Chapter 77
There is blood everywhere. It’s splashed across the floor and spattered on the walls.
A trail leads from the bed toward the door, complete with bloody handprints, as if someone was dragging themself along.
But it’s the bed that I can’t rip my gaze from.
The sheets are twisted and slashed as if by the blade of a knife and soaked through with even more blood.
So much of it that I would never know the sheets were once white if I couldn’t see their original color in the folds that hang off the bed.
It looks like a massacre took place in this room.
My hands fly to my mouth to stop the scream even as I turn and flee from the room, race through the apartment to the front door, and yank it open.
Then I’m running through the lobby in a blind panic, my feet pounding on the marble floor and all thoughts of stealth abandoned.
All I want to do right now is to escape this building, and the horrific scene inside that apartment, because something is terribly wrong at the Glendale.
I reach the doors and barrel through them without slowing, then fly down the steps to the sidewalk.
At one point I lose my footing and almost trip, but I recover my balance and push forward until I reach the corner of the block, where I come to a breathless halt.
When I look back at the building, it looks just like it always has, but now I see it with new eyes.
The malignancy that Addison warned me about is real, and I’m not sure I can ever set foot inside that place again.
Certainly not tonight. I can’t stay here, either.
I take out my cell phone and call Sam. Right now, I don’t care what he and Kalina did or if our relationship is over. I need him.
But of course, it goes to voicemail.
I leave a message anyway, because at least he’ll get it in the morning. It’s garbled, and I probably sound unhinged, but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances. Not that it helps me at this moment.
I sum up my options, which aren’t many. My parents will probably pick up, but they’re at least forty-five minutes away in Newton.
I could call an Uber to take me there, but that would also mean waiting out here on the street, and I really don’t want to do that.
I feel vulnerable. I need to get somewhere safe, somewhere that isn’t the Glendale; then I can call my parents and have them come and pick me up.
There’s only one place I can think of to go this late at night.
Dawn and Jamie’s apartment. They’re right here, in the building opposite the Glendale. I make up my mind and call Dawn.
She answers on the second ring.
“Jordan? Is everything okay?”
“No.” I’m practically in tears and I can’t stop shaking, and when I try to explain what happened, it’s hard to compose my thoughts well enough to form a coherent sentence.
I’m babbling in between the sobs. “I need to come over right now. The apartment on the ground floor . . . It’s .
. . Oh my God. There’s so much blood . . . I can’t go back . . . Please . . .”
“Okay. Take it easy. Slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Dawn’s voice, calm and collected, slices through my terror. “Come on over to the apartment, and I’ll buzz you in.”
“Okay.” My relief is almost palpable. I have somewhere to go, and it isn’t the Glendale. I cross the road and head for Dawn and Jamie’s apartment. When I get there, Dawn buzzes me in through the front door, and a couple of minutes later, I’m at their apartment.
Dawn answers the door dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweater that I suspect she threw on after I called.
She looks tired . . . and worried. After ushering me inside, she leads me to the sofa and sits me down, then settles next to me.
Jamie appears from the bedroom, pulling on a T-shirt and tucking it into his pants. He studies me with narrowed eyes.
Dawn glances quickly at her husband, then focuses her attention back on me. “How about you tell us what’s going on.”
“I’ll try,” I say. Then I launch into how I went down to the apartment on the ground floor, which is supposed to be empty, and went inside.
“Wait.” Dawn looks at me. “I don’t understand. How did you get into the apartment on the ground floor?”
“I took the key from the safe in the doorman’s office.”
“Wouldn’t the safe be locked?” Jamie asks.
“It was. I knew the . . . Look, that isn’t the point. Please, just listen to me.”
“Okay. Fine. Please, continue.”
“Thank you. So, I went into the apartment, and at first, I thought someone was living there. The doorman, Angelo, told me that the place wasn’t fit for habitation, but that clearly wasn’t the case.
There was furniture in there, as if someone had just gotten up one day and walked out.
And everything was years out of date, like the food in the pantry.
I thought it was strange, but it wasn’t a big deal.
Then I went into the bedroom, and . . .” My throat closes and the words refuse to come.
The panic comes rushing back just thinking about it.
“Hey.” Jamie takes my hand. “You’re safe here. You know that, right?”
I look at my friends, the concerned expressions on their faces. “I know.”
“Now, what about the bedroom?”
An image of that hellish room flashes through my mind. I try to speak, but the words catch in my throat, and all that comes out is a thin croak.
“Hang on.” Jamie turns and disappears. After a minute he returns with a tumbler that contains a finger’s worth of amber liquid. He offers me the drink.
