Interlude by C.S. Poe

Author:C.S. Poe [Poe, C.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emporium Press
Published: 2021-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Someone’s in the Wall

—

Before The Mystery of the Bones

POV: Sebastian Snow—

I sat at the table-for-two in the front room, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs and a T-shirt, eating Lucky Charms and scowling at my phone’s screen. “I’m cold,” I stated when Calvin entered from the kitchen.

“Probably because it’s November and you’re in your skivvies.”

I looked up. “Do you recall the circumstances of our meeting?”

Calvin set his thermos on the table. “I woke up one day and you were in my bed,” he answered, knotting the tie around his neck. “Thought it was a bit strange, but you were cute, so I let it slide.”

“I’m serious.”

“Well, what kind of question is that, baby?”

“I think there’s someone in the wall.”

Calvin said nothing as he adjusted his shoulder holster, picked up his suit coat from the back of the chair opposite me, and pulled it on. He then walked to the coatrack beside the door, collected his winter jacket, and returned to kiss me goodbye. “I’m going to go to work now.”

“Calvin.”

“There’s nothing in the walls, Sebastian.”

“I heard it last night—behind the bed. It woke me up.”

“It was probably a rat.”

“It was way bigger—”

“Call the super today and have him schedule an exterminator.” Calvin kissed me again. “Have a good day.”

“If it turns out that Fortunato is dead in our walls, I will never stop saying I told you so,” I called after him.

Calvin opened the front door, looked over his shoulder, and said, “If one of our neighbors pulls a Tell-Tale Heart—”

“Cask of Amontillado.”

“—I’ll let you spank me.”

My eyebrows crept to my hairline. “I don’t need a reason to spank you.”

Calvin shut the door.

I glanced at Dillon, who cocked his head to one side. “Well, I don’t,” I reiterated before standing and collecting the bowl of soggy cereal. “I just prefer the action in reverse. Why am I saying this to a dog.”

I left the bowl in the kitchen sink, went upstairs, and got dressed for a day of errands and chores that absolutely did not involve a mysterious thing in the wall. I tugged my arms through a long-sleeved thermal, pulled it over my head, and put on a clean pair of jeans. I went to the nightstand, grabbed my wallet and keys, then put a knee on the mattress and leaned over the headboard. I couldn’t see any sort of hole or break in the drywall that’d suggest something had been trying to escape last night. Even though it had been loud enough to be a human trying to dig their way out with a spoon, and it wasn’t my fault that, for the first night in a week, Calvin had managed to sleep deeper than the dead the one time I’d have preferred he easily woke, thank you very much.

I pressed my ear against the wall and listened. At first there was nothing but that strange, fishbowl hum that seemed to exist in the bit of space between Neighbor A and Neighbor B in a densely populated urban environment—but then I heard it.

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