Kelly Creagh - Nevermore

She sighed. All things considered, it didn’t surprise her.

She stared at the wall, and her eyes went unfocused. The warm air felt good against her scalp, and combined with the low drone, it began to make her drowsy. She wouldn’t have guessed she’d be able to sleep tonight, but now that she was home, surrounded by normalcy, the memory of her terror began to subside, as though it had been something that had happened a month ago, and not an hour.

Like she’d done a dozen times already, she replayed the run in her head. If she hadn’t been so scared, so completely out of it, she might have seen who it was. But she hadn’t wanted to stop long enough to wait for someone to appear. While the thought had made sense outside, when she’d been swinging a stick at nothing, she now tried to come to terms with the idea that she’d been chased by someone who knew her. And if that was the case, then more than anything, it had probably all been just a sick joke, right?

She frowned, knowing that it didn’t make much sense. In fact, nothing about it made sense. It didn’t seem likely that Brad or any of the others would do something like that. She couldn’t picture it.

Besides, Brad would have to have followed her to the bookstore, then waited for her outside. And while she could picture him spying, something about the idea of him chasing her through the park at dusk just didn’t add up. He was too straightforward for that. Not to mention too proud.

No, even if he had been anywhere around, even if he’d been spying, she thought she knew him well enough to say that he would never try to scare her so badly. In fact, even if he had followed her, breakup or not, she knew he wouldn’t have let her go into the park by herself to begin with. It had been a stupid move—she knew that now. He was always getting after her for doing stupid, impulsive things.

Isobel bit her lip. Her hand tightened on her phone as she battled the sudden wave of longing to dial Brad’s number. She wanted to call him, to tell him what had happened.

But she knew what he would say. First, he’d be smug because she’d called him, because she’d caved after only a day. Then he’d ask all sorts of reasonable-sounding questions. Then, finally, he’d say it was Varen and go into an all-out “I told you so” blowup. And then . . . then what? Do more of what he had already shown himself capable of?

Isobel scowled at the thought. There was something about the memory of Brad slamming Varen around that made her whole body wince, like someone breaking a Ming vase just to prove that they could.

Then again, she thought, pausing—what about Varen?

Could he have followed right behind her after she’d left the bookstore? It would have been easy to do. But why would he? To play a joke on her? Prove some morbid point? She had heard voices upstairs after going back to get the Poe book. Was it something he’d planned? Revenge for the ice cream shop? With some of the dark stuff he said sometimes, she didn’t know if she would put it past him.

Over the whir of the hair dryer, she thought she heard a quiet tap, a knock on her door.

Isobel shut off the hair dryer. Glancing at her door, she gathered her still damp hair in one hand and said, “Come in.”

Her door remained shut. She stared at it, waiting. “Mom?” she said. “Dad?”

There was no answer.

She set her phone aside, left the dryer on her bed, and went to open her door. Poking her head out into the hall, she heard the blare of the TV from downstairs, the distant roar of a crowd over her dad’s enthused “Go, go, go!” The bathroom light was off, and she could still smell the remnants of the cherry blossom shower gel she’d used. Danny’s door stood ajar at the end of the hallway, blasts of blue-white light issuing forth, each burst accompanied by a zombie’s scream of anguish. Other than that, there was nothing.

Confused, Isobel shut her door again, then went to her dresser, pulling open the top drawer and rifling for her favorite pair of pink-and-black-striped pajama shorts, and matching T-shirt.

She got dressed, tossing her robe onto the floor, but paused after pulling the T-shirt down over her head because she thought she had heard the tap again, this time from behind.

Isobel looked up. She stared past her reflection in the dresser mirror, her gaze fixing on her window.

She waited, and the sound came once more. A soft and quiet tap. It was accompanied this time by a low scuffle, like the scrape of rough fabric against wood.

She twisted around to stare at her window, ears straining.

The rustling came again, louder this time. There, beyond the lace of her curtains, under the tiny slit at the bottom of the shade, something moved.

Her heart rate quickened.

For a moment she thought about going to her door and calling downstairs for her dad.

Then the scraping shuffle seemed to shift. It became continuous now, and at this angle, she thought she could see a bit of black cloth, like the shoulder of someone’s shirt—somebody angling to try and get a good grip on her window.

In one quick move, Isobel reached out to her dresser, snatching the “Number One Flyer” trophy she’d won freshman year. It left behind a polished square of wood in the layer of accumulated dust.

Clenching the trophy by the fake-gold cheerleader figurine, she held it upside down in one hand, brandishing the hard granite base like a club.

Each footstep soaked silently into the carpet as she drew closer to her window.

A long rustling shhirrk-sruuffshh sounded from just outside. Squinting, she thought she could see what looked like a set of long, thin, black-gloved fingers trying to reach under the sill.

With a quick step forward, Isobel yanked down on the shade. It rushed upward with a loud snap.

Something screeched. Blackness, like spattering ink, spread across her window. With a short scream, she fell back. She hurled the trophy toward the window, missing the glass by inches, knocking a dent into the wall.

An angry flurry of dark feathers splayed against the glass, followed by the tap of a pointed beak and a low, grating croak.

“Stupid bird!” Isobel shouted, her heart pounding so hard that she could feel her pulse thudding in her temples. She pulled herself up from the floor, a stinging bite of rug burn chafing the back of her thigh. She ignored it, rushing to pluck two pink throw pillows from her bed. She chucked one right after the other at the window. The huge beast of a bird gave one giant flap of its black wings. It let out a squawk when the first pillow hit, and then, after the second, it swooped off into the darkness.

Isobel yanked the shade down again, pulling the lace curtains closed.

She made her way back to her bed. Fighting the shivers, she grabbed her robe along the way, throwing it back on over her pajamas. She chucked her dryer off her bed and onto the floor, swiping up her phone.

She paced. The view screen of her phone read 8:52 in electric blue. Cutting it close to nine, she thought. Well, he’d just have to deal.

Isobel punched in the number. The dial tone rang once . . . twice . . . three times. She’d give it one more“Yeah?”

Isobel blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to answer. “Yeah, hey,” she said, trying to sound businesslike.

“Hey,” he said, but she could hear the underlying question in his tone: Why dost thou, O simplest of mortals, summon me from my grave?

All right, then, she’d get right to it. “Listen,” she said, “I need to talk to you. You weren’t in the park tonight, were you?” Okay, maybe that sounded a bit more accusatory than she’d meant it to.

She winced but decided to wait and see how he reacted.

Nothing from the other end. Didn’t he even breathe? Jeez.