and was hurriedly trying to lock my door as the rain poured around me when something on the porch railing caught my eye.
Dangling from a length of twine tied around the rail, was an X, formed of twigs and thin white bones tied together. Something round and lumpy was pinned with a needle in the center of the X.
I gave the lumpy thing a poke with my finger, and my stomach curled in revulsion.
It was an eye. A fish’s eyeball, pinned in the center of the twigs and bones.
It dropped from my hands, swinging back and forth on its length of twine as cold dread flooded me. I looked frantically around the yard. Who the hell had left this here? It hadn’t been there the day before, which meant someone had to have come through the night, come into my yard, and tied this hideous thing outside my door. Nauseous, I ran back in the house, grabbed a pair of scissors, and cut the thing loose from the porch. I went to the edge of the trees, and with as much strength as I could muster, I hurled it into the forest.
As I stood there, shaking, I heard a twig snap.
I froze, staring at the kaleidoscope of shrubs and branches. The sound of the rain was like static in my ears, dripping off my hood and pooling in the mud around my feet. Something had moved. Somewhere out there, in the shadows, something was watching.
Too scared to leave him alone, I put Cheesecake in his harness and packed him into the car with me. He’d gone on enough car rides to be calm, and he stared curiously out the window as I drove to Inaya’s apartment. I wanted to keep driving and driving until I was out of this town, this state. I’d keep going until I was back in California, or hell, I’d pack up and join my parents in Spain.
I didn’t understand what it meant, but finding a trinket with a fish eyeball tied to my porch couldn’t possibly be anything good.
“Hey, girl — oh, oh my God, are you okay?” Inaya’s face fell the moment she saw me.
“I’m fine, I’m good, just a little...uh…” I gulped, shaking as I stomped the rain from my boots. “I brought Cheesecake, sorry, I just, uh…”
I was scared. I was so goddamn scared.
“Woah, woah, yeah, you should sit down.” I let Cheesecake hop to the floor and Inaya led me to the couch and got me to sit. For a few minutes, all I could do was take deep breaths to fend off the panic as she rubbed my back. Cheesecake, eager for attention, hopped up next to her and began head-butting her side in hopes of chin scratches.
When I raised my head to see Inaya with one hand rubbing my back and the other petting my cat, I nearly sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to come over such a mess.”
“Rae, please, stop apologizing,” Inaya said gently. “You know you could come over here with a body in your trunk and I’d go grab a shovel.” She gave me a little smirk and side-eye. “But I do hope that’s not what’s wrong.”
I giggled, snorting grossly as I wiped tears from my face. “No bodies in the trunk this time, babe. Just some creeps leaving Blair Witch shit in my yard.”
I told her about the trinket, the feeling of being watched, even my trip out to St. Thaddeus and my fears that it may have attracted some attention to me — although I didn’t specify attention from what. She listened quietly, Cheesecake happily curled up on her pink sweatpants as she stroked him. When I finally took a breath after describing the horror of the fish eyeball, she said, “Well, that’s weird as hell. Rae, seriously, you need to stop going to those creepy places alone. What if someone had snatched you? What if you’d gotten hurt? What —”
“Yes, yes, Mom, okay, next time I’ll drag you with me!” We both giggled as she rubbed her face in exasperation.
“Look, we both know how weird people can be around here,” she said. “Honestly, someone probably saw you go to the church and wanted to freak you out. Or maybe Mrs. Kathy thought she was being neighborly.” She rolled her eyes. “Or, if you really think about it, it’s October. It was probably someone pulling a Halloween prank.”
“Yeah, you’re...you’re probably right…”
“Stay here a few nights,” she said. “Trent is in San Francisco for