11

"Hello".
"Hey Billy"
"Bella, how are ya kid? Long time no see. Almost 4 days", Billy boomed over the phone in mock surprise and broke into laughter.
I laughed a bit and replied, "Yeah well, I was kinda busy. But I'm free now and I was wondering if I could come around".
"Yeah sure. Come on over."
"And I was wondering if Sue's at home too. I'd really like to get to know her. She really tells the most fantastic stories", I said and waited with bated breath, hoping that Sue was home.
"Of course she is home. I'm glad you want to meet her. I'm sure she'd love to get to know you too. Come over whenever you like", Billy said.
"Ok, then I'll come over around 3. See you then", I said and hung up.
Now things were going to get weird. How do you start a conversation like the one I had in mind? As I pulled into Billy's drive way at 3, I hadn't yet made up my mind about how to talk to Sue. But I shouldn't have bothered, because as soon as I stepped out of the car and moved towards the house, the front door was flung open and the object of my visit greeted me as if we were old friends,
"Hi Bella! So glad you came. It's finally great to meet you properly, and in broad daylight too. I couldn't even tell if you were real or a figment of my imagination", Sue yelled happily.

I wasn't sure how to respond to this, so I smiled and waved.

"Hi, it's great to meet you too", I said as I stepped onto the porch. I tried to be as normal as I could on the outside, but inside I was bursting with impatience. I wanted to bombard Sue with questions about all that she knew, but I still wasn't sure how to. It was an internal turmoil that possibly showed on my face, because Sue said,

"You know I don't bite. You can talk freely you know."

I was slightly taken aback at this, but smiled and said,

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to offend. It's just that I've… it's been a while since I last came here. And that was while Ed..." I trailed off and Sue nodded in understanding.

"That happened to me when my partner died. 7 years ago. We were together for ever and then cancer took her from me", Sue volunteered.

I was struck time and time again with the woman's candidness. But I also found that I wasn't uncomfortable around her, and talking was also getting easier.

"I know how you feel", and then I laughed and added, "Don't you just hate it when people say that?"

Sue laughed too, a throaty laughter that was actually pleasant, and said,

"Oh Lord, do I! I want to strangle people who say they get it, but they have no idea. But you Billy and I are different. We say that to each other and walk away alive and breathing because we have lost our other half".

Sue's casual frankness was growing on me and I found that despite the morbidity of the topic, I didn't mind talking and laughing about it with her.

"So where's our host?" I asked looking around. Billy's house was small enough for every corner of it to be visible right there from the hall where Sue and I were standing.

Sue walked into the kitchen, pointed at a post-it on the fridge and quoted," Billy 'went to get groceries. Be back in an hour.' This was when I was in the shower 15 minutes before you came", Sue said and looked at the clock over the dining table.

"He should be back in, say, 30 or 40 minutes. Meanwhile, we have the whole place to ourselves. What do you say we take a few cold root beers and sit out back and 'bond'?" fluttered her eyes at the word 'bond' and we both burst into laughter after a second.

"Sure, why not. By all means, let's 'bond'" I said as Sue pulled two bottles of root beer out of the fridge. She handed them to me and took two more in her own hands and we walked out the back door and went into the backyard.

It was more like a scrap-yard with car parts and tools and chopped wood all over the place. The was a garage at the end of the yard and I could see Billy's old Volks Wagon Rabbit and the 2 bikes Jacob and Edward had fixed and ridden as teens. We found a pair of rickety chairs in the garage and pulled them to a clear patch in the yard and sat there.

At first we drank and talked about non-topics.10 minutes in, all my hesitation and apprehension was gone. This was a woman I could talk to easily.

We talked about Forks, the weather (which Sue called 'ungodly'), the reservation, my life. I told her about Edward and me, and was only slightly aware that it didn't hurt to talk to her about it. She was genuinely sympathetic, and as she had said, she did know how I felt. We then talked about Sue's work. Once we were on the topic I learned that Clara (Sue's partner) and Sue were fellow Occultologists. They had met during college and had ended up together, until Clara passed away. Sue explained that the book on folklore she was working on was Clara's project, and Sue was just trying to fulfill her dream.

We were talking about 'Clara's book', as Sue liked to call it, and I realized that we were finally on the topic that I wanted answers about.

