Traces of the Girl Read online

  Traces of the Girl

  E.R. Fallon

  © E.R. Fallon 2019

  E.R. Fallon has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the author

  Chapter One

  “You better open up,” a man’s deep voice shouted late one night as I read a history book on my couch, unable to sleep yet again. He knocked on my door then pounded furiously despite the fact that I had a doorbell.

  I remember snippets of what happened next in my secluded rural house.

  He kicked his way through the door into my home, a tall and hulking man.

  “What do you want from me?” I shouted. “Who are you?”

  He didn’t speak.

  “Why are you doing this?” I demanded.

  He only smiled.

  “Somebody help me!” I screamed. But even at that moment I knew nobody would be there to help.

  I ran into the kitchen and took a cutting knife from the counter, left there from the dinner I had started to prepare but never finished. He sneaked up behind me and tried to grab me, and we struggled. I screamed and stabbed him.

  There was so much blood all over him and me, and I even slipped on it on the floor and fell down and became covered in his blood. I looked at my hands and they were tinged red. What about him? Would he get up and try to hurt me again?

  He was slumped over on the floor and seemed lifeless. I reached into a drawer from where I sat on the floor and then jabbed his thick arm with a fork to check, and nothing happened. He didn’t move. He was a body now, no longer a man.

  I kept thinking, I killed someone. I killed someone and I’m covered in his blood. I need to wash it away. Now. I didn’t want the police to think it hadn’t been an accident. I didn’t want them to think I’d intended to stab him.

  Panicked, I got up and bolted upstairs to shower. As I washed off the blood under the hot spray I decided I would call the police when I finished. I had no other option, and the sooner I called them the better. The more time that had passed, the worse the situation could get for me.

  I would tell them I had defended myself against an intruder. Surely they would believe me, a decorated Air Force veteran.

  I stopped the water and got out and dried myself then went into my bedroom to put on clean clothes, with the dead intruder still in the kitchen. I caused death during the war, by dropping bombs to the earth from a plane in the sky, never face to face.

  A new, disturbing thought occurred to me as I dressed. What if the police didn’t believe me? I was in therapy after all and could be considered troubled. I went toward my phone at my bedside and grabbed it. Then I remembered my gun. I had a gun in a lockbox in my garage. I had a good reason for keeping it so far away from me. I couldn’t recall if it was loaded. It might sound a little chilling that I had a gun but a lot of military people did.

  I can’t remember what happened after that.

  I woke up groggy on the couch late the next afternoon. I couldn’t remember what happened after I showered other than I put on clothes, grabbed my phone and walked downstairs. But I must not have called the police because no one had showed up at my house. I hadn’t even heard the doorbell ring. And the police would have kicked down my door if I’d told them there was a dead body in the house. From where I sat up on the couch my door looked intact. I glanced at my phone on the coffee table by the couch. And what about my gun? Had I gotten the gun and loaded it, or had I gotten it and it was already loaded? I searched for the gun on the couch cushions beneath and surrounding me. Nothing.

  I didn’t own a TV so I couldn’t see if there was anything about the man who’d attacked me. Was he a wanted criminal? Or had someone reported him missing?

  I got up from the couch, checked the time and knew I’d missed my morning appointment with my therapist, something I had never done before. Dr. Tompkins might not refill my medication if I skipped our appointment without calling to notify him beforehand that I’d be absent.

  I had his cell phone number for anything very important. Was this something very important? Yes. It was the definition of ‘very important’. I reached for my phone and called him. I got his voicemail but didn’t leave a message. How could I explain why I’d missed my appointment? Where would I start?

  Hi, Doctor Tompkins, I might have killed a man, an intruder, but, still, another human …

  I knew I needed to talk with Dr. Tompkins about what I remembered doing but I felt he would call the police if I did. The police might think I was making it up since I was crazy, or they might believe I did it on purpose because I was crazy.

  The doctor would see that I’d called him and I could just try him again later. I did worry a little that he might show up at my house, but I soon forgot that thought because I had an awful, pulsating headache and a huge thirst. The inside of my mouth felt as dry as paper. Had I been screaming? Yeah. I had yelled at the top of my lungs during the struggle – the struggle with that man, that home invader. Then I remembered the intruder’s body and hurried into the kitchen to check for it, but there was no body and no blood, not even a smear, so no trace that a body had ever been there. No knife either.

  I managed to drink some water despite my nerves, but I almost broke the glass in the sink. No knife. Not just no knife with blood on it, but no knife whatsoever. I threw what was left of the dinner I had started to make the night before into the trash can. The cutting knife I’d stabbed the intruder with seemed to have vanished entirely. What had I done with it? I looked around everywhere, every drawer, every nook and cranny, and all over the floor, and I still couldn’t find it.

