Disclaimer: You know she owns it.
This is a little stab at a story line that popped into my head this morning. I couldn't sleep and was stuck watching history international. So here it goes. Leave me some feedback and let me know if I should continue it.
Chapter One: Cursed Anniversary
Egypt was a place of wonder and mystery. The sand was soft as the beaches in Florida where my mother lived, so fine and if you weren't careful it got into everything. But the sun was hot and beautiful. Some days I sat in the shade of the pyramid that my husband David was excavating, and watched the rays shimmer off that fine sand for hours.
I met David while I was in college in Seattle, Washington. I was studying Early English literature and he was studying Archaeology and early Egyptian Civilization. At first I couldn't even bare to look at him much less even think about the date that he proposed every time he saw me, but eventually I let him in. And it took a good three years for us to be married. As I sat here in a restaurant in Cairo, I was in wonder that it had been a year already.
It was a good thing that he did what he did because it allowed me to run from my demons, to pretend that my life had always included David. To forget that year and a half in my life that haunted my dreams, even to this day. The ghosts as I had come to call them. The figment of my imagination that followed me no matter how fast or far I ran. I couldn't even bring my self to say the name, and as God was my witness it would never pass my lips again.
But David was a good man. He was handsome, but not beautiful like the one ghost. He was safe unlike that one ghost, and he was perfectly happy with what I had to offer him, I was good enough, unlike the one ghost.
It wasn't that I didn't love David. I did. I promised to love and honor and all of that good stuff that went with vows of marriage. But my soul didn't belong to him. It belonged to my ghost, and even though he didn't know of my ghost, he still understood my distance at points.
But I did try. I even went so far as to get married on the anniversary of the fateful day in September. I wanted to take the worst day of my life and turn it into something grand and powerful. I wanted to give it meaning and profound. I wanted to forget. But all it did was make me feel like I betrayed my ghost. I cried all the way up till the time to walk down the isle. I cried after my new husband fell into a deep sleep after making love for the first time. Hell I even cried during the sex because I was giving away something that belonged to my ghost. Of course David thought that I was crying because it hurt and that made me cry harder because he was trying to be sweet about it.
After the wedding we still had about six months of school left and as soon as we graduated David got a job at the Seattle Museum of History and since then he has become the Assistant Curator. I guess that happens when you graduate top of your class with honors.
Me on the other hand, decided to try my hand at writing. When he got the job in Egypt it was no sweat off my back to go with him. I could write anywhere, and Egypt was one the places in the world that my ghost couldn't go. Not that he would, but it gave me peace of mind, kind of.
We had only been here a couple of months when David was called away to the desert to excavate a new cavern that was found next to the great sphinx. They needed his expertise to translate the hieroglyphs and his know how with the Egyptian government. So I had been here in Cairo for about three weeks by myself.
From time to time I would write, and other time I would study. When you have a husband that is a passionate as David was, you tended to want to know what all the hype was about. Plus in the fact, I thought that I could cash in on the Mystery Novel world, so I needed to know all that I could. It came to a surprise that I picked up on it a lot faster then most people and I could even decipher most of the ancient text as good as David.
Sometimes I would travel out to the old tombs with the tourists just to hewn my skills. Even snickering at the miss translations of the tour guides that were born in this country and never thought to study what they were selling. Of course, me being me I never said anything, I just read them for myself and moved on, knowing that the deadly curse that the tour guide translated was actually something like was a good husband and father. Who was I to kill their bread and butter? Impending death sells.
I looked down at my Sat phone for the fifth time in fifteen minutes. "Damn." I cursed silently to my self. David was supposed to call me today. I couldn't talk to him everyday, but today was special. Today was our anniversary. One year today we were married, and six years today my ghost became a ghost. If anything I needed to talk to him just so that I could be put in a semi calm state of mind for the rest of the day. But he was supposed to call an hour ago, and Usually he was on time, so what was keeping him?
I glanced down at my phone again trying to look as nonchalant as possible. I could just imagine what the locals thought about the crazy woman that kept looking at her phone. I must have looked desperate as hell.
Truth be told I was. Desperate that is, not crazy. I needed this little piece of normality. I needed him to call so that I knew not only that he remembered but that I was important enough to be remembered. If I didn't have that I would be on the verge of relapse, and my ghost would be brought to the forefront of my mind. My ghost would grab hold of my in a choking hold and I would be sent spiraling down never to reemerge as myself again. I could lose who I had become, and I had work so hard to become this person.
