Next Door

I had awoken with a jerk. I was bolt upright in my bed before I realised it had been a dream. My bare back glistened in sweat, cooling with the light breeze than came in from the open window behind me. Even as I wiped the sweat from my clammy forehead, I could feel the dread ebbing away, my shoulders aching slightly as the muscles relaxed once more. For a moment there, I had to fight the urge to jump out of bed and tear into the front room to look out it’s window into the street for the Garda cars and Ambulances I had felt certain must be there. Blowing my cheeks out and letting myself fall back against my bed, it occured to me that Scott, my tenant, may not have appreciated his naked sweaty landlord bursting into his room at this hour. I glanced at the red LED display on the clock radio by my bed. Four am.

I let my mind drift back and examine the dream I had just had, trying to colour in the images that had woken me with such violence.

Violence.

That’s what had woken me. A ruby red flower of blood blossomed against a window. A spiders web cracked glass pane, bursting, and a falling body. It tumbled interminably, turning head over heel in a slow, wheeling spin, arms and legs outstretched like spokes in a broken wheel. The figure was a solid black outline, a 2 dimensional shadow, with no features, but I knew who it was. Above the figure, as it wheeled slowly below the window, not seeming to be falling, but hanging suspended by invisible wires, drifting dead in space, was the figure of a woman. The silhouette of her hair stood out in stark contrast to the light of the bedroom behind her framed in a jagged hole in the window. She looked like a human shaped cut-out that had been punched from the scene. I could see the familiar outline of a shock of unkempt hair, but I could also see a steely white eclipse of teeth, as her mouth drew back in a maniacal grin. Even now, I found the remembrance of the evil looking smile so disconcerting that I immediately put it out of my mind and flicked on the bedside light. My excuse was so that i could read my book, but part of me did not want to be caught in the dark with that horrible image. As I picked my book from off the table, a last flickering image passed by a window in my mind. A flash of of steel, a gleaming shard of moonlight against the knife the figure in the window had been clutching as she watch the bloody body of Mark O’Leary fall.

I made hot milk in the kitchen, letting it form a bubbling skin in a pot on the hob as I back the patio door to let the tendrils of smoke from a cigarette dissipate into the warm night air. Stepping out onto the decking I couldn’t help turning to look up at my neighbours window. Of course there was no broken glass, no hideous figure against the bedroom light. Just the dark outline of a curtained window like all the rest in the terrace. I felt a chill run through me, then quickly admonished myself with a snort, and flicked the half smoked cigarette into the rose bush. I poured a large Starbucks mug full of the warm milk and went back to bed.

When i finally awake the next morning, it was 11 o’clock. I had not set an alarm, due to my fractious sleep. It was Saturday after all. Jessica was sitting at the kitchen table reading the morning paper. She worked nights at the hospital as a nurse, and had probably only been home an hour. I clicked on the kettle, weighing it first to see if it held water, and watched the back of her head for one admiring moment before she notices me. Her blond shoulder length hair was tied up into a pony tail, displaying her slender neck, which she rubbed absently with her index and forefingers as she cupped her jaw in the palm of her hand. Her back was sore again, I knew, but i knew better than to draw attention to something I couldn’t fix. She turned to greet me with a warm, tired smile.

“Morning hun” she said, as i bent to kiss the crown of her head, and took a seat opposite her.

“Morning sweetie” I gave her offered hand a gentle squeeze in my own larger paw. “How was your night?”

I would never say it to her, but i loved the way she looked when she came home in the mornings. Her face was soft and warm with fatigue, her eyes sleepy and dream like as she relaxed in her favourite ritual. A cup of tea, to slices of warm buttered toast, and the morning paper. Very soon she would go to bed, removing her nurses uniform for me to tidy away in to the wash basket, lift her legs into our bed, and cuddle herself into a ball in the duvet and fall into a sleep.

“It was fine. Busy as usual, but no big drama. Ellen didn’t turn in again”

I shook my head in disgust.

“She’s a liability that girl. The sooner they find a replacement the better” I said, sweeping a palm across the table, distributing the remains of last nights cigarette ashes onto the floor.

Jessica inclined her head and sucked in through her teeth. I knew she would defend her friend again, despite the amount of times she had been let down by her.

“You know she’s been through a lot” she sighed, “she’s never been comfortable since the fight that night. She lit a silk cut blue and held it between her thumb and forefinger, tipping the ash instinctively into an ashtray before her.

