The afternoon sun blistered through the kitchen window. Gusts of wind gently lifting the tablecloth weighted down by the copious amounts of food we had laid out for our guests at the welcome party we held for ourselves to get to know our new neighbours.
Almost every other couple in this town seemed to have a big family and busy office 9 to 5 kind of lives, it was a little intimidating considering I have always been an author and my husband was a self-employed engineer. We made our way around the house, introducing ourselves when we bumped into another couple who had also just moved into the neighbourhood, it was comforting to know we weren’t the only fresh faces in town.
“My name is Kat, this is my husband Harry.” I said, lifting my hand to greet them with a handshake.
“It is lovely to meet you Kat, my name is Andrew. This is Marianne.” The man replied, gesturing towards his wife.
Andrew was very handsome, he had a strong jawline, blue eyes and thick brown hair lightly draping over his forehead Clark Kent style. He was well dressed and almost reminded me of a Ken doll. Marianne had dull brown and blonde highlights through her shoulder-length hair and dressed like one of those hippy art school teachers.
We did the usual small talk for a good hour or so and got to know our new neighbours pretty well, we didn’t mean to spend most of the time only talking to Andrew and Marianne but I guess we just got along pretty well which was nice.
It grew fairly cold by the time we had finished our lunch and uninteresting conversations and I decided it was time for everyone to go home, I needed to take my medication and didn’t want everyone around to see what I was taking so Harry and I said goodbye to everyone over the course of the next half an hour and ended the night watching movies.
A week later I ran into Marianne on her morning walk when I was out grabbing the letters from my mailbox.
“Kat! Hey, would you like to come over for dinner this evening?” she yelled as she made her way towards me from across the street.
“Uh, yeah sure. Would you like me to bring anything?” I said.
“A big bottle of wine if you have one!” she laughed.
“No I am joking, just bring yourselves! Say, what? 8 tonight?” she continued.
“Okay sure, we’ll see you then. I really must be going I have a lot to do, we’ll see you later.”
I replied trying to be dull. I wouldn’t mind having new friends in this new town but I rarely ever had the energy to do things like this. It makes me sound lazy I know but socialising was not something I really enjoyed doing all too frequently.
We arrived at 8 o’clock on the dot with bottles of wine in hand and made small talk for a short while, we poured ourselves some wine and the lads opened a few cans of beer. Marianne perked up almost immediately as we sat down.
“Oh before we settle down, we should give you a quick house tour! At least then you will know where the bathroom is. I think you two will appreciate our vintage décor, we have already begun renovating one of the bedrooms and the guest bathroom so you will have to excuse the mess.” she said.
We walked around the dimly lit house which almost reminded me of my grandparents place in Australia. Beautiful wooden picture frames which looked like they could have come from a palace were hung perfectly on the wall, all with photos of different people who I assumed were their family members.
“You guys have a lot of family don’t you?” I said.
Andrew glanced at me quickly and nodded. “Yes. They’re mostly my family, my great-grandparents had many children.” He held strong eye-contact with me for a short while which was a little discomforting and simply replied with “Oh. Wow.” and continued to follow Marianne down to the next room, which was Andrews “Man-Cave”.
Harry had been begging me to let him use one of our guest rooms for a “Man-Cave” of his own and it wasn’t like I ever said no, we just never got around to doing it so I knew he would get some motivation behind him to start the decorating. As soon as we entered the room we noticed it was just filled with a tonne of random shit.
Medals, Trophies, Paintings, Gaming Consoles dating back to the 80’s, a large old mahogany wooden desk and more books than any one person could read in their lifetimes stacked in a bookshelf against 2 out of the 4 walls of the room. Andrew had his own little library in there and being an author, this really peaked my interest.
“Why do you have all of this stuff?” I asked out of curiosity.
“I like knick-knacks. I visit Pawn Shops and Charity Shops frequently and just pick up things that I like. I am not a hoarder but I would say almost borderline.” He laughed.
“Wow, so many cool things in here.” I said, picking up a gleaming gold medal displayed on the wall with the words
1st Place - Sean Smith - 800m Sprint
Huh. Sean Smith? That is an extremely common name but what a coincidence.
“Hey, Andrew? Is this one of your family members medals?” I said with a little bubble in my throat.
“No, it’s actually one of my nephews. I don’t speak to my sister anymore but that belonged to her son. I kept it for the memory of him because I know I will probably never see him again.” He replied.
“Oh dear! Our dinner is getting cold!” Marianne jumped in, startling all of us.
“Let’s go eat, we can continue the tour afterwards.” She smiled and ushered us to the dining room.
We sat and ate the lukewarm meal and carried on our conversations about work, family, travel and Andrew’s collection of belongings. I gulped down a glass of wine or two and looked up at the clock.
“My my, I didn’t realise the time! We have to head off to bed darling, we have to get up bright and early in the morning!” I said. We thanked Marianne for the “delicious meal”, said our goodbyes in quite a hurry and left. When the front door closed behind us, Harry looked at me with a concerned look on his face.
“You good? You look a little unwell.” He said.
