Part 1 || 3 | Judy
A Tale of a Bookworm
After talking with Grace Ransom on Screen Chat in her bedroom, Judy “Late Bird” Windermere went downstairs, fixed herself a steaming bowl of ramen for dinner, ate it, and chased it down with orange juice. She then went back upstairs, changed into her pajamas, and came downstairs again to spend the rest of her evening reading. On this particular evening, after talking with her friend about their crazy slumber party at Franklin’s house over the summer and her own crazy dreams later that summer, she ventured through the kitchen past the dining area into the family room and turned on a floor lamp next to the sofa, splashing a line of bookcases in a warm glow along the wall, where a TV and stereo set would’ve been in any other household. Those bookcases, filled with rows of books, beckoned her with a familiar tug in her chest, asking her to partake of more thrilling adventures from the classic mystery and detective section of her house.
And so, with orange juice still tangy in her mouth, she scanned a row of spines below the level of her bosom, looking for something pulpy to read from Sax Rohmer, one of her favorite authors. She pulled out Rohmer’s The Green Eyes of Bâst and cracked it open to the first page, then took it with her to the sofa next to the floor lamp.
She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and began reading the first chapter. In it, Jack Addison led a constable to a certain Red House to enter and lock the doors, before going back to his bungalow and seeing a shadowy figure tailing him to his abode. And in the last lugubrious paragraphs of that chapter, after Jack entered his house and peered out the window into the garden just as the light of the moonlight faded into darkness, he turned to light the lamp on his desk . . .
“. . . during such a dark spell and at the very moment,” she read under her breath, “that I turned aside to light the lamp that I saw the eyes.”
She looked up from the page and stared at the closed blinds of the sliding glass doors obscuring the patio outside. She slid a bookmark between the pages and put the book on the sofa, got off the couch and stalked towards the blinds obscuring the glass sliding doors, then reached out her hand to pull a blind aside and peaked into the lighted patio beyond.
No pair of eyes glared back at her, but she caught the scent of cherry blossoms and peach blossoms lingering there.
So she let go of the blind and headed back to the sofa, where she had left The Green Eyes of Bâst in the glow of the floor lamp, and paused for a moment.
Judy’s mind was turning now, turning over a set of mental associations gleaned from watching horror and supernatural anime and listening to creepypasta readings on MeTube and reading a certain book that Judy suspected was tainted with influences of the eldritch variety.
Instead of sitting back down, Judy passed the dining area and kitchen and headed into a living room with just one window next to the entrance door. From that entrance door, bookcases lined the walls up to the edge of the hallway, where a china cabinet would’ve been in any other house. She stalked towards one corner of the living room, running her finger along the spines of gothic titles, and pulled out Bram Stoker’s Dracula and returned to her place on the sofa in the family room.
Of Stoker’s Dracula, Judy read through the fourth chapter, till she reached the part where Jonathan Harker grabbed a shovel in the chamber housing Dracula’s coffin and . . .
“. . . lifting it high,” she read under her breath, “struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face. But as I did so the head turned, and the eyes fell full upon me, with all their blaze of basilisk horror,” and she looked up at the blinds obscuring the view of the patio outside.
Judy gulped down her qualms, stalked past the dining area and kitchen, and headed towards another corner of the living room. There she crouched at the corner of two bookshelves near the bottom row, pulled out a big omnibus of H. P. Lovecraft’s Collected Stories, and returned to her place on the sofa again, thumbing through the pages for the table of contents and scanning down the list of titles.
Of Lovecraft’s Collected Stories, Judy thought about what had gotten her thinking along the lines of a pair of eyes looking in on her through the slits of the blinds obscuring the patio. After finding the title, she turned to “The Haunter of the Dark” and read about Robert Blake’s investigation of weird disappearances of several congregation members in the 1800s. Yet as she read on through the verbose prose of Lovecraft’s story, she couldn’t help pausing on a description of yet another pair of eyes from the now-deceased Robert Blake:
“The rigid body sat bolt upright at the desk by the window,” she read under her breath, “and when the intruders saw the glassy, bulging eyes . . .”
She paused and twirled a stray lock of brown hair around her finger, thinking about the correspondence of three separate stories with the same motif of a pair of eyes in each. In this way, Judy kept spinning countless possibilities in her head, till her eyelids grew heavy, and her body slumped into the pillowy cushions of the couch, and her mind drifted off to the land of Nod.
A Tale of a Dreamer
Tonight’s land of Nod smelled like cherry blossoms and peach blossoms for some reason. So when Judy opened her eyes, she found herself in a recurring dream, sitting curbside beneath the awning of a cake shop. It was a dreamscape from the month of June, a time when summer nights were warm and sultry, a time when other couples were eating cake and flirting with each other. A few guys passing by asked her if she was free, but Judy shooed them off, saying that she was waiting for someone. A few of the stubborn ones pestered her, but one demonic glare through the glint of her glasses scared them off. She then waited with her foot fidgeting over her crossed ankles, waiting for an answer from someone who had yet to come, waiting with the drumbeats of her heart accompanying her.