She swept her palm slowly over he forehead and brushed her fringe back from her face, for a moment framing her petite looks under her hand. She has a wonderfully pretty face, my Jessica. Her small, full lips like opposing pink hearts as she pursed her mouth once more. She rose from her seat and I could see down the opening in her uniform to her small breasts as she bends over the table to kiss my forehead. It feels warm and sweet, and lingers there long after she has turned and climbed the stair to our bed. I sip the remains of her tea, feeling the soft burn of her kiss absorb into my skin. I worried for her when she worked nights. Her friend Ellen had been there one night a few months ago when a fight had broken out between to drunken travelers. Hospital cut backs had led to there being only one security guard on duty, and he had been in the bathroom when Ellen had tried to intercede, earning herself a slashed forearm for her trouble.

The bathroom door opened into the kitchen and Scott emerged in his dressing gown in plume of steam.

“Quite an entrance” I say, as he turned, still rubbing his head with a large white towel.

“Naturally” he replies, spoting me from beneath the towel. Scotts large frame ambled forward out of the steam and sat itself down in the chair Jessica had vacated. His salt and pepper hair stood in tight wet curls as he nodded towards my cup.

“Made the tea have you? Good man!”. His Yorkshire accent is thick and goodhearted.

I grinned and pointed to the steaming kettle by the hob.

“Buffet service this morning mate”.

Scott had been staying at our house for a year now, ever since we had bought the place at the very edge of what we could afford. We hadn’t been keen on sharing our home with a stranger, but needed his rent to help pay the mortgage. As it happened we had been fortunate to have him. He worked away from Monday to Friday, only coming home late on the Fridays, when he would toss his bags in his room, poke his head in the front room and say hello, before disapearing down the pub for the night.

“You look like shite, by the way” he says, straightforward as ever, over his shoulder as he rose to retrieve the teabags from the side board and pour himself a cup of tea. “Heavy night was it?”

“Ta” I reply sarcastically. “Bad dream, that's all. Was awake at 4am pacing the kitchen drinking hot milk”

Scott widens his eyes in mock surprise.

“Hot milk? Red blooded Irishman you are, eh?” he laughs.

I scrunch my face up in agreement with his distaste.

“Well, it was a nightmare. Woke me up in a cold sweat it did. I dreamed yer one next door had killed the husband”

Scott stared at me and carved a look of disgust into his weather beaten looks.

“you had a dream about the bag lady next door?! Jesus. No wonder you look like shite” he whistles.

“Yes. I know. Bloody awful it was”

A thought seems to occur to him. He looks at me quizzically as he sits down facing me, placing his tea in front of him. He Bends in towards me with a look of concern on his face, tempered by a hint of smile

“Oh Jesus” he whispers. “She wasn’t naked was she?”

“Feck….Off!” I twist my own expression in disgust, smacking my lips as if trying to expel a bad taste from my mouth.

“Jesus, I didn’t think the nightmare could get any worse, but thanks for that image”

Later, I shower and stand toweling myself off in front of the mirror. I do look like shite, I think, as I wipe a streaked swipe across the glass and catch sight of the grey half moons under each eye. My wet hair is swept back over my head, my pale scalp showing through my thinning hair line. Every morning as I shave, my hair is showing signs of my 34 years by not being there quite so much as it used to. The morning role call is getting shorter and shorter, I muse.

Later, Jessie and I drink frothy cappuccinos in the nearby coffee shop, both absorbed in our latest purchases from the St Vincent De Paul charity book store. I scan the back of my novel, as Jessica reads the first few paragraphs of her latest prison diary book. She has a thing about crime and punishment. Survival in harshest regimes that I kid her about. I tell her constantly that I’m convinced she’s researching ways to do away with me and plant me under a patio as she flips the page in her latest death row biography. It’s a subject Scott never likes to engage in, as we sit watching the football while Jessie works nights, for some reason. I think I just bore him with my talk of Jessica.

We both enjoy our books. Perfectly capable of sitting together, her head in my shoulder, as we read our separate tomes, a gentle nudge or a squeeze reminding each other that were still there. Before she goes to work, we cuddle in our beanbag, in our spare room, silently engrossed in our books, listening to Nick Drake’s Cello song in the backround. Sometimes this leads to more. More often, we just disappear into each other, inseparable, and enjoying the silence that entwines two people who have become as much a part of each other as our own separate limbs.

