The Smile in the Background

Okay, I can explain.

The words tumbled out before Marcus could stop them, his hands raised in what he hoped looked like surrender rather than guilt.

Detective Reyes stood in the doorway of his basement, her flashlight beam cutting through the darkness like a blade.

"Mr. Holloway,"

she said slowly, her other hand resting on her holster,

"why is there a woman chained to your wall?"

Marcus swallowed hard.

The woman in question, pale and emaciated, watched them both with eyes that gleamed too bright in the artificial light.

She hadn't screamed when the detective descended the stairs. She hadn't even flinched.

"She's my wife,"

Marcus said.

"Elena. She's been missing for three months, I know. I reported it myself. But Detective, please, you have to listen to me."

Reyes stepped closer, her boots crunching on something that might have been salt scattered across the concrete floor.

"I'm listening. Talk fast."

"It started the night she disappeared. I woke up and she was standing at the foot of our bed, just. watching me. But something was wrong.

Her smile was too wide. Her eyes didn't blink. When I turned on the lamp, she was gone."

"So you chained her up?"

"No. That came later."

Marcus moved slowly toward the wall, where symbols had been painted in what looked disturbingly like rust.

"She kept coming back. Every night. Standing closer. First the bedroom, then the hallway, then right beside me.

I'd wake up and feel her breath on my face, but when I opened my eyes, nothing."

The woman on the wall tilted her head at an angle that made Reyes's stomach turn.

"Then one night,"

Marcus continued, his voice cracking,

"she spoke. She said, 'I've been trying to come home, Marcus.

Something followed me back.'

And I realized. that wasn't Elena. Not anymore.

Not entirely."

Reyes glanced at the woman. The chains were thick, industrial. The kind used to anchor boats.

"Mrs. Holloway, are you being held here against your will?"