Sapphire:

Tales of a Gemstone Traveler

A new book and the start of a new adventure.

I probably should’ve finished the Recall series first, but there are times that I stray from the path. I can’t help it, sometimes a story develops inside my head, and I just have to get it onto the page.

Revolt, the third book in the Recall series is in the making, but for now, I hope you’ll enjoy this new story and join Sam and Max on an exciting adventure that crosses the realms of reality.

Check out a preview of Sapphire: Tales of a Gemstone Traveler

Chapter One

“Poison.” The word resonated inside my head on repeat, and I couldn’t quite fathom why. At the same time, guitars guided me into consciousness, and at the words “You’re poison,” I opened my eyes. The numbers on my alarm clock read six a.m. as I recognized the Alice Cooper song spewing from its small speaker. The old rock classic wasn’t a song I wanted to wake up to. Maybe listen to in the car, but definitely not wake up too.

Relieved to hear the DJ announce the news, I rolled onto my back and stretched my limbs. I stared at the ceiling for a while, and as a new song began, I realized I hadn’t heard a thing of what the news anchor had said.

A shrill beeping made me cringe, and I groaned at the second reminder to get out of bed. The annoying sound produced by my phone, which I had left on my desk before getting into bed last night, gave me a renewed appreciation for the Alice Cooper song.

With another groan, I rolled out of bed, killed the aggravating noise, and found my way to the bathroom without turning on any of the lights. Even though I’d lived in this ground-floor apartment a little over a year now, I’d only bought the bare essentials, so I wasn’t in any danger of stomping my foot against some strayed object.

The tiny place wasn’t anything special, but I didn’t need much. That’s why I hadn’t thought twice before signing the lease. A simple apartment to call home in a small town called Hillside Creek just north of Seattle was just what I needed to get my act together. I just wished they’d told me beforehand that the place above mine had also been available because that might have severely influenced my decision. Unfortunately, what was done was done.

I shuffled across the hall and stopped to glance in the direction of the living room. A quick glimpse through the window revealed the first signs of dawn on the horizon. Not that I could see the horizon, just the light creeping inside from beyond the windowsill and the apartment building across the street.

Inside the bathroom, I flicked on the light and waited for my eyes to adjust. A cold shiver ran down my spine, reminding me that September would end soon and the time for turning on the heat was coming upon us again.

As I shoved a toothbrush into my mouth, I took a reluctant glance in the mirror. Rings under my gray eyes betrayed another fitful night, and I longed for the times when I managed to sleep seven hours straight. My hair stuck out on all sides, and even pulling a hand through it didn’t flatten any of the short strands poking out. Not that long ago, my blond hair would’ve reached just below my shoulder blades, but around the same time that I’d decided to move here, I had also chosen to cut my hair short. I shrugged at myself in the mirror and figured a shower would take care of the wild mess on top of my head. Besides, if people were bothered by it, then they should probably look in a different direction.

After getting dressed, I pondered breakfast for a moment, but a quick look inside the nearly empty fridge made the decision easy. One of these days, I’d have to start buying real food, or at least some milk that could go with cereal. Making a mental note to stop at the grocery store after work, I headed out the door and made an effort to ease it shut with the slightest click of the lock before I took the steps down to the sidewalk.

I was still searching for my car when I heard a voice call my name. My eyes closed reflexively, and I let out a long sigh before I turned and looked up to see Sally Judd, commonly known as my mom and the reason why I couldn’t find my car, standing on her balcony.

“Oh, Samantha,” she said, sounding way too chirpy for this early hour, “I’m so glad I caught you.” She said it as if she hadn’t been waiting for me to step outside.

“Morning, Mom,” I replied. It had taken me years of practice to manage a civil and polite tone as I spoke to my mom in moments like these. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to see or talk to her, but I preferred an order to things to make these early hours bearable. I’d rather keep the interaction with people to a bare minimum. I had enough coworkers and people to talk to at work, and I enjoyed my alone time whenever I could get it.

“Have you heard those sirens?” she said, waving a hand in the air. “They’ve been keeping me up all morning.” I gazed up and listened. There weren’t any sirens, and I hadn’t heard anything.

