Dark Shadows

It's a fifteen minute walk from my apartment to Tess's, through the heart of the West End. It was extremely windy, dark, about 9pm on a Friday night. In addition to an actual cemetery, which to me, is scary in the daylight, most of the houses on these streets are huge brick mansions with vast, expansive yards which create a lot of dark shadows. Most of the windows in these houses were dark. There are no cars, no other pedestrians, not even any fanatical dog-walkers. (Even people who live in the heart of this neighborhood agree that it' haunting... check out the story at maine. Magazine.) Lady Gaga coming in through my earbuds is not blocking the deafening rustling of the trees in the wind. Through this noise, I hear a creaking, like metal on metal. In my wildest imagination, I can't think what terrifying thing could possible be producing this noise, but that's just it- the unknown is so much scarier than the known. It was discovered earlier in the week my boots are NOT made for running, so to take my mind off of things lurking in the shadows, watching my every move, I do what I always do when I get scared: I called Laura and leave her a lengthy voicemail in a panicked tone of voice and arrived at my destination in one piece.

The next day she says she has a story to rival my story, which yeah, wasn't really that spooky unless you were there. Big deal, I was freaked out by the WIND. She was cleaning out a closet in her house (one that hadn't been used since she moved in,) and there was...

...a body bag.

They couldn't identify it at first, was it a tarp, or a garment bag... because other than people who work in hospitals, funeral homes, and oh yeah, people who watch Grey's Anatomy or Six Feet Under, no one should know what a body bag looks like. There was a toe tag, and a little contents key to mark weather the body had an infectious disease or was decomposed or whatever other ailments dead bodies might have.

Holy. Shit. Was their landlord plotting a murder??