Every Fear (29 page)

It was slightly ajar.

Goodness.

Her concern melted to annoyance. It had a temperamental mechanism. Upon entering, she’d detected the aroma of baked onions, pepperoni, peppers, and cheese and sighed. Her new neighbors, the young nuns from Canada, were partial to pizza every now and then but had yet to master the trick of completely locking the front door. Well, the silver lining here was that it spared her from fiddling with her front-door keys. Inside, the building was quiet as Sister Anne climbed the stairs to her second-floor apartment, where she lived alone.

Evening prayer, a cup of tea, and a bit of rest for her weary bones. She flicked on the lights of her small apartment and felt a ping of unease. Something wasn’t right. She couldn’t put her finger on it but something felt
wrong.

Oh, it’s nothing.

She was being silly because she was exhausted. But hanging up her jacket, she still couldn’t shake a niggling feeling of
a presence.
Something in the air. The smell of cigarettes? But no one in this building smoked.

She stepped into the hallway leading to her bedroom and froze.

Her clothes cascaded from her dresser drawers. Her closet had been ransacked.

Someone’s been here.

She looked toward her phone. A floorboard creaked and before she could react, a strong, gloved hand reached from behind and covered her mouth. A large, rockhard arm hooked her neck in a viselike grip, crushing her windpipe, lifting her body. Her toes brushed against her hardwood floor as she was carried to the bathroom and her face thrust before the mirror.

The eyes of her attacker stared into hers.

He held her there long enough for her to recognize him and exhume long-buried pain. Then a knife blade glinted at her throat.

“Scream and you’ll die,” he said. “Understand?”

She nodded and he loosened his hold over her mouth.

“You know why I’m here.”

She knew.

“It’s gone,” she swallowed. “I told you, it’s gone.”

“You’re lying! Where is it?”

His grip tightened until she whimpered. The blade scraped over her skin, breaking it. Blood webbed down her neck, tears filled her eyes, and she said, “We can never erase the sins of our past.”

His anger burned.

“No,” he said, “but we can pay for them.”

Her eyes widened suddenly as the blade sliced deep across her throat. Her hands tried to stem the blood.

“I forgive you,” she whispered.

He let her collapse gently to the floor as if she were his dance partner. He watched her struggle for something in her pocket. A rosary. Her blood-stained fingers squeezed it. He watched for several moments until Sister Anne’s face emptied of life. Then he returned to her bedroom and resumed shuffling through her personal papers and photographs.

Stopping at a recent snapshot of a boy. Searching the kid’s eyes and face, the man studied it long and hard until he almost smiled. He now had the link to the thing that belonged to him.

All he had to do was claim it before time ran out.

© Rick Mofina 2007

PERFECT GRAVE
by Rick Mofina
Available September 2010