We fold into the beanbag beneath us.

She leaves for work at 9, leaving a warm empty indent in the beanbag beside me.

I busy myself with my half built rockery in the garden for the rest of the evening, making use of the bright summer dusk. By ten o’clock, with the sun losing it’s heat and finally disappearing behind the slates of my roof, I sit back on a the sleepers propping up the mound of earth and light a cigarette. I’m dressed only in three quarter length shorts and am happily caked in soil from the newly constructed flower bed, and sit like a small boy, one leg tucked underneath me and the other kicking the heel of a paint splattered trainer against the wood.

Our garden is long and narrow, green and lush now. The plot of land only the width of our little terrace house that in the past six months I have dug flower beds into and re-laid sods of grass over, has been transformed from the wilderness that was here when we moved in, into a habitable little oasis beside my neighbours overgrown meadow next door. My flower beds lie parallel to a 6 foot wall that borders our properties. Untrained trees and wild brambles hang over my wall, natures bullys leering over the wall as if scoffing at the my well groomed garden. Tonight, I have planned to finish my rockery, open a bottle of Wolf Blass, and settle into the quite corner I have uncovered at the bottom of the garden, and read my book until the stars come out.

As I sit there, voices begin to drift from the house next door. Raised, angry voices. I try to immerse myself further into my book, but the voices continue, rising and falling as the argument gains momentum. I recognize Sarah, my neighbour, as the drunken slur that is berating her husband Mark over some comment he’s made over her drinking. She is large and frightening to Marks small, lean frame. He is tanned and slim from his labouring job as a bricky, to her lolling, obese, pale palor. I meet her occasionally over the back wall as she hangs out the washing in the small concrete patio area behind the back door. She engages conversation with an opening of “God save us” whenever she catches my eye, before plunging in one diatribe or and other about foreigners or the landlord, jobs and the social welfare, and generally how sick shes feeling today as I wince at the odour of stale alcohol that drifts over the wall. Pink or black lingerie is generally swinging in the breeze behind her head as she lights another cigarette with the tail end of her last.

She pounded my door one late night a few months back. I threw on a dressing gown and descended my stair to open my door, bemused by the sound of a thudding knock at 4 in the morning. She stood there, leaning over the fence between our front gardens staring at me with one eye, the other lazily focused somewhere above my left shoulder.

“God Save us. Did ye hear that noise?” she said, her voice faltering as if wrecked by some recent trauma. She looked as if she may crumble into an emotional heap at my feet at any minute.

She was dressed in her pajamas, one arm clasping her top about her bosoms as her belly poured out over the waist of her bottoms. Her other arm was pressed against the side of her face, holding back the tangled knot of black curls that normally fell about her forehead. If it wasn’t for the cigarette held between the forefinger and index finger of this hand, curls of smoke drifting into her hair, I would have been convinced she was sleep walking.

“What noise?” I had asked her, looking about the street for signs of disturbance. I was somewhere between horrified and appalled as she inclined her head to look past my shoulder into my front room, as if she wanted to be asked in for a chat.

“That banging noise. And that screamin’ Didn’t ye hear it? Jaysus, mother of god, did ye not hear it?” she continued, still furtively looking over my shoulder as if she expected to find the root of the supposed noise in the shape of a party going on behind me.

I folded my arms and leaned against the door post.

“All I heard was you banging on my front door” I said, matter of factly, not wanting to antagonize her.

She flicks her eye back to me, the other seemingly still scanning my front room.

“I didn’t bang your door!” she said defensively, a look of horror on her face, as if i just accused her of murder.

“You didn’t bang on my front door?” i said, looking at her hard. Surely she didn’t expect me to believe this.

“Then who did?”

I made a point of scanning the street once more. It was desserted, save for the figure of Ashram behind the counter in the 24 petrol station across the road. I’ll have a great story to tell him tomorrow when I pick up my paper, I remember thinking. I returned his wave as he caught me looking in his direction, no doubt laughing to himself as he spotted my doorstep companion. The next morning he had been in great humour
(Pakistan had just beaten England in the cricket) and I had shared in his mirth about it as he mentioned my midnight caller.

Sarah was plodding her way down her driveway when I turned my gaze back to her. With heavy clumps of her slippers, she turned right and headed towards the front door of the appartment adjacent to her house, her arms wrapped tightly around her midriff as she waddled towards the door. As I closed my own door, I could hear her muttering to herself.

