Don't Sleep Just Yet | Chapter 6

            Ansel stood beside the counter, staring off into space. He was worried. Worried that Jay had something big under his sleeve. He’d known the man for a long time, but had never considered him a real threat until earlier that morning. Until then, he’d been a creep, but nothing to necessarily fear. Who knew what was on that CD? Maybe it had something to do with him. He had tried to get Darcy to back down, but it had become quickly apparent that the doctor was done laying low. Something in Ansel’s gut told him that Jay’s involvement was either a red herring or just plain bad news.

            However, when he glanced at the digital clock above the television and saw that it was almost 10:20, he tried to shake his worries out of his head. Surely, he was just paranoid. Jay couldn’t do anything to him, and he’d be damned before he let him do anything to Darcy. At least, that was what he thought, up until the moment that he heard what almost sounded like the wail of a banshee coming from the bedroom.

            “Darcy?!” Ansel cried. He practically slammed himself through the bedroom door, only to find his best friend staring at the computer screen with his hands clamped over his mouth in horror. Saying nothing and deciding to see what had frightened Darcy so terribly for himself, Ansel stepped closer, looking over his shoulder at the screen.

            It was security camera footage. Ansel could see Darcy, standing in the middle of a kitchen with a corpse at his feet. The corpse was Mr. Adair.

            Ansel glanced at his friend, who just kept staring, quivering like a dying leaf. “Darcy,” he began with an uneasy voice, “what is this?”

            “I killed him,” Darcy stammered.

            “Was this on the CD?”

            Dr. Adair nodded. So, Ansel opened the drive, causing the player to close. “Ansel, what�"” Before he could get any more words than this out of his mouth, he watched Ansel pick up the disk, holding it up for him to see. Then, he whipped it down to the floor, and it snapped in half, causing Darcy to flinch before looking back up at his friend.

            “I told you not to check it.” The younger man grumbled with a voice that trembled with emotion.

            “Did you know about this?” Darcy accused.

            “I knew this damn disk was bad news, yeah! Didn’t think it would be this bad, though!”

            “Ansel, I just watched myself break my father’s neck!” The doctor shouted, growing increasingly furious.

            The man pointed his finger right in Darcy’s face. “No.” He snapped. “That doesn’t make any sense, and you know it. The timestamp there said 9:05 PM. You wouldn’t have made it home until 9:50 at least!”

            “I still could’ve done it!” Darcy argued.

            “I woke up at 9:52.” Ansel stated. “You were asleep.”

            “Ansel,” Darcy wept, “I saw it! I just saw what I did to my father, on camera! How could that be faked…?!”

            “I don’t know, goddammit!!” Ansel roared, whipping himself around and stomping to the far wall. “I don’t know, but it was!!”

            “But what if it wasn’t?”

            Ansel turned his head to look over his shoulder, but he didn’t know what to say. He just stood there, breathing heavily. He knew the recording couldn’t be true. There was just no way that Darcy could have ever done such a thing. If it had been himself on the recording, then Ansel would have been worried, but with circumstances the way they were, all the insomniac was concerned with was that Darcy now had it in his head that he was the culprit. He had to wonder how the hell Jay had managed to make such a convincing recording; it looked just like Darcy was in that video. It couldn’t have been anyone else, but there was no way in a thousand years that it ever could have been him.

            “Ansel, I’m a murderer…” The doctor choked through his tears. “I killed my own father…!”

            “I heard you, you know.”

            “What…?”

            Ansel shook his head slowly. “I laid down to rest my eyes at half past eight.” He admit quietly. “You didn’t come in more than a minute after I laid down. I… I wanted you to think that I had been asleep the whole time, so that…” He chuckled somberly. “I don’t know why. So that you’d think I’d been able to get any sleep? Truth is, Jay left a message that night. I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to.” He turned, looking down at his friend, who stared at him in silence. He shrugged his shoulders with a tight-lipped smile. “You did your little nighttime ritual, then you went to sleep. I just sat on the couch. Kept pretending to be asleep whenever you were in the room. Then, you went to sleep. At 9:50, you were in such a deep sleep that I probably could’ve blown an air horn at you without disturbing you.”

            “How do you know that?” Darcy sniffled.

            Ansel didn’t move, though he did avert his eyes down to the floor. He was nervous about admitting to a strange habit of his, especially at such a sensitive time, but it was either his confession or Darcy’s emotional trauma. He exhaled slowly out of his nose, then inhaled. “I… watch you, sometimes. When you’re asleep.” He quietly revealed. “It calms me down, y’know? Just… making sure that you’re safe. Comfortable. It sounds creepy, but I swear it’s not, it just… It soothes me whenever the panic attacks get too bad.”

            Darcy shook his head numbly, still trying to process what he was hearing. It was very surreal to see Ansel so honest and vulnerable. “But you haven’t had panic attacks for a month since today.”

            “Not in front of you.”

            It was Darcy’s turn to look down at the floor. The air was tense with silence for too long, since neither of them knew what to say. He wasn’t sure how to respond to Ansel’s confession. On one hand, he was extremely touched to discover that Ansel cared that much about him. On the other, he was right: it was a bit creepy. However, overall, he didn’t feel any fear or concern about Ansel’s actions. He felt needed, and it was a feeling that washed relief over him.

            “I know it wasn’t you, Darcy.” Ansel concluded. “You’re the kindest man I’ve ever met, and even if you weren’t such a big softie, you were asleep when…” He trailed off, realizing it might be insensitive to just flat out say the words “your father was killed”, even if that was the point Darcy had been trying to make.

            Darcy laughed through a sob. He was relieved, but not entirely convinced. If it wasn’t him, then how was he on the recording?

            “Jay must have faked it.” Ansel affirmed his thoughts. “I don’t know how, but that’s the only logical…” He trailed off again and his face paled, causing Darcy to look up at him, confused. “… con�"… �"clusion.”

            “Ansel?”

            “Nah, it’s nothing,” he nervously muttered. It had occurred to him that Jay could have somehow dressed like Darcy, but that didn’t accommodate for the steep difference in height, and while Jay was possessive and overall very creepy, Ansel didn’t think that he was a killer. At least, he hoped that he wasn’t.

            “You sure?” Asked Darcy.

            “Yeah. Listen, you should get some rest, Darc. You’ve been through a lot.”

            The doctor disagreed. “Ansel, I was cooped up in here for three days straight.”

            “Well, yeah, but that was just your father. Now, your mother…”

            Darcy thought for a moment. “Wait.”

            “What?”

            “She hung herself? The same way dad did?”

            Ansel shrugged. “I didn’t stick around to hear too much, but yeah, apparently.”

            “Did she have that bruise on her shoulder?”

            The younger man averted his eyes.

            “Ansel?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Darcy questioned, standing up from the chair.

            “I didn’t want to scare you, alright?”

            “Scare me? If anything, that’s a relief.”

            Ansel raised a brow. “How so?”

