He Will Come Back

A loud alarm startled her awake. She got up slowly, still not fully awake, and removed her pink covers. Her legs swung over the side of the bed, but she didn’t move to get up yet. She instead reached out for her screaming phone on her nightstand.

She grabbed the phone and cut off the alarm. That was when she noticed the time - it was 7:30 AM. Her eyes widened; she slept in. Now fully awake, she got up out of bed like a horse running from danger and ran for the bathroom to start her morning ritual.

She took a shower first, the water warm to the touch, and then changed into the clothes she picked for the day. She brushed her almost perfect, white teeth and got in between them with floss, but she had to be more thorough with the tiny overlap in her front teeth. Then she brushed out the tangles from her long, wavy, blond hair.

Once she was done getting ready, she double-checked herself in the mirror. Her skin was peachy with a tiny, forming pimple on her cheekbone - that was going to drive her nuts later. Her thick, black, square glasses were dirty, so she quickly cleaned those, and then placed them over her green eyes again. Her white blouse had no wrinkles, same for her dark brown dress pants. Good, everything was ideal. She nodded her head in approval, left the bathroom, and grabbed a protein bar to go.

She opened her front door and walked out of the house. She got into the red SUV and drove off. She was going to be late for work, she just knew it.

()()()

She parked her car outside a small office building. It didn’t look like much with its paper-white outer walls and reddish roof. She got out of the car and walked in through the glass door of the building.

The moment she stepped into her office, a voice called out, “Hey, Susan! What took you so long?” Susan turned to see her friend and co-worker, Emily. Emily had dark brown hair and blue eyes. Her skin was paler than Susan’s and she wore a similar outfit.

“Hey Em, I slept in. I didn’t hear my clock go off the first time,” said Susan as she sat down in her pink chair.

“Again? Girl, that’s like the fifth time since you moved here,” said Emily.

“I know. You would think I would have gotten used to it by now, but nope. A whole year had gone by, and my internal clock still hadn’t righted itself.”

Emily laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure it will soon. It can’t be too much longer now, right?” she said with a wink.

Susan smiled gratefully. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

With a pat on the shoulder, Emily sat down in front of her. “So, have you heard the news today?” Susan shook her head in the negative. “Well, it’s not good. A killer had escaped from prison late last night and he has yet to be found.”

Susan felt her heart drop down into her stomach. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound good.”

“When is the news ever good?” asked Emily.

Susan thought for an answer, but nothing stuck out to her. She couldn’t think of one bit of news that was good that didn’t involve something horrible. So she shrugged her shoulders.

“Exactly,” said Emily. “Anyway, I hope they find the guy soon. I’m sure I’m not the only one that would like to sleep peacefully tonight, right?”

“Yeah, I would like that too.”

“Well, I’ll let you get to work now. See you later, Su!” Emily left for her own office, leaving Susan to her thoughts.

‘I’m going to have to make sure to lock every door and window I own before going to bed tonight,’ Susan concluded before starting up her computer and began working on a new dress design.

()()()

Susan went home after a long day at work. She was tired, but could still feel her heart beating faster than normal. The news about some crazy killer got to her more than she thought. The very idea of a murderer just walking around close to where she lived was the scariest thing that had ever happened to her.

She walked into her house and entered the living room. Her black heels clicked against the hardwood floor as she walked and lightly tossed her keys onto the coffee table. She then made her way into the kitchen. She was so thirsty, like a fish that had been out of the water for too long.

Susan strolled into the nice, lukewarm kitchen; the walls pink and the tiles white. She headed for the cabinets and opened the one that had the glasses in it. She pulled out a tall glass and filled it up with water using the sink. Just as she was about to take a sip, a clink sounded from the living room.

Susan laid her glass down and left to investigate. When she got to the living room, she looked around. She didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at first, but then she saw that her keys were not on the coffee table anymore. Bewildered, she moved closer and spotted her keys at the foot of the table.

‘How did my keys get there?’ She picked them up and stared at them in thought. She then looked at the coffee table and decided, ‘I must have thrown them too close to the edge.’ With a shrug, she placed her keys down on the table again and went back to get her water.

After drinking the heavenly, cold water, Susan checked the time. It was late, too late to make dinner, so she picked up her phone and called the Chinese place to order takeout.

