Scareship_Issue8

stands behind her. He means her no harm, but is gone whenever
she turns.
The next afternoon, the police call her in again. She waits
alone in a room with frosted glass, watching silhouettes glide past
and listening to a distant angry voice. She waits for fear to come,
but she is too exhausted. If Detective Morris brought Tommy in
now, she’d probably punch him hard in his stomach. But she
knows that she would be relieved to hear anything, even that he
was dead. She would be sad then, but the burden would be gone.
It’s the uncertainty that grinds at her. That’s beginning to bother
her more than his nightmarish disappearing act.
Detective Morris comes into the room and asks her to come
with him. “We want you to look at some video footage.” She nods
and walks after him down the hall and into a darkened room with
two other men, detectives she assumes. She sits and the TV comes
on, and the film is of the bar.
She jumps when Tommy appears out of nowhere as she turns
with the drinks. A moment there, on film, the grainy imprecision of
a security camera—and he’s gone.
“It’s a glitch on the film,” one of the policemen says. “That’s
all we can figure.”
The other one coughs. “Yeah, it’s strange. None of the other
people are affected by the glitch. We don’t know what that
means.”
“We were hoping,” Detective Morris says, “that the film might
jog your memory, bring back some additional detail.”
She shakes her head. “No.” It’s worse on film that it was in the
bar that night, more disturbing. “He’s not there, he’s there, he’s not
there. How does that happen? And how can it be the film?”
“It’s unsettling, I know,” Morris says. “It’s disturbing to us,
believe me. But what else can it be?”
Cheri is in tears. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
102