“Jaysus mary, mother of god….”

It was that night, I have suddenly remembered, that I had had that horrible dream for the first time. I had thought nothing of it at the next morning. Just another nightmare brought on by stress, too much cheese, far to much alcohol, and my habit of sitting up late reading. It occurred to me that repetitive nightmares are unusual. I remember cleaning wine I had spilled on the kitchen floor at some point, probably while rushing for the front door in my half-sleeping state, before climbing the stairs for bed.

Again, tonight, I am woken by a nightmare. It’s 4am when I look at the clock, my head fizzing and throbbing from alcohol. Again, the fading images of the dream linger long enough for me to make out the steely flash of the blade. This time the force of the nightmare had shot me into a sitting position on the side of the bed, both feet planted firmly on the carpeted floor. I’m clutching my t-shirt to my chest as I slow my rapid breathing.

Downstairs, I mull it over, resorting the scenes in my head, while I stir a pot of milk, warming on the hob. It had been the same dream, but somehow different. Like a film shot from two different angles. As I try and piece the events together, I struggle to find the last missing piece. The part that caused me to wake this time. Before, I have always awoken at the point where I see the blade in Sarahs hand. The glint of moonlight along its shaft the trigger. Tonight, however, the blade flashes, and then disappears into the shadows once more, and I was left still looking at her.

Ah, that's why it seemed different. The angle was different. I could see her head in more profile, as if I was standing on my own kitchen roof, looking across at her. I was almost at the same level with her as she…..

I drop the ladle as a cold shudder sweeps over me. I have to shake my head to banish the sudden eclipse of fear that has just thrown a dark shadow over my mind. The ladle has clips the edge of the pot and clatters onto the black glass of the hob, trailing a slippery tail of white skin from the heated milk.

The jet black silhouette of my neighbours head, turning slowly to face me is there, at the front of my aspect. Her eyes, solid white orbs, over an arc of white, luminous teeth. Her lips pull back taunt against them in a ferocious, lupine grin, as she glares at me from the window.

I can’t go back to bed. I know I won’t sleep now, so I busy myself at the hob making breakfast for myself. Four sausages, two slices of toast, buttered to their edges, and one fried egg. My sandwich made, I settle in front of Sky news with my hot milk and watch the morning arrive through the open curtains of my front room. Outside, a door creaks. It causes me to pause, one hand on the remote, the other bringing the sandwich to my mouth. A glance at the clock on the mantle piece assures me that it is 4.30am. I sit for awhile, contemplating the noise, until eventually, it is followed by the muffled click of a door being pushed too. I have to look, there's no denying my curiosity. At the window, I pull back the curtain to reveal the orange glow of street lights against the antique pale glow of the sky above the town. In the dim light, i can see the shambling figure of Sarah, waddling accros the road, pushing a babies buggy before her. its an incongruous sight. I watch her as she practices the safe crossing of the junction, looking once to each side before pushing the buggy forward and following it with quick, mumbling steps.

Its not unusual, i have to remind myself. I have often left my house at 5am to catch a plane, work bidding me to arrive at London at an ungodly hour as it often does, and witnessed her early morning walks in the past few weeks. I take it to mean her child is not sleeping. She has no car, so sometimes she has to walk the baby in the early hours to help him sleep, i imagine. This is particularly early, but given my own reason for being awake at this time, I shouldn’t be surprised. Except, this time, there is something that makes me linger at the curtain. I can’t explain it other than to say that she appears furtive. Nervous even, rather than the tired, careless form I have come to expect. Her head darts one way, and then the next, as if looking for watchers.

I watch her departing shadow, an idea welling up inside me. A dark, subversive notion that I instantly shake from my head, as I fling the curtain shut.

Jessie is here again, the back of her blond head facing my admiring gaze. She sits, crossed legged, reading the paper, gingerly tipping her cigarette ash into the small ceramic ashtray I’ve placed before her. I’ve tipped her hair, and kissed her brow, and returned to the hob as I make scrambled eggs for her. She breathes out soft tendrils of smoke as she turns a page. I watch her, wanting to hold her, as I always do these mornings. I watch as her slim shin rocks against the calf of her other leg. A flat thin Pump, tiny, I could hold it’s volume in my hand, beating to the rhythm of some song that’s singing, silently, in her head. I stand here most mornings, watching her slender frame relax into our kitchen table. She sometimes releases her hair from its pony tail, letting it unfold and spread, sweeping delicate fingers over her smooth shoulders. I am sometimes jealous, ridiculous as it may seem, of her hair.