“Probably your neighbor’s TV,” I replied. “Why were you glad to catch me?” She threw another hand in the air as if I could ever believe that she would have forgotten what she wanted to ask. She had probably lain in, waiting from the moment she’d heard me moving around in my apartment.

“Oh, do you mind leaving me the car today?” Mom asked. “I need to run some errands.” The civil and polite tone that had taken me years to master left my voice as annoyance took over.

“Mom, you’ve had the car three times already this week, and it’s Thursday,” I said as I raised my arms. “And I’m dressed for work already.”

“Oh, please, darling,” she said with a sense of urgency that didn’t even exist in her world anymore. She had fully embraced her retirement from working as a teacher about five years ago and since then had only done things she wanted to do. “I promised Patty to meet her today. We’re supposed to go shopping. Do you need anything—oh and I’ve finished your laundry.” There it was—the guilt trip. I couldn’t get her to not do my laundry or wash my windows, but every time she needed me to do something or wanted something from me, she happened to mention those things. I raised my arms again but in defeat this time. It was too early to deal with this.

“I’ll drop the keys in your mailbox,” I said while I suppressed a growl and stomped back up the steps. Why she even bothered to return the keys at all baffled me.

“Thank you, dear,” she replied, but before I could venture back inside to change, I heard her call my name again. “Oh, and Samantha, dear…”

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath before I stepped back from underneath her balcony, so she could see me again.

“Yes, Mom.” I felt somewhat pleased at keeping myself from sounding overly annoyed.

“You look like you’ve only slept for about an hour and you look even thinner than you did when you were a teenager. You should eat better,” she said.

I glared up at her for a moment, unsure if I should feel touched by her concern or frustrated by the fact that she still berated me like a child. It wasn’t even the berating that bothered me, but her words had an undertone that to my ears sounded a lot like, “Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

It was that little undertone that had me going in precisely the opposite direction. I hadn’t asked for her to move into the apartment above mine, and if I had known about the vacant flat, I would have surely searched for a different building to live in. This felt too much like living at home again. I was thirty-two years old for crying out loud. If I wanted to skip breakfast, I should be able to do so.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said and started for the door. “I’ll see you later.” Before she could reply, I slammed the door behind me and hurried to find my running gear.

#

With the heavy bassline of electronic dance music assaulting my ears and dictating my pace, I ran along Tranquil Lake Trail. It was only a little over two miles from my home to the Grain retirement home where I worked, and usually, I could run it under twenty minutes. I enjoyed running and often embraced the time spent inside my head as my feet thumped on the pavement, but today I wasn’t feeling it. Somehow I felt anxious, although I had no reason to be.

The constant blaring of sirens that had reappeared after I’d left home and that seemed bent on waking up the surrounding neighborhood didn’t help either. It turned out that Mom hadn’t imagined the racket after all. I looked up as I heard another emergency vehicle approach, even though I couldn’t see it from the trail. The sound raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and a shiver ran down my spine. Turning up the sound level on my phone, I forced myself to refocus. The path along Tranquil Lake was beautiful in its own right, but my mind-set didn’t always allow me to see it.

Life had a tendency to overwhelm me, and retreating into the world that existed inside my head had become my refuge. It had even gotten to the point that I couldn’t stand to be in the city anymore. Seattle had been my home for as long as I could remember, and it had become my place of work as well. I couldn’t quite recall when it all started to fall apart. My father’s untimely demise two years ago might have had something to do with it, although that had hit my mother harder than it had hit me. Having a father who preferred to drink himself to death instead of spending time with his family wasn’t exactly something that would strengthen a bond.

It wasn’t that I’d describe my dad as a bad guy, but selfish was undoubtedly a label that fitted him. I understood that life had dealt him a bad hand when the company he’d built with his own father had gone bankrupt. With all these big retailing companies sprouting from the ground, my dad’s old-school hardware store never had a chance, but that had been over ten years ago. He’d never been able to pick himself up after that and instead had Mom and me pick up the pieces. Mom had never been able to let him go even after he turned into a mean old drunk. I just stopped caring. Besides, I’d been too busy building my own career.

