I used to laugh when people talked about falling in love at first sight – until it happened to me.
I was twenty-two and on a roll. I had just been promoted at work. I went out most nights to catch a movie or for pizza and a beer. I’d been single for almost a year and was fine about that. I was having fun and making money. Life did not need to be any more complicated.
Then: Ka-pow!
A big, jagged-edged caption did not actually appear in the air but it might as well have done.
I was standing in the aisle at a store and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
She was five foot nothing, with long auburn hair and big glasses, and was looking at the value-brand cereals.
And I had fallen in love with her at first sight.
I didn’t know that at the time. I was too busy feeling in a complete daze. My heart was beating way faster than it should and I was probably sweating a lot.
Which wasn’t good.
Neither, I realised, was the fact that I was staring at a young woman who had no idea who I was.
I tried to smile. That would make things better.
She would be able to tell I wasn’t a creepy weirdo, but an eligible, successful, above averagely attractive man.
By now, she had noticed me.
To be honest she did not look that impressed.
I turned up the dial on my smile. Somewhere in this grin she would be able to see what a good credit rating I had.
I later found out, that the only reason she came over and started speaking to me, was because she was worried I was about to have some kind of seizure and maybe needed help.
At the time, I had replied to her asking me if I was ok, by telling her about a movie I had just seen. It had won an award and was according to the blurb on the poster, ‘sensitive, ‘moving’ and ‘powerful’.
I was convinced by telling her about the movie she would recognise that I was all these things as well.
When I had dried up with things I could remember from the movie, I asked her if she would like to go for a coffee.
She hesitated for a moment, then she laughed and said, “Sure, why not.”
I was so happy.
That first coffee turned into a trip to an all you can eat buffet and an evening that was filled with laughter.
Basically, we clicked.
At the end of the evening, I walked her home, old-fashioned gentlemen style, and after we’d said goodbye I stood in the street for a long time with a stupid smile on my face.
At one point a passing patrol car stopped and an officer looked out of the window and asked me if I was doing alright.
I told him that I had just met the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
He looked at me, possibly wondering if I was on some illegal substance, then shook his head and indicated to his partner that they should drive on.
The next few days were a wonderful blur.
We messaged constantly when we weren’t together.
We went to see the deeply meaningful movie I had told her about. When we left the cinema, she looked at me very seriously and said, “That was dreadful.”
I replied, “I know.”
And we both burst out laughing.
We went for a meal at a seriously upmarket restaurant that cost an absolute fortune. I paid for it, and she looked embarrassed.
I told her it wasn’t a problem.
I already knew that she was looking for work after returning to the area from a college on the other side of the country. When she’d told me this, I could tell she was stressing, and I asked if it was ok to hug her. She flung her arms around me and kissed me.
Outside the restaurant we kissed again, and she told me for the first time that she loved me.
If I had had a ring on me, I would have gone down on one knee there and then and asked her to marry me.
The next day, I bought a ring. Its price made the upmarket restaurant’s bill look cheap, but I had no doubts about what I was doing.
I proposed the next time I saw her and she said yes without a moment’s hesitation.
It was the weekend, and a beautifully sunny day. She suggested we put together a picnic and drive out into the countryside and find a peaceful spot to toast our future together.
I rarely ventured out of town, and as open fields sped past on either side of us, I was definitely out of my comfort zone.
The road was narrow, with a lot of blind bends, and though we had not seen a single other vehicle for over half an hour, I was apprehensive about being in a collision.
My fiancée was quiet in the passenger seat.
Until, suddenly, she said, “Stop, here.”
I eased down on the brake and tucked the car as far into the side of the road as I could. Then turned to her. “What is it?”
She didn’t reply. She was looking off to one side of the road.
At a house.
It sat alone in a field looking like something out of a painting. It was big and old and built of wood.
My fiancée turned back to face me and asked, “Can we go and take a closer look?”
I had a question of my own: “Why?”
She smiled at me and replied, “Humour me.”
How could I refuse.
Hand in hand, we walked over the field. I had been worrying what the owners would think about a couple of strangers intruding on their property, but as we came closer to the house it was clear it was empty.
The picket fence which marked the boundaries of the property had gaps in it, the windows looked like they had not been cleaned in years, paint was flaking off the front door and the weeds in the front yard were out of control.
It needed so much work doing on it.
I was about to say this when I felt my hand being squeezed a little tighter and my fiancée said, “I know how crazy this sounds, but I want us to live here.”
In my daydreaming of our future together I had seen us buying our forever home in the suburbs, somewhere that would be ideal to raise our three children. Two boys and one girl. Or the other way around.
It would be nothing like this ramshackle place in the middle of nowhere.
The surprise must have been clear on my face because she cupped my cheek in her hand and in a gentle voice said simply, “Please.”
Love flared inside me, and I said, “Yes. If that’s what you want, then let’s do it.”
We kissed and hugged and actually jumped up and down for a few crazy moments, then set off back to town. I dropped her off and, as soon as I got back to my place, I went online.