()()()

The next morning, Susan got up on time and was ready for the day. She went downstairs and made a bowl of cereal. When she finished eating, she went into the living room to get her keys, but they weren’t where she left them.

“I could have sworn I left them on the coffee table,” she said to herself. She peered around the table, but there were no keys. She looked around the couch next to the coffee table, but they weren’t there either; she even tried to search under the furniture.

She looked in a few other places and finally found her keys in her small, pink purse. ‘How did they get there?’ she questioned nervously, scouting out the room. She thought she saw movement by the stairs.

‘What was that? Was it a ghost? No, it couldn’t be. I’ve lived here for a year and nothing strange has happened before. Maybe I’m just seeing things. But how did my keys end up in my purse? Did someone break into my house last night? No, it couldn’t be that either. Nothing’s been stolen.’ Her mind was going a mile a minute. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself before she succumbed to a panic attack.

“Calm down, Susan. You probably put your keys into your purse last night so you wouldn’t be late to work. You don’t remember doing it because you were tired,” she reasoned with herself. She felt her heart slow down to a normal speed and her body relaxing. Once she had calmed down, she grabbed her purse and keys and left the house for work, no longer thinking about ghosts.

()()()

For the past week now, things had been happening around the house. It was no longer just her keys going missing. She lost her phone, her hairbrush, and even her purse. Susan tried to tell herself that she was just misplacing her belongings, but a small whisper in the back of her mind had its doubts and kept telling her it was a ghost.

She shook her head to try and clear it of thoughts of ghosts. They weren’t real, she kept telling herself. She focused her eyes back on the road. She was almost home.

She pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. She sighed with her shoulder sagging tiredly. She grabbed her purse, left the car, and walked into the house. As she stepped into her living room, she felt goosebumps form on her arms and could see a faint mist as she exhaled.

‘Why is it so cold in here? I’m pretty sure I turned the air off.’ She put her purse down on the coffee table and went into the dining room. As she walked in, she turned to the left where the bookshelf and thermostat were. Her eyes widened when she saw that it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit and 7.2 degrees Celsius, but the temperature wasn’t what frightened her - the air was off. It shouldn’t be cold; it was warm outside.

Susan spun on her heels quickly to go for her purse and grab her phone, but as she reentered the living room she saw that her phone, as well as her keys, were on the coffee table and no longer in her purse. Maybe it was a ghost? Things started happening after the killer escaped from prison.

Susan was told by the old lady next door, shortly after moving in, about how a couple used to live in her new house.

“They looked like they were such a happy couple, but then one day, the man killed his kind and lovely wife. I heard the screams that night, so I called the police. They caught the man and found his wife dead. Poor Claire was stabbed eight times,” the old lady had said, sounding sad and lonely.

Susan shivered and looked at the phone again. She shook her head and said firmly, “There is no such thing as ghosts.” As if on cue, Susan heard a sink turn on. Her eyes widened, pupils small as pinpricks. She slowly turned her head toward the downstairs bathroom door. She could see steam flowing out through the small opening. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face; her blood pumping loudly in her ears. Casually, she took steps closer to the bathroom’s ajar door. She gently pushed it open, seeing the steam wisping out and around her. She looked at the sink, seeing the water running. She advanced in further and turned it off. She then arched her head up, as if she was a robot or puppet, and looked at the foggy mirror. Her breath caught in her throat at what she saw.

He will come back!

GET OUT!

Susan panicked and ran out of the bathroom. She grabbed her phone off of the coffee table and was about to call Emily, but before she could hit the call button, the sound of the back door opening was heard. She couldn’t speak or make any kind of sound. She heard footsteps coming closer, so she quickly moved as quietly as she could toward the living room closet by the front door. She opened it and slipped in, silently closing it behind her.

She scanned out through the crack of the door and saw no one yet, so she lifted her phone and turned it on. She almost panicked when she saw how bright the screen was. She almost dropped her phone in her attempt to lower the lighting. With that done, she glanced out again but saw no one.

Susan brought up the keypad and called the cops. The phone rang as she held it to her ear, waiting with bated breath for them to answer.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“There is someone in my house,” Susan whispered urgently.

“Where do you live?”

“78 Mercury Road.”

“Alright, they are on the way.” Susan didn’t reply, not that she could anyway. As she was looking out through the crack, she saw a man enter the room.

