"That will be all, Miss..."

"Becker," Sophie said, hugging her afternoon shawl around her shoulders, "Sophie Becker." The officer gave her a dismissive wave of his hand, and she smiled at the corner of her mouth as she walked away and hugged her purse just a little tighter. She... really should not have been relieved that they didn't seem too interested in investigating potential witnesses. It was a terrible thing, a truly dreadful fate for two teenage boys (Jay and Devon she'd learned), but the part of her that was afraid had relaxed its grip on her for the time being. They'd barely taken her name down, and it was likely to be stowed in a paper file and forgotten on a shelf, as opposed to placed in the papers or some extensive database.

It was one less concern that she might be found.

Sophie bought herself a newspaper as she made her way to the bus station, and read the small article about the two boys over and over. They'd been torn from gut to gullet with an "unidentified" weapon, according to the seemingly disinterested reporter, and among their belongings were aerosol cans, a lighter, and a shovel. She stared at one of the photos - not of the bodies but of the crime scene - and on the shovel in particular. Something on the edge of it caught her attention, a strange lining that didn't look like mud. The entire article felt subtly off in a way she couldn't explain; all the facts were there, but she felt as if she was missing something.

That feeling persisted on the way home; it stuck to her like syrup on her shawl, clinging to her shoulders and seeping onto her skin with an uncomfortable stickiness she couldn't just brush away. Sitting in the back corner, reading the snippet again because she couldn't do anything else, Sophie squinted at the pictures, staring at them and trying to find just what she hadn't seen the first dozen times. It turned up nothing, and she folded the newspaper at her stop and tossed it into the first bin she saw.

Her apartment building had a long, winding and narrow stairwell; part of her always made a note of the fact that getting down was easier than up, and the doors were heavy and hard to swing, but the second floor always kept theirs open. She hated that her first impulse was to make an escape plan, a safety route. She was supposed to already be safe.

Of course this part of Chicago wasn't safe, but that was sort of the point. Sophie reached her front door - paint chipped, sign faded - and smiled a little, proud of her modest home for the moment. Malcolm, with his shiny uniform and his always-polished chief badge and his impossible standards, would never look for her here. Her own mother wouldn't look for her in a place like this; that was why she chose it. The door clicked shut behind her, and she locked it as she lingered on that last thought.

Her mother. Sophie pulled out her phone and stared at the screen as it lit up; of course there were no voicemails, no messages, but she felt the pang of guilt all the same. She wondered if her mom had given up calling Sophie's old number yet, if it even led to a voicemail anymore. If it did, she wasn't sure she wanted to know about it. It ached so sharply that for a moment she forgot her discomfort with the newspaper, and sat down on the sofa. She barely noticed when Talcum leapt into her lap.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she murmured, closing her phone and stowing it back in her purse, "I love you. I have to love myself this time, though." Her mother loved her, she knew that. But she'd loved Married Sophie much more than Single Sophie, and much, much more than Divorced Sophie. And she had loved Malcolm. "Maybe one day," she said, turning her attention to Talcum, "I'll find somebody better to marry. Then she won't have to worry about me dying old and alone. What do you think, Talcum?" He rolled onto his back and she idly traced a finger over his fluffy stomach. He wriggled and purred in her lap, and Sophie smiled just a little. She scooped her cat up and stood, cradling him in her arms.

"Can you see me getting married again, Talcum?" She kissed his belly, and Talcum wriggled in her arms. "Maybe I'll just marry you. You already bum around the house and expect me to feed you, you're as good a husband as him." He squirmed away and landed with a light thump, and she smiled, just a little. "Alright," she said, putting her hands in her pockets, "you value your freedom, I can respect that." Sophie pushed herself back up and paced about the room.

She was restless. The police hadn't cared, but she did; about the boys, about that place, about the energy that had been following her around all day. She had thought the place was a temple; maybe it was, and they weren't meant to disturb it. Maybe those boys hadn't felt it, had made a mistake and stirred something even further than she had.

Or maybe they had known. She shivered at the thought, but it would not leave her. Had they known? Had they felt the same weight in the air that she'd felt, the same strangeness that enticed and repelled her all at once, like the most lovely coloration of a poisonous fruit? Sophie picked up her purse again.

"I'm going out," she said, breezing into the kitchen and fixing Talcum's dinner, grabbing a water bottle from her old fridge and a map off her counter, "I need to see something." She went back to the door and felt a touch annoyed with herself as she unlocked it again. "Don't accept any solicitors or invitations to strange parties."

"Mrow," said Talcum, and the door clicked shut once more.


It was a strange trick of running from bus to bus and double-checking old emails and comparing addresses that had changed, but Sophie finally found herself back in front of the building. The bleeding light of dusk seeped over it from behind, and the shadows somehow made it look ancient, as if it had been here for all of time. One empty police car sat parked nearby, but nobody was around, not even reporters. Like vultures, the conference of reporters and investigators must have picked the scene of all evidence and intrigue. The entrance sat before her, patient and filthy. Sophie took a breath before she approached it, peering in and squeezing the front of her shawl a little tighter.

"Hello?" She called, and there was nothing; the air was musty and thick, and she swallowed. "I'd like to come in," she said, softer, "is there anybody here?"

She was met with silence, but the tension in her chest eased in a way she couldn't explain. It was as if an anxiety - the fear of being uninvited - had been alleviated; as if whatever was here had held the door open for her. She should have been troubled by such strange thoughts, and perhaps she might have once upon a time. But now, when she was already used to being afraid...

There could be an ambush, she thought, but who would know I was coming? She immediately pushed Malcolm's sharp face from her mind as it started to form, and she stepped in, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous halls. She regretted not thinking to bring a light; her phone's screen could barely light the hand that held it. She kept walking, trying to remember the picture in the paper, where the bodies had been.

She didn't want to see them, of course. No doubt they were already in some morgue to be examined and dismissed; she was not optimistic for their closure, though she said a silent prayer for their souls nonetheless. Two boys, two dead boys, barely old enough to start being men. It truly was a tragedy.

But they weren't why she was here.

She turned a corner; there were puddles here, and she vaguely remembered it raining the night before as she prepared for bed. Her shoes were sturdy and her stockings were dry, but the moisture clung onto her cheeks and made her reach up to wipe her neck as she kept going. She pulled up the picture she'd saved, looking at it, trying to contextualize it. Further in she wandered, in what had to have been a spiral, accompanied by the sound of her own footsteps and, eventually, those of another.

Sophie grew still. The footsteps stopped. She felt the tension again; the air grew taut and somebody's gaze lay on the nape of her neck, patiently waiting for her to turn around.

"Turn around, Sophie," a voice said, and she drew in a breath. Not his, but a him, a man, somehow far away and right in her ear. "You came all this way to see me, do not be afraid to look." Her hands shook as she turned with her whole body, needing only an instant to find the figure in the dark.