Messenger of Fear Novella #1(2)

Understand that Messenger and I were not visible or audible to Lisa Bayless. And the office was so cramped that Messenger and I stood with half our bodies literally inside the wall, so that only our faces, chests, and hands were in the room. Understand as well that yes, this was extremely weird for me, but I was slowly adjusting to the oddness of my occupation, and since I had moved through solid objects before, this was merely a new wrinkle on an existing weirdness.

As we watched, Lisa reached without taking her eyes off the screen, fumbled for and then found a roundish dark chocolate, and popped it into her mouth.

She chewed, then made a face, obviously tasting something odd, something unexpected. But then she continued working for another few minutes.

And then, I saw her mouth working as though she was still tasting something unpleasant. She felt her lips with her tongue, and then touched her fingers to her lips, and all at once: panic.

Lisa leaped up from her chair, pushed open the door, and raced through the kitchen. But by the time she reached the stairs she was wheezing, and her face was puffy, as if her skin was a balloon being slowly inflated.

Halfway up the stairs she tripped and gasped, and her face turned pink. She sucked air with all her might but nothing came. Yet she climbed and turned onto the upper landing. But now walking, let alone running, was no longer possible. Still, she crawled, hands and knees along the carpeted hallway, into the master bedroom, and from there across the tile of her bathroom floor.

The medicine cabinet was above her, and she was desperate by this point, desperate and terrified. Her eyes were squeezing shut, and I don’t believe that by the time she managed to drag herself to her feet she could see at all. It was with blind fumbling that she ransacked the medicine cabinet, knocking pill bottles and toothpaste onto the floor.

I saw the moment when she realized that what she was looking for was not there.

“An EpiPen,” I muttered. “She’s looking for an EpiPen, the injectable adrenaline you keep if you’re severely allergic.”

Messenger said nothing. When words are not absolutely necessary, Messenger does not like to spend them.

I have by now seen death, most terribly the suicide of Samantha Early. This death lacked the blood and gore of that earlier one, but no amount of exposure can ever really prepare you for the terrible sight of a human being dying before your eyes.

I looked away. I heard rather than saw her slip to the floor. I heard grunted efforts at breathing. I heard a surrendering moan. And when I looked again, Lisa Bayless, history teacher, was dead.

Perhaps ten minutes had passed.

“Someone put that shrimp in that chocolate,” I said, because unlike Messenger, I will occasionally say the obvious. Perhaps it’s a weakness on my part; I can be verbose, but I find that putting awful events into words makes them more manageable. It gives me a little distance.

I did not know this woman, but she was a human being, a human being with life yet to live. And now her life had been stolen from her.

“Murder,” I said. “But how . . . Her family would have seen the chocolates and . . .” I frowned, trying to work it out. But Messenger has more direct means of explaining events. He walked away and I followed.

We walked back through the bedroom, down the hallway, and down the stairs.

We stood in the empty foyer. I had time enough to look at the usual family pictures hung on the wall. Lisa and her husband. Lisa and her son.

And then, a key turned the front-door lock, and in stepped a boy.

He was perhaps my age, sixteen, or close enough. I think he was good-looking, though constant exposure to Messenger has raised my standards in that regard. But good-looking by normal standards.

He wore a Lorde T-shirt, and I approved since I like her music. He carried a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. He closed the door behind him and stood, listening, wary.

He then went room by room, through the kitchen, the living room, the breakfast nook, and last, the tiny office.

He stared, transfixed, at the box of chocolates.

Then, his face alight with an expression of excitement and fear, he continued searching until he found Lisa’s cooling body. He stared at her for a while, too, but made no move to touch her, no move to help; and he did not call 911.

Instead he pulled latex gloves from his bag and put them on. He ripped a paper towel from a roll on the bathroom counter, knelt down, and clumsily wiped the inside of her mouth with it. The paper towel came out brown with chocolate and wet with saliva. He stuck the towel in a plastic ziplock, which went into his bag.

The boy looked in the bag, found what he was looking for, and pulled out the last thing I would have expected: an egg roll. This he stuck into Lisa’s mouth, and twisted it in half to leave part of it in her mouth. He took her jaw and moved it up and down, back and forth, in a macabre chewing motion.

Now he put the rest of the egg roll in his bag and trotted downstairs to the kitchen. From his bag he pulled out a box of spring rolls no different from those you’d find in any supermarket. The box had been opened. He stuck it in the freezer.

The second half of the egg roll he placed on a small plate, carried it to the office, and set it beside the box of chocolates.

Any person looking at the scene would see clear evidence that Lisa had been eating an egg roll and chocolate.

“Very clever,” I said. “But if she was allergic to shrimp, why would she have bought shrimp egg rolls?”

“She didn’t. The ingredients will show no shrimp listed. But the box does not match the contents. Thus the obvious explanation is that the egg roll company made a mistake, boxing its shrimp rolls in a package meant for a less dangerous product. The producer will be seen as responsible.”