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“Is it really that late?” Alma could see
between the concrete stairs into the darkness beyond. How easy
would it be to hide in the shadows and wait, ready to reach through
the slats and grab a victim’s ankle? She let Paul go up first.

“I’ll help you get to sleep,” said Paul.

“You’re not coming in.”

He was frustrated with her insistence. “Like
hell I’m not. At the very least I’m going in to make sure it’s safe
before you kick me out.”

“I didn’t ask you to come, Paul.” She walked
up past him, embarrassed that a moment before she’d allowed herself
to rely on him for security. “I just want to go to bed. Go home,
Paul.”

He shook his head and followed her up.

The bugs swarmed around her face as she
forced her key into the cantankerous deadbolt. It stuck frequently,
leaving her stranded, trying to force the key in while the bugs
swirled around her head. This time the lock opened easily, but the
door was stuck in its frame. She had to slam it with her shoulder
to get in.

Paul tried to follow, but she pushed him
back.

“Seriously, Paul. I appreciate you coming
here, but I don’t want you in my apartment.” It wasn’t as clean as
his, and she avoided turning on the living room light to keep him
from seeing the mess.

He tried to look in over her shoulder,
oblivious to the mess and hoping to make sure there wasn’t a man
lurking in the dark. “Just let me have a look around.”

She put her hand on his chest and pushed him
back the one step he’d dared to take into the apartment. He looked
hurt by the gesture, but relented and moved back. “Go home,” she
said, and it felt like she was breaking up with him again. She
wanted to cry.

Alma closed the door on Paul.

She couldn’t help but sob, and covered her
mouth to keep him from hearing through the door. She put her back
against the door and slid down until she was sitting on the tile
entryway. She pulled her knees up to her chest and cried as she
curled up. She started to hum to calm herself, and then looked down
the hall at her bedroom.

The bedroom light was on.

The hallway from the apartment’s entrance
led straight to the master bedroom on the other side. The living
room was to the right, with a porch that looked out onto the
parking lot, and the kitchen was to her left. The bathroom was down
the hall to the left, with a guest room on the right filled with
junk she’d never gotten around to unpacking. Straight ahead, down
the carpeted hall that led away from the tiled entryway that she
sat on, was the closed door of her bedroom, and light shone from
beneath it.

Her father could be in there.

She remembered one night, before her brother
disappeared, when she came home to find the light on in her
bedroom. She was six, and had been playing at a friend’s house.
There were several bizarre details about that night that stuck in
her mind, like how the taste of chocolate raspberries that her
friend’s mother had made for them was still in her mouth when she
came home. She recalled an odd smell that she couldn’t identify in
her home, similar to what the house smelled like when the oven was
set to self clean. There was a spider in the corner, and she walked
to the side of the hall away from it, beside her brother’s door, on
her way to her room. She recalled the feel of the carpet between
her toes, and the trail of wetness that went from the bathroom all
the way to her room.

Alma didn’t suspect anything at the time,
and casually strolled to her room, more frightened of the spider
than anything else. She ran the last few steps and was relieved
when she opened her door and escaped into her room. That’s where
her father was waiting.

He was nude, wet from the shower, and
sprawled out on her twin bed, over the Animaniacs bedspread. He sat
bolt upright when she walked in and just stared at her, as if
terrified. His eyes were wide, and the whites were nearly awash in
red, drowning his black pupils in crimson.

“You,” he said and then stared at her.

“Daddy?” she was terrified of him for the
first time in her life. He was supposed to be away, on a business
trip in Missouri. “What’s wrong?”

He stayed in the same position, staring at
her, and didn’t bother to cover himself. His hair hung in long
black, wet strands down to his shoulders. He smelled strongly of
soap, as if he’d lathered and never rinsed.

“Would you miss me?” he asked finally and
then, after a pause, added, “If I were in heaven?”

“What? Of course, I would.”

He stared at her, expressionless and silent,
for a terrifying moment. Then he said, “Liar,” before falling back
on the bed.

