Man of the Year (Drake Story)

Chapter Tyve

She was alone.

By herself, standing in the rain that had just begun. He hair was different, now. It was fake; not the brown soft curls she used to have. Now she wore straight, black jaw-length hair that seemed to be a wig. She smiled at me, and I can comfortably say that her smile was one of the most frightening, repulsive things I’d ever laid eyes on. Belphoebe still looked dead. She was supposed to be. She wasn’t here. I was hallucinating.

I closed the door in her face.

I stumbled away from it, down the hallway and toward the guest room. There was an itch on my chest, like something was chasing me, about to catch me. I couldn’t run. My feet kept tripping over each other in an effort to walk fast but slow down. I kept blinking. Nothing went away. The house, the itch - it was all still there.

“Aubrey, is everything okay?” Keziah called from the room. She was still trying on clothes. I didn’t answer her. “Who was at the door?”

I stood in the doorway, waiting for her to look away from the mirror and up at me. In a few seconds, she did. There might have been something on my face, some kind of traumatized characteristic that made her gasp, even jump back a little.

“What is it?” She approached me slowly. “What happened?”

“She’s at the door,” The words slipped through my lips when I wasn’t sure I wanted to release them. “Belphoebe.”

Keziah stared at me for a while. Her eyes searched through mine, looking for answers to the questions I’d probably created in her brain. For a moment, with how alarmed and confused she looked, I thought she was going to believe me. I thought that she was going to understand that there was no way I could make something like this up, that the stress I was clearly under would seal the deal. But she laughed. Right in my face, she burst into laughter, like I’d just told the joke of the century.

“Baby,” She kissed my lips, “you’re drunk. Stop talking about her. Her name makes me uncomfortable. Come help me figure out which pair of underwear I should wear tonight.” She winked at me. I was going to join her, to play along with the solution she’d just proposed and really believe that I was just a drunken, confused idiot and should watch my girlfriend try on underwear for me. But it came again, the ring at the door. This time it was followed by a knock, a real knock, something a dead girl couldn’t do.

I was not that drunk.

I raced out of the bedroom and to the door. Keziah slammed the bedroom door behind me, as if to hide herself from Belphoebe. She believed me now. This was real. It was happening. Madeleine prayed that her presence would always be with us, but I know she didn’t mean this way. Not with me.

I opened the door.

“It’s very rude to slam doors in people’s faces,” She said. “Though I’m sure with how sturdy and heavy this one is, it sure is a pleasure. It creates quite the effect on both ends, I suppose.”

She walked past me and into the house, into my house. I could only watch her. I didn’t remember myself touching the door or pushing it closed, but when I looked it was. Belphoebe took off her tall rain boots and sat on the couch, examining the first floor the way an inspector would study a restaurant kitchen. I felt my heart begin to beat in a way it never had. It wasn’t just fast, but it was growing larger in my chest, rising higher and higher until it would crawl into my throat and pop in my head.

“This is a very nice home,” She said. “What style is this, Gothic Revival?”

“Belphoebe,” It was all I could manage to say.

“No, not Gothic Revival. I can’t remember what they call these.”

“Belphoebe.”

“It isn’t Georgian, I don’t think so.”