“It’s Mr. Doyle that’s doing it. The man that lives next door? He’s poisoning me.”
I frowned at her. Aunt Margaret’s mind was going more and more as she went downhill physically, but this kind of weird paranoia was new to me. “Why do you say that?”
Her yellowed eyes shifted nervously from the nearby window to my face. “I’ve seen him come over in the night. He creeps up on the bed. I can feel his weight on top of me. I try to act like I’m asleep, but I’m not. I see what he really is.”
Swallowing, I sat down next to her. Had someone really been messing with her? Coming in and assaulting my poor, dying aunt while she lay helpless in bed? I felt fear and anger rising in my chest. “Are you sure about this?”
Her eyebrows knitted together. “Of course I’m sure. I know I’m getting dotty, but I’m not crazy.” She paused. “Not yet.”
Nodding, I went on. “Okay. I believe you. So what does he do when he’s on top of you?”
Margaret’s chin trembled slightly as she got a distant look on her face. “His forehead opens up. Splits open like a melon. And this long arm comes out that looks like a spider’s leg, only it has a hand on the end.” She was clearly terrified as she remembered it, and she had to pause several seconds before going on. “The hand covers my mouth and my nose. I try to keep my mouth closed, but it doesn’t matter. It drips something onto my lips and into my nose. I feel it run inside of me, poisoning me.”
I leaned back and sighed, trying to decide on the best way of approaching this. “Margaret, that sounds terrible, but you think maybe it was just a dream? A really bad nightmare?”
Her lips drew into a thin line as she locked her eyes back on me. “It wasn’t a dream. And it’s happened several times. He’s a monster, and I know it.”
“But…if it always happens at night, and with all the medicine you’re on…” Her eyes widened as she sat up. “No! I saw him during the day once. I was wide awake and it was before my afternoon meds. I was clear-headed. I was looking outside, watching his house, and he came into his back yard for a minute. He looked normal at first, but when he came on out to check on his roses…In the right kind of light you can see what he really is. That’s why he doesn’t come out much around noontime, I bet.”
I patted her arm. “I understand. I believe you. Here, let me fix your tapioca and I’ll go call the police about it.” I watched as she ate it like an angry but obedient child. I’d been slow with the doses of poison over the last three months, but it must have built up in her system. Made her delusional. That’s why I tripled the dose tonight. It should still be untraceable by the time her organs finished shutting down in the next few hours, and I wasn’t up for listening to crazy monster stories, big inheritance or not.
As she fell into what would be her final sleep, I searched myself for guilt, but found none. Feeling lighter, I went home and slept a peaceful sleep of my own.
I awoke to a rough hand clasped across my mouth and lips, two burning eyes glaring at me in the dark below a black arm that protruded from the ruined flesh of an old man’s head. I tried to scream, but all I did was choke on some thick, noxious liquid that was streaming down my nostrils and between my lips.
“I tried to save her. Fought off the poison best I could, but you beat me. Took her away. But that’s okay. Not everything I do helps.” The alien hand on my face clamped tighter as he spoke. “Some of it hurts. Quite a bit.” When he took his hand away, I found I couldn’t move.
“You’ll have a chance to find out all about that, though. You’re going to live a long time now. Alone with me. Down in the dark.”
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Credits
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