Blue Murder Stories

See You Soon

It's been a long time hasn't it
Don't worry if you've been missing me
See you soon

Isabel looked at the message a few moments more, but all it did was twist deeper in her stomach. She put the phone down and walked away from it, circling her house and listening to its silence.

Outside the sun was setting across the broad, out-grown lawn in warming dusk light. The house was perched far enough in the lone backwoods of the estate land that she couldn't see anyone from her windows at all—no neighbours in the distance or lone figures stalking the grounds.

She wasn't afraid of solitude. Only of vacancy. The house out where it was didn't seclude her—or at least it hadn't in the year since Caleb had last lived there.

When she came back from the window, Caleb's message was still bright on her phone. It had come after the brief power outage that afternoon which only lasted about ten minutes. When the power and the wi-fi returned, there it was bright on her screen. He hadn't sent anything else.

Isabel took a breath and read it again. See you soon. It was right there on her screen and still she had hardly a clue what it could really mean, other than what it said.

Suddenly she felt she didn't want to be alone. The sun was still setting, the light darkening. She knew it was useless to try calling the police and didn't. When she did pick up the phone again it was Maddie she sent a message to, asking if she could possibly come see her that night, telling her she didn't want to be alone for the moment. She'd say why if she came.

The day died slowly outside. The crickets began to ring in the trees. Isabel sat by the back window as they did, the latches and the doors locked just in case. There was a fat dragonfly caught thrashing its wings in the upper windowpane, and Isabel remembered suddenly a useless fact about dragonflies, about how they're supposedly the most successful predatory animals on Earth or something like that. That their kill rate is ninety-seven percent, higher than all other apex predators. That they fly into webs and pretend to be trapped just to ambush and eat spiders.

She couldn't remember where she heard that fact. Maybe Caleb had told her.

It was dark when Maddie came to the front door. They sat in the kitchen and Isabel showed her Caleb's single message.

'That's...fucked up,' Maddie said finally.

Isabel had to agree. 'There was a blackout for about ten minutes this afternoon,' she said, her throat dry but trying to keep her voice steadied of nerves. 'After the signal came back, the message was right there.'

'So, what, he means he's coming here?'

'I don't know,' Isabel said simply, in quiet breath. She shook her head. 'I mean, if he wants to scare me, he'd do it today.'

'Why?'

'The last time I saw him was a year ago.'

Maddie almost laughed. 'It's dramatic, I'll give him that, the fucker. You seriously haven't heard a single thing from him after you broke up with him?'

Isabel shook her head. She'd already told Maddie that, and she knew Maddie knew, but admired her friendly hopefulness anyway.

'I'm going to call the police,' Maddie said.

Isabel shook his head again. 'No. It's useless. It's not a threat. It's just a scary message. The police wouldn't say an abusive ex would wait an entire year just to start stalking someone.'

'Well, you're not just going to board yourself up here and wait for him to do something. I know what he'd do. You know what he did to you.'

They paused.