Alma left to go sleep in her brother’s room,
but she couldn’t recall anything else from that night. In fact, she
didn’t remember much about her brother at all these days.

She stared down the hallway of her
apartment. The door at the end of the hall beckoned her, and she
wondered if the floor would be wet between her room and the
bathroom.

Alma considered sleeping on the tile
entryway. She almost laid down and curled up within the small area,
as if it could somehow protect her, but recognized how ridiculous
she was being. She stood up, kicked off her loafers, and walked to
the kitchen to get a knife from the drawer. Then she took out her
cell phone and dialed 9-1, prepared to dial the final digit.

She walked down the hall and didn’t breathe
the entire way. When she got to the door, she listened against it
for any sign of life on the other side.

Finally, she swung the door open to reveal
absolutely nothing to be afraid of. She gasped and was nearly
relieved, but searched the closet first. Then she walked to the
spare bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen pantry to make sure she’d
checked everywhere. She was safe. Her father wasn’t in the
apartment.

She tucked her phone back into her purse in
an attempt to keep from losing it, which she often did. Then she
closed her eyes and felt an overwhelming exhaustion.

Alma returned to her bedroom and set the
kitchen knife on her nightstand, beside the alarm clock. The red
numbers displayed the time, 12:14.

She fell back onto her pillows and set her
hands over her eyes, exhausted and thankful for a new day. Perhaps
this day would go better than the last.

As she tried to relax, she couldn’t help but
do the math in her head. It was 12:14. One plus two is three.
314.

She turned the clock away from her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Recurring Nightmare

Widowsfield

March 14th, 1996

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” said Anna as
she looked out of the library window. “Maybe there’s a low pressure
system coming through or something.”

The school’s library looked out onto the
field that separated Ozark Hills High from its sister school,
Widowsfield Elementary. There was a gym class playing soccer and
Anna looked for her ex-boyfriend, Clint, who had broken up with her
two weeks ago because he wanted to be single for a while. His
bachelorhood lasted two days before he started dating the captain
of the swim team, Clarissa Belmont.

“Oh yeah, sure thing, Banana,” said Jamie.
Anna despised that nickname. “You’re staring out the window at the
football field because you’re a budding meteorologist and not
because Clint’s out there. Do you think I’m an idiot or
something?”

“I’m serious, I’ve got a headache and my dad
said that weather patterns can cause them.”

Jamie gave a sideways glance away from her
Social Studies book as she frowned. “Sure.”

“Don’t be a bitch. I’m not stuck on Clint.
He can go fuck himself for all I care.”

Jamie folded the book cover’s inside flap,
made from a brown paper bag from the grocery store, over her page
and then closed the book. “Then what’s up? For real. You’ve been in
the dumps since the dickhead dumped you. That’s not like you,
Banana. You’re the most fun girl I’ve ever hung out with, but
you’ve been a total downer lately.”

Anna scribbled her black pen in one of the
spots on her book cover that had previously been adorned with
Clint’s initials enshrined in a heart. She’d blackened out the
picture, and now the paper bag cover was dangerously thinned. She
didn’t doubt that her pen marks had managed to cut through the
cover to deface the textbook, but she continued to scribble the
circles anyhow.

“I’m not going to lie, I mean, I was pretty
pissed at him, but it’s not like we haven’t done this before. You
know? We’re always, like, breaking up and getting back together
again. It’s sort of our thing. It’s like I have this need to be
heartbroken or something.”

“Then why do you keep going back to
him?”

Anna sighed and shook her head. She knew
that Jaime hated Clint, and had since grade school. In fact, most
of Anna’s friends disapproved of her relationship with the stoner.
She was an Honor Roll Student, a member of the Mathletes, and all
but guaranteed a scholarship to a major university. Clint, on the
other hand, was the epitome of the ‘C’ student.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got a
self-destructive personality or something.”

“Yeah, ya’ think?”