‘Oh please hurry!’ she prayed silently to the police as she studied the man. He was a middle-aged man, maybe in his 30s to early 40s, with eyes as cold and sharp as bullets, piercing everything they gazed upon.

She watched as he went into the kitchen, she could hear things moving around, chairs scraping on the floor, and glass breaking.

The man came back into the room and inspected the items, but this time Susan could see him. He checked out her display cabinet, luckily not bothering to open it and break any of the glass sculptures or china plates inside. Then to her horror, the man came closer to her hiding place.

With each step he took, her heart sped up and her breath shortened. His footsteps sounded like they were getting louder, or was that her heartbeat? She couldn’t tell anymore. Her body felt cold and wet, like rain on a winter’s night falling on her like needles.

She could not move a muscle as he stopped in front of the closet door. He was so close she could smell the car oil and sweat on him. His scarred hand reached out for the handle of the door. Just when his fingers were about to touch, a loud, high-pitched scream was heard.

Susan jumped at the unexpected, sorrowful sound, bumping into the wall. She feared that the man heard her move, but the screaming was so loud and startling, he didn’t even notice. Instead, he had scrambled away from the door.

The lights flickered, and the glass on the coffee table fell over and broke on the floor. Finally, the screaming stopped.

“Claire, I know that was you,” the man said to the air, and the TV had blared on. “Don’t you remember me? It’s me, your husband, Benjamin.”

‘He must be the killer that escaped prison,’ Susan realized.

The lights flickered more, and one of the bulbs burst into tiny shards. “It’s not my fault that you’re dead, Claire. You didn’t give me any choice. If you hadn’t tried to leave me, then you would still be alive, and we would have been happy together.” Two more lights blew out. “So what if I killed that girl? She was taking all of your attention,” he paused as if listening to something. “I don’t care if she was your student and having trouble. She shouldn’t have been trying to take you away from me! So yes, I killed her so you would come back to me, but no, you just had to go and pack your bags and try to leave me anyway, all because of that stupid kid!”

Susan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How sick was this monster? She could understand why Claire wanted to leave so bad. It was heartbreaking that she didn’t make it.

Susan gritted her teeth. ‘He’s blaming her for what happened! It wasn’t her fault! You’re just sick and evil!’ In a way, Susan wished she could say that to the monster’s face, but fear overruled her.

A loud crash on the closet door snapped her back to reality. She saw that Benjamin had ducked under something that was made of glass, and then shortly after, the sound of sirens could be heard down the road. Susan breathed a sigh of relief.

Benjamin ran for the back door, and Susan thought he would escape, but then she heard him howl and bang on the door, demanding for it to open. The sirens grew louder as they got closer. Benjamin started beating the door louder and more rapidly. The cops broke in through the front door and ran for the back. Susan heard a scuffle happening and the cops yelling at the man to stay down and not move. It lasted for only a minute before one of the officers came into the living room again.

“It’s safe to come out now,” he called to her.

Susan hesitated, but slowly opened the door. The cop looked over to her and asked if she was okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thank you for saving me, officer,” she said, her voice filled with relief and gratitude.

“No problem, ma’am. Why don’t you take a seat? We’ll get this nut back to where he belongs,” the cop said with a kind and cheerful smile.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Susan said and shakily walked over to the couch to sit. She melted into the comfortable furniture in bliss. After this night was over and the next morning rolled around, she was going to call her boss and tell her that she wasn’t coming in that day.

Benjamin was dragged out of the house. Susan flinched when she saw him glaring at her. The cop pushing him shoved him harder and told him to keep moving.

The same cop that came looking for her was back and asked if he could take a seat. She gave him the okay, and he sat down next to her.

“It’s late, so I’ll make this quick. Can you tell me your name?”

“It’s Susan Harts.”

“Can you tell me what happened here tonight from beginning to end, please?”

Susan recapped everything that happened from when the man broke into her house to the cops coming in. The only thing she left out was the paranormal activity that Claire was causing.

“Thank you, Susan. That’s all I’ll bother you with. You try to get a good night’s sleep. Drink some tea or something to help calm your nerves.”

“Thank you, sir.” Susan walked the officer out and told him goodnight before closing the door and making sure it was locked. She turned around and saw a transparent woman in her 20s standing there with a kind and relieved smile. Susan knew she was Claire and smiled in return. “Thank you, Claire.” Claire smiled brightly and vanished through a soft, peaceful light while Susan watched on with a lighter heart.