Something Missing - ONC 2024

Chapter 12 - Second Victim

From the glass door of the conservatory, Timothy stood and watched Wayne turning the round object over and over in his hands. He closed the curtains, turned the light off and walked to a box in the corner. Bending down on his creaking legs, he retrieved a pair of night vision binoculars. He peered out between the curtains. What was Wayne doing? What was he holding?

That couldn’t be it.

It couldn’t be.

Could it?

Panic filled him, then dissipated as he focused on the object Wayne was holding, the plug, the wire.

Just a broken lamp.

Timothy sighed in relief.

He and Helena had nothing to worry about. He shut the curtains and replaced the binoculars back in their box. His heart rate subsided as he crept up the stairs.

But then the sense of background dread came back.

‘What is it, Timothy?’ Helena said as he entered the room.

‘It’s Wayne, he’s just stood out there looking at a bit of rubbish,’ Timothy said, the memory of the round object burned into his brain – transformed into something else, the other thing. ‘I thought it was – I thought it was – something else.’

‘Oh, Timmy, darling,’ Helena said, placing the paperback she was reading down on its back. A note of irritation sounded in her voice. ‘You’ve got to stop this – this paranoia of yours.’

‘He looked at me strangely,’ Timothy said, paying way too much attention to a siren in the distance. ‘He knows something, Helena.’

‘You’ve seen him, smelt his marijuana out in the garden often enough. The guy’s a loser, and definitely a druggie,’ Helena said dismissively. She placed a hand on Timothy’s back that felt more like control than intimacy and failed to calm his rising panic. ‘He doesn’t know anything. And if he does, he’s not exactly going to go to the police with it, is he?’

Timothy nodded, his mind filled with thoughts he usually did a bloody good job of keeping at bay. In his mind, the lampshade Wayne was holding had transformed into a skull.

‘No. I suppose not.’      

****

‘Ugh. What time is it?’ Rita moaned as she stretched her legs stiffly in the hotel bed. Her head throbbed even though she had not been drinking the previous night.

‘About 12,’ Alfonso said. ‘What time did you get back? I didn’t hear you come in. I was completely out of it.’  

‘Just after 1:30. Yeah, you needed it,’ Rita said, gulping a glass of water from the side of the bed and then putting her arms around him. ‘Yesterday was a really long day for both of us.’ She downed the rest of the water; the previous night’s conversation at Federico’s house came back to her. The heaviness in her stomach returned.

‘How’s Matteo?’ she said, thinking of the confession he had made last night, the way he had sobbed on the carpet and his dad’s enraged reaction. The anxiety that had been at the back of her mind before Subeera’s revelations seemed to put all that in the shade. 

‘Uh, he seemed slightly better by the time I left. But he started talking on and on about the bible. He asked me to church with him. I mean – I’ve always been an atheist, I don’t get on with religion. I told him that. He got angry. Insisted this church was different.’ Alfonso took a deep breath. ‘He said this church told him they could cure his obsession with Erica.’

‘A church shouldn’t be promising that.’ Rita squeezed his hand, the uneasy feeling rising in her again. ‘That sounds dodgy. Someone should check that place out. But it doesn't have to be you.'