The Psychic Next Door

[First Draft] Chapter 9: Curse

The realization that my psychic neighbour and Polly's sister's ex-boyfriend were the same person changed everything. It felt like we had all the answers in the world, but no idea what they meant. It was giant puzzle was spread out before us, yet we were missing the picture to use as a guide and didn't know where to even begin putting the pieces together.

It couldn't be coincidence that both her sister and I were attacked after interacting with him-Luc. He was the only connection we had in common. He must have something to do with this... but just how much?

Polly was convinced that everything that had happened-her sister's death and my attacks-were entirely his fault. But even faced with the staggering evidence, I was hesitant to condemn him. I mean, I wasn't convinced that Luc was a good person, but nor was I sure that he wasn't. If Polly's theory was correct, and he was the one who was after me, what exactly was his motivation? Polly's sister had at least shared an intense relationship with him. I had only been in limited contact with him! So why would he choose to attack me? What had I done to offend him?

But I couldn't think of anything else it could be.

Luc was the only person who was even remotely supernatural that I had been in contact with-that I knew of, at least-and it was true: the strange occurrences started right after my first interaction with him. After all, it wasn't like I had a ton of enemies... I couldn't think of one person who would hate me enough to want me dead. Well, I wasn't exactly on good terms with my ex, but he wasn't exactly the murderous type or one to dabble in stuff like magic. That, and the moron couldn't even finish reading The Hobbit; there was no way he could follow the complex instructions I assumed magic of this level required.

So the evidence of Luc's guilt was piling up. I desperately wanted to talk to him, to interrogate him, to find out what his involvement truly was... but we couldn't find him. Not a single trace. It was like he disappeared.

He didn't return to his apartment that day, or the next day, or the day after that-we know this because we even spent a few days parked out in front of my apartment building, on a stake out, waiting to pounce if he showed up.

But he never did. And he didn't answer his door when we approached it or his phone (the number painted on the window below the neon sign) when we called. He had truly vanished.

All I could figure was that he went somewhere else to lay low. I didn't understand why he felt the need to do so, or why he looked so horrified to see us standing there on the doorstep that day-aside from the fact that Polly all but tore his face off. But it was the way he looked before she confronted him that disturbed me; like we were ghosts.

When I shared my theory with Polly, she-of course-wrote off his behaviour to guilt. But I just couldn't bring myself to be convinced. I couldn't help but feel like I was missing something, something obvious. I needed to confront him, to interrogate him; I had become obsessed.

But Polly just wanted to kill him, as she thought that his death would solve it. Like it would be that simple.

However, after several days of being unable to contact him, unable to discuss it with him, we were backed into a corner. We had no other information to go on, and Luc still looked like the likeliest suspect. Polly had become ansty, and I more so. The threat of the thing-the Beast, as we now referred to it-seemed to hang over us like an impending storm... a storm that wouldn't start, that just filled the air with its sickening electricity, with no sign of an end.

So that was it. We weren't quite sure if he was definitely the one behind it, but we couldn't sit around and do nothing for any longer. I decided it couldn't hurt to find someway to stop him, even if we weren't sure it was him.