“Give me a break, Jamie.” Anna set her pen
down and put her head on her book. She worried that the fresh pen
ink would stain her forehead, so she moved the book aside and then
set her head down on the cold table.

“I’m just sick of you doing the same thing
to yourself over and over. I’m sick of seeing you down like
this.”

“I told you, I’m not upset about Clint.
Honestly. I’ve just got a really bad headache right now. I don’t
know why.”

“I think I’ve got some aspirin in my locker.
I can get you some after school if you want.”

Anna nodded with her head still on the
table. “That’d be great, thanks. What time is it?”

Jaime glanced back at the oversized clock
above the library’s main desk. “Not quite a quarter past.”

Anna groaned and then sat up with her arms
draped over her head as she arched her back over the edge of the
seat. “This day’s dragging on forever.”

Jaime tapped her pencil on her book and
looked like she was about to say something, but then decided not
to. She set her chin on her hand and stared off at nothing.

“What?” asked Anna. Jaime looked surprised,
as if she didn’t know what Anna was asking about. “You were about
to say something. What was it?”

“It’s just that, well, I guess I just want
to know why you do it. Why do you keep making the same mistake over
and over again? You and Cunt, I mean Clit, I mean Clint,” She
smirked at her own joke. “You guys are a bad match.”

“I guess I just hope he’ll change; that the
next time it’ll be different.”

“You know what the definition of insanity
is, right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
something to change.”

“Then call me crazy, I guess,” said Anna.
“Maybe I’ll just take up drinking to calm me down.”

Jaime rolled her eyes. “Alcohol’s not the
solution.”

“Chemically speaking, any alcoholic beverage
is a solution since the alcohol is mixed up with other stuff.”

“Well shit,” said Jaime as she started to
scribble numbers onto her book’s cover. “Break out the Boone’s Farm
then. Time to get the party started.” They both laughed before
Jaime mocked her friend. “You’re such a nerd, ‘Chemically speaking,
blah, blah, blah.’”

“It’s true,” said Anna. “What are you
writing?” She leaned over the table to look at Jaime’s book.

Jaime looked down at her scrawling.

3.141592653

“Is that pi?”

“Yeah. We were supposed to memorize ten
digits of it for Mr. Trager for pi day.”

Anna settled back in her chair and
snickered. “Sure, for the test this morning. Why are you still
writing it?”

Jaime paused for just a moment. “I don’t
know. There’s something calming about it. Is that crazy?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

Anna watched Jaime write the sequence over
and over, oddly transfixed. Then Jaime wrote the final digit as a 4
instead of a 3 in one line. “You got that one wrong.”

Jaime didn’t stop writing and didn’t look
up. “There’s no such thing as a perfect circle. There’s chaos in
all of it.” Jaime looked up at the ceiling and then at the window
before she asked, “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Anna thought her friend’s statement
carried an undercurrent of malice. Then she looked down at her own
book and saw that she was continuing to draw spirals in the spot
where Clint’s initials used to be. Her marking had worn well past
the paper cover and was digging into the book itself. She dropped
the pen and it spun in a circle on the table as if the tip was tied
down, with the other end rolling awkwardly around.

Anna heard the chatter of teeth and put her
hand over her lower jaw. The noise seemed to be coming from her own
head, as if she were shivering but didn’t know it. Her jaw wasn’t
moving, but the chatter continued.

“It’s time,” said Jaime. “It’s starting over
again.”

“I know.” Anna stood up and walked to the
window that looked out onto the field. She put her right hand on
the glass, her fingers splayed wide, and savored the cold
sensation. Dogs howled in the distance and Anna took her hand away,
letting her fingertips linger for a moment.

The chatter continued.

“How many times have we done this?” asked
Jaime.

Anna knew exactly what she meant, but
understood none of it at the same time. It was as if she had
wandered into a dream where she was certain everything made sense,
but could never have explained it if asked to. She watched Clint on
the field and wondered if he would die immediately, or if they
would let him live this time.

“Too many to count,” said Anna. She looked
at the large white clock on the wall above the center desk in the
library.