  And what had I done with the body? Why didn’t I remember?

  No. Wait. Had it even happened, or had I hallucinated?

  For the first time I started to think it might not be a good idea to call the police. Would my showering afterward and washing the blood off make me look guilty? Had I destroyed evidence that could have cleared me of any wrongdoing? There was no body. No knife. What if they thought I’d killed the guy on purpose and then cleaned up and got rid of his body and the weapon?

  I ran out into the hall and checked to really make sure the front door or even just the lock weren’t somehow broken. They weren’t. I ran my fingers over my clean clothes and skin. What happened to the blood? I felt remarkably calm despite the vague memories of what I had done to that man. Numbness, another side effect of the medication Dr. Tompkins had prescribed for me.

  The doctor had told me my memory problems and forgetfulness were associated with my mental health disorder, and the meds I take could also cause memory issues. The medication can make everything else, like the constant highs and lows I experience, better, but still affect those other things negatively.

  I didn’t have a deep, dark basement where I could hide a body so I went outside to check the only places I could hide one, to my garden first. There were no signs the earth had been disturbed. Then I went to the woodshed
and into my garage. No body. No body wrapped or covered in anything. No corpse at all. I checked the back of my little red car in the garage and the trunk. Nothing. I left the garage and walked around my fairly vast property.

  It was nearing the end of wintertime and the remaining snow crunched under my shoes. I wish I had put on a jacket before I left the house. There was a deep, natural cavern far off on my property that made a small, city-like structure underneath the ground and was accessed by an old mining shaft visible from the outside. I would need to grab a flashlight before I ventured into the complete darkness of that cave.

  I returned to my house and went inside. I almost left the door open while I went to get a flashlight but changed my mind and went back and shut it. I didn’t want anyone else getting inside and surprising me. Surprising me? More like, terrorizing me.

  Before I could find the light, the doorbell rang. Only a few seconds had passed since I’d entered.

  The police?

  I started to feel nauseous. I hadn’t heard a vehicle when I was outside, and I hadn’t seen anyone.

  I answered my front door and a man and woman who looked to be in their early forties, about a decade older than me, waited at the other side.

  “Hello,” the woman said with a polite smile.

  She was thin and small in stature, with smooth, tanned skin, short red hair – bright red – and piercing green eyes. She wore tight blue jeans and a matching denim jacket. Her clothes seemed inappropriate for the time of year, like she’d left somewhere in a hurry to come to my house.

  The man standing next to her was a good foot taller than her and muscular. He had salt-and-pepper black hair, was clean-shaven and had a round face like an egg. His skin looked a bit weathered. He just stared at me and didn’t speak.

  I completely forgot that I’d gone inside to look for a flashlight to check my cavern for a body.

  “Are you detectives or something?” I asked slowly.

  It seemed unlikely, but after last night who else could they be? Had I called them after all and not remembered? But they wouldn’t have taken so long to come there. So why were they at my house now?

  “How are you?” the woman asked with a sigh. She spoke like she knew me, which was strange because I didn’t recognize her.

  “I’m …” I paused. “Excuse me, you never said who you two are.”

  “Can we come in?” the man finally spoke.

  “No. Who are you?” I said firmly.

  “Can we just come in?” she asked. “We just want to talk. That’s all. We’re not here to hurt you.”

  “Did my doctor send you? Or are you detectives?”

  “Yeah, we’re detectives,” he said.

  I let them inside but didn’t shut the door behind them at first. The man gestured to the door.

  “You can close it now.”

  The woman waited until I shut the door to speak again.

  “Lucky for you we aren’t detectives, Miss Murderess.”

  “Excuse me?” I said. “Did my doctor send you? Dr. Tompkins?”

  “No. But we know everything,” she said. “We know how you killed that poor salesman.” She smirked and seemed to watch me closely, cruelly, as my face twitched.

  “He wasn’t a salesman.” My voice croaked. “He was a home invader. He broke into my house and tried to attack me.”

  “No, you’re the criminal. He was a salesman. But you went nuts and pulled him inside your house and attacked him.”

  “Then what was he doing coming to my door so late at night?” I insisted.

  The man glanced at the woman and then looked at me. “His car had broken down on the road not too far from here and he wanted to use your phone,” he said calmly.

  “How do you know all of this?” I almost laughed at their audacity but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

  “Yeah,” the woman said. “Your door was open when he talked to you so we heard everything.”

  “From where?”

  She gestured outside. “We were up in the giant tree right outside your door.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Watching you.”

  “Why were you doing that?”

  “We like watching you. You’re an interesting person to watch.”

  The story sounded less far-fetched than I would have thought.

