Dark Enchantment ☽ The Abridged Edition

☽ Mystery Man ☾ Part 2 ✩

I pulled up outside my small, two bedroom house just outside of town and sat in my car, unsure of what I was waiting for. My fingers gripped the steering wheel as I lost myself to my thoughts, the only thing catching my attention was the glint of the moonlight off the wine bottle I'd stashed on the passenger side seat.

Meeting Adrian had been strange. Come to think of it, I didn't know anything about him other than a first name, and where he lived. I had no way to contact him, to thank him for the wine - fuck. I should've asked if he wanted to share it with me.

Why did I always think of the thing to say after it was too late?

No matter, I thought to myself as I opened the car door and slid out into the night. Rain had started drizzling from the sky not five minutes before I pulled up, and part of me was hopeful it would have ended in time for me to walk inside without getting wet. No such luck.

I hurried from my car to my front door, wine bottle firmly in my left hand, and keys in my right. As I pushed through the door, a large gale forced it back shut behind me, sending a rattle through the bones of my old house. I pressed my hand against the support beam in the hallway, almost as if to soothe it, before proceeding into the lounge.

"Just gotta do it all again tomorrow," I said to myself. With the wine on the small coffee table in the center of the room, I made my way into the kitchen to grab a glass, and then returned to the lounge, letting myself relax on the sofa.

My coffee table was a mess. A tarot deck, with four cards placed in front of it, took over the majority of the left side, with a handful of pendulums and crystals around it. Did I really believe in all that stuff? Maybe. Some days I found myself consulting my tarot cards, and others I found myself thinking it was pathetic. Thinking that none of it was true. But it comforted me when I needed it, so I allowed myself the small pleasure of believing, even if not all of the time. The right side was taken up with books of assorted genres and sizes. I'd recently developed the horrible habit of not putting my books away when I was done with reading - namely because I'd struggled to finish anything recently. I found myself agitated, stressed, worrying too much about things I didn't need to worry about.

I grabbed the wine and poured myself a drink, slumped back into the thick cushions of the sofa. My eyelids dropped and my thoughts, as if I had no control over them whatsoever, drifted onto Ravenswood itself. A nice enough town for anyone to settle into, but the strangeness of my meeting with Adrian had me somewhat concerned. I tried forcing those thoughts to the back of my mind, trying to ignore them to the best of my ability — but I couldn't. I couldn't quite shake the coldness I'd felt when I met him for the first time. Gut instinct was something I'd been a big believer in trusting, but last night, seeing him battered and bruised in my alleyway, I wasn't immediately put off. The coldness was softened by a genuine need, and then softened once more by a small act of kindness.

The taste of wine lingered against my tongue for a brief moment after I swallowed it down, enjoying Adrian's gift. He'd given me no reason to distrust him, and if anything, he'd seemed more reserved than even I. He hadn't forced himself on me, hadn't expected anything at all. He didn't coerce his way into my store, nor had he stolen anything from me - but it was strange how he appeared, bloody and bruised, asking for nothing but entry.

A friend of mine, Tilly, might have known something more about him. Perhaps I needed to give her a call and arrange for a meet up, either at the store or the local library where she worked. Tilly was a good woman, and she knew almost everything that there was to know. Much like me, she found pride in knowing about Ravenswood, knowing about it's rich history - but unlike me, she enjoyed learning more about the current people who lived there. Perhaps she'd heard something about the sale of the old house — and perhaps she could sate my curiosity as to who this presumably wealthy stranger was.

Either way, I distracted myself with some mid-tier show on Netflix and swore to myself for the rest of the evening, I'd stop thinking about Adrian - he was a stranger to me, he didn't need to invade my thoughts entirely.