A few hours later I had tracked down the realtor who had the property on their books and had put an offer in.
Things did not slow down after this. The wave I was riding kept on racing.
In no time at all I had a mortgage, then fast forward a bit more and there was a truck hired, then packed, then unloading, and before I knew it, I found myself standing on the porch of my new house with my fiancée waving goodbye to the truck as it pulled away.
Somehow in the middle of all this we had set a wedding date for a year’s time and were down to a shortlist of three venues.
I took a deep breath and put an arm around my fiancée and said, “You might need to go back to eating value cereal for a while.”
I had a budget for doing the house up and it was eye watering.
She came in closer for a hug and said, “I don’t care about anything but being with you in our home.”
And I agreed with her with all of my heart.
To try and keep the costs down we were was planning on doing as much of the work by ourselves as we could. We would only bring in tradespeople where we felt we had to.
My very understanding employer had also allowed me to bunch my holidays together so that I could devote three weeks to ‘Project House’, and after that I would be rising early, commuting, then working late into the night on the house.
It was going to the hardest thing I had ever done, and I had never been happier.
Until I found the first box.
I’d lost track of what day of the week it was. They had all blended into one dust choked muscle aching procession of jobs that I was not sure I was doing right.
Cleaning gutters and stripping paint and sanding down surfaces and wondering if that crack had been there before or not.
I was sweeping a freshly sanded floor when I noticed one of the boards seemed to be loose. I hooked my fingers into a worryingly big gap and pulled – and, yep, the board came up with ease.
I was puzzled to see there was something in the underfloor cavity. It was small, no longer than the length of my hand, and covered in dust and spiders’ webs, and it was a strange shape.
It looked like a tiny coffin.
Weird, I thought, and reached down and picked it up.
It was made of wood and was very light, and there was a lid, which I opened.
There was… not dust but flakes of something in there. As I looked more closely I could make out four small piles.
A shiver passed through my body and I shut the lid, feeling a bit creeped out.
I had no idea what this was but I did not want it around. I took the box outside to put in the skip I’d hired.
My fiancée was in the front yard, trying to pull a weed out. She had it in both hands and was pulling with all her strength but the roots must have been pretty deep because it wasn’t shifting.
She stopped when she saw me and asked what I had there.
I told her it was nothing, just rubbish, and threw it in the skip and forgot about it.
Two days later I was poking my hand up into the chimney above the shell of an open fireplace that I really hoped could be saved. It would be so cosy to have a real fire in the winter.
I was pulling out leaves and causing spiders and bugs with way too many legs to scatter in all directions when my fingers closed on something more substantial.
I took it out.
It was another box. The same size and shape as the first. A coffin in miniature.
A part of me wanted to throw it away without looking inside. I had so many things to do without worrying about stupid things like this.
But curiosity got the better of me and I opened the lid.
There was a faded photograph in this box. It was too big to lie flat and the edges folded upwards, but I could clearly see the man and woman in the photograph. They were standing side by side, smiling, and there were holes where their eyes should have been.
The card the photograph had been printed on had been poked through in those four small places. The rest of the image was intact.
It struck me as horrible and I did not want to look at it anymore.
I closed the lid and put the box where it belonged, in the skip.
Trouble was, the house, and my dreams now felt a bit tainted.
And, yes, I knew I was over-reacting, but I so badly wanted everything to be perfect.
These unsettling objects that I knew nothing about, were anything but.
I was returning from the skip when my fiancée stopped me and put her hand on my arm.
“Hey, babe, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I mumbled, “I’m just tired.”
She put her arms around me and before long the world started to feel like a better place.
Then she whispered in my ear, “Would you like a cold beer?”
I laughed and said that would be perfect. We did not have anything so fancy as a working fridge, but putting a four pack in a bucket of cold water gave the beers an acceptable chill.
She headed off to the beer bucket and I was getting ready to start back on clearing the chimney when someone knocked on the door.
We were not expecting any deliveries, and it would have to have been a seriously keen door-to-door salesman to call on us out there, so I went to answer the door wondering who it could be.
I was taken aback to see there was a policeman standing on my porch. His cruiser was parked close by.
He tipped his cap at me and said, “I am sorry to trouble you, sir.”
He had the broadest accent I had ever heard, and the biggest gut I had ever seen on a policeman. It hung way over his belt. From the broken veins on his nose, I guessed a good few of those extra pounds had come from drinking.
I realised I was staring rudely, snapped out of it and replied, “That’s not a problem, officer, how can I help you?”
“Well,” he drawled, “I was passing and seen the house was occupied again so am just swinging by to give you a polite warning.”
“A warning about what?” I asked.
