Page 16 of Grotesque
My heart galloped. My arms had gone numb, my mouth dry. All at once it felt like my chest was seizing. I couldn’t breathe.
Why couldn’t I see his face? Not even the glint of his eyes. It was as if a black hole stared back at me instead of a man.
The weight of his gaze was too familiar. It was the same overwhelming awareness that had fallen on me the moment I stepped onto the property. I knew that this was the man I had felt watching me. As we continued to stare at one another, a profound, inexplicable sense of evil pooled at my feet. I felt it clawing at my legs, threatening to drag me under if I so much as blinked.
“What do you want?” It was barely a whisper. I hated that despite how much I thought I would be prepared for a murderer or stalker to come after me one day, I was entirely frozen with fear. No number of movies or books could have prepared me for the utter terror that pounded through my veins.
Somewhere in the background the woman screamed on the television. Holy fuck, I was going to end up just like her.
The stranger extended an arm, revealing one pale, grey-tinged hand. The hand opened, a silver chain tumbling from it. He wriggled his long fingers, so that the charm on the end danced.
It was a locket necklace. A heart locket.
“I was saving it for Maxine, but I think it would be prettier around your neck.”
The threat in this voice was obvious. I could practically feel the venom behind his words dripping onto the porch.
I dragged my eyes up to his empty face. “Will you leave if I take it?”
The sick feeling around my legs pulsed. The stranger cocked his head slightly to the side, enough so that light cut across the edge of his chin. “For tonight,” he said.
Anything. Anything to get this freak off my property and on his merry way.
“Leave it on the handle and step back,” I said.
The man tilted his head the other way and though I couldn’t see his expression I felt he might have been scowling at me. He let the chain glide down his fingers onto the doorknob. It clacked twice against the door before he finally stepped back.
I shook my head. “All the way off the porch.”
He let out a heavy sigh and walked backwards, not once turning his face away from me. I unlocked the door slowly, watching him until his feet hit the grass beyond the decking. I opened the door and jerked at the chain. It fought against me as I tried to free it. With a final yank, it snapped and I pulled it inside, locking the door once more.
The stranger hadn’t moved. I could feel him laughing at me, though he made no sound.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” His voice was crystal clear. As if he were standing right in front of me still, rather than eight feet away.
I looked down at my hands. The locket was silver, finely made. My hands were shaking so badly it was a wonder I managed to open it on the first try, but somehow I did. Inside was a mirror.
I looked closer. A ripple spread across the glass, and in the space of a blink there was a moth sitting on its face. The familiar skull pressed into its delicate wings stared back at me.
A shadow fell across my hands, obscuring the locket and its contents.
“You must be soaking wet by now.”
A tingling sensation prickled along my skin. He had seen me. Had been watching me for who knew hold long as I pleasured myself to a woman being attacked.
I knew what I would see when I looked up, but nothing prepared me for the shock when my eyes travelled upwards to find him looming over me once more. Dread was not a strong enough word to describe the sheer force of him. Looking into nothing, into the blackness where a face should be, I knew what true fear was for the first time. And there was nothing sexy or inviting about the realization that he was about to hurt me.
Shrieking, I hurled the locket against the window.
“You don’t like the face of death now that you’ve met him?”
Time seemed to slow.
The stranger reached for the doors, and with the barest of touches, they drifted open. With my heart in my throat, I stood transfixed as fear himself crossed the threshold.
The locket clattered to the floor, breaking the spell. By the time he had fully stepped inside, I had already turned to run.
I didn’t have time to grab my phone, knowing he was hot on my heels. I sprinted up the steps, my blood pounding, every sense screaming that death was right behind me.