“I’m fine, I just thought I recognised the medal in Andrew’s hoarder room.. I swear I saw something similar in a news article a few months back but I am sure I am making connections that aren’t actually there. I will probably Google it when we get in the house just to calm my mind but as I said. I am sure it’s nothing.” I replied.
Harry just looked at me with a blank stare on his face.
“Well, Sean Smith is an extremely common name.. I guess you do what you want but I think you’re right, you’re just making connections to things that aren’t actually there.” He said as we walked through the door, I immediately pulled out my laptop from a drawer on the loungeroom, sat down on the sofa and googled anything I could that could give me a sign that my gut feeling was right.
Sean Smith Missing Boy LA
School Boy Taken From School Sports Day Event
I had a hit.
Sean Smith Missing Boy from Los Angeles, California - 2015
A south LA school has issued a safety warning after a nine-year-old boy went missing from school property at 2pm on Wednesday afternoon.
In an email sent to parents, the headteacher Gary Dartmoor said the child “was taken from the outskirts of the school property during the annual Sports Day event.”
He added: “The boy was last seen at the back-gate entrance of the school, walking with a man along a side-road. We have no description of the man or the car as yet.”
Schools nearby were already on alert after a separate incident outside a nearby Primary School last Friday where a pupil was grabbed by a man wearing a balaclava.
My stomach dropped.
-–
That evening, Andrew lay awake staring at the ceiling.
I knew, he knew that I knew.
He could tell just by looking at me and Marianne sensed something was off as soon as I picked up that medal.. the way Andrew held himself for the rest of the evening wasn’t like him at all according to Marianne who had spoken to Andrew about it when Harry and I left.
Andrew just told Marianne that the cold food made him feel a little unwell and that he would be spending the rest of the evening alone to prepare for the next day at work. Marianne didn’t really question it but when she brought it up to me in our last conversation, I immediately caught wind of what was happening.
Andrew made his way down to the office where he locked his door and went quiet for a while. When he came out he was holding the medal I had picked up earlier that evening and tucked it into his trouser pocket, Marianne didn’t think anything of it but part of me thought she knew, she must have known.
“Andy what are you doing?” she said
“Cleaning. When Kat and Harry were over I realised how much shit I had and when it comes to the renovations It will be far too difficult to pack up and then put back on display so I am going to get rid of it. I need more room for my work stuff anyway.” He replied.
Marianne nodded and watched Andrew fetch a couple medium sized cardboard boxes from one of the rooms down the hall and shut himself in the room again. This was obviously out of the ordinary for Andrew because Marianne came over to my house the next evening with a bottle of red and told me all about it.. I was running out of time already.
-–
A few days passed and I didn’t hear from either Andrew or Marianne so I just assumed that they were far too busy. I mean, I didn’t really want to see Andrew anyway as now I had some uneasy sense of impending doom whenever I heard his name mentioned but at the same time I wanted to know more, I needed to know if it really was him and if he was related to the crime.. if all of the “knick-knacks” he had were trophies he collected of victims or if he really just collected random shit from Pawn Shops.
I considered calling the police many times over the course of those few days but I felt like I needed more proof. I had to get into the house.
I watched Marianne and Andrew come and go from their house, learning their daily routine. If I was going to do this, I didn’t want to be caught.. especially by someone who could have been a potential murderer. By the time a week had passed, I came to the conclusion it was time. I heard from our other neighbours that Marianne was getting on a plane to go on a work trip this afternoon so I didn’t have to worry about her..
I stepped out my front door and peered over to their house. No car in the driveway.. Andrew’s schedule is always the same. I thought I would take advantage of the time as Andrew wasn’t due back home for another two hours..
I made my way over to their house and went around the back, cracking open a window I noticed was open which led straight into one of their bathrooms.
As I crept through the house and made my way to Andrew’s creepy room of shite when I noticed it was practically empty. Fuck. There’s nothing I can do now. He got rid of all of his little trinkets and now I have literally nothing to connect him to Sean Smith.
I let out a soft sigh and turned around to leave. Andrew stood tall over me, or at least.. It looked like Andrew. Something was off about him though, the same eyes and charming face but the way he looked at me was different, his eyes glazed over as if he was staring right through me.
I stood frozen for a split second, glancing up at the vile uneven smile smeared across his face.
I screamed and I pushed right past him, running as fast as my legs would carry me, throwing myself back through the open window that I came through onto the ground. I stood up and ran back around to the front of the house where Andrews car sat in the driveway.
“Hey Kat.. What are you doing here? What’s wrong?” He said, noticing I was panting and clearly disturbed.
“N-Nothing. I thought I saw someone in your house and went to check through the windows. Couldn’t see anything though.” I replied, not making eye contact.
“Ah. You must have met my twin brother. Not to worry, he is a little strange but I assure you. He is harmless.” He let out a nervous laugh.
“Come inside, I am sure he’d love to meet you.” He continued with an unnerving smile across his face.
Andrew turned the handle to his front door and gestured for me to go inside.
“Please, ladies first.” He grinned.