"Miss, would you like some more coffee?" The barista asked with a very heavy Egyptian accent.
I looked down at the cup that I had ordered about thirty minutes ago. It was untouched and cold. I looked up to the weathered old man and smiled, "Yes please, and could you take this one away?"
The man removed my cooled drink and left to go fill my order. I didn't used to be a coffee drinker but after everything that happened to me, I found that I had to reinvent myself. I started doing things that the old Bella Swan wouldn't do, like riding motorcycles and strutting the streets looking like I hadn't a care in the world. I started drinking caffeinated beverages even though for the first few months my body went into overdrive and I would get the shakes like I was a drug fiend.
I started taking self defense classes and even started taking dance classes. Then after I graduated I was accepted to Washington University so I moved. I cut all contact with anyone that I knew in Forks and even changed my nickname to Issa. Bella died the day my ghost walked out of my life. I was something new.
The Barista returned with my coffee and set it in front of me but didn't leave. He was standing there looking intently at me. "I'm sorry, I don't need anything at the moment." I told him, still trying to decipher the look that he was inflicting on me.
"Miss, I was told to give you this." He said before sliding a folded piece of paper on the table in front of me and hurrying to the other side of the restaurant.
I'm sure that my face showed just how confused that I was. Who had written me a note? I really didn't know anyone here, and nobody knew that I was coming to this particular restaurant. He must have been mistaken. But the look on his face was so sure. And then there was something else. Maybe fear?
I opened the note and my blood ran cold. Six words flashed at me, and might as well have been a neon sign.
Bella,
I'm sorry for your loss.
MABC
MABC? I didn't know anyone with those initials. And what loss were they talking about? I scanned the restaurant looking for the person that sent this message to me. The restaurant was mostly empty, and the people that were there were engulfed in their own conversations. No one was paying me any attention.
I looked out onto the street and scanned the crowds that pasted by on a daily basis. They moved like cattle, some slow some fast, some going one direction and some the other but none of them looking at me.
I was unnerved not only y the note but by the fact that this person knew me. They knew me as Bella, not Issa. That means they knew me before my change. That's what got my blood pumping and my heart pounding.
I looked out on the street harder, and I spotted what I was looking for. A small woman wearing a black Abuja, full with Muslim veil to cover her face. Her hands adorned black gloves and her feet were covered. This was nothing new to me, Islam is the second largest faith in the world. They were all over Egypt and so that was common enough.
What got me was her eyes. They were piercing and sad as they looked straight into mind. They were soulful, and they were eyes that I had looked into many times before in the past, because they were golden like my ghost.
I wasn't sure how long I stared at her and she back at me, it could have been hours with the intensity, but it was probably just second. My mouth was dry and my mind blank. My fingers had instinctively curled into tight fists beside my coffee cup. My whole body was rigid, and if I had sat there like that for much longer I would have been sore with the strain.
Before I could whisper her name my sat phone began ringing. I looked down at it for a split second but when I looked up she was gone. I scanned the crowd again but she was gone. All the while my phone continued to ring and ring.
I smirked to my self. Had I made up the image of Alice in full veiled get up because of the day? We my mind slipping already? I shook my head and whispered, "Ghosts." I picked up my phone looking at the display.
The number across the phone was not one that I had ever seen before. Nobody had my sat number but my husband and my publisher back in the states. Maybe David had let his phone die and was using one of his colleagues phone to wish my a happy anniversary.
"Hello." I said.
The voice on the other end was not my husband. The voice was heavily accented, "Mrs. Daily?"
"Yes." I said hesitantly.
"This is Detective Massri. I'm sorry to be calling you like this but you weren't at your… how you say… apartment. I needed to send a car to pick you up." He said very business like.
"I'm sorry what is this about?" For the second time today I was confused. What could the Egyptian Police want with me?
"Yes Mrs. Daily, I need for you to come to the consulate, there has been an accident with you husband Mr. Daily."
I sat straight up in my chair and my heart caught in my throat. "Accident? What kind of accident? Is David okay?" The questions were coming out like a whisper, my throat felt like it was closing up on it's self.
"No Mrs. Daily. I'm sorry… I didn't want to tell you this over the phone… but your husband died last night in a cave in, at his dig sight." He sounded regretful, and guilty for having delivered this news to me the way he had.
