Finding Anabelle Glass: Part III

4th November 2014

Heston’s eyes opened at the same time they did every morning. The apartment was too hot, climbing degree by degree, as it would until Heston began the daunting task of ventilating it. Had Heston been a different man, the problem may have been solved years ago; perhaps the air conditioning needed a tweak or there was something wrong with the building’s pipework.

Ventilating Apartment 5a was daunting for many reasons. Hot air rises, were the words Heston remembered when he thought back to his science classes at school – and they were the only words he could think to explain why his apartment got as hot as it did. Heston’s apartment was on the top floor, had one window and a sky light, and also happened to sit above a particularly broken set of pipes, which worked to heat the entire floor.

Every morning at twenty minutes to nine, Heston would wind open the skylight and wedge open the broken living room window with a thick, dog-eared dictionary – he had made his peace with this by ordering a second copy, which was used for what dictionaries were traditionally used for.

The act of opening the apartment windows was terrifying to Heston. The breeze offered both cool relief from the overpowering heat and a sharp reminder that he was no longer as closed off to the world as he had been moments before. Which is why, even as he turned the handle to open the skylight above his head, he kept the blind closed; though it restricted and lengthened the procedure, it made it that little bit easier. The same went for the living room window: he snuck a hand between curtains, opened the handle, used the dictionary to keep it wedged open and withdrew his hand as quickly as he could. A practised manoeuvre.

On the morning of the fourth of November, Heston felt particularly exposed. His dreams that night had been haunted by huge, bald, muscled men and slamming doors. It was raining outside, too, which always made ventilating the apartment even more stressful than it always was – renegade raindrops would somehow find ways to slip through the tiny crack in the skylight and past the dictionary and into the living room.

He slipped from his bed quietly, glancing at the clock next to his bed to triple-check the time. This particular clock was one of his favourites: a dark Persian green (the colour he’d had to look up in one of those fabric colour charts you could order from carpet shops) with gilded edges and a silk panel just behind its slender hands, so that instead of the mechanical tick, with each passing second the clock would let out a soft whoosh.

In the few seconds between twenty minutes to nine and nineteen minutes to nine, Heston, sweaty-palmed, unwound the skylight and wedged the dog-eared dictionary into place. A bead of rain on the back of his left hand had his breath quickening, and he was in the bathroom washing it off before it could settle on his skin. Two squirts of lavender soap, two squirts of sanitising hand wash.

Something about the day felt awkward already – Anabelle Glass still hadn’t returned and the police hadn’t been by to check the break-in. Why would they, though? Heston asked himself, it wasn’t as if he’d called it in – as far as he knew, Heston was the only one who’d witnessed the whole thing.

Heston didn’t deal well with awkward. His stiff-collared shirts felt too close to his skin and his socks felt as though they were cutting his circulation off at the ankles. The thin coverage of hair on his head stuck to his scalp and his fingers wouldn’t stay still – they twitched and fumbled with parts of the apartment he’d never held issue with before. Suddenly, the television wasn’t at the right angle. The forks and knives needed to switch place in their draws. No, they didn’t. He switched them back.

Lunchtime came and went, leaving Heston no less agitated. At thirteen minutes past twelve, his computer pinged with an email. He hadn’t been expecting any emails – the last thing Heston had ordered had been a pack of Pilot P-700s, the only pen he found worthy of writing in his house martin notebooks, and they had been delivered a week ago. He had all spam accounts disabled and layers and layers of malware on his computer in order to stop the unexpected.

The email:

Mr Chadwick,

I am writing on behalf of your local parish. We are having a local cake sale in our parish centre on the 12th of November – and you’re invited!

We’ll be raising money for the restoration of the church vestry as children’s liturgy has had to be moved elsewhere when we found a leak – God bless Father Michael for allowing the liturgy to take place in the church lounge.

The parish welcomes the community’s support in this fundraiser and any donations are absolutely welcome!

We hope to see you there!

Yours, faithfully,

Agnes Prior,

Choir Director at Our Lady and St. Joseph’s Church.

Heston wrung his hands together, not quite knowing what to do. Whilst simply deleting the email was a simple enough solution, he didn’t like that it had appeared in the first place. Heston was meticulous in ensuring his privacy was kept just that: private. Somehow, he’d been infiltrated. By a church, of all things.

When Heston had been a child – a time he rarely reflected on – his mother had tried to teach him the value of religion by taking him to a local church. The sensation of the bread on his tongue hadn’t worn off for hours, and the sharp tang of wine had held his face hostage in a grimace for just as long. The prayers had made no sense and when Heston verbalised this, louder than was appropriate, as they approached the priest for communion, he and his mother had been pierced by eyes from every side.

His mother had never taken him back.

The email was a sharp reminder of that moment and Heston didn’t like it. He didn’t like revisiting his past, especially something as invasive as unpleasant tastes and textures – it was almost as if he was experiencing the communion all over again.

The email was led to the bin icon on the desktop screen. Heston paced away from the computer and towards the armchair in front of the television. In his trepidation, he didn’t hear the footsteps in the corridor – though they were notably quieter than the previous day’s heavier visitor.

Just as Heston sat, the owner of those footsteps stopped outside Apartment 5a and raised a fist.