The Mystery at Sag Bridge

Chapter 2

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After dressing, Cora wandered around tidying the house, mulling over past incidents she jokingly referred to as Angel dust.

She supposed other people had odd things happen they couldn't explain. Cora thought she probably had more than most, but she had gotten accustomed to them over time. It had been years since she'd had such weird experiences, but in the past few months little odd phenomena had resumed, such as finding things where she hadn't put them. One day she reached for a book she left on the bedside table, but it wasn't there. She searched the house, then there it was, on the same table, where it had just not been. She watched drawers slide open untouched and paper clips jump across her desk. Rational explanations, like being out of balance, didn't seem adequate.

Last week she found two batteries on the edge of her desk in front of her laptop. A small clock Cora kept behind her laptop lay face down in its normal place with its battery compartment open. At first she thought Cisco opened the clock and forgot to put the batteries back-for whatever reason she couldn't imagine-so she asked him about it.

He gave her a blank look. "What are you talking about?"

"Didn't you take the batteries out of my desk clock?"

He shook his head and gave her and irritated look. "No. I haven't left the room. Why would I do that?"

"Well, it's sitting there on my desk, open, and the batteries are sitting somewhere else. Come and look." Cora dragged Cisco into her room.

"See? How did it get like that if you didn't do it?" she asked, pointing.

"I guess you must have done it. There's no one else here, and I sure didn't."

"Well, I didn't do it-I'd remember." She crossed her arms over her chest. "The battery compartment didn't open itself, the batteries jump out and leap over the laptop, and stop at the edge of my desk. So what happened?"

"Old-timers' disease?" he guessed, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his office.

Cora's first encounter with Angel happened when she was pregnant with her son, Patrick. After fixing dinner, she would lie down in the bedroom to wait for Cisco to come home from work. She knew the sounds of his arrival: a key clicked in the lock, the downstairs door creaked open, footsteps ascended the stairs, a key turned in the apartment door, the door brushed over the carpet. One day she heard the familiar sounds, but Cisco didn't come to her room. When he came in a short time later, Cora asked, "What happened? Did you forget something?"

"No. Why do you ask?" he said with a puzzled look.

"Didn't you just come home, then leave and come back?"

"No. I just got home now."

She told him about the sounds, and he thought it was strange, but perhaps she was half asleep, dreaming, didn't that make sense? Well...maybe. But the same thing kept happening.