The Violin’s Last Cord

I rap my knuckles softly on Mrs. Cook’s door. I stand there for a moment, and check my watch. 5:00. Where is she? Usually, my violin teacher is waiting for me at the door, hands full with a plate of cookies for me. My stomach turns uneasily as I think something terrible. She is eighty...

I knock on the door again, a little harder this time, and call out in a wavering voice, “Mrs. Cook?” No answer. I bite my lip and touch the cold metal door knob. If she’s okay, I’ll tell her I was only breaking and entering to make sure she was fine.

The door knob catches. Locked. I take a step back from the door, wondering if I should call her, when I see movement in the window that looks into the living room. I exhale shakily, relieved that I wouldn’t be finding any dead bodies today. I lean over to the window so I can wave her over, but I stop when I peer into the room.

Mrs. Cook, the kind elderly lady who made me cookies every week, who didn’t have any children and who’s husband was long gone, who doted on me with gifts and hugs, who I thought of as family, is laying on the ground of her living room in a pool of blood. Her white hair that I always makes me think of cotton candy is pink where is touches the thick, red liquid. Her pale blue eyes look up at the sky, her mouth open slightly. I look for the source of the blood and see her intestines spilled across the floor.

My stomach heaves and I turn around quickly, vomiting. Tears run down my face and my hands shake terribly. My knees give out and I sink to the ground, my back against the cold brick wall. My chest squeezes and my breath comes out in short gasps.

I’ve had panic attacks before. I know I need to regulate my breathing before I pass out, but every time I close my eyes so I can concentrate I see Mrs. Cook’s torso, ripped and ravaged.

He could still be here! A small voice in my head yells. Get up! Get up get up! My mind flashes to the dark shape I saw moving in the window. I force myself to take a deep breath and I stand up. My knees feel like they’re jello, wobbling fiercely under my weight. I take an unsteady step away from the corpse, and another, and another.

Run! The voice tells me, but I know if I try to run I will black out. I’m having trouble enough controlling my intake of air. I manage to get to Mrs. Cook’s neighbor’s house and knock on their door softly.

A dog barks at me from behind the door. By the sound of it, it’s a small dog. A hugely pregnant woman opens the door after cursing the dog. She looks at me with shock.

”You need to call 911,” I say softly, my breathing back to small gasps. The wold starts to spin. “Mrs. Cook is dead.” I barely get the words out before the everything goes dark.

When I wake up, I’m on a lumpy couch. A dog licks my face, and I push it off of me and sit up slowly. I hold my head and look around. The pregnant lady is in the kitchen, sitting at a small table while a cop asks her questions, and the other one takes notes. I look outside and see an ambulance with it’s lights off outside of Mrs. Cook’s house.

The Yorkshire terrier jumps back up onto my lap and claws my arm, wanting pet. “Shoo.” I tell it, sliding it off of me again. The dog yelps at me and walks off.

Everyone in the kitchen looks at me. One of the cops, the one taking notes, looks at the other cop. The other cop, he has a brown beard but a bald head, nods at the cop taking notes. He’s younger than the bald one, and blonde. He sits down on the recliner next to the couch.

”Hello. I’m Officer Bob.”

I laugh. Maybe it’s the nerves, or the shock, but Officer and Bob sound really funny together.

He ignores the laugh. I guess I’m not the first to find his name amusing. “What is your name?”

”Samantha Green. I go by Sam, though.” Officer Bob scratches something down on his notepad.

He looks up at me with green eyes. “Why were you at Mrs. Cook’s house today?”

”I go there every Tuesday after school. Violin lessons.”

”Same time every week?”

I nod. “Five o’clock.”

He writes something else down. “Tell me about what happened.”

I gulp, and nod my head again. I tell him everything, how Mrs. Cook didn’t open the door, the dark shape, her body, how I threw up.

Officer Bob looks up at me grimly when I’m finished. “Miss, we didn’t find any body or any blood at the alleged crime scene.”

”Alleged?” I shriek. “Sir I know what I saw! He must have hid the body!”

He looks at me warily, clearly thinking that I might go into another panic attack. “Miss, we got here five minutes after Mrs. Baker called. He wouldn’t have gotten far with a body, and would not have been able to clean the blood out of the carpet.”

”Have you found Mrs. Cook?” I ask angrily.

“No, but we are searching for her.” Officer Bob looks at me again, his expression full of pity. “Miss,” he says softly. “did you really see a body? And blood? Because if you are serious, we will further investigate it. But if you are making this up, we’re going to have to arrest you.”

Tears blur my vision. He thinks I’m making this up? “I saw her body, Officer Bob.”

He nods slowly. “Alright, then I think we’re done here. You can leave, Miss Green.”

I leave that house quickly, all but running out the door. The cold air sends tremors through my body. Or maybe those are the sobs building up inside of me, trying to break free. I run home, seeing that dark shape in every shadow and hearing death with every snap of a twig. Somewhere along the way I come to the realization that maybe the man that killed Mrs. Cook wasn’t a man. Maybe it was more than that. That’s how the evidence disappeared.

I sprint now, knowing that I won’t make it home fast enough. It saw me! It must have. I didn’t leave the house quickly after I saw Mrs. Cook’s corpse. I reach my door to my apartment, shove the key in, open the door and slam it violently behind me. Heart pounding, I race up the stairs, down the hallway. Hands shaking, I try to put the key in the door but I can’t. My chest squeezes painfully. I finally unlock the door, shut it, and lock it back.

I slump against the door, and sigh with relief. Being in my own house makes me feel safe. I stand up. Tea will help me relax. I go into my small kitchen and grab a mug, fill it with water, and stick it in the microwave. It’s the best I can do for hot water. While it whirls around, I head to my bedroom, eager to change into other cloths. My room is dark, so I don’t see it till I turn on my lights.

It’s body is made out of shadows, dark, foreboding, transparent, evil shadows. It’s body is oddly twisted, it’s fingers shaped like claws. It’s red eyes look at me hungrily. I scream, and it runs at me with jerky motions.

The world goes dark again.

It is dark for a long time.

I can hear something, far off. Gentle voices, the sound of beeps, like a machine of some sort.

When I wake up, my clothes are wrapped tightly around me, my arms plastered to my sides. The room all around me is white. I stand and look down at my clothing. White. A white jacket.

I see a door in the far corner of the room. I run for it, and scream at those outside. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there.

”I’m not crazy!” I shriek. “You have to help me! It will find me!” If it found me in my house, it can find me here. “It’s going to kill me!”

Two men walk into the room. “Thank God,” I tell them. “You have to help me. The creature that killed Mrs. Cook, it’s coming after me next.” The men look at each other, and then walk towards me slowly.

One of them pulls out a syringe. They stick the needle in my arms. It hurts.

The world goes dark.