“This here house used to be lived in by one Billy J Mitchell and his family. Now, Billy was a bad ‘un and killed his parents. It was a most atrocious act, sir, yes it was. Well, young Billy was caught and tried all fair and legal and sent to spend the rest of his life in a high security facility. Only, here’s the thing, Billy was being transported to hospital for a medical procedure when he done escaped. It’s a poor state of affairs, indeed it is. Now I assure you that the full force of the law is looking for Billy and we will find him and incarcerate him once more, but till then I suggest you be vigilante in case he decides to visit his old homestead.”
Pin picks of cold had spread across my skin as the officer spoke and I was shaking when I asked, “How did he kill his parents?”
“With a knife,” the policeman answered without missing a beat. “He cut out their eyes. The pathologist reckoned they were still alive when that happened, but they would not have survived for long before they bled out.”
Then he tipped his hat at me once more and added, “If you have any concerns just call the police and we’ll be right along.”
And with than he was manoeuvring himself into his cruiser and backing up.
I watched the cruiser disappearing down the track thinking, I don’t have a phone that works out here, and feeling physically sick.
I closed the door. All of a sudden it looked far too flimsy. There was the window that did not close properly as well.
And there was a grade-A psychopath on the loose who might be about to take a trip down memory lane.
Bile rose into the back of my mouth.
From out the back my fiancée called out, “Who was that, babe?”
I closed my eyes, swallowed the bile, and replied, “No one, honey, a lost tourist looking for directions.”
She appeared in the doorway, holding a beer in each hand and smiling broadly. She had no idea of the danger we might be in.
And I was going to protect her by not telling her. Instead, I was going to come up with a reason why we should head back to the town for a time. We would be safe there.
“Er, honey,” I said. “I think I smelt gas just now. We should clear out of here while it’s investigated.”
“But we’re not connected to the mains,” she said.
“Swamp gas,” I replied in desperation.
A concerned expression settled on her face and she put her hand on my forehead. “Are you feeling ok, babe, you look awful pale?”
“I’m fine,” I began to say. “It’s just…”
I froze, unable to speak. Barely able to breathe.
I had heard a floorboard creak.
In an old house like this, that should have meant nothing.
But now, it felt ominous.
There was a second, louder creak.
I tried to swallow. My throat felt very dry.
My fiancée was staring at me. I could see the fear flowering in her eyes. “What was that?” she asked. “It sounds like there is someone in the next room.”
We turned as one as he entered.
Billy was short and skinny. His clothes were filthy rags that clung to his body. His grey eyes shone with excitement and in his hand he held a knife.
It was long and rusty and looked grotesquely sharp.
His lips were moving but no words were coming out. He was laughing, quietly, hysterically.
I could tell all reason had left him long ago.
He stepped towards us.
My legs felt so weak, like they were about to give beneath me, but from somewhere I found the strength to move in between him and my fiancée.
I held my hands up, and he lashed out. Not with the knife, but with his fist.
I felt an explosion of pain in my head then everything spiralled.
I must have been knocked out. I don’t know how long for, but when I opened my eyes I had the mother of all headaches and my vision was badly blurred.
I blinked and tried to sit up.
Nausea rose inside me and the pain in my head skyrocketed, but I had to fight through it.
I had to. My fiancée was alone with a maniac. Anything could have happened to her.
She could be dead!
I struggled to my feet. My vision was clearing, and I could make out someone standing with their back to me.
They turned and, as the haze lifted a little more, I could see that it was my fiancée.
Relief flooded through me.
She was alive but covered in blood. Her face, her hair, her hands, her dress. It was everywhere.
“You’re hurt,” I gasped and tried to reach out to her.
She shook her head and said, “It’s not my blood.”
I didn’t understand, and then I saw a body slumped on its side on the floor facing a corner.
It was Billy. The knife was next to him. Its blade was stained dark with yet more blood.
Somehow, she had survived.
I began to sob. “It’s going to be ok,” I said. “It’s going to be ok.”
“It will be,” she said, “This will always be my home. My special place, where I keep my secret things.”
She held up her hand. There was something in it.
A small, coffin shaped box.
She opened it.
There were two orbs inside. They were white and grey and soaked in blood. They were eyes.
As I stared at them, sickened, trying to understand, my fiancée smiled and said, “My brother, Billy, always was the stupid one. It was easy to pin the blame on him for the killings. He went to prison. I was sent to live with foster parents. But I knew one day I would return here.”
Her smile had hardened as she spoke, and she knelt down and picked up the knife with her free hand and said, “But I know you won’t want to be with me anymore. Now, you know who I am. What I am.”
She lifted the knife high then leapt at me.
It was an accident, what happened next. The way we fell and rolled and suddenly I was lying next to her, and her eyes were wide and staring uncomprehendingly into a distance that only she could see. The blade was embedded in her chest. She was dead.
I am writing this down before I drive to the police station, to get it straight in my mind, as there’s only my word now.
There are no witnesses.
Even though, when that desperate struggle with my fiancée ended, there was someone else there.
Billy had rolled over in the final moments of his life and was looking blindly on with his empty eye sockets, the quiet laughter of the insane trickling from his lips.