The police car stopped outside and the officer got out with his torch, running it along the fence and seeing nothing, got back into his car. Chelsea tried to alert him, but it was too dark and he didn’t look up to the attic window. She dialled the police again and the surly officer answered, “State your emergency and please speak clearly.”
“The dark figure came through the gate and the police officer you sent didn’t see him! Can you send him back to check the front yard?” Chelsea asked and heard the officer sigh.
“Ma’am, it’s ten o’clock at night. Do you think you might be seeing things?”
“No, the fence is still open from when he came through it.” Chelsea explained, watching the swinging fence. Suddenly the dark figure walked to the gate, “He’s back in sight! He um,” Chelsea watched as he went out the gate and closed it. Then stood where he had been standing before.
“Have you had alcohol this evening ma’am.”
“Um, no, I don’t understand, he’s standing where he was before your officer showed up.”
“Well, that sounds like it’s all wrapped up. Please try get some sleep,” the officer hung up and Chelsea just watched as whomever was staring at her house just stood on the other side of the fence.
…
Chelsea woke suddenly and looked expectantly out the window, to not see the figure that had been watching. She cursed at herself for falling asleep in the chair. Looking around the suprisingly roomy attic she saw a few bits of broken furniture and some boxes in the corner. She opened a few and frowned as they were filled with different styles of clothing. Not colours but themes. There were bohemian dresses and sandals, then prim and proper office wear from, she guessed, the nineties, gothic styled clothing, cartoon printed tee shirts, mens business suits, normal shirts, shorts, some boxers and an army uniform. She supposed the previous tenants had left them. A few others contained some notebooks and knick knacks. She saw that one of the dismantled pieces of furniture was a metal bed frame and she thought she’d set it up, if she needed to spend the night monitoring the dark shape again. She got down from the attic and felt the sunlight coming through as a major relief, from the danger she had felt in the night. She actually felt a bit silly to remember how frightened she had felt. Making herself a big mug of coffee, she sat on the sofa and flicked to the morning news channel. She jumped in shock as her phone made a loud noise to say she had gotten a message. Wiping up the spilled coffee, she read it,
Message from Jody:
Coffee? 10@Cuppa Java
She answered with a thumbs up to say she’d be there. She turned up the volume for the news report of a burnt building.
“… after a few weeks. The cause of the fire was reported to be a member of the community, but no names have been released as of yet.” It turned to an image of around thirty people in a blurry photo and she realised that it was probably the office fire that Jody had mentioned. She scanned her eyes along quickly and saw Jody, Peter, Margot, the tall Steven and a few others she recognised if not by name. Her eyes found the one on the end and he had an odd resemblance to someone, but with darker hair. It was too blurry to see for sure, but the news story switched to weather and didn’t reappear. She turned it off and went up to rummage in her suitcase for a something to wear. She felt a bit bored by her selection and wondered if it would be in bad taste to wear the clothes she had found in the attic. She went back up and rummaged in a box for a pale yellow dress she had seen, when her eyes recognised the style of the pale green suit as it had been in the news photograph. She pulled it out and felt a square packet in the front chest pocket. Reaching in she found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The mystery of how the fire had started was starting to make sense. She suddenly realised that he must have lived in the house. Backing away from the boxes, feeling an oddly creepy vibe from knowing the person, she decided to wear her own clothes and ask Jody about him.
She decided to walk down to the coffee shop as she had quite a bit of nervous energy. When she arrived, Jody was leaning her chair back against the wall and throwing a balled up napkin into the air and catching it in her other hand, to repeat the process. Her chair clunked down as she caught sight of Chelsea. Jody yelled to the dark skinned man behind the counter who appeared to have even more piercings than she did. He rolled his eyes at her and started making the coffees. Chelsea sat down opposite her as Jody threw her balled up napkin into the trash.
“How’s the shoulder?” Jody asked.
“Pretty sore, but healing,” Chelsea paused, trying to consider her words and not have herself be called a lunatic, “I found some clothes from the previous tenent in the house.”
“Really? Anything good or just moth ridden slacks?”
“Did the guy who burnt down the office, used to live in my house?”
“Yeah, he did,” Jody replied, looking oddly uncomfortable.