I shake my head, refusing the glass.
He sits beside me, places a soothing hand on my back. “It’s whisky. It will calm you down. Steady your nerves.”
He presses the drink into my hand. This time I take it, down the whisky in one gulp, even though I hate the taste of hard liquor. He’s right, I need to calm down. My mind is going a hundred miles an hour, making it impossible to think straight.
“There you go,” Dawn says. “Now, take some breaths. In and out, nice and slow.”
I take several deep breaths, and soon the panic subsides.
“Better?” Dawn asks.
I nod.
“Good.” Dawn places her hand on my arm. “Now, tell us what you saw.”
“Blood. There was blood everywhere. It was up the walls and on the floor and all over the bed.”
Dawn stares at me, wide eyed, then exchanges a glance with her husband. “Are you sure it was blood?”
I mouth a barely audible Yes. But even as I say it, I can’t help wondering if that is really what I saw.
Because so many strange things have happened to me since we moved into the Glendale.
Like the crib in the basement, and the bumblebee toy that I know moved on its own, which of course is impossible.
Or the painting in the hallway outside the apartment.
The one of the woman holding her dead baby even as it disintegrated into nothing.
By the time Sam came home, the painting was gone as if it had never been there, replaced once more by the original work of art.
A much less triggering painting of the Glendale.
Sam thought I was seeing things. That the trauma of my miscarriage was rearing its head again.
And now, sitting here in the tranquility of Dawn and Jamie’s apartment, I wonder if he was right.
Which means I could be wrong about the blood, too.
Because apart from anything else, I had just found a real bloodstain, albeit many years old, under a rug in my foyer.
It’s hardly surprising that foul play would be on my mind after discovering that.
“At least, I think it was blood. It looked like it.”
“Maybe it was paint or something,” Jamie says, echoing my own sudden doubts. He stands back up. “Your doorman did say the place was in a poor state of repair, right?”
I nod, my resolve momentarily wavering. Maybe it was paint.
But if so, why was it splattered around like that?
People don’t usually throw paint onto their walls like they’re caught in the middle of a Jackson Pollock–style frenzy.
They don’t leave handprints and smears all over the floor.
And it was on the bed, too. The sheets were sliced.
They were ripped and slashed. Then there’s the text message.
Would someone really send me down to the ground floor apartment in the middle of the night just to see a deranged decorating job?
No. My conviction hardens even as the obvious occurs to me.
Something I should have done before but didn’t think of in my blind panic.
I fumble to unlock my phone. “It wasn’t paint. I need to call the police.”
“Whoa. Hold on.” Dawn reaches over and gently lifts the phone from my shaking hand. “Let’s just think about that, shall we?”
“What? Why?”
“You stole a key and broke into an apartment.”
Jamie nods. “You’ll probably end up arrested.”
“Jamie’s right,” Dawn says. “Have you talked to anyone else? Like Sam?”
I shake my head. “Sam puts his phone on Do Not Disturb when he’s sleeping. I was going to call my parents after I got here and ask them to come and pick me up.”
“How about we figure out exactly what you saw before waking people up in the middle of the night. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose.” As much as my gut is telling me that something is terribly wrong and to get as far away from the Glendale as possible, I have to admit that they’re right.
I can’t be sure what I saw. I was already nervous, and the scene in the bedroom shocked me.
It looked like blood, but now my conviction wavers.
After all, the apartment was empty. There was no body, or any other source for what I assumed was blood.
And getting arrested for breaking and entering isn’t something I’ve even considered.
That would be beyond awful. But still . . .
Jamie reads the expression on my face. “Look, I understand if you don’t want to go back over there, but wouldn’t it be better to know?”
“If you want, me and Jamie can go over and take a look while you stay here,” Dawn says, standing up. “Then, when we get back, if what you’ve told us is true, then we’ll call the police. Does that sound good?”
“Stay here on my own?”
“We won’t be long. Just over and back.”
The breath catches in my throat. I don’t want to stay here alone any more than I want to go back across the street.
I almost say that we should all stay here, that there’s no need for them to go and look at that apartment, but I can see by the looks on their faces that they’ve made up their minds.
They don’t believe me, or more accurately, they think there’s a reasonable explanation for what I saw.
After thinking about it, I decide that I’d rather be with them, even if it means facing my fears.
And strangely, I’m not afraid anymore. The panic is gone, replaced by a soft and fuzzy sense of calm.
The whisky has helped more than I expected.
I take a deep breath and stand up. “Okay. I’ll go. ”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Dawn takes my hand and leads me toward the door. “Come on. You’ll be safe with us.”