It was only after the situation at work had turned itself upside down that I’d felt the need to run from everything. Even though I had moved only a little over an hour’s drive north of Seattle, Hillside Creek had gradually helped me to get past these things that I so desperately wanted to forget, but today it seemed a bit harder to do that. This weird feeling had resonated inside my gut from the moment I’d woken up this morning, and even running didn’t seem to diminish it. The sounds of sirens blaring didn’t help either as I heard another emergency vehicle pass.

My interest piqued as I crossed the intersection that led me down the street of the place where I worked, and I removed my earplugs. Police cars, ambulances, and other emergency vehicles blocked the road. Even a hearse stood parked at the curb, and I felt my stomach drop.

Up until then, the Grain retirement home had provided me with a quiet and uneventful job that focused on administrative duties. Even though my boss might have thought she worked at an enormous corporate firm and dressed for the part, my most eventful day had been when old Miss Marshall had died. She’d been a resident for over twenty years, and her death had touched a lot of people. For me, it had meant updating the computer files and shipping the few things she’d still owned to her grandchildren. I hadn’t been there that long at the time and didn’t know her, so…

I slowed to a jog as I pushed through a throng of people who all seemed to be staring up. The yellow tape kept the onlookers at bay, and a few police officers stood guard to prevent anyone from crossing the line. The thought of being late for work and the scolding I could expect from my boss kept me moving through the crowd.

Not having noticed any of my coworkers, I scanned the people for familiar faces, but soon the murmur of conversation around me triggered my curiosity. I glanced up the five-story-high building with its sad, gray facade and gasped as the sight of a blackened hole in the face of the building pulled me to a stop. At the same time, I felt a hand on my shoulder, but even though I flinched, I had a hard time tearing my gaze away from the structure.

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed, not sure if I saw this correctly. Shaking my head, I directed my attention to the person holding me by the shoulder. I was startled by the stern look from a police officer.

“You can’t go this way, ma’am,” he said. Blinking, I looked back at the square hole in the wall that occupied a section of the third floor. From the size and the location of the gaping hole, it appeared as if only one of the rooms had been affected. My first thought veered toward a gas-line explosion or something, but on closer inspection, it seemed this couldn’t have been an explosion. There wasn’t any debris, and it looked as if the missing section of wall had been cut out with a cutting torch. Burn traces edged the rims of the cut, and in some places, I could still see it glowing red-hot. Smoke billowed up from those areas, but there didn’t appear to have been a fire. Some scorch marks had blackened the surrounding bricks, but the rest of the building was untouched.

My eyes returned to the officer patiently observing me. The tag on his chest revealed the name Klein, and the buttons of his uniform looked all shiny and new. Officer Klein kept the stern gaze as he watched me, but his baby-faced looks screamed rookie.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I kinda have to get to work.” I pointed at the building, but then I realized that was where he didn’t want me to go. With a shrug, I added, “I mean, that’s where I work.”

He glanced over his shoulder as if he needed the confirmation of which building I would have been pointing at, but it wasn’t as if there were any other buildings occupying this block. The Grain retirement home’s forefront took up the entire street.

“Samantha,” a shrill voice called out. I flinched at the sound that drew both the officer’s and my attention. “I’m so glad you finally made it.” The combination of pettiness and accusation in Trish Johansson’s voice made me cringe, and I automatically checked my watch. It turned out I was still six minutes early to start my shift, and I would have been at work already if this officer hadn’t stopped me or if there hadn’t been a sizable chunk of the building missing. I also knew my boss wouldn’t care about any of that.

She stopped and stood next to the officer on the other side of the yellow tape. Trish must have been inside the building already, and I wondered if she knew what had happened.

“Officer, thank you so much, but I can take it from here,” she said as if she were his superior. To his credit, the officer didn’t waver.

“Ma’am, this area is contained. I cannot let anyone pass the line,” Officer Klein said in that same polite voice that he’d offered me.