“Oh,” Chelsea, didn’t understand her concern and assured, “That’s okay. I saw the old photo they showed on the news.”
“Yeah, they can’t show him because the company isn’t pressing charges and they just wanted to help him. It wasn’t really his fault.”
“That’s really nice,” Chelsea said as the man gave her a coffee, “Oh thanks, so much, how much do I owe?”
He shook his head, “No worries Christy, we’re cool.”
“Sorry, I’m not Christy, I’m Chelsea,” Chelsea corrected him and he hit his forehead with his hand.
“Oh, sorry, Jody said, I just forgot. My apologies, Jody’s already paid, so no worries,” he went back to the counter and Jody rolled her eyes at him.
“That’s Justin. He has a bad memory, but if you ever go down to the Kingscross pub on a Friday, he plays awesome guitar, won’t hear a better player in the country,” Jody recommended.
“He seems nice. Oh, you’ll never guess what happened last night! There was this random dude standing at my gate for almost the entire night.”
“Oh, did you call the cops?” Jody asked in concern.
“Yep, but fat lot of good it did. She asked if I had been drinking and told me to get some sleep!”
“That’s terrible. They didn’t even come check?”
“Yeah, but the person hid somewhere in my front yard, so the police officer didn’t see him,” Chelsea explained, “then I called back to tell her that he had entered the property and he just went back to the gate.”
“That’s pretty,” she looked up and placed her hand on her chin exaggeratedly, “strange.”
“It was scary! I hardly got any sleep at all. What happens if he’s a pervert or psycho? The police aren’t any help!”
“Just give me a call and I’ll scare him away. I think I have a cricket bat somewhere.”
“It only happened late at night. I don’t want you traipsing around the neighbourhood in your pj’s with a cricket bat!” Chelsea laughed.
Without missing a beat, Jody responded, “No worries, I sleep nude.”
They enjoyed another coffee and Chelsea enjoyed herself. When finished she said goodbye to Jody and Justin to make her way back home. She was surprised when she opened the mail box and found a package inside. Carrying it up to the house she noticed that there were no postage stamps on the brown paper wrapped parcel with her name and address scrawled messily on it. She sat on the sofa and tore off the paper to reveal a purple diary with her name printed in the little window in the front. It was a page to a day and a little note on the front page, written by someone, ‘Write your worries in me and I’ll help you cure them.’
Finding she had nothing to do, she started writing about the week and felt oddly better at having it written down. Just in case something happened to her. She knew she was thinking dramatically, but it made her feel comforted having a journal. She decided to set up the attic in preparation and went up the stairs to assemble the dismantled bed frame. Picking up one of the pieces she spun around and winced as one of the boxes toppled to the floor. She moved the part of the frame to the window and bent to retrieve the books which had fallen from the box. She picked up a few notebooks with some random names scrawled on the covers, then the fancier ones with other names. She opened one of the newer looking ones and looked in horror as she read about, looking at the printed name, Charlie Pascure. The end became very disturbing as he was apparently seeing a therapist and talking about someone standing outside his house.
March 3rd
“He’s back at the gate. I went out to see who it was but when I got there he was gone. I got a flashlight and waited until he showed up, but he didn’t arrive. I’m starting to think I’m going crazy. It’s like living with a phantom. Always there, yet never captured.”
March 12th
“So much mess, it’s all over the floor. It’s everywhere. I tried to use the mop, but it seems to have soaked into the floor. I need something stronger.”
It appeared to be the last entry. She picked up another with the name Chloe Baker on it. She scanned through the pages coming to the last entries.
August 19th
“That lady Margot is weird since she came back with a shaved head. I think she should go to a shrink or something. She was ok before, a little weird, but at least not talking non-sense all the time. She used to be a writer, but got bad press when she wrote a book about magic and some people took the abstract meaning to be about transgender rights. She told me, that she had only written a story and if they interpreted it that way, they were wrong, but people are cruel and so she became incredibly depressed. When she went away for her long service leave, she seemed happy enough. But when she came back last week, she began talking about people coming to get her. She started saying the company is a big mental institution and that everyone there is a lunatic.”
August 27th
“I got invited to the head office tomorrow. It should be fun. Margot keeps yelling at me, that they are going to experiment on me. I’ve learnt to ignore her. I’m going to wear my favourite yellow dress.”
