“Yeah, cut it. And the front windows need to be washed too. There’s some bird shit or something on the glass.” Lance swung the door shut harder than he intended to and leaned against the wall. He watched through the window beside the door as John walked across the lawn to a small storage shed tucked beneath the trees on the far side of the yard.
Lance turned and made his way to the kitchen, and grabbed an apple from the fridge. As he chewed at the fruit, he walked to the atrium and gazed out at the lake, which was a deep blue and as flat as the glass he looked through.
After chucking the apple core in a nearby trashcan, he sat at his computer and opened a new Word document. As he organized his thoughts, his fingers floated over the keys with an eagerness he had missed in the past two months. The opening words came to him and he began to type, just as the sound of a lawn mower chugging into life resounded through the house.
Lance stopped typing and turned his head toward the kitchen window. He could see John sitting astride a fairly new riding lawn mower as grass clippings flew in a torrent from beneath the deck. Lance turned back to the computer and tried to regain his focus. The words came in bits and spurts as he hacked them out onto the screen. The sound of the mower running outside slid across his nerves like a cheese grater and kept throwing off his focus. As the gaps in typing became longer and longer, he found himself glancing over his shoulder at the place on the floor where the stain had been and he pictured it, floating there in the darkness.
“Shit,” he said, as he pushed himself away from the table and exited out of the Word document without saving it. He pondered changing into different clothes, but instead, grabbed his wallet along with the Land Rover’s keys off the shelf in the entry and locked the front door behind him as he left the house.
The air had begun to heat into a balmy mixture of bright light and oppressive humidity as Lance climbed behind the wheel and started the vehicle. He looked in his rearview mirror as he pulled past the turnabout and headed down the drive.
John still sat hunched over in the seat of the lawn mower, his hat pulled down to shade his aging eyes. Lance didn’t see him look up as the SUV curved with the driveway, soon hidden from sight behind the thick growth of trees.
Lance’s mind crept back over the events of the past few weeks as he drove, trying to string them together into some semblance of reason. He had heard a voice speaking his name just after setting foot in the house. The door to the storage room seemed to be welded shut with God knew what inside, and someone had been there with him in the house last night, he was sure of it. The memory of the figure standing motionless in the dark outside his door washed over him, and he felt goose bumps follow in its wake.
“Get a grip,” he said quietly. He felt the urge to call Dr. Tyler and tell him about the happenings, but he was afraid the psychologist would be concerned about the stability of his mind and of the emotions that ruled it. If he called, it wouldn’t surprise him if the doctor drove straight here just to see him in person, and he didn’t need that. Not now. He needed to focus on his writing and stop worrying about kids playing pranks, or his own overactive imagination.
Lance curved the SUV around the last bend and Stony Bay’s main drag came into view. Seeing the small town always lifted his spirits, and over the past weeks he had become attached to the friendliness of its inhabitants and the quaintness that permeated the streets and buildings.
Without bothering to signal, he pulled into an empty parking space outside the local grocery store and shut the car off. Several couples passed him on the sidewalk, offering smiles and nods as he made his way to the entrance.
Cool air pushed at his face as the doors slid open, and he began to walk unhurriedly toward the coffee aisle.