I sit before her, placing a plate of scrambled egg on hot buttered toast before her, and watch her eat. She is delicate, even in her tired state. Not even one buttered crumb remains on her lips as she idly places the fork to her mouth, over and over again, until she has eaten her fill. Her breakfast finished, she smiles at me, placing her finished fork neatly on the plate. “Thank you sweetie” she says, before rising. She leans in to me, slowly, as if she wants to savor the moment, and presses her lips to my forehead.

“Goodnight Sweetie”. Her voice is almost dreamlike. I watch her as she slowly turns, and mounts the stair to our room. A door closes somewhere upstairs, followed by the sound of Scott's feet descending the stair.

I rise and claim the bathroom before him.

After I shower, I sit on my front step, looking out onto the road as I fasten the Velcro straps on my cycling shoes. It’s a crisp, clear Sunday morning and I have decided to take a spin on my bike out through the hills that run along by the beaches of Clogherhead and Anagassan. It’s the kind of cool, breathless morning that demands attention. Demands to
have me feel its cool fingers on my face to wash away the fatigue that clouds my mind. As I sit here, I hear the door of my neighbours house click open. An ambulance rushes by en-route to the hospital up the road, lights silently flashing the empty road. From the corner of my eye I can see the front two wheels of a buggy being pushed outdoors,
followed by the rest of the buggy, and two swarthy hands clutching the push bar. I turn around to see Mark standing in his doorway, a cigarette dangling from the lips of his browned face. I have to admonish myself silently for the thought that rises in my head. The thought that Mark is still alive after all. I nod in his direction.

“Howsit going Mark?”

He returns my nod with a smile that greases his face, his brown tan forming dark furrows in his cheeks, great crows feet around his eyes. “Howya” he says, rolling the cigarette to one corner of his mouth to let the word escape.

“hows the little fella?” I ask, inclining my head to see into the buggy. A little mound of blankets tucked high up in the chair is all I can see from my seated position .

“Grand” Mark says, tossing his head a little as if to say “you know”

Are usual short greetins dispensed with, Mark closes the door behind him and disappears round the corner while I mount my bike and freewheel off the curb.

Later that night, as I lay sleeping in the warm August breeze that billows my curtains, I dream once more:

In my mind I was riding.
I am chasing. Standing on my pedals I am climbing over tall foreign
mountains; I can feel the urgency in my legs, the surge of adrenaline
that is powering me up the steep incline. The insurmountable climb
ticks under my wheels as I press and pull on the pedals, warm salty
sweat pouring down over my face. Through the narrow tree lined road I
reach the summit and plunge down into a steep cliff edged descent,
tearing into a beating hot yellow sun through steep stepped lush
green vineyards. My legs felt like indominatable turbines, pumping and
grinding out mile after mile without weakness. Tucked with chin to
handlebar I am then freewheeling down a sheer drop from the mountain
top, the wind cooling my face, I bend right, then left at impossible
angles on these switchback curves, wheels biting on the last solid
part of the tar macadam, kicking up trails of dust from gravel margins
as I feel my back wheel almost give way, then find purchase at the
last minute with a sudden jolt of acceleration. Down into sleepy
mountain villages of poplar lined streets and cobbled lanes. Cafe
culture onlookers second glancing the streak of blue and silver
streaking past their cappuccino tables. Out into the flat countryside
passed the breathing trees and chattering breezes of the hedgerows.
The bike beneath me indecipherable now from my body, the wheels my new
legs, rolling smoothly, rhythmically in syncopation with my body, a
flying, rolling, unstoppable dynamo. Stone houses, petrol stations and
cars sweep passed in blurs of colour, streaming into each other until
the black road in front of me becomes a hissing snake of tar through a
kaleidoscope tunnel of watercolours, it’s ending stretching miles in
front to a sharp pointed tip that pierces the burning sun as it set
in an eclipse of blood red twilight. My legs pummel on, steaming my
wheels onward and onward, trying to stay within the suns grasp before
it slips beneath the horizon. My face contorts with grim effort,
desperation as the blur of colour converges around me, closer and
closer, narrowing the road below me. Faster and faster my legs spin
and my wheels sing of hot black friction until my chest heaves and
muscles bulge under shining skin as the suns dimming tip sinks
silently below the edge of my perception. Fear and desperation fuels
my legs, they burn with boiling blood and straining, aching sinew
until, abruptly, the light blinks out and the road falls away into
inky blackness, plucking the sight from my eyes and plummeting the
road into black space, down, far beneath my feet…

Suddenly, I am awake.