The rest of the pages were blank. Picking up the next one, which was named Christina Locklan she read the last entries.
October 4th
“I tried to tell Pete, what I was worried about. But he ignored me, as usual. He came home the next day with a dozen tulips, without remembering that I’m horribly allergic to the damn things. My nose and eyes have not stopped watering. To make it up to me he said he was going to cook dinner for our anniversary. I know he’s going to cook his spaghetti bolognese. He’s very proud of it.”
October 9th
“Bolognese sauce is everywhere, the floor, the knife, the wall! No, oh no. I need to clean it up. Where is Pete? I’ll find him once everything is clean. We both need some space. It will be fine.”
Chelsea saw it was the last entry and realised that it must have been Peter’s wife writing. They must have had a fight on their anniversary and she left shortly after. How could so much history be in one box! There were three more and she realised that they all had been delivered a journal. No mention of who could have done this. Though one Christopher Mildew did write that his therapist thought writing about his feelings would help him push past a buried trauma.
Chelsea took the diaries down to the living room and placed them in date order. There were eight in total. Her new one made nine. One was a sketch book with numerous child’s paintings in them. The last picture had a big red blob over the picture, indicating a spill. The rest of the pictures appeared to be of a house and family. Normal kids pictures. She thought she should track down the owner as their parents would want them back. But checking the cover she couldn’t see a legible name.
…
Looking out the window, she realised that night had fallen. She peered out and the dark figure was not there. Shrugging, she oddly felt like spaghetti bolognese after reading about it. She looked up Connie’s pizza place number as she had seen a menu saying they did pasta as well, being an authentic Italian restaurant.
“Connie’s pizza shop,” the same bored man from her first night, answered.
“Hi Adam, can I get a spaghetti bolognaise delivered?”
“Um, yeah. You sure?” He asked a bit shocked.
She paused at the odd reaction and said, “Yes, it’s what I feel like.”
“Oh, ok. Um, it will be delivered soon,” he hung up and Chelsea felt a bit worried by the strange tone.
He arrived a few minutes later and held out to her the plastic take away bowl. He had taken off his helmet and looked at her with concern, “Be careful as it’s pretty hot and you don’t want to spill it on the floor.”
She nodded and took the napkins to protect her hands and took the bowl from him, “Thanks Adam, you still have my credit card on file?”
“Yeah, you look after yourself Chelsea and we’ll see you soon,” he nodded and Chelsea felt a weird thought that he was saying goodbye for some reason. As she closed the door, she felt like she was involved in a play, where everyone else seemed to know their parts and only she was oblivious to the next scene. She placed the takeaway on the counter and got a fork and spoon from the draw. She opened the lid and the smell hit her like mallet. She stepped away, feeling like her insides had started becoming living creatures. She shook her head and ran to the bathroom to throw up. As she dry heaved stomach acid rose in her throat and she realised that she had forgotten to eat that day. As she finally got her dry heaving under control, she stumbled into her bedroom and felt incredibly fatigued.
She had been lying down for a few minutes when she heard a window break. She sat up in bed and listened to the terrifying sound of slow heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. They stopped and she waited, feeling the anxiety build. She heard a pot clatter and then a scream sounded. Where was that scream coming from? She had heard it for quite a few nights. The smell of the spilled bolognaise felt like it permeated the air. The footsteps grew closer and the dark figure stood in the doorway with bolognaise all over its hands. In one hand he held a knife. He walked over to her and said, “Shhh, hold this for me and don’t leave the room until morning,” he patted her twice on her injured shoulder, getting the warm bolognaise sauce on her burn and she screamed. He handed her the knife he had been holding and told her to be quiet as he left the room. She heard him stomp down the stairs and out the front door. She waited for a moment and then something inside her, told her she needed to check. She got onto her unsteady legs and made her way out the door, to the kitchen. The sauce was all over the floor. She knelt down in the middle and cried as she tried to wake up the two people lying in the sauce.
“Chelsea, it’s okay dear. Come with me. We’ll clean it up,” A gentle voice said. She looked up to see the doctor standing there, holding out a gloved hand. Jody stood beside him and nodded sadly. Chelsea took the hand and started to remember…
Next Chapter:
TBC 20/03/2026
Maxine the Magnificent 