Page 5 of When Night Falls

Ambivalence - The state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

That's the only way that I can explain how I feel right now.

The morning came as the sun shined new signs of life into the day, trying to weave itself through the dark clusters of clouds. And despite having one of the best nights of sleep of my life, ambivalence grips the tendrils of my heart, confusing the rational thoughts in my brain as I hold the folded up note in my hand.

I opened the bookstore just a few moments ago and the dead streak of having no customers in the morning is what gives me time to overthink the response that was left taped to mydoor, replacing mine from the night before, along with another singular black rose.

It’s a vintage cream piece of paper, thicker than most, and it's definitely been worn down over the years. It’s a beautiful yet odd piece of stationary displaying a formal response to the informal note I had left.

The black ink wisps effortlessly in scripted waves against the texture of the paper in my hands, my fingers absentmindedly tracing over the words as I read them over and over again.

I am no fool when it comes to the finer things in life. The color black represents parts of who we are inside and the rose itself is a delicate representation of only you. I know exactly who I am to leave my gifts for, Lucynda.

Sincerely, your shadowed admirer.

Every nerve ending in my body ignites with confusion and heat. My pulse strums in my ears and sinks down into my belly. I blink my eyes more than a few times, wondering if what I’m reading will become another imaginative memory ghosting intothe distance, but the words still display immaculately against the aged paper and my head dizzies as I take in the note for what it is. They know my name.But who could this be?

Someone has to be playing a cruel joke on me.

I was sure the roses were meant for the previous tenant. I don’t know a single soul in this town, at least no one that would admire me from the shadows, so to speak.

This could mean that I wasn’t seeing things last night when I opened the window. Which means it was real when I saw it a few weekends ago leaving the grocery store as well. I recount all the times I've seen a shadowed figure over the past few weeks, now confident that whomever it might be is the one leaving the roses. I shiver at the thought because I've yet to run into anyone that might have deemed me memorable enough to want to gesture kindness, even if it is a little creepy. But not only that, this validates my suspicions of the feeling that I truly am being watched.

Or someone is playing a ginormous prank on me and thinks it’s funny to humiliate me after all I’ve been through. But who in the world would have time to enact that kind of child’s play?

I stuff the note into one of the drawers near the cash register at the sound of the bell ringing above the door. It’s a little early for my first customer but I thank the distraction for a few moments so that I can gather my wits.

As soon as my shift is over, I’ll go straight to the police. This has to be one of the girls, which means they might have found me after all, and I swear I will make them regret it.

I’m down to the last few minutes of work and I’ve had plenty of time to count the money in the drawer, close the register and put away the last few books that have been left scattered around. I go to flick off the lights and head back to the front to lock up, just as the bell above the door dings.

Mentally, I groan. Who the hell decided to be an absolute soul-sucker by walking into a place of business literally minutes before the doors lock?

I perk myself up and pretend to be the customer-facing worker that I normally am, plastering on a tired smile and turning to face the door.

“Hi, welcome in,” I offer to the emptiness in front of me, realizing that no one's there.

I watch as the door slowly inches back to place, indicating that someone had definitely walked in. But then I hear the howl of the wind in the distance, and I conclude that the harsh breeze must have forced it open.

I walk over and turn the deadbolt into place, even though I still have two minutes left until closing, and yes, normally I would stay open until the last second, but today has been a weird one. It was the busiest I’ve ever been on a Thursday and of course there’s the looming note stuffed in the drawer that’s been keeping me distracted most of the day.

I start to walk over to the desk to grab my things, the cream-colored paper included, but before I can let myself out, I hear what sounds like a book drop in the distance.

I shake my head, telling myself it’s just the wind outside rather than something lurking inside. Then I hear a shuffle and that’s when my heart stops. Someonedidmake it inside and I just didn’t see them get through.

Fuck, please don’t get robbed, I think to myself.

I pull out my pepper spray and place my backpack quietly by the door before tiptoeing toward the bookshelf I heard the noise come from. The bookstore is relatively small, but the shelves are overflowing with classics and romance novels and historical fictions. Not a single space on any given shelf is free, books piled to the brim, just how I like it. But now I wish I had better organization if only to give me an easier view beyond the piles of books. At any point, whoever is in here could jump around the corner and I’d never see them coming.

I hear what sounds like the pages of a book being gently flipped through. I take a deep breath hoping that it’s only a kid or a homeless person seeking shelter until I finally get close enough to one of the bookshelves and close my eyes before turning the corner.

There’s a man. He's wearing a solid black, silk button-down tucked into a pair of dark wash denim jeans and seemingly unbothered that he’s practically trespassing.

I can't help but watch him as he flips through the pages of a book delicately, and rightfully so. He's holding the oldest book the store owns. It's a first edition paperback ofThe Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writingsby Edgar Allen Poe. Usually, my customers come in for a history book of the town of some sort or the latest spicy romance novel.

I lower my pepper spray and analyze him from a distance. It's the way that he leans so casually against the shelves, his feetcrossed over each other as he skims the pages of the dusty old book. I want to keep watching, but my intrigue gets the best of me and my mouth is opening before I can help it.

"Edgar Allen Poe?" I ask curiously but also somewhat impressed, though not realizing that I just invited a conversation with someone who is impeding my closing time, and I have plans afterward to report my stalker.

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