Sharon Sala - For Her Eyes Only

Jessica hadn’t been outside. In fact, she hadn’t been out of her bed since Brenda had put her there last night. She stopped and turned.

“Jessie?”

“What?”

“Why did you just say that?”

Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know. I just suddenly saw them dangling out of the lock.”

The hairs stood up at the nape of Brenda’s neck. She shivered, refusing to give way to what she was thinking. “Nothing more than a lucky guess. That’s all it could be.”

Jessica’s expression didn’t change. “Go see if I’m right.”

She listened, and when she heard the sound of a car engine firing, she shuddered and crawled back into bed.

Toad tracks. Now I am scaring myself.

She lay back on her pillow and flung her arms above her head in a dramatic gesture of disgust. The longer she lay there, the more convinced she became that something out of the ordinary was happening to her. The question remained—what was she going to do about it?

That night, Jessica ate her evening meal by the light of the moon. Although the power had been restored all over town, she still felt the need to escape, and the dark of her backyard was as far as she could go. She sat on her porch with a can of pop in one hand and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the other, unwilling to move indoors.

Grape jelly squished out of the edge of the bread as she took a big bite. Before it could drip, she caught it with the tip of her tongue and swallowed it whole. It wasn’t exactly fine dining, but for Jessica, who at her best was just a fair cook, it sufficed.

Thanks to a co-worker at the lodge, her car was back in her driveway and her purse and cell phone were safely on a chair in her bedroom. But her stitches kept pulling beneath the bandage and her long hair was driving her crazy. The longer she sat, the more she thought about cutting part of it off. At least, the part that was making her nuts.

It shouldn’t be all that hard. She had scissors, and thanks to the power company, a good light by which to see. Since she could work any computer program on the market, she could surely cut her own hair without making a mess. Besides, Dr. Howell had given her a jump start by shaving the part around her stitches. All she had to do was tidy it up a bit.

An hour and a half later, she stood before her bathroom mirror, staring at herself in disbelief. Yes, she was a whiz with figures, but she should have remembered that she couldn’t sew on a button without bringing blood.

The length was gone, just like she’d wanted. But so was the shape and the style. And for hair that was remarkably straight and limp, she’d somehow given it a life of its own. It no longer lay on her head. Instead, it sort of sprang from it, like new sprouts on a severely pruned tree. Oddly enough, the new cut gave her gamine features an engaging quality that her old style had not. The flyaway do was, in its own way, quite charming. But Jessica couldn’t see the charm for the harm. She dropped the scissors in the sink and sighed.

“Mouse poop.”

That pretty much said it all.

* * *

The next day dawned with an inevitability she couldn’t ignore. She needed to go to Squaw Creek Lodge and finish the payroll. When she got in her car, her nerves began to draw. A short while later, she turned into the parking lot and sat with the engine running, staring up at the grand log-and-stone edifice with dread. And as she stared, the same thought kept running through her mind. This is where it happened.

But she wasn’t referring to the accident. It was what happened afterward that was making her nuts. While she sat, lost in thought, someone knocked on her window. She turned with a jerk, expecting to see Olivia Stuart’s ghost.

But it wasn’t a ghost. It was Sheila Biggers, administrative assistant to the manager of the lodge. Jessica glanced at herself in the rearview mirror as she killed the engine. No use putting this off any longer. At least she wouldn’t have to go inside alone.

Sheila squealed. “Jessica, ooh, your poor little head.” She pushed aside a swag of Jessica’s gypsy-cut hair to peek at the bandage beneath and made a face.

But Jessica didn’t bother to answer, because Sheila Biggers could shift conversational gears faster than a drag racer on a hot track. They started toward the lodge, and Sheila continued without taking a breath in between.

“Did you hear! That bride-to-be, Randi Howell, disappeared the night of the blackout! The Stuart wedding never did take place!” She took a deep breath and moved on to another subject. “I love, love, love your hair! Who did it?”

Jessica’s mouth dropped. “Really? You don’t think it’s too drastic a change?”

Sheila reached out to touch the ends of Jessica’s hair. “I always said you looked like a younger Goldie Hawn. Didn’t I say you looked like Goldie Hawn?”

“Yes, you did, although I must say I never saw why.”

“Never mind, because I was wrong. I see it all now. It’s the hair that does it. It’s not Goldie Hawn. It’s Charlize Theron.” She fluffed the back of Jessica’s hair with her fingers and shrieked in delight when it fell back in disarray. “Cute, cute, cute!” She glanced up, realizing that she was already at her office. “Gotta run. Talk to you later.”

Jessica continued down the hallway, wondering how far a cute chin would take her in life. She opened the door to her office and turned on the lights, then hesitated, almost afraid to shut herself in the place where she’d first had the dream. When nothing out of the ordinary happened, she stepped inside and closed the door.

A dark stain shadowed the carpet near the bank of file cabinets. Blood. Her blood. She shuddered. A couple of steps farther, she saw her umbrella sticking out from beneath the desk where it had rolled after she’d tripped. She picked it up and put it safely on top of the cabinets where it belonged.

When she sat down behind her desk and turned on the computer, a feeling of well-being settled upon her. The familiarity of her desk, her computer, her things, eased the tension she’d been feeling. Now maybe everything would return to normal.

Before the program came up on the screen, she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection and grimaced. Everything else might be normal, but her hair was not. Although it still made her look like a waif, there was an unplanned benefit to the shaggy style. The wild fall of bangs across her forehead hid the lump of white bandage quite nicely. Then the program came up and her reflection disappeared and she forgot about everything except payroll checks.

Less than an hour later, she picked up the house phone. Her part of the job was finished. Now all she needed was Jeff Dolby’s signature on the checks and she, along with the other employees of Squaw Creek Lodge, would get paid.

It should have been a simple call. Punch in the three numbers that dialed the manager’s office, then tell Sheila that the checks were ready to be signed.

She punched the numbers, and as she’d expected, Sheila answered the phone. But Jessica didn’t tell her the checks were ready. Between dialing and waiting for her call to be answered, something else started to happen. When she heard Sheila’s voice, she started to shake. And when Sheila raised her voice to repeat her hello, Jessica heard herself shouting.

“Your house is on fire!”

Sheila’s gasp was audible. “Who is this? If this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

Sweat beaded on Jessica’s upper lip as she stared down at her desk. The checks were right before her, but she didn’t see them. All she could see were tiny orange-red tongues of flame eating their way up a kitchen wall. Her voice deepened, and she spoke in a vocal shorthand, trying to impart the urgency of what she was seeing.