The fact that Sue loved her work showed, because with little to no prompting from me, Sue went on and on about her research and the different places she had gone, the people she'd met, the experiences she'd had. I still asked questions about this and that and Sue happily answered them all.

"I mean seriously, think about it", Sue continued, "Unnatural stuff happens all the time. And science can't explain it all. I mean I've personally had a ton of unexplainable stuff happen to me."

"Like what? You don't really mean to say that a vampire got you, do you?" I teased.

"No, of course not. But one time, when I was in Malaysia, I swear I saw someone run right into this floor length mirror I had in my room. And the moment it jumped in, the mirror broke into a million sand-sized pieces!"

"No way."

"No really. It took the cleaner 3 whole days to get all the mirror particles out of my room. Human beings can't do that. Believe me; I tried to shatter even hand held mirrors like that, no luck."

"Creepy", I said with a shudder and I meant it.

"Didn't you move after that?" I asked.

Moved? I left Malaysia for good after that." Sue said, making her eyes as big and round as saucers.

"Of course", she added, "my work there was finished by then."

At this we fell about laughing. The woman had a twisted sense of humor.

"But seriously", she said sobering up, "that wasn't the only time I encountered the paranormal."

"You mean mirrors have been shattered around you on other occasions?" I asked with a straight face.

"Ha-ha, no. but a 'Dorian Gray'-like situation happened once when I was in Belgium."

"A person stayed young while his portrait grew old?!" I asked incredulously.

"Not exactly. But you are so cool to even know that." Sue gave me a high-five.

"I read a lot", I said smiling.

"Well, what happened was, I was in a village in the north-eastern region of Belgium, thriving little place, bumper yields of crop every year, but I don't remember the name of the place. But there was supposed to be a full proper medieval-era Samhein celebration and I had to be a part of it. I was boarding at the village-head's house, or rather mansion. It was big and old and made of stone. And it had a left-wing and a right-wing. Everyone lived in the left-wing, but the right-wing was shut down.

"Anyways two nights before All Hallow's Eve, I hear screams in the middle of the night. I go out of my room to check, but the Head's wife meets me and says the maid saw a mouse. So I go back in. but next night it happens again, and this time a huge maid intercepts me says the other maid got bit by the dog. I wasn't convinced, but what could I do when a woman three times my size ushers me back into my room! I stayed out all night for the Samhein Celebration, so I don't know what happened that night. But the next night I heard the screams again and this time was determined to know the truth.

"So I snuck out of my room and carefully made my way to the source of the screams. I narrowly avoided the Head's wife and the Sumo-maid and finally figured out that the screams were coming from the right-wing. So I tiptoed my way to the right-wing and prayed that the door opened silently. It did and I slipped into a huge room. I mean all the rooms in the wing were combined to make one ginormous room with two rows of pillars, one on each side of an alter-like way right down the middle. I moved a few paces forward and hid behind a pillar. What I saw from there made my blood run cold."

"What did you see?" I asked enthralled.

"I saw a large portrait of a woman on an easel. She was very beautiful and had long black hair and was wearing medieval cloths. For some reason, she reminded me of Mona Lisa. Anyway, I saw that her hair was moving. I mean not a trick of the light or kudos to the artist, but it was actually alive and moving. It grew out of the frame and grew towards the floor. That's when I noticed two girls lying on the floor near the easel and another one being held by the Head and another guy. She was screaming her head off and in about a second, I found out why.

"The hair reached her and wrapped around her neck and strangled her. In about 5 minutes she was dead and the woman in the portrait smiled sweeter than Mona Lisa as she retracted her hair. Needless to say, I left the village very next day."

But… what?!"

"I found this out later, but apparently, Mona Lisa-lady was an avatar of their crop-god and the human sacrifices were the reason why the village thrived." Sue said grimacing.

"Oh my God!" I was dumbfounded. When I found my voice, I asked, "So you believe that the supernatural is real?"

"No", said Sue and she looked me straight in the eyes, all traces of lightness long gone from hers, "I know the supernatural exists."

A/N: So I know I disappeared again, but i had some stuff to deal with. And the most monumental of these I'm sill working on. Plus, i don't have a personal computer. It's a shared device, and my sister hogs it all the time. I actually had a huge row with her to use the computer today. So here's this chapter. no guarantee when the next one will come. Probably when I have the next big fight with my sister. Enjoy and Review.