Jenn McKinlay - Due Or Die

Nancy silently handed them each a plate. Lindsey loaded a thick slice of bread with a couple of pieces of cheese and several pickle slices. Carrie and Nancy did the same.

After a few minutes of listening to the wind claw at the side of the house while they ate, Carrie said, “I’m sorry I woke you both.”

“No worries,” Nancy said. “Nightmares happen.”

“No, there was a man,” Carrie said. “I saw him standing on the ledge outside my window.”

Nancy and Lindsey exchanged a look but said nothing. Heathcliff began to pace the room, as if on patrol, and Lindsey found it sweetly comforting.

“It must have been a shadow,” Nancy said. She poured them each a glass of milk and took a sip of her own. In a most pragmatic voice, she added, “I mean, who would be fool enough to be out in this weather?”

“I don’t think it was a who,” Carrie said. “I think it was a what.”

“A ghost?” Lindsey clarified. “Really?”

Carrie looked at her with huge eyes, and maybe it was the shadows being cast by the fire, but she noticed that the dark circles beneath Carrie’s eyes stood out against the pallor of her skin, and Lindsey surmised she hadn’t really slept in days, which was not a big surprise but would explain why she had hallucinated a man looking into her window.

“He wants me to solve his murder,” Carrie said. Her voice was whisper soft and sent a shiver down Lindsey’s spine. “He won’t rest until I find out who shot him.”

There was a beat of silence and then Nancy said, “Well, that does sound like Markus.”

Her tone was wry and managed to reach out and tickle Lindsey’s funny bone. She had to muffle her chuckle in her glass of milk, but it fooled no one, and after a second, Carrie chuckled, too.

“It does sound like him, doesn’t it?”

Whether it was from nerves or lack of sleep, Lindsey couldn’t tell, but suddenly the three of them started to laugh.

Heathcliff jogged over from the door as if he wanted in on the joke and jumped into Lindsey’s lap, almost sending her glass crashing to the ground. She hugged him close and he licked her face as if delighted to be included.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The blows against the front door to the house were unmistakable. Someone was out there. Someone who wanted in. Heathcliff barked and raced to the apartment door. He scratched at the door, eager to be let out to investigate whoever was out there.

Nancy rose first, looking startled.

Carrie jumped up, too, and grabbed her arm. Her hands were trembling and she looked terrified.

“Don’t answer it,” she said. “It’s him. I know it.”

Nancy patted her arm, but even Lindsey could see that the older lady looked frightened, and she realized that this must bring back bad memories for her, memories of another bad storm where officers came to tell her that her husband had gone down with his ship.

“You two stay here,” she said. “Lock the door behind me. Heathcliff and I will check it out.”

“No!” Carrie argued.

“I don’t think…” Nancy began, but Lindsey interrupted.

“It could be someone in trouble. We have to answer it.”

Before they could argue, Lindsey picked up one of the candles and strode across the room. With a bracing breath, she stepped through the door with the dog at her side.

The candle had been a poor choice she realized as soon as she stepped into the foyer. It didn’t cast enough light and it just made all of the shadows in her peripheral vision dance, making her more skittish than she already was, which was saying something since she felt as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

A growl sounded from beside her, and she glanced down to see the fur on Heathcliff’s shoulder bristling. His already low brow seemed to lower, and the gleam of his puppy teeth showed that he had curled his lip back in a ferocious sneer. If she didn’t already know he was a complete goofball, she would have been afraid. His bravery in facing the unknown made her stiffen her spine and approach the front door.

The glass pane in the door was frosted, making it impossible to see outside. Lindsey had no choice but to open the door if she wanted to see who or what had made the banging noise.

She unlatched the shiny new dead bolt and pulled the door open. A gust of freezing cold air blasted her and snuffed her candle, but before the light went out she saw a gloved hand reaching out of the darkness for her, and despite her best intentions to be brave, she screamed like a little girl.

With a roar, Heathcliff launched himself at the figure in the darkness. The door to Nancy’s apartment banged open, and the body on the porch, unprepared for a flying dog, went down in a heap with a thump and a yelp.

Nancy came out of her apartment with her flashlight in one hand and a cast iron frying pan in the other.

“Who is it? What is it?” she demanded. She shone a beam of light on a puffy blue coat lying under a sitting dog that looked intent on licking every snowflake off the newcomer.

A young male voice said, “Call him off, Naners, before he licks me to death.”

“Charlie, is that you?” Nancy asked.

“Heck, yeah,” he said.

“You know this man?” Carrie asked.

“He’s my nephew,” Nancy said.

“Heathcliff, come,” Lindsey ordered, and the dog leapt off Charlie, looking quite pleased with himself.

Lindsey reached out and grabbed Charlie’s gloved hand and pulled him to his feet.

“What the heck are you doing out here in weather like this?” Nancy demanded. “Did you drive in this? Are you crazy?”

“I didn’t know what I was in for until I was halfway here,” Charlie said. “Then it was too late to turn around.”

Nancy hustled him into the house, pushing him into the apartment. “You could have been killed in an accident or frozen to death. You idiot!”

“It’s good to see you, too, Naners,” he said with a grin as he unwrapped his scarf and unzipped his coat. “And you might have mentioned that you added a dead bolt to the front door. I couldn’t get in, so I tried to get into my apartment from the porch roof, but the window I usually leave unlatched for those times when I lock myself out was locked.”

“It was you!” Carrie said as she made him a sandwich from the bread and cheese. “You’re the man I saw peering in my window.”

“Charlie, that was twenty minutes ago,” Lindsey interrupted. “Why didn’t you knock on the door earlier?”

Charlie gave her a sheepish look. “Well, when I slid off the roof, I clipped my head on the porch and sort of knocked myself out. The snow woke me up, good thing, or I might have frozen out there.”

“Let me see your head,” Nancy ordered. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

She tugged off his hat and pushed back his hair, and sure enough, a knot the size of a chicken egg had formed above his temple.

“I’ll go get some ice,” she said.

Carrie handed him the plate and he looked blissful as he sat by the fire and let the warmth wrap around him. Charlie was a tall, skinny kid with stringy black musician hair, which, without his hat, stood on end, fully charged with static.

“I’m sorry,” Carrie said. “I locked the window. It didn’t occur to me…”

“Of course it didn’t occur to you,” Nancy said, returning with a cloth full of ice that she held to Charlie’s head. “Normal people don’t have to access their apartments from the porch because they’ve locked themselves out-again. As for you,” she said to Charlie, “I was planning to tell you when you came home from your tour next week. Why are you back early anyway?”

Charlie heaved a sigh and stared gloomily at his plate. “The band broke up. Our keyboard player dumped our bass player for our drummer, and the two of them got into a fist fight on stage in Panama City. I’ve been driving for three days in a van full of people who are not speaking to each other. This is why some bands don’t allow girls.”