Page 50 of A Monster Is Coming

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Yeah, me too. My mother is in the hospital getting her stomach pumped for the hundredth time. She’s never happy when they do that. She always said alcohol is used to get drunk, not tossed down some drain or put in a medical bag.”

The woman beside me gave a sad smile.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

I wanted to ignore her. I intended to ignore her, but something just … it … I had to tell her what was going on. I didn’t understand it. None of this made any sense to me, and so I did.

“The love of my life has just died.”

“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and put a hand on my arm. “That is so awful.”

I nodded.

We both sat in silence.

“She was my wife,” I said. No one knew we had gotten married in secret. She had known who I was, what I was capable of, and yet she had still loved me. From the moment she had met me, she’d blown my world completely apart. And now she was gone, as if she never existed. The world was never going to know her, or know us.

Everything I had built and the man I’d become was because of her.

When the woman began moving, I turned toward her and watched as she removed a necklace from around her neck. It was an ugly looking thing. A faded rope, with a cross dangling from it. “I’m not the religious type,” I said, when she held it out.

“I’m not much of a religious type either. Never even been inside a church.” She licked her lips. “I won this at a fair when I was about eight years old, I think. I’ve had to change the rope once as it snapped. My dad, he’d been … well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the woman that gifted this to me when I won it, told me if I ever felt alone or scared, then I should hold onto it, and know that I was never alone.”

It was a silly tale.

“Maybe your wife is wherever she is, and you can hold this because we share this moment together, and whenever you feel alone or sad, or in need of feeling close to her, this could help.”

I wasn’t a child. I didn’t need little trinkets.

“For fuck’s sake, Niamh, get your useless fat ass out of that fucking chair, and get over here.”

That voice angered me.

Niamh got scared, and slid that cross into my hands. In that moment, I knew a perfect stranger had gifted me with something precious of hers, in my moment of need. And in that moment, I knew I had to do something to protect her.

****

Niamh

Present Day

“You didn’t need to do anything. I didn’t give you that necklace in the hope of getting anything in return. I gave you that necklace so it would bring you peace.”

I’d never told a soul about the strange man who looked ready to kill himself. Over the years, I wondered what happened to him and whether my necklace had helped. It was easy to remember him when I had reached for my necklace, only to find my chest empty.

Ivan got to his feet and stepped closer.

Having the memory of who he was, I no longer felt afraid of him. “Does Peter know how we know each other?” I asked.

“No,” Ivan said. “No one knows anything about how you and I know each other. No one knows that I was … married. No one knows I was in love.”

This made me sad and in that moment I felt pity for this man, which was completely insane because he’d sent a man to manipulate me. I didn’t want to reason with him, or attempt to even understand him.

“What is going to happen to me?” I asked. I had to stay on track. It was going to be the only way I would survive.

Ivan took hold of my wrist and put the necklace back into my hand. “You need this more than I do,” he said.

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