This time I am lying on my back staring a the ceiling at three luminous stars, acrylic dots placed there for the child of the houses’ previous occupants. They wink and glitter as I watch them. They tell me that light is coming in from somewhere outside my window. Turning on my side I gather the curtain in one hand and look out out into my neighbours garden.

I see nothing at first. The night is still and moonless, save for a gentle breeze, a welcome cool breath against my face. The shed at the bottom of my own garden yawns a gaping black hole where I have left its door ajar after returning my bike to it earlier today. A partial red outline of my face reflects in the window from the clock radio beside
my bed that reads 4am.

A shadow is moving in the garden next door. At first I had thought it to be the old dead tree stump that protrudes from the chaotic, overgrown lawn. But now a movement has caught my eye. A shadow has peeled away from the tree stump, as if the person had been standing behind it, making me believe for a moment that the old tree was itself on the move, before I make out the head and shoulders of a person walking slowly away from the stump, separating itself from the dark shape. Shapes begin to reslove themselves as I concentrate on the figure as it slowly turns and faces the tree stump. Suddenly a light from a small torch flicks into life, a low, covered glow from the hand of the figure. It throws an elongated shadow against the ivy covered wall to the left of the figure that I now can recognise as Mark O’Learly’s slim frame. He holds the light downwards, as if to hide the white light it shines on the weeds before him. Slowly, I watch him place the torch on a the stranded picnic table that barely shows above the undergrowth. He steps forward and appears to take stock of the ground before him, before raising his arms before him, now holding the sharpe outline of a spade, or shovel before him. I can hear the “Shink” as the blade bites the earth, and a subsequent “Shunk” as he leans forward and applies his foot to the shoulder of the spade head. I lean forward, just enough to block the reflection of the LED display from the window. The figure raises itself to it’s full height once more, and I catch the glint of moonlight that flashes from Mark O’Leary’s wristwatch.

Someone was breathing in my room.

Somewhere, in the darkness, someone
was watching me. I felt my own breath halt in my throat as I
tried to filter the background from that one, simple sound I’d heard,
waiting for it to happen again. If it was regular, I knew, it was
alive, real.

There. Again. A faint exhale of air over a lips.

Now I could sense a presence. It filled the room, surrounded me in a
rising wave of fear. I still hadn’t taken a breath and now I felt
myself gag with terror as I tried to open my mouth to let more air in,
but couldn’t. Something tight and adhesive was across my mouth,
gagging me, a sickly taste of glue across my tongue. A red a hot rush of adrenaline hit every extremity at the same time as I exploded in a frenzy, writhing against the straps that
bound my legs and arms to the bed. Dear god, what was this horror that wrapped me to the bed, my back, sticky with sweat. Tight broad straps of inflexible bounds held me fast to my prone position, as if I’d woken from a nightmare, into a nightmare. They bit into my skin as the realisation came upon me, that I was trapped.

The room glowed suddenly, and I froze. There, to my right, sitting on
the floor with his back against the wall, I briefly caught sight
of a mans figure in the red ember of the cigarette, burned into my retina. He sat,
still, pulsating in my minds eye.It was O’leary. I was sure. Terrified, and sure. The acrid-sweet pungent fug of his Sweet Aftons filled my heaving senses.

“You been watchin’ me boy”

The words dragged heavily across my consciousness like a thick bloody tear across my chest, wrenching the breath from my lungs.

I heard a small whimper of fear emit from my throat. His voice
graveled it’s way out of his throat, rolling slowly like a growling
avalanche of hatred. The red ember rose in an arc, then seemed to blaze
violently for a second as he pulled another toke from it. His face in
it’s light. Those hard, slitted eyes. Those murky frog spawn globes of
eyes. The tips of his fingers like fat stubbed cigarettes, nicotined
and filthy. I stared from the corner of my eyes, unable to move my head in his direction, into his horrible dark eyes, afraid to look away, as if holding
him at bay with my wide open terror.

