David Bell - Never Come Back

“I know. I’m sorry.” I looked down at my plate of food. I wanted to stop myself from saying anything more, but I couldn’t. “I just really want to know who this woman is who went to Ronnie’s room and upset him so much. Don’t you want to know?”

He sighed. “Elizabeth, I’m not sure I want to know anything else about any of this.”

We ate the rest of our meal mostly in silence.

I lived in what might generously be called the graduate student ghetto on the east side of campus. The undergraduates dwelled mostly on the north of campus, where there were larger places to live and share—rental houses and town homes, spaces landlords were more than willing to wedge six or seven students into and charge them an exorbitant monthly rate with the hope that the parents would just go ahead and pay it. Most of them did.

Graduate students tended to live alone or in pairs, and the apartments on the east side of campus were smaller and slightly nicer. And slightly nicer meant the roofs probably weren’t falling in, the hot water worked at least half the time, and the chances of the police descending on a residence, lights swirling, to roust a group of underage drinkers was next to none. I lived alone, by choice, in a studio apartment on the top floor of an eighty-year-old building. The railroad tracks ran alongside it, and three times a day or night, freight screamed by. It woke me up the first two nights I lived there. After that, I slept through it without stirring.

I parked in the tiny lot at the back of the building. It was dark by the time I returned home after my dinner with Paul. I was tired. The streetlights were coming on, their yellow glow leaking through the canopy of trees that grew over the back of the apartment building.

I never felt unsafe in my neighborhood, or anywhere in Dover for that matter. The town had its share of small crimes—cars got broken into; apartments and houses were burgled, usually when people forgot to lock their doors. Around campus, we experienced the typical array of drinking and drug arrests, but there were few assaults and almost never a murder.

But Mom’s death had put me on edge. On the drive home, I considered calling Dan or stopping by his place, which would inevitably lead to spending the night with him again—and not spending the night alone in my apartment. But a river of complications flowed from that one simple act, and I needed more than anything else to keep things as simple as possible. And I needed to not be a baby, to not let what happened to Mom filter into my mind so much that I started running scared and jumping at my own shadow.

So when I stepped out of the car into a surreally calm night, I told myself that it was my imagination, my own creeping fears and insecurities preying on me rather than any real disturbance or threat. But the area was dead quiet. Dead. None of the sounds that usually dominated the neighborhood—music, conversation, cars—were there. And it was too early for things to be so quiet.

Why?

I looked all around me, swiveling my head like a soldier on combat patrol, as I moved to the side of the building where a rickety wooden staircase led to my apartment at the top. I cursed myself for not carrying pepper spray or having taken a self-defense class—all the things I was supposed to do as a young single woman living on her own in the big world. But my mother had lived the most cautious life imaginable. She locked every door and window and would never open her house to a stranger. Once darkness fell, she did everything in her power to not leave the house. And what had that prudence done for her?

A door slammed somewhere. It sounded as if it had come from behind me, from another building or maybe a car. I turned to look back but saw nothing. I had reached the base of the stairs and started up, hurrying as best I could while carrying my laptop bag and my books. My graduate student tools, the things I carried with me everywhere I went.

The staircase went up three stories, zigzagging up the side of the building like in an Escher drawing. I reached the first landing and heard someone coming down toward me. Enough space existed for two people to pass without touching each other, but unconsciously I moved to the edge, toward the outer railing, when I heard the steps coming. The person was moving fast, faster than would be normal. I expected it to be one of my neighbors, one of the guys who lived below me who were always hustling off to a basketball game or the library. In the darkness the figure coming toward me looked big—short, yes, but hulking and big, his face obscured and turned away from me in the half-light. He brushed past me, his left arm hitting mine and nearly knocking the bag out of my hand. The force of the contact spun me around a quarter turn, giving me a clear view of his departing back.

“Hey!” I said.

But he didn’t stop. He thumped down the stairs, his body just barely maintaining control and remaining upright. The body didn’t look as if it belonged to a student. It looked… older somehow. A professor at our building? Was he slumming?

The man disappeared into the night. I listened for the sound of a car door or engine, but it didn’t come.

“Asshole,” I muttered, then continued my trek to the top. And when I made it there, slightly out of breath, my arms weakened from hauling my gear, I understood why the man had been in such a hurry.

My door sat ajar, the wood around the lock splintered into hundreds of shards and pieces.

I didn’t enter my apartment, not alone. I turned and went back down the steps, only to reach the halfway point and realize that the man I’d passed—the one who was very likely responsible for breaking into my apartment—could be lingering at the foot of the stairs. Or somewhere in the darkness of the parking lot. I hadn’t heard a car start. Hadn’t heard anything to indicate he had left the scene.

I had no way of knowing whether he was the one who’d broken into the apartment. I’d been gone all day, and since my unit sat alone on the top floor, no one would have noticed the shattered door.

I went one floor below, to the two apartments beneath mine. I didn’t really know my neighbors. I suspected they were grad students just like me, given their ages and monklike habits. They were quiet as well, never disturbing me with loud music or parties. But I had spoken to a guy in one of the apartments. Once. A pipe beneath my kitchen sink had sprung a leak one night during the previous winter, causing water to run all over my floor and cascade into his apartment. Fortunately, he was home, and he came up and found the shut-off valve for the water. We didn’t say much to each other—what do you say to someone whose apartment you’ve just flooded?—but he seemed friendly enough. Polite at least. A little nerdy. A little awkward. Some kind of science grad student, I guessed at the time. Maybe engineering.

I knocked on his door, hoping like hell he’d be home. If he was, he was moving slowly, so I knocked again. I was ready to step over to the next apartment, where God knows who lived, when the door opened.

His brow furrowed when he saw me. I didn’t think he recognized me, and maybe he wondered what I was carrying in my arms and trying to sell on a fall evening. He looked ready to object, to send me on my way with a polite but stern “Thanks but no thanks,” when some flicker of recognition crossed his face.

“Oh,” he said. “Do you live upstairs?”

“I do,” I said. “Can I come in? My place has been broken into.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. I went inside and put my things down. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911, reporting the problem to the dispatcher, who asked me three times if I was someplace safe or in any immediate danger. The third time she asked I turned to my neighbor, who was standing in the same spot, his mouth slightly open, and asked, “She wants to know if I’m in any immediate danger now. Am I?”