The Others by Sarah Blau (best ereader for academics TXT) 📗

you were bound with ropes, walked to the nearest river and tossed in.

If you somehow managed not to drown, well then, you’re a witch destined to burn at the stake. But if you sank like a stone? It’s a shame, of course, but at least it proves you’re not guilty.

And what about you, Sheila, guilty or innocent?

I stay up all night, my phone burning in my hand like a lump of coal. I study the painting from every angle, this presumably being the first contact the killer has made with me, and I feel like I’m whispering an old incantation. The painting is threatening and mocking me at the same time, it was sent to remind me of something, something from ages ago… but what?

I mull over the entire chain of events, picking it apart from the moment it all began, from the moment Dina was murdered and things started spiralling. But was Dina’s murder really the beginning? Think, woman! Was it ground zero? Is it possible that this thing started long before that? Maybe, say, when four young women met on the grassy mound behind the campus cafeteria, long, long ago?

Hercule Poirot always said you have to look for the starting point – there’s one moment when it all began, and once you identify it, you’re halfway there. That’s all very nice, Hercule, but what is that moment?

Deep down, you already know.

The drowned witch is flashing me her eternal, submerged smile, and something flickers and flutters at the edge of my consciousness, a niggling memory, fighting to reach the surface. It has something to do with Dina, I know it, something that was said, or wasn’t said, during that last visit. That something is right there, waiting, lurking.

Go back to the starting point, the moment it all began, Poirot’s words echo in my mind all night. He never had kids, nor did Miss Marple; their lives were more than full without them. Maybe that’s the reason they became detectives, not to leave your own traces, but to track the traces left by someone else.

I’m sitting in my living room, staring at the painting, the dead witch silently staring back at me as the minutes turn into hours.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

Micha’s reaction comes as a surprise, and not a pleasant one.

Oh, come on, when has he ever pleasantly surprised you? It’s been a few days since we last met, a few days in which he hasn’t contacted me, and the look he gives me when I show him the picture is the condescending amusement of a man who was waiting for this moment, a look that says, I knew she’d find some cockamamie excuse to see me again, this is the best she could come up with?

He asks a bunch of questions with that half-mocking gaze and offhanded tone, and slowly but surely it sinks in: no, he doesn’t believe me.

“You’re acting as if I sent that photo to myself.” I can’t hold back.

“I didn’t say that.”

You don’t need to, your tone is doing it for you.

“So why aren’t you rushing to find out who sent it?”

“It’s not that simple. We’d need to get a court order for the phone company, and then have people assigned to it, and our security department is pretty much two cops. You see, this isn’t high up on the priority list, so it’ll take them time to—”

“Then explain to them how urgent this is, and they’ll make it a priority.”

He keeps his eyes on his phone while I’m talking, inert but for his thumb sliding across the screen, a model of indifference. I’m trying to understand what caused this shift, we were so intimate, we were almost… flashes of me sitting on the toilet, dripping red, float before me; for an hour and a half I was almost… we were almost… maybe in some subconscious way he sensed the threat and his instincts screamed, run, man, run!

Sitting on the edge of the couch with his gaze still on his phone, he doesn’t bother to hide his boredom.

I look down at my own phone and see the drowned witch looking back at me with a sympathetic smile, and I wonder why I’m not afraid of her, wasn’t afraid of her even for a moment, when this picture is supposed to be an explicit threat.

No threats, girlfriend, I’m your sister-in-arms! Now get this man on your couch off his arse.

I nip into the kitchen and return with a meat cleaver. Unused, it’s spotless and shiny. For a moment his eyes grow wide with panic, and that moment is all I needed. He doesn’t trust me, never did.

“I want you to teach me how to defend myself in case the murderer shows up here,” I say, trying to imbue my voice with genuine distress.

“Sheila, you don’t actually think someone’s going to show up.” Again with that dismissive tone of his.

“You piece of shit,” my voice nearly booms, “what gives you the right to be so blasé about this?”

What gives you the right to be so blasé about me?

He gets up, lunges at me and snatches the knife with zero effort, just plucks it from my fingers like a ripe piece of fruit. Turns out whatever sexual power he had over me is still there, but that’s all he has.

“You shouldn’t play with knives,” he says, “because if someone does come after you, he’ll just use it against you.”

“Then teach me how to use it.”

“There’s not much to teach,” he replies.

“Don’t you remember how in Face/Off, John Travolta teaches his daughter how to stab her boyfriend in the thigh and twist the knife so the wound won’t close?” Almost involuntarily, I recall our first conversation with all the flirty banter, and for a moment I think I can see a tiny sparkle in his eyes; but it’s just my imagination, because the next thing I know he’s glancing at his watch and “suddenly remembers” he has to go. Obviously, he’ll update me about any new