  “Then what happened to his car, to this guy’s car?” I asked.

  “We put it in the ditch,” the man said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we like you. You’re an interesting person.”

  There wasn’t a ditch nearby. “Get out of my house.” I opened the door and tried to push them outside.

  “Kick us out and we’ll go straight to the police.” When the man’s hand moved against his jacket I noticed a gun holstered to his side. He reached behind himself and closed my door.

  “I already called them,” I said.

  The woman locked my door. “Oh, really? Then, where are they?”

  I felt for the shape of my cell phone through my sweater pocket and took it out. The battery was half dead.

  “Give me that,” the woman said, reaching for my phone.

  “No.”

  “Then turn it off.”

  “No.”

  “Do it. Or we’ll go to the police.”

  She watched me as I appeared to shut it off. But I hadn’t. I’d pretended to in case I decided to call someone, like if I had the courage to call the police despite what the woman and man said I’d done.

  The woman laughed through her nose.

  “What the heck are you laughing at?” I was the one who should have been laughing at them for believing I’d shut my phone off.

  “You didn’t go to the cops. And now you can’t go to the cops.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’d be admitting to a murder. Anyway, they won’t believe you, a psychiatric patient.”

  How did she know what I was thinking, and how did she know …

  “How do you know I’m a psych— How do you know about that?”

  No reply.

  Then she said, “If we need to, we’ll sort this out in a way the police can’t.”

  A veiled threat? With my free hand I grabbed onto the doorframe behind me and prepared to bolt into the kitchen and then out the side door that led to the garden.

  “Or we’ll go to the police and tell them what we know,” she repeated.

  “And tell them what exactly? You weren’t here with me.” My insensitivity toward the man’s death shocked me.

  Sometimes I couldn’t trust my own mind. What if … they were right and I had killed someone innocent?

  The woman stepped close to me and her breath smelled faintly of onion. I imagined her eating breakfast at a diner with her giant sidekick.

  “We know where the body is,” she said. “And the murder weapon with your pretty fingerprints all over it.”

  And I didn’t know those things. Or at least, I couldn’t remember them.

  She eyed my hand on the doorframe and shook her head. “No one can help you now, Emily.”

  “You know my name? How?”

  “You were in the newspaper.”

  The newspaper, from when I worked at my former job. A profile of me in the regional newspaper from when I was the only female flight instructor at the flight school, before I’d ‘retired’ early.

  I really suspected the company wanted me out of there because I’d come clean that I’d been diagnosed with a mental health disorder and was taking medication. I’d gone to my job hungover after a solo binge – I always drank alone at home instead of at bars because I didn’t want to hurt someone else on the road on my way home at night – the night before, and almost crashed during a lesson my boss insisted I give despite my admitting to being hungover and in the middle of a full-blown mania that at the time my medication barely controlled, or else he’d fire me. The boo
ze hadn’t mixed well with my meds. I was lucky no one died.

  Maybe one of the reasons I’d been fired was for disclosing my illness. But when I went to see a lawyer she said it would be difficult to prove that since, although I hadn’t been tested, I’d admitted to being hungover and could be considered partly to blame for the incident, even though my boss had forced me to fly by threatening to fire me if I didn’t.

  Those weren’t the only reasons the company had let me go. It had coincided with something else, something even bigger, and darker, and everything had come crashing down on me all at once. But the near miss in the air had scared the heck out of me, and I hadn’t flown since then, not even as a passenger.

  I had joined the Air Force at eighteen, right after high school. My dad had been in the Air Force, and he also had some kind of mental health disorder. So maybe I was genetically predisposed to getting one. Who knew? I never got a chance to ask my father because he and my mother died when I was very young.

  I’d been a fighter pilot during the Iraq War, and I’m sure that had messed me up too. I lost a close friend in the war, Bobby, a fellow pilot whose plane had crashed, and that had been hard. I got medals, including for the mission where Bobby died, and was treated like a hero. Then a few years ago, I was honorably discharged after four tours of duty flying bomb missions over Iraq. I’d wanted to do more tours but they wouldn’t let me; they said they didn’t want me to “burn out”.

  The Air Force had been my life and my identity for so many years, and when it was over I didn’t know who I was. When I returned home I wasn’t Emily Will, the war hero, anymore. I was just a woman who’d served in the military. Like so many other veterans.

  The drinking let me escape the war memories that haunted me and the flashbacks of Bobby’s plane crash and death, which had occurred in front of me, and then later on it helped me escape my mental disorder. “Don’t mix booze with your meds.” That’s what Dr. Tompkins had said to me over and over again. So, most of the time, when I took the meds, I didn’t drink after. But sometimes I’d drink first, and in my state of feeling invincible when intoxicated, I’d then take a pill.