He blew the sickly warm sweet hot air into my face, causing my eyes to clamp shut
involuntarily, instantly birthing a fresh surge of adrenaline as I
lost sight of him again.

When I opened my eyes the darkness pressed
against my face again, a smothering blanket of unknown horror.

“Made me wonder what you were playin’ at, you know, spyin’ on yer
neighbour like?”

I glared into the darkness, unable to focus on anything as sprites
darted about my vision, tricked by the absolute blackness of the room.
I could hear him smile. Actually hear the bristles on his face rub
against each other as the corners of his mouth pulled back. The sound
of my own heart bellowed in my ears, billowed against my breast bone.
I heard him shift position, a shoe being dragged across the tight
weave of carpet. Suddenly I felt the heat of his face next to mine and recoiled
just as far as the strap around my forehead would allow. His hot
breath on my eyelids. His words sank like pistons pumping into my skin.

“So why the fuck was he follyin me to work then, eh? Follyin me when
I’m takin the wee fella for a walk?

He spat every second word. I felt his spittle on my skin. I revulsed
as it speckled cold fingertips on my forehead.

His voice lowered into a ferocious growl.

” I even seen ya looking in me back winda at me and the missus, ye
fuckin’ pervy bastard, aye.”

His words ended in an imagined, malichous grin, baring his teeth so that the words
spat out in clipped staccato daggers.

“Enjoy…

That…

Didja…

Boy?”

The air clears, I hear him push his back into the wall again.
He grunts as he seems to search his pockets for something. I hear the
rustle of a cigarette box. I hear my heart, pound as if it wants to escape this moment and disown me, flop away down the bed an fuck of out the door without me. And then A bright sudden sprite of white light burns a flash into my vision. A second, followed by an orange flame, and
O’leary’s face, bent in concentration over a new cigarette. His widows
peaks’ like dirty lanes back into his scalp, cheeks sunken as he
pulls on the cigarette. The flame dies, and just the burned outline of
him on my mind remains, lines slowly bleeding into each other,
mutating into a horned silhouette of a demon. I tried to open my mouth
and call out.

His voice is leveled when he speaks again, no longer spiting, but drawling, as if he wants me to take in every horrible word.

“So, I had to think to meself, whats this fella playin’ at? Up at all these hours of the night, bangin’ round de house, wakin’ me and the missus up. Then I sees ye. Last year it was. Somethin’. Somethin’ that bothered me, but meant feck all to me at the time. All That feckin’ about the garden ye did. We just feckin’ thought yez were bored, and just feckin’ about in the garden; sure we passed no heed. But I did pass comment at the time that she wasn’t present for most of it, ye know, her, yer missus. Then she disapeared. Ye know, yer missus, whats her name, jessie?”

Something rang cold, a steel winter bell, in my chest.

A scene flashes in my memory, like someone threw a light over a darkened room for a breif, flashing second. That day when the Gardai came. That big Sergent in his padded vest and distant eyes. He didn’t want to be here. Not at this time. Not for yet another domestic.

“So i had to think to meself: ‘What this fella playin’ at?”

Dark buttons on the sergeants vest. Metallic rims against a herringbone blue.

“All that feckin’ around in the garden..”

Hard, probing eyes narrowed to slits, until they burrow. Delve. Dig. Dig…….

My mouth works .Shapes, fashions words, and fails. Jessie. Jessie. I’m so sorry…

*********************************



Scott was questioned, over and over again. His broad shoulders must have shook as he sat unfathomably lost in a sea of questions from the Gardai as they took me away. His grey temples must have been buried in his hands as the Garda forensics dug away at the rockery at the bottom of the garden where he used to sit and smoke those tiny little cigars of his, puffing thoughtful grey circles into the night air while Jessie slept below. Right where he sat and thought. Right where he and I sat and drank, and set the world to rights after Jessie's disappearance. They must have asked about the times I put breakfast on the table for her and I even after she was gone, and how…How was he to know? Why should he have known? that was our, little, place. Our little secret. Just Jessie and I.

She turns now, and smiles at me. Her hair hasn’t lost that shine, that glow that I love. She’s sitting right there, right across form me in our small, but comfortable little room. there is a chess set placed between us, as the door closes and locks behind us, like it does ever night. I turn and nod, smilingly at the man with the peaked cap that looks in at us through the narrow porthole in the door, before he move away. He doesn’t acknowledge Jessie, even though she shines like a million lights in my eyes. Just to me, it seems. Just to me.