"What?" The news still wasn't sinking in. My mind couldn't process it. Not on this day. Not on the day that a curse and blessing had happened to me. This couldn't be happening. "Is this some kind of joke?" I could hear the hysteria and hopefulness in my voice. I swear if I was being punked, I was going to kick Aston's ass till he tasted the brand of my shoe.
"I assure you Mrs. Daily, I would never joke on something so serious." He said with no hint of amusement in his voice. "Please tell me where you are and I will send the car to collect you."
"I'm not far from my place. I'll meet the car there." I said. There was coldness to my words. All emotion was gone. I had nothing left.
"Okay we will be waiting for you." He said and disconnected the call.
I sat in my seat for a few moments trying to remember how to walk. Shit I was trying to remember how to breath. My eyes fell on the neon sign of a note staring back at me, over and over the sentence taunting me. I'm sorry for you loss.
The tears threatened to fill my eyes and I blinked rapidly to stop them from falling. I felt the sob forming in my throat and swallowed it hard like a sour pill. I couldn't let them go. I had to see the detective. But one thing did escape, one of my ghosts come to light, "Alice" I whispered before grabbing my things and walking out into the hot Egyptian sun.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
"Are you sure that there is no one else that can do this for you?" Detective Massri asked for the seventh time sine we got to the run down morgue in the run down hospital.
I hated that David's body had been brought here. He deserved a state of the art morgue. I wasn't sure where this line of thought came from but it was how my mind was dealing. I had been asked by the Egyptian equivalent of a commissioner if I would identify the bodies of my husband and his assistant. Red tape and all to make sure there wasn't a terrible mistake. I had agreed without thinking. And now I really wanted to chicken out. But that was Bella not me. I would be brave for my husband because that's what he knew of me.
"Yes detective, I'm sure. I wish you would stop asking me that." I knew that I was snapping at him and it wasn't his fault per say, but proximity was a real mother some times.
He nodded and walked in front of me silently. It's funny what you notice during a time of crisis in you life. Like the fact that the detective's shoes squeaked with every step he took. That would be forever etched in my mind. The fact that this hospital smelled different then the hospitals that I had been in before, that also was a thought that would be in my mind forever. But I followed Mr. Squeaky Shoes to a set of double doors at the end of the sea green hallway.
He didn't hesitate when we got to the doors, but I did. Again I couldn't remember how to breath. My heart was pounding in my throat, and ears. I felt that I might pass out at any moment.
This couldn't be happening. This had to be a dream. My husband was safe, he just forgot our anniversary and he was hiding from me. I would have forgiven him if had just called. I wasn't at the morgue in Cairo about to ID his body. This was mistake.
My mind kept trying to talk me out of making the last steps into that room where the end of my world lay cold and dead. I even tried promising God that if he just let this all be a mistake I would sleep through this day for the rest of my life. I would bury my ghost in a dreamless haze and move my anniversary to another day. But even that didn't work.
I took a deep needed breath, to clear my head as much as it could be and made the last steps past the threshold to the morgue. The room was very clinical. The walls were stainless steel, the floors were polished concrete. There were all kinds of contraptions hanging from the ceiling, things that I didn't even want to know what they were for, for sanity sake.
The detective was standing by two gurneys that were draped with white sheets. The drapes fell over the gurneys in the shapes of bodies. My mind made note of how white the drapes were. At lease there's no blood, I don't do well with blood. Of course I had never seen a dead body so I wasn't sure how I was going to do with those, but hey, goal for no blood.
"Are you ready?" He asked as I stood by his side for the first body to be uncovered.
I nodded and he lowered the drape to chest level and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. The body laying on the first gurney was Stan, David's assistant. What shocked me was that fact that his throat was a mangled area of what looked like hamburger meat.
I gasped and before I knew it I had backed into the other gurney. I spun around as the drape slipped to show the handsome face of my husband David, with his throat in the same state as Stan's.
I covered my mouth and ran to a nearby sink and vomited violently. Everything that was in my system came up with a burning sensation from the bile that was left and came through my nose.
Detective Massri waited patiently for me to gather myself. When I turned both bodies were covered up as they were when we walked in.
"What… what did that to them?" I asked. It was the first question that came to mind.
