Thirty-one – 03

[This post is from Matt’s point of view.]

Her house perched on a cliff that overlooked the water. As it turned out, the place where he’d awakened that first day was part of a finished basement where she spent most of her time—she felt safer down there, she’d said—no one could see her down there. She went upstairs to cook, but that was all. For everything else, she stayed downstairs where it was safe.

Where she felt safe.

Hecate had told him, though, that he could go anywhere he wanted in the house, so he’d been exploring ever since. He’d found evidence of a life lived in the house, but without photographs to go by, it was hard to know whose life it had been. There were books and knickknacks, sketchpads and notebooks. Whoever had lived in the house above had been an artist, someone with myriad fascinations, someone that wasn’t afraid to enroll in a class here, a class there—just to learn more about something. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to any of the subjects he’d found in the notebooks beyond most of them being full of lecture notes. Clearly, whoever lived in the home had traveled, based on the souvenirs and odds and ends scattered around—or lived vicariously through the other people who’d collected them.

She usually stayed downstairs while he was exploring, shuttered away in her study, working on whatever it was that she was working on—he hadn’t asked, mostly because he didn’t want to know.

Matt was finding that he wanted her to keep as many secrets as he wanted to hear.

He woke alone that morning, though the bed was still warm where she’d been. They hadn’t talked about that morning two days before when she’d woken from her dream. She’d just stayed close to him, as if his presence was comforting—it probably was. He didn’t mind it.

Still, the closeness of the past few days made him a little nervous to find her gone when he woke up.

If someone’s shown up to—to—

To what? To threaten her again? What the hell would he do?

Not nothing. That’s for sure.

He got up, threw on pants and a shirt, then ducked out of the room, listening for signs of anything amiss.

There was nothing—no sound, no sign of anything wrong. Not down there.

That was terrifying.

Matt sucked in a deep breath and headed for the stairs.

Where are you, Hecate? Where are you?

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