Page 22 of Monsters

Chapter 8

You’ve reached Peter Stanovich. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.

Shit!

I threw my cell on the chaise after the third time going through to the answering machine. My nerves were shattered, and my resolve was quickly following suit. I was wearing a hole in the wooden floorboards from all the pacing, and Peter was unreachable. After returning to my apartment, I went through every dark spot of every room, and once satisfied I was alone, I slid the waist-high bookshelf in front of the door. There was no deadbolt, so the piece of furniture was the next best option.

I was left with little choice but to speak with Detectives Walsh and Kinross. Mason Carter simply was not convinced that I had kept my word. No matter how long I maintained my silence, he would always come after me.

He thrived on intimidation, he always had.

Nothing was about to change now.

~

Sweat coated my neck and trickled through my hair. In my semi-conscious state, I could feel dampness coating my skin. My mind warred with a nightmare, begging me to wake, yet trapping me in a chase I couldn’t escape. My legs thrashed at the sheets begging for fresh air. The short silk negligee, suffocating.

My eyes opened, and I found myself staring out the window. A soft, warm breeze floated through causing the thin curtain to move in an almost ghostly manner. I needed a cold shower and one of Peter’s sleeping pills, but the red digits on the alarm told me I only had another four hours before I had to be up and ready for work.

Sleep had evaded me for one reason.

My stomach churned.

My sweat-soaked skin tingled with unease.

My nightmare had followed me into reality.

I sat up against the headboard, and as my eyes adjusted to the soft glow of the streetlamp filtering in, I looked into the eyes of another.

I went to scream but made no sound, sweet spice filling my airways. The lingering scent was one which catapulted me back into a world I longed to escape. Back to a man I tried so desperately to run from.

The ominous figure stood motionless at the end of the bed, but despite being shrouded in shadows, I knew who he was.

Mason Carter had found me.

He watched, observing my fear, caught in a silent standoff with a girl he’d relished in traumatizing for so long.

“Mason?” I whispered, hoarsely. He wouldn’t have heard. A flicker of light pulled my eyes from his face to his hand.

A knife. Its blade glinted with his slightest movement.

He wasn’t going to do this. Not again.

Lunging into action, I reached for the lamp to my right, fumbling desperately for the switch. The light cut through the darkness in a heartbeat, but by the time I turned back, the dark figure was non-existent. Mason had gone. His cologne remained, the only real evidence to prove I wasn’t going mad. Leaping from the bed and with courage barely mustered, I ran down the hall flicking any and every switch possible until the whole apartment was illuminated. And there in the living room, I stared at the one thing that proved I was, in fact, going stark raving mad—the waist-high bookshelf was still in place covering the door.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered, still feeling the anxiety gripping my stomach and only slightly foolish.

Relieved it was only my senses playing a cruel trick on my sanity, I headed to the bathroom switching the lights off as I passed. Entering the bedroom with a moment of foreboding, I glanced at the end of the bed where Mason’s apparition stood only minutes ago, to see nothing but empty space. Rounding the corner of the bathroom, I caught my reflection in the mirror, but it wasn’t the dark circles under my eyes that stopped me in my tracks. It was the mirror itself. There, in large bold letters with what appeared to be blood, was a message well and truly meant for me.

It was a message to prove that I wasn’t going mad after all.

A message left by Mason Carter.

Little Wren

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