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Harris and his wife arrive home shortly after nightfall. Still, I watch, becoming more and more certain that there is nothing more to this family than a very dysfunctional marriage. Dr. Taylor was cheating on his wife with his hot neighbor. Their troublemaking child became sick of the drama and ran away, accepting five-hundred bucks from a stranger to deliver letters to a woman’s house.
That’s it. I’m sure of it.
I am just about to call it a night when I hear a twig break somewhere to my right. Silence, followed by anothersnick,then another and another. I’m no tracking expert but based on the equally spaced repetition of each breaking twig, it appears to be a human walking through the woods.
Looking from window to window, I confirm Harris and his wife are still inside.
The steps grow closer and I am sure whoever it is has no idea I’m here.
So what to do now?
The decision is made for me when I am literally almost run over by this mystery person.
I lunge backward, tripping over a scrub brush and almost falling on my ass. The woman screams, a terrible, ear-piercing shrill of noise.
“No, no, no,” I rush toward her, palms up.“Shhh,it’s okay, it’s okay.”
The woman freezes. It is so dark between us that although we are facing each other, we are nothing more than silhouettes. Black cardboard cutouts of two people.
I catch the scent of her perfume, and considering how still the night is, that’s saying something. It is a strong, pungent scent, the kind that preludes your arrival. The kind that women who want to be taken notice of wear.
My eyes rake over the outline of the woman’s body. She is tall, with long red hair that hangs down to her waist.
The neighbor.
We recognize each other at the same time.
“It wasyou.” Gloria Lopez hisses. “You—” she jabs a finger into my chest.
I blink, my brain taking a moment to catch up with this emotional swing from crippling fear to apparent anger.
“It wasyouin the house that night.” She is slurring badly, her breath laced with alcohol. I have to fight from taking a step back. The woman is completely inebriated. And then it hits me—she’s likely on her way to the abandoned house to meet Dr. Harris, the horned sadist himself.
“I’m sorry…” I say. Typically, I would assume that a woman would be embarrassed to run into a man who saw her being sodomized—and enjoying it. However, I don’t get this vibe from her. Gloria is nothing more than pissed. “I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean to watch me like a sick pervert?” I inhale to respond, but she cuts me off. “Did you tell anyone?”
“Ah—”
“Oh God, did you tell anyone?” Her tone switches from anger to panic and I realize then that the woman is more than just drunk. High on pills, maybe even cocaine.
“Oh my God,” she says to my no response, then collapses into sobs.
I look around, not that I can see anything, but if this woman doesn’t pull it together, we are both going to get busted.
Her sobbing increases, loud spurts and sputters of incontrollable emotion.
I’m staring at her like an idiot, the stereotypical man who doesn’t know how to console a crying woman. Guilty. I admit.
Gloria grabs onto a tree branch as she doubles over in hysteria, the combination of standing and crying proving to be too complicated for her wine-fueled system.
Awkwardly, I tap her shoulder and say, “there, there.”
She grabs my arm, collapses into my chest.
I want out of here. Gone.Now.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she sobs. “He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me.”