Trish looked shocked and stood aghast in the wake of the officer’s refusal to grant her wishes. With any other person, I’d have imagined the look of disillusion on her face was fabricated, but in Trish’s case, I knew it was real. In her pinstriped tailored jacket and matching skirt, Trish would have fit right in with the executive crowds working in fancy office buildings in the big cities. Her ginger hair, thick and long, looked immaculately styled, and I had no idea how she kept herself upright in those heels.

“This is Samantha Judd, one of my employees, and I need her assistance in containing the situation,” she said in utter dismay. “You cannot expect me to assist our clients without the help of my staff.”

“Ma’am—” Officer Klein started to say, but Trish was relentless.

“Officer, I appreciate everything you’re doing out here,” she said as she waved a hand around dismissively, “but please don’t make me go back inside and get Captain Ford. I’m sure he has enough on his mind.”

Officer Klein glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and shot me a look of sympathy. Then his eyes turned down as he inspected my running clothes and asked, “You work here, ma’am?”

“Unfortunately,” I said underneath my breath but corrected myself as I witnessed Trish’s eyes almost bulge out of their sockets. “I mean, yes, Officer, I do.”

The young man grinned before he asked, “Do you carry any form of identification?”

“I am telling you who she is,” Trish interjected as I reached to undo the strap around my arm that held my phone.

Officer Klein ignored her as he took the ID card that I kept inside my phone case while running. As he inspected it, he said, “The front of the building is off-limits, but we’ve been evacuating the residents to the south wing.”

I took the card from him and slipped it back into the case.

“My office is in a separate building on the east side,” I said. “Is it okay to go there? I need to change.”

Officer Klein smiled as his eyes shifted over my running clothes again.

“That should be fine,” he replied. “But you should probably go around.” He pointed a finger in the direction that I already knew I needed to go.

“I’ll check in, in a few minutes,” I offered Trish. She placed her hands on her hips and gave me an urgent look.

“Hurry,” she said, “and meet me in the cafeteria.” I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do here. I wasn’t any good with the elderly, and I doubted I’d be able to get any of my usual work done. Still, I excused myself, ignored the wink Officer Klein offered me, and jogged off.

Chapter Two

A quick shower and a change of clothes would have to be enough to prepare me for whatever Trish had planned for me. The small building on the east side of the Grain that held my office and a separate area that contained a couple of servers along with a desk for Ron Hanson, our part-time tech-guy, used to be changing rooms in the old days to accommodate a swimming pool. Lack of funding had turned the swimming pool into a grassy lawn, but fortunately, the shower facilities had remained after the building had received its new purpose.

Except for the days that Trish had me running after her while she dictated her demands, I gratefully spent the remaining time alone within my fifteen-square-feet of an office. Ron only worked on Wednesdays and at times when I had to call him in for an emergency. Like last week, for instance, our WiFi crashed, and I couldn’t get him here fast enough after our residents started to complain about not being able to connect to Facebook. Because today was Thursday, Ron wasn’t expected to come in; I, unfortunately, wasn’t that lucky.

I couldn’t fathom how the nursing staff did what they did; I only knew that I wasn’t cut out for it. On the other hand, whatever had happened to the front of the building seemed to be contained. It hadn’t affected any other sections of the retirement home. Sure, the residents were one big pile of concerns and had questions from here to Tokyo, but the structure seemed intact, although we were still waiting for an official confirmation.

None of the essential systems had been affected. Power was still on, none of the fire extinguishers had gone off, so there was no water damage, and the kitchen was up and running. Nothing indicated that anything had happened except for the hole.

Because of the incident, all five floors in the south wing had been deemed off-limits until the fire department could inspect the building’s integrity. That meant that all the residents living in that wing had been moved to the cafeteria, and while some of the staff tended to the exiled elderly, others went off in search of a way to accommodate the bedless in case these people couldn’t return to their rooms by the end of the day. Unfortunately, Trish had assigned me to the cafeteria.