"It must have happened during the cave in." He said. His eyes were hard. I could only imagine that this was the part of the job that he hated. It made me wonder if he was asking me if I wanted to view the bodies for his own benefit. "Are they your husband and his assistant?"
I nodded not trusting that I wouldn't start dry heaving. I pushed up off the floor, I hadn't even noticed that I had slump to it, and made my way to the double doors. I needed fresh air right away. The detective was right behind me.
"Excuse me, Detective Massri? May I speak with you?" A small man with graying hair asked as we passed the doors into the hall.
"Mrs. Daily, this is the coroner. If you just wait down the hall I'll arrange a car to take you home." I turned and started walking, but something in their conversation caught my attention.
"… lack of blood… teeth marks… cave in after death." I continued my trek down the hall.
My mind was working over time. Alice had been there in the street today. There had to be something up. Because there was no way my husband was killed by a cave in. The only thing that could have caused those exact wounds was for someone to rip out their throats. The only reason to do that and then cause a cave in was to hide something. And the only thing to hide was a murder.
The only reason that Alice would come out of hiding was one thing. Vampires had killed my husband, and his assistant. Somehow my innate ability to attract danger had reigned terror on a unsuspecting man who had wanted nothing more then to love me. When I had allowed him that one emotion I had doomed him to the horrible death.
I wrapped my arms around my middle like I had done during the months I had gone crazy after my ghost left. I was trying desperately, to hold myself together. I had to wait till I was in the comfort of my own home to fall apart. I would wait till there was four comfortable walls, familiar walls to let go and mourn the loss of the husband that had loved me without condition.
"Mrs. Daily?" Detective Massri was standing besides me with a look of concern on his face.
"Issa, please. You have seen me vomit all my insides up I think that is basis to call my Issa." I told his trying to manage a small smile.
"Fine then my name is Omar. Are you ready to go home Issa?" He asked offering me a reassuring smile in return.
"When are they releasing the bodies? I would like to start making arrangements as soon as possible." I asked as we finally made it out to the warm dry air of the Egyptian night.
"I'm sorry Issa, There are some discrepancies with the deaths and I'm sorry. We had to open a murder inquiry." Omar said.
"Murder?" I feigned shock. I knew that this was coming. I knew that this wasn't open shut. "I thought you said they were killed by a cave in." I nearly choked on the word 'killed'.
"Yes well it's just a formality. As soon as the inquiry is finished we can help you make arrangements to transport the bodies." HE was glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes. He was lying, and he was worse at it then I was. But I went along with it.
I sighed dramatically and gave him my best innocent look, "I understand." I looked at the car that waited for us at the curb in front of the hospital. "Are you going to come with me to drop me off at the apartment?" I asked.
"No I need to do some paper work, and finish some odds and ends. Please keep you phone on, so as I might contact you as soon as we have some news." He said finally looking directly at me.
I nodded and got into the car and stared out the window at nothing at all. My mind was just at a point of break down, and thinking about nothing was helping to save off the impending spiral that I was headed. Before I knew it I was in front of my apartment.
As I got out of the car I looked at the dark windows that used to be so warm ad welcoming. Now they were cold and foreboding, warning that none shall enter because happiness no longer resided there.
I walked up the stairs to my door and noticed a package waiting on the right side of the door. I picked it up not even looking at postmark. David received packages all the time from Seattle, this would be the last.
I slide my key into the lock and entered my apartment. It was almost ten o'clock at night. This awful day was almost over, just to open up to hard core mourning tomorrow. I dropped the keys in the bowl by the door. I could feel the sobs starting to bubble up in my chest. I wanted nothing more then to scream at the top of my lungs, but my throat felt parched and scratchy like I had already done that.
I heard far away whimpering. I thought, why is that person crying, I'm the one that lost her husband. But then I realized that it was me. I was whimpering. That knowledge brought the tears and I collapsed in a heap on the floor just inside the front door.
I was alone. I was broken again. I needed something. So I took a chance and whispered, "If you're here please… I… I need you." The anguish that followed was heartbreaking even to me. The sobs stole my breath and strangled me.
Two strong cold marble arms wrapped around me. I sagged into the embrace finding comfort in the fact that I wasn't alone. I cried harder and moaned in my misery.
His smell was the same. My ghost was here to comfort me in my time of need. "Okay love. I'm here." Was the last thing I heard before exertion over took me and I passed out.