Seraphina #2
Curiosity is an interesting vice, isn't it? It makes people do the most remarkable things. It makes them look through keyholes. It makes them linger by the windows after the lamps have been blown out. They want to see what happens when the skin comes off. They want to see the bone.
I walked toward the side path, my boots sinking into the soft moss.
Everyone has habits. A routine. They think their routine keeps them safe.
They think because they buy their bread at eight and lock their back door at nine, the world has agreed to let them live but a routine isn't a wall. It’s a trail.
It’s a map that tells anyone who cares to look exactly where you’ll be standing when the light goes out…
I stopped at the edge of the gravel track that led up the hill.
You have a routine, don't you? I know you do. I've been watching the way you turn the pages. So regular. So predictable. It’s almost... intimate.
The walk up to Elias’s cottage was different in the daylight.
The fog was thinning now, lifting off the gravel in long, tattered white ribbons that caught the pale sun.
His house sat at the crest of the lane, small and solid, built of dark timber and river stone that looked like it had grown directly out of the mountain.
The truck was gone. The gravel driveway was empty, save for the deep, heavy tire tracks he’d left when he drove down to the station at seven.
The back door wasn't locked. In Blackridge, no one locked their doors before the first frost, a collective delusion of safety that I found endlessly endearing.
I stepped inside.
The kitchen was cold. The air smelled of old coffee, cold fat, and the faint, underlying scent of clean wool and pine shavings.
It was a functional room. No decorations on the walls.
No small, bright things on the windowsill.
Just a heavy iron skillet sitting on the stove, a thin skin of grease dried in the bottom from his breakfast, and a white ceramic mug sitting in the sink.
I didn't touch the mug. I just looked at it. The porcelain had a small, grey crack near the rim shaped like a lightning bolt.
I moved into the small living room with quiet, deliberate steps, my boots making no sound on the rag rug. The floorboards here were wide, rough-hewn pine, scrubbed so often that the grain stood up in white, pale ridges.
His books were on a single shelf near the cold fireplace.
They were mostly technical manuals, state vehicle codes, penal law volumes with cracked leather spines, and a few paperbacks about forestry and tracking that looked thirty years old.
I reached out, my bare finger trailing over the top edges of the pages. No dust. He touched them often.
I walked into his bedroom.
The bed was longer than most, built to accommodate a man who stood well over six feet tall.
Its black iron frame rested against the wall beneath the window.
The blankets were heavy grey wool and a dark green quilted coverlet that had been tucked in with military precision, the corners folded flat and tight.
I leaned down, my face inches from the pillow.
It smelled of him.
It was a heavy, concentrated scent of cedar, the bitter tang of stale tobacco, and the warm, salty musk of his skin after a long day in the sun. It was the same smell that had been trapped in the blue jersey, but here, it was thick enough to taste.
I sat down on the edge of the mattress. The springs gave a single, low groan beneath my weight.
On the wooden nightstand sat his watch, not the silver one he wore to the store, but an old, scratched iron one with a cracked leather band. Next to it was a small white bottle of aspirin and a pocketknife with a staghorn handle. The brass rivets on the knife were dull from the oil on his palms.
I picked up the knife. It was heavy. I turned it over once, feeling the rough texture of the horn against my skin, then set it back down exactly where it had been, aligning the tip with the edge of the aspirin bottle.
The bathroom was off the small hallway. It was narrow, the floor floor yellowed near the base of the tub. The air inside was still damp from his morning shower, the mirror covered in a thick, milky skin of condensation that was slowly starting to dissolve into clear, weeping streaks.
A bottle of his aftershave sat on the porcelain sink Old Spice. The cap wasn't screwed all the way. A single, amber drop had dried on the glass rim, looking like a tiny bead of resin.
I reached out and touched the glass bottle, my skin absorbing the coldness of it.
The shower curtain was a plain, clear plastic that clung to the side of the cast-iron tub.
In the bottom of the basin, a few dark, coarse hairs from his beard were trapped around the chrome drain, curling against the white enamel like tiny, dead spiders.
I stood there for a long time, just watching them, until the mirror behind me cleared completely, revealing the pale, sharp line of my own jaw in the glass.
I stepped into the shower taking his shower gel and I smelled it.
Just.Like.Him. Looking around I found another one and took it.
What? I didn't take anything of importance. I didn't move the towels. I didn't open his drawers. I just walked out, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind me with a soft, final thud that the valley fog swallowed whole.
The kitchen in my own cottage was exactly as I had left it. The manuscript sat on the table, its pages white and unblinking under the grey light from the window. The coffee in my mug was cold now, a thin, dark film forming across the surface of the liquid.
I pulled the blue jersey off over my head, the wool scratching against my cheeks, and hung it carefully on the peg by the door.
"You forgot something," Gerald said from the mantelpiece.
His voice was louder now, splitting the silence of the room like a dry twig. I froze, my hand still resting on the rough blue wool of the sleeve. I didn't turn around.
"I didn't leave anything there. I double checked before I left."
"No," Frank whispered from the window seat, his ceramic face dark against the glass. "Not there."
Gerald’s painted smile seemed to widen in the quiet of my head, small and sharp and perfectly cold.
"You forgot to feel guilty."
I let go of the sleeve. I turned around slowly, looking at the two of them sitting there in the grey light, their tiny, unblinking eyes fixed on mine.
"Oh," I murmured to the empty room. "That."
After all,...
The easiest homes to enter...are the ones you're invited into before anyone realizes it. People worry far too much about strangers breaking into their homes.
They should worry more about the ones they invite inside…