Page 5 of Haunt

It doesn’t really matter what she thinks.

She belongs with me.

To me.

As day turns into night, I watch her from the rafters of her room. Feet crossed at my ankles, back to the wall, I sit along the wide wooden beam, wait for her to crawl into bed. She does not look up. She does not peek at the body hidden beneath her bed. I think of her comfort, how she is not fazed by the dead man sharing her space, and I wonder if anythingIdo to her tonight will unsettle her at all.

Something unfamiliar, at the thought, threatens to pull at my lips, morph my face into something unrecognisable.

Something I couldn’t ever stop myself from forming when I were with her.

A smile.

It is sinister in its intent, the way I watch her move around her space. Finally peeling away her clothes, pull on a yellow nightdress, with nothing more than the flicker of a single candle casting her shadow across the wall. I cannot see all of her creamy pale skin, but I imagine I can as I watch her silhouette creep across the room.

And it is perfect.

She is perfect.

I watch her patiently,agonisinglypatiently, for her to fully settle. Then, I monitor the time, waiting for the large hand on my watch to hit twelve, the little hand to find it too. It is difficult to see it in the blackness of night, her candlelight not stretching anywhere near this high. Only a small circle of glow around where she lies, but with my eyes having adjusted slowly as the blanket of onyx befell us, I find it considerably easy to watch it strike twelve.

Slowly, swinging my legs down, I let them dangle over the old wooden structure, nothing but an almost silent creak as I curl my hands over its edge and begin to lower myself down. Rafter after rafter I climb my way closer. Heart thudding dangerously loud in my ears. My feet find the floor much faster than they left it in my desperation to get closer. I keep my breath held. Try to temper my excitement. Adrenaline like a lightning bolt zapping through my veins.

I feel alive.

For the first time in over a decade.

Emerging from a state of hibernation, everything inside of me kicks into gear in the pursuit of my sunlight.

I am as silent as death, creeping across her space. She does not spot me, even as her candle projects my large shadow against the wall. She reads, enraptured, head in her book. Completely zoned out, and I can’t help but recognise how dangerous this is.

For someone like her.

I am still out of sight, watching her delicate fingers trace old pages in her book. I cannot see her face, hidden beneath shadows and curtains of dark hair.

I want to watch her forever. Keep my eyes on her until death. But just for a moment, I must keep her in the dark. So I blow out the candle and plunge us entirely into black.

It is precisely midnight when it happens.

I am lying on my cot, curled fist propped beneath my cheek, holding up my head. Elbow digging into the thin mattress, a white cotton sheet covering it. My other hand curled over top of the open pages in the book I am reading. Room in darkness, shadows flickering across the white wall opposite, dancing in the light of the tall cream candle beside my bed. A singular cross hung upon it; a bloodied Jesus nailed to the wooden symbol.

My eyes scan across the yellowing pages of text, a book in French I have carried with me for as long as I can remember. Poetry. Assaulted and abused with strokes of many pens and pencils, coloured notes and scribbles and doodles all added by my hand, except...

La folie et l’horreur, froides et taciturnes.

Madness and horror, cold and taciturn.

The scrawled words beneath that line of text. The only onesnotby my hand.

His handwriting is beautiful. It is almost an archaic scrawl, calligraphy, something slanted and delicate and important. I do not know what it means. Silver circles the phrase, the page dented from years of lead pencil.

A single tear slides down the side of my nose and I let it fall from the tip, splashing onto the black inked phrase. That’s when I hear a sudden rush of breath and the candle beside me goes out.

Smoke scents the room, my skin prickles with cold, goosebumps barb across my flesh, but I do not move.

I think of the corpse beneath my bed. The wound to his neck. Imagine his fat greying fingers clawing at the edge of my sheets.

My breath sails in and out of me, my chest heaving. I am paralysed. I am so still, bar the rapid flexing of my rib bones, the solid, rampant thudding of my heart. Something I desperately want to stop as I strain my ears, try to listen for breaths from the dead body beneath my cot. But there is a buzzing inside my skull, a descendant of flies readying to feast. I bite my tongue, swallow the urge to cry, crinkle the pages in the tightening of my fist.

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