When a waitress came up for her order, Judy ordered a slice of cheesecake with a cherry on top for herself and a chocolate fudge cake for her friend, and when asked what drinks she wanted, she ordered ginger ale for herself and cherry soda for her friend. When the waitress left, she sat back in her chair and watched the scenery around her, keeping an eye out for any sign for her date.
Judy felt self-conscious at all the guys wooing their girlfriends around her, talking about this and that about themselves, listening to their girlfriends talk on and on about their interests, all that lovey-dovey stuff. As far as she knew, Judy was an ungainly swan in a pond full of mallards, so she drowned out the steady hum of endless quacking with thoughts on Grace Ransom’s answer to an overwhelming question.
She remembered that day in vivid detail when she let her friend know her true feelings. She recalled the overcast sky on the way back from school, the way Grace’s dark hair seemed to bounce over her shoulder blades as she walked, the way her heart hammered in her chest like an anvil when she said, ’Will you go out with me?’
‘Haven’t we already gone out?’ Grace said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, will you go out with me?’
And she remembered Grace stopping her tracks for a moment, then gaping at her with wide eyes.
So Judy stopped and looked at her, waiting for her answer.
‘Please tell me you’re joking,’ Grace said.
‘I’m not,’ Judy said.
Which left Grace silent for excruciating seconds, till she walked on and said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Please,’ Judy said, catching up to her best friend in the whole wide world. ‘I really like you.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said again.
’Is it Franklin?’ Judy said. ‘Are you into him?’
But Grace remained silent for a time, walking on without giving her a straight answer, and said, ‘Give me some time. I’ll let you know once I clear my head,’ and she walked on without saying another word to her, till they parted on their way to their homes in different cul-de-sacs.
That was two days ago, and this morning, Judy had received a text message from her friend asking her to meet her at the local cake shop, The Cake Fairy, without giving her the time. Judy had texted Grace back what time she wanted, but Grace never texted her back. So here Judy was, waiting for Grace to show up and hoping against hope that she wasn’t trying to stand her up. And here Judy waited and waited and waited. She waited after the waitress placed her orders on the table.
“Is everything all right, miss?” the waitress said.
“I’m fine,” Judy said.
“I’m sure your friend will arrive soon.”
But Judy said nothing, just waited as she ate her cheesecake and drank her ginger ale.
Yet in her head, Judy was going a million miles a minute wondering what on earth happened to her friend. Maybe something popped up, so Judy checked her smartphone for any texts from Grace, but there was no text. She then called her friend, but her call went to voice message. So she texted Grace, saying that she was waiting for her at a table by the curb of the cake shop, adding that her chocolate cake was waiting for her, but her text went unanswered. She waited in agony amidst the chitchat of other couples, waiting for Grace to show up, wondering if her continued absence was her way of breaking it to her without doing it in person, and tears started trailing her cheeks at the thought of it. Yet still she waited, waiting till Grace’s cake seemed to beckon her to taste it like an uneaten wedding cake, a cake with her friend’s name on it, waiting for Judy to eat it, waiting for her to admit defeat.
So Judy texted Grace back with a message that read,
Judy: I’m sorry.
Then she proceeded to eat Grace’s cake all by her lonesome, crying as she ate it, then washed it down with Grace’s cherry soda. And in her mind, she imagined the imprint of Grace’s lips on the rim of the glass she drank from, imagining the taste of cherry soda on her lips in a kiss that would never come true.
“I fucked up,” Judy said, gritting her teeth, squinting the image of Grace Ransom out of her thoughts. “Damn it, damn it, damn it, . . .”
She went on cursing, turning people’s heads her way, garnering looks of confusion and annoyance from the couples around her, and becoming the spectacle of the spectators, including one customer manifesting at Judy’s table that was not Grace Ransom. Yet Judy was unaware of her strange companion, for her mind began churning up faces contorted into evil grimaces and leers, their voices merging into a chorus of jeers and whispers about Judy ‘Late Bird’ Windermere barking up the wrong tree, playing the wrong part, getting her kicks in another girl’s bed, being a weirdo, etc.
Through it all, she kept saying, “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” saying it like a mantra.
So the waitress approached her table again, saying, “Are you all right, miss?”
Yet Judy couldn't hear her words, but was only repeating her mantra, chasing away the evil chorus of whispers in her mind, when someone growled and said, “Stand aside,” which scared the waitress into apologizing and running off.
Yet Judy still remained unaware of her strange companion, till something spoken stopped her ‘damn it’ mantra. So she looked up and saw a pair of red eyes from across the table, before she fell back through a falling dream, falling down a rabbit hole and coming to rest on something soft, where she found herself breathing hard beneath the sheets of her bed.