I would have offered money to get out of that task, but Trish had been keeping a watchful eye on me all morning. I wished that I wasn’t wearing a white button-up shirt with my jeans, but under Trish’s scrutiny, I stayed on task. I just hoped Mom would be able to wash out the stains.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to help these people or that I felt too good to be doing it. I didn’t mind helping a little old lady go to the bathroom, even the third time within the same hour; I wouldn’t have minded if only she’d just stop talking for one minute. Each time she told me about her son who was supposed to come that day, and I would have to remind her that her son came on Sunday and not Thursday; something she had told me herself. Then she’d give me a confused look and ask if I were new because she’d never seen me before. This conversation repeated itself about six times before I could even get her to the door of the bathroom, and I nearly started crying. I just wasn’t cut out for this kind of work.

“Had your break yet?” Ellie asked as I handed Mr. Beeks a glass of juice. I looked up to meet Ellie’s bright smile. Ellie Norris had become a legend in the almost twenty years that she had worked at the Grain, and it was easy to see why. Never in my life had I met someone so committed to taking care of people. She knew all the residents by name, and probably the names of all their closest relatives, always had a kind word for everyone, and could make anyone feel right at home—even me.

My head ached, but the sight of her brought a tentative smile to my face. Ellie always looked so put together, and not in a forced, Trish kind of way. She never wore any makeup except for the bright-red lipstick that complemented her dark, nearly flawless skin. If I hadn’t known any better, I wouldn’t have guessed her to be over forty-five. Instead, Ellie was nearing sixty, with coppery hair that was always styled in the latest trend. This time that meant a relatively short bob.

With a glance at the clock on the wall, I realized it was nearing 1 p.m. As if on cue, my stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten this morning, and I figured that would probably explain my headache.

“Judging from your glazed expression and the sound coming from your stomach, I guess not,” Ellie said before I could answer. “C’mon. Let’s fix you something before you keel over.” Almost forcefully, she took me by the arm and dragged me over to the counter that connected to the kitchen.

At five-foot-five, Ellie was about four inches shorter than me, but because of her muscular arms that I guessed had come from a lot of people lifting over the years, I knew it would be a waste of time to resist.

“Ellie, you don’t have to—” I started to say, but Ellie cut me off as she called out,

“Jeff, make this girl one of those veggie sandwiches on wheat, you know, the kind you always tell is good for me. And use the special sauce.”

“Coming right up,” Jeff answered from behind his counter. Then as an afterthought, he said, “You should try one yourself, you know. It’s good for you.”

One of Ellie’s eyebrows nearly rose to her hairline as she placed her hands on her well-rounded hips. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” she said with a note of playful defiance in her voice.

“I’m just saying,” Jeff replied as he busied himself with my sandwich. Jeff had been one of Trish’s hires to help bring back a healthier diet to our everyday meals. With his toothy smile and toned body, he looked like one of those fitness gurus you’d find in health infomercials, although his unnaturally tanned skin didn’t look that healthy.

Trish’s act might imply a concern about our residents’ health, but before she’d hired him, Trish had had me do the calculations, comparing the average cost of employing Jeff and the cost of buying healthier food with the income from having a person live longer while they remained at the Grain along with some other numbers. Let’s just say keeping a resident alive and living here for as long as possible turned out to be cheaper than finding new ones.

Ellie shot Jeff a knowing smile before her attention veered back to me. I could feel her eyes roam over me as if I stood in some lineup for inspection.

“You look thinner,” she said with a hint of concern in her voice. “Are you eating all right?”

“With my mom living above me, how could I not eat right?” I said and forced a smile. I didn’t mention the fact that I tended to decline my mom’s invitations and chose a microwave dinner or takeout more often than not. As a distraction to steer her away from the topic of me, I pointed at the elderly sitting in groups around the tables in the cafeteria.

“That was something else out there this morning,” I said. “Any ideas of what caused it yet.” My distraction seemed to work as Ellie turned her attention to the folks playing board games, watching TV, or staring at a blank wall.

“Nothing yet, although I spoke to Suzanne from the night shift and she said that she’d heard a strange whooshing sound around five this morning before all the alarm bells went off.” She shook her head. “It’s the weirdest thing, I tell you.”

I nodded in agreement as Ellie continued.

“Mr. Exter is one lucky man that he wasn’t inside his room when it happened. One of the firefighters told me that there was nothing left of that room, and the stuff inside was charred dust.”

