Mitchell had developed a habit of pacing when the house was empty. He hated the emptiness. It wasn't a feeling he was used to. Loneliness, sure, he had felt that all the time, even when he wasn't alone (and he remembered the moment he actually felt it stop, a rainy night in George's shitty old one-room flat, with cheap wine and rental ads).
But when Annie was out of the house, it didn't feel lonely. It just felt wrong. Cold, maybe. Actually, it was less cold without her presence, but a warmth was gone. He hated it.
When she had gotten that job at the pub, he started spending more time away from home. It wasn't as if he could have asked her to stay home all the time - for what? His comfort? That wouldn't be fair.
He stopped at her room, its door ajar. It felt forbidden when she wasn't there. He knew she went into his room when he wasn't there. She'd look at his books and comics and put them back improperly or play his records and leave one on the phonograph. He didn't mind. You have to expect your things to be moved about when you live with a ghost. They were, as Ivan once said, "curious creatures." Vampires lack that curious nature. He'd never thought to look in her room when it was empty before.
Annie owned very little in the house, but she had her box, an old shoebox where she kept her only real belongings. It had once been full of pictures of her and Owen, but they'd all been burned. Except for one (or half of one - Owen had been torn out). It had fallen to the floor when she had decided to get rid of any remnant of Owen. He'd slipped it into his pocket. She was getting closer to her door, he suspected, and he wanted something to remember her by. It wasn't as if he'd rooted through her box and stolen it.
From the minute he had stopped at the doorway of her room, he'd felt an urge to look in that box. As if it held some kind of secret. He went to the closet, through the excruciating stillness, and opened it.
The box sat on the floor. As he lifted it, he imagined her catching him, outraged. Maybe, deep down, he hoped by picking up the box, she'd appear.
She didn't.
He sat on her chair and lifted the lid gingerly. Inside, there were small things, a lip gloss, a hairbrush with blonde hairs in it (once Nina's, he guessed), George's old chain necklace, the one that had broken one full moon and he'd replaced, a photo of a couple he guessed were her parents. An advertisement ripped out of a magazine. A bottle opener and a cardboard coaster from the New Found Out. A smudgy pencil drawing of a random face. An old Smith's tape... strange, he never knew she liked '80s music. He stopped and thought.
Gilbert. It had been left behind by Gilbert.
He sighed. Now instead of memories of Owen, she kept memories of Gilbert.
He dropped the tape into the box. "Great," he sighed. Everything in that box was a memory, a piece of someone special to her. And he didn't see one thing of his. Seriously? He had all kinds of crap in his room he'd never miss.
He pulled a rolled cigarette from his pocket. He wasn't supposed to smoke in her room, or anywhere in the house technically, a rule he regularly disregarded because she had no sense of smell. He lit up with his Zippo and sighed, running his thumb along the chrome.
As he reached for the lid, the lighter fell into the box. For a moment, he imagined that it was one of her small things, that it had been there when he'd opened it. Oh there it is! I've been looking for that! Oh, well, if it means that much to Annie, she can keep it.
He pulled the lighter out and shoved it in his pocket.
That really hadn't been as satisfying as he'd expected. He exhaled. Was it his imagination, or did the smoke just hang there, the air was so stilll?
After a few minutes, he headed down to the kitchen. He needed a drink.
It never did occur to him that the smudgy drawing in the box was him.