Chapter 3

When I got close enough to the hallway, the music suddenly stopped, but the silence only made the emptiness of the room even more terrifying. At that moment, I should have run, but the duty to protect the bookstore took over, and I moved a little further, just a few inches, which gave me a partial view of the hallway. There was nothing. One more step, this time a bit more confident, and I saw something.

In the dim light, there was a man at the end of the hallway, only half of his body visible, and he was smiling at me. A huge smile, though it didn’t seem happy. It was empty, psychotic, too big. His dark eye overshadowed me like a bad omen, a dark cloak, or an endless shadow.

My God. My God. My God.

I froze in his presence and couldn’t react. I was very close to him, close enough to become an easy prey. Slowly, afraid to even move, I took three steps back. I made a mental list.

I needed to reach the phone, call the police, and run.

Breathe, Cora.

But I noticed something was wrong, something beyond that man staring at me at the end of the hallway. It took milliseconds for me to realize that, even as I stepped back, he hadn’t moved an inch. I covered my mouth, desperation gnawing at me from the inside. I breathed deeply, once, twice, and took a step forward. From where I stood, my view was terrible, and all I could see was his white smile shining in the dim light. Reducing the distance, I noticed two things that changed everything: that expression on his face wasn’t a smile because his mouth was torn at both ends; and he wasn’t just any man. Though I hadn’t recognized him before, at that moment, I could see, through the skin distorted by the wounds, a familiar face.

Andrew.

I was in shock. Frozen. It felt like my skin was being chewed by ants. I couldn’t move or go toward him, barely able to think. However, when I heard footsteps approaching, I reacted. I hid in the empty shelf at the end of the hallway, right next to where Andrew’s body lay. I squeezed into the small space and went silent. The claustrophobic feeling worsened when I shoved the sleeve of my sweater in my mouth so that my heavy breathing wouldn’t give me away. It was as if I was suffocating to death, with tears filling my senses, my eyes blurry, and my mouth covered.

Footsteps. I heard slow, heavy footsteps. Suddenly, I thought of the doorbells ringing, the darkness, and the sound of the turntable suddenly getting louder. I thought about the fact that I hadn’t locked the door and everything I didn’t know and couldn’t change about that damned night. Crouching, I forced myself to control my noisy breathing under the fabric of my shirt because I suspected that my survival depended on how well I could hide. I heard someone getting closer.

Getting near.

Near.

Near.

The sound of a deep, masculine breath filled the place. I prepared myself to die, but that changed when the footsteps started to fade away. It didn’t make sense, but the door revealed that it was being opened and then closed. The damned bells rang. The emptiness buried me, silenced me, passed through me, and I couldn’t move or find out if he had left. I just couldn’t.

Instead, I stayed hidden in that dark, dusty hole. From there, I could smell the blood, and I knew exactly where it was coming from. Time passed, inconsistent, frightening, and paralyzing. I don’t know how long it took until I finally gathered the courage to leave, or with what force I dragged myself down the hallway to reach the phone on the counter. I didn’t even feel alive while I dialed the police number; I wasn’t present when my voice narrated what had happened.

The fact is, when the police arrived and the sirens filled the desolate silence, they found me sitting on the floor, in the dark, with my face between my arms and my eyes empty. They spoke to me and tried to find me, but I was lost in that sickening scene inside the bookstore. I was lost inside myself.

The victim is dead, that’s what they said.

The killer had plenty of time to do it.

The witness is in shock.

In that distant, ethereal, silky mist, it was as if nothing could touch me. Only the emptiness and nothingness existed, but when the policeman’s fingers touched my shoulder and life materialized, I finally exploded, screaming with the greatest violence left inside me. I screamed as if a knife was being pulled from my jugular, because finally, my brain made room for the faces that gave meaning to those funeral words.

That night in the bookstore was the first time he killed someone in our city, but it wasn’t the last. The horror, like the suffering, had only just begun, because the victim was my friend, and I was the only witness to what they did to him.