Chapter 367 - Two Days Prior, Part 1

For an hour, there's been nothing but the quiet. For an hour, she's made every sound, every noise, every slightest disruption to that quiet, hidden well in plain sight behind a windshield tinted heavy by the blinding glare of afternoon's light. 

She drifted tired, sunken eyes over at the vacant passenger seat where a small opened notepad was left to bake in the sun. The harsh white glaze of the paper sent colorful splotches obscuring her vision to which she irritably blinked out.

With one hand over the steering wheel, she clicked a nearly depleted pen hanging loose between her fingers, and with the other. she reached for the notepad… bringing them together, she brought the tip of the pen pressing down against the last empty white space of the page before it was officially filled to the brim with countless amounts of her hasty scribbles. 

Pausing briefly, she peered back up at the top of the page, reading again, as she did over and over again, the very first in a long list of notes.

1590 Bentley Hill Road. Two-story house, red roof, a dog house in the garden. 

Irene went ahead and scanned the rest of the page, making sure that what she was about to jot down had not already been written long ago in longer, duller hours prior. 

<<Multiple two-story houses with red roofs situated across the vicinity. Amelia had failed to disclose this detail. Reminder to reprimand her upon our next meeting. Meanwhile, unsure of the gravity of the situation, might be more than just one. Will monitor the neighborhood periodically throughout the night… monitoring might take until tomorrow, and if so, I hate my life.>>

<<Old lady seen throwing garbage at the house to the right 15C. 7 in the morning. Lives alone, most likely. No suspicious activity.>>

<< Middle-aged man jogged past. 8 in the morning. Place of residence unknown. Not suspicious, given mobility, still a likely suspect however in a case of maturity. Will continue to monitor.>>

<<Dog barking from the house in the center. Clue?>> only for that to be roughly scribbled out, replaced roughly and quickly with another line. <<Multiple dogs barking in the neighborhood. Highly unlikely lead to narrow down search. Fuck.>>

<<Young male/female couple living in house 14A at the end of first street. Exhibiting normal human emotions, as well as expressing public displays of affection. In front of my car too. Too young, too normal. No suspicious activity if albeit, a little annoying. Stop kissing in front of me.>>

Down the page the entries continued on, some spanning across long meticulously detailed paragraphs, while others would more than often end in just a single sentence worth of words. Also sprinkled throughout her worded thoughts were tiny little blurbs, things, and details she bolded and underlined twice that she deemed of great pertinence.

Usually they never really were in the end… but regardless, she jotted them down all the same.

Eventually, once more, her eyes reached the empty white space at the end of the notepad again where her pen had been bleeding black into the page all this while… and as such the first letter she wrote had a darker, wetter outline in the next sentence she wrote.

<<4E. Middle-aged man. Limping. Fell twice leaving the porch. Fell once going back in. Walking funny. Found him." 

The moment she finished those last two words she hastened to scribble them out. Too many times has she written the same thing to prior entries already. 

How many times had she left her car, knocked on doors, only to bear no fruits of her efforts? Already too many people were casting shifty glances at her every time they passed her car.

After all, what was a lady like her doing staking out a normal quiet suburban neighborhood since the dark of night?

Every stumble, every trip, every hundred-yard stare she'd find on the faces of the old and weary had proved her wrong too many times already. Most of the time stumbles to the ground, trips on cracks in the pavement… were simply just that and nothing more.

She can't afford to arouse any more suspicion, and she can't afford to be asked any questions. After all, what if he was watching? She needed that element of surprise, because just as she highlighted in a bold black circle in her prior notes - what if there were more than just the one she knew about?

That single question was what kept her from knocking on every door, from inquiring one by one every person that resided in the neighborhood. No, it was a far better choice to keep covert. 

And yet all this would have been unnecessary had Amelia only come as she had been called last night. Only she didn't, or rather wouldn't… probably her way of protest and revenge for all the demands and orders thus far.

Matriarchs are known to be petty beings like that, or so the legends and books have drastically forewarned. 

"Thanks, Amelia."

Another sound in the quiet whirled her gaze back onto the dashboard. 

It was a familiar sound, one heard all too many times already throughout the hours - a door swinging open - usually never a cause for any great concern, and if she had to pay close heed to every creak and squeak, then she was gonna need a thicker notepad… and more ink while she's at it.

But for this, she slouched her back forward, creeping herself closer to the dashboard, her chin nudging the upper rim of her steering wheel, because for this…

This wasn't usual.

The front door of 4E was ajar again, and below it, resting beneath the withered planks of the porch was the same middle-aged man. 

He just sat there atop the steps of his driveway, weathered hands wrapped across bulky shaking knees, staring at the quiet, at the peace, with eyes gazing at far less than what was readily available to him, because, for some reason, his mailbox was all that was within view for him. 

She watched him, studied him, assessing, every wrinkle above his bushy brows, the white-gray stubbles across his chin. His hair was cut short, trimmed to always look proper even now when unkempt and uncombed. 

But ultimately, it was his appearance that caught her eye - wrinkled, stained, presumably worn for more than a day - and his shifty demeanor that stayed her pen from scribbling out anymore.

He was making movement unbecoming for a man his age, rocking himself from left to right, pulling weird faces, puckering his lips in and out, it was very much akin to something a child would do when faced with nothing to do.

Quickly, fleetingly, she glanced back down at those last two words.

<Found him.>>

Eventually, the man-child got up to his feet once more, pouting, child-like disappointment brazenly apparent in his scowl. A clumsy, nearly stumbling spin backward he turned, before he was gone through the front door… but not before tripping once more on his feet in the process of crossing through the doorway.

For the first time since she started, she flipped close her notepad, pen in stow between the pages, stuffing them both back into her black blazer. 

Now both hands gripping the steering wheel tight, Irene took a moment to recoup her breath and resharpen her senses dulled by the hours. It didn't take long, it didn't even take a second - that tedium, that monotony she was feeling was being purged by a new, exhilarating rush.

The rush of discovery, and the heavy dread of confrontation. 

And then her phone vibrated, purging even that rush too momentarily. With benumbed fingers, she reached back into her blazer, pulling out a display bright with a single notification.

Another message. From him.

Irene felt a corner of her lip slightly twitching upwards as she slowly, leisurely took her time reading his words a single word at a time.

<<New job's going good, just wanted to let you know. You should really come visit if you find the time. I'll make you your favorite. Know you're probably with work stuff, but I haven't seen you in some time, kinda missing you, y'know?>>

She read, and reread the message, each run through amplifying the twitch in her lips more and more. The temptation to reply was strong, as it always was with every message he sent prior.

But more often than not, she'd never known what to say, or what words were the right ones to use. Unlike him, everything sentence she weaved and crafted would read so awkward and so stupid that she ultimately would end up just erasing them out of pure embarrassment. 

Rinse and repeat until she whimpered out on her reply. That's how it normally goes.

Normally...

Irene gave the text one last read, letting it linger for as long as the display would stay on. When it did finally turn off, when her reflection stared back at her within the black mirror, she stowed the phone back deep into her pocket and reached for her glove compartment.

She clicked it loose, and let it swing wide open. 

There was another noise that sounded as soon as it did, another loud ruckus to disrupt the peace, the quiet. 

A handgun plopped out, teetering still at the edge.

When it came to beings of her world, killing took effort. You'd have to expend yourself, your strength, sword, arrows, magic, matters not the method, you'll always need that little bit of effort.

But when here, in this world, for these beings in this world, killing was as easy as pulling a trigger.

And for this man, this being here, residing in the normal suburban home of house 4E, there was no need to expend any effort, any strength, when pulling that trigger.

She will kill him easily.

This old man.

This otherworldly being.

This little parasite. 

Jay's parasite.