“That was Max’s room?” I said in surprise. Equally surprised, Ellie looked at me.

“You know Mr. Exter?” Ellie’s tone suggested the absurdity of the notion. I felt my face flush because her insinuation was correct. I didn’t know any of the people living here. In fact, I didn’t even visit the main building unless I had to, which usually came with orders from Trish, or to pick up lunch. My office was located in a separate building, and I tried to spend as much time in there as I could. Being around too many people gave me a headache, although I did know Mr. Exter.

“Yeah,” I said as I glanced across the room again. “I haven’t seen him. Is he okay?”

“He was, the last time I saw him, but that was a while ago,” she replied. “But if you know him, then you probably know he’s not able to sit still for very long. He’ll show up when it’s time for dinner.”

I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the elderly man; everything he owned must have been inside that room, and he had lost it all. The urge to find him rose, and I had an idea of where I should look. Just as I wanted to tell Ellie, I noticed someone had caught her gaze. Beth, a young intern who had joined the staff about two months ago, purposely made her way toward us.

Her petite frame slipped easily between the tables and the elderly people sitting around them. Lips set in a tight line replaced the usual perky smile, and her eyes looked troubled as they homed in on us.

“I think someone might have stolen her lipstick again,” Ellie said as she leaned in and whispered near my ear. I grinned at the memory of the story that Ellie had told me a few days ago. Beth had accidentally dropped her lipstick, and Mrs. Henshaw, who had found it, had applied a generous amount before passing it around to her lady friends. Apparently, it had been some kind of expensive brand Beth had received as a gift from her boyfriend, and she had been devastated.

“This…is getting crazier by the minute,” Beth said as she reached us, instantly grabbing Ellie by the arm and tugging.

“What has gotten into you, girl?” Ellie said as she resisted following Beth. Ellie wasn’t someone to boss around, and that should’ve been one of the first things Beth had learned these past two months.

Beth relented and sounded out of breath as she said, “You won’t believe…what I…just saw.”

I wasn’t sure if she was trying to catch her breath or raising the suspense as Beth’s wide eyes darted from Ellie to me and back again. Ellie rolled her eyes at the young woman’s expectant expression.

“I’m not gonna stand here guessing like an idiot, so just spill it.”

“Okay, okay,” Beth said and checked the room before she moved closer to us so no one would overhear. “I walked by Trish’s office and heard her talking to someone. I think it might have been the police.”

Beth eased back, eyebrows raised, and nodded her head emphatically.

“I think that would be standard procedure in these circumstances,” I replied.

“I know that,” Beth said, sounding indignant, but kept her hushed tone. “It was what they were talking about.” She did that building-the-tension thing again by pausing to gage our reaction.

“If you don’t want me to give Mrs. Henshaw another go at your precious lipstick, you better start talking faster,” Ellie said as she crossed her arms. I wasn’t sure if it was Ellie’s stern look that did the trick or if Beth was unable to hold it in any longer, but the words came spilling out of her mouth in waves.

“Trish and this other person, probably a detective, because he wore a suit and all that—anyway, they were talking about this thing that was up in the room that was hit. I mean not hit, but, you know, burned and stuff.”

Ellie waved her hand in a circular motion to keep Beth on track with the story.

“Right, sorry,” Beth said. “At first, I feared there might have been a casualty after all, but then the way they were addressing this ‘thing’”—Beth added air quotes before she continued—“it got me curious, and I went up to see for myself.”

“Wait,” I interjected, holding a hand up. “You went up there? Isn’t that like interfering with an investigation or something?”

“Shh,” Ellie said as she waved me off. “Not if no one saw her. Did anyone see you?” Beth shook her head.

“I don’t think so.” Beth’s face had innocence plastered all over it, and I wondered if she’d even thought of the consequences if she’d been caught up there. The police might have thought she’d have something to do with the situation; she could have been arrested.

“How could no one have seen you? The place is crawling with cops and emergency personnel,” I asked and almost sounded appalled.

“I have my ways,” Beth replied with a wink.

Ellie nudged me with an elbow. “Let her finish, Sam.”

Undeterred, Beth continued.

“Well, Mr. Exter’s room is right across one of the emergency exits. So, when everything returned to relative quiet, I snuck up there and waited for the right moment. A cop was posted at the door, so I had to keep the emergency door ajar, but as soon as he turned his back, I peeked.”

Beth’s eyes narrowed, and she looked around the room again. Jeff hadn’t returned with my sandwich, and the elderly were still sitting in the same spots. There was no reason to delay her response, but it seemed Beth enjoyed building up the tension. It worked too and felt a knot form in my stomach, and my throat felt dry. My hands had started to tremble, and I shoved them into the pockets of my jeans so no one would notice.

“And?” Ellie said as she lifted her hands in impatience.

“I saw this.” Beth slid a hand into the pocket of her nurse’s uniform and pulled out a phone.

“You were lucky that the security systems haven’t been reset yet after the initial alarm, or else you’d have gotten yourself in a heap of trouble, opening that emergency exit,” I said as my gaze shifted to Beth’s phone.

Beth stabbed at a button, and with a few flicks across the screen, an image appeared, and she held the phone up for us to see. I squinted my eyes, not sure what I was looking at.

“Is that—” Ellie started to say but then tilted her head to take another look. “Did Mr. Exter have a mannequin in his room?” The question sounded absurd, although I had to admit that was what it looked like to me as well—a charred and deformed mannequin at that.

In her picture, Beth had captured the open door to Mr. Exter’s room. Although partially obscured by a police officer facing away from the camera, I could clearly make out something that looked like a person pointing a bony finger at a wall. Like everything else inside the room, the figure was charred black. The only thing that wasn’t covered in soot was the man-sized mark on the wall that the figure pointed at.

Even though the picture had come out a bit blurry, I had to admit the figure in the picture looked ominous, but I quickly dismissed it as being a person because some features of its anatomy seemed off. For one, its jaw looked out of proportion with teeth sticking out as if they belonged to a piranha or something, and I didn’t think a human being would be able to stand upright after being scorched to death; at least, I hoped they wouldn’t. Besides, there would have been something on the news by now about a casualty, and I didn’t think Trish would have kept us in the dark about something like that.

“What do you think?” Beth asked. She sounded excited, as if she had just made the most profound discovery of her life. I hesitated to answer, unwilling to crush her find, but Ellie didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

“That can’t be a person.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Beth asked with a note of disappointment in her voice.

Ignoring her tone, I replied, “A person wouldn’t be standing after something like that. Besides—”

“Besides, Trish would have informed us.” Ellie finished the sentence for me and wrapped an arm around Beth’s shoulder. “It’s probably just some life-sized doll or something.”

“But it could be something else, something unknown,” Beth said as her eyes perked up. “Why else would that detective be talking to Trish?”

“Probably just a formality,” I said.

“C’mon,” Ellie said, tugging Beth along. “I’m gonna put you to work right here, where I can keep an eye on you and you won’t be able to sneak off again.”

I hoped Beth would erase the picture, because even though I doubted it to be significant, it looked nasty, like something out of a horror movie. Despite how little I knew of Beth, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before the picture would end up on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

“Here you go, Sam,” Jeff said, just as I felt a shiver go down my spine. I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath to let the feeling pass. It wasn’t just because of the picture Beth had shown us. My brain had trouble dealing with things if they didn’t comply with the structure I had devised for myself. I wished I could just head back to my office and hide while all of this played out, but I had a feeling Trish would find me.

It might be that I’ve always been like this, but things had intensified after that one eventful night about six months before I moved here. Maybe my previous job had kept me too busy to think about it before that night, or perhaps because the events that had led up to it had been so out of character for me that it had triggered some sort of defense mechanism. The fact was that I had trouble dealing with changes in my routine, and when that happened, my body revealed some telltale signs.

Jeff moved out from behind the counter and offered me a neatly wrapped package. My hands were still shaking as I took it, and Jeff must have noticed. “You okay?”

With the perfect excuse already in mind, I smiled at him. “Skipped breakfast.”