Someone was at the door. A series of sharp knocks rang out through the house and pierced Greg's head like gunfire. He groaned, shielding his eyes from the sunlight that fell in golden streaks across the rug on which he lay. He felt something against his shoulder, something rigid. It was the leg of his coffee table.
Why am I...
The knocking had stopped, and it was silent until the front door flew open, slamming against the wall behind it. There was a flurry of panicked footsteps as someone entered the hall.
"Greg! Greg, you home? You haven't been to work in a day or two, and they sent me to check up on you... Your door was unlocked, so I-" The visitor made his way to the living room, where he stopped cold in the doorway.
"Jesus..."
Greg instantly recognized the pale face that gaped at him from across the room. It belonged to one of the interns who worked in his office building... He was from out of town.
Charlie, isn't it? Yeah, Charlie sounds about right, he decided.
"So they got me on suicide watch now, eh?" Greg hadn't spoken a word since the night before, and his throat burned. Hoarse and unfamiliar, his own voice sounded strange to his ears.
"What? No, you- er, didn't check in yesterday. Or the day before, come to think of it..." He paused to consider this for a moment, before his attention jolted back to the situation at hand. "Here, let me help you! Don't try and get up on your own, you might cut yourself...
For the first time, Greg noticed the broken glass that littered the floor around him.
"Looks like you had quite the night..." The intern put an arm around his shoulders, supporting him as he slowly rose from the floor. The pain in Greg's head was even worse standing up, and had he not been guided to his armchair in the nick of time, he might have collapsed again. "I don't think we've officially met," the young man said as he extended a hand. "The name's Kelly."
Ah. Not Charlie, then...
"Greg. Greg Connelly." He simply stared at the hand in front of him, until it slowly fell back down to Kelly's side.
"Well, Mr. Connelly, you've got an... interesting place here." He scanned the living room, his eyes flicking to a board that hung on the wall above a cluttered desk. Newspaper clippings, grainy photographs, and scribble-covered scraps of paper were pinned to it, connected here and there with frayed bits of string. In the center of it all was a larger photo, in full color. "Have I seen her before?" he asked.
Greg grunted. "Sarah?" He picked up a framed picture from the table beside his chair, holding it out to Kelly. "I'd be surprised if you hadn't, I certainly got enough photos of her around..."
"No, no, in the papers... It would've been a long time ago." Kelly's gaze still hadn't left the woman's face. Something about her was familiar. But not the woman herself, he knew he'd never met her. "They did an article about her, didn't they? Something big, real front-page material..."
Greg was silent for a few minutes, and Kelly began to worry that he'd lost consciousness again. When he turned from the board and met Greg's eyes, there was something in them, something dark. "She was taken," he spat.
Kelly froze. With these three words, memories of the headlines from seven years ago flooded into his mind once again, crashing through the barriers of time:
Local Woman Disappears on Sunday Stroll
Small-Town Clerk Snatched in Broad Daylight
HAVE YOU SEEN HER? Sarah Connelly's Case Grows Cold as No Witnesses Come Forward
And finally, after months of ongoing investigation produced no results:
YOU ARE READING
When Fate Came Knocking
Short Story"They say there's a process with things like this: anger and denial, then fear, then a sort of numbness as the gravity of the situation sets in. Then comes the point where assumptions are begged to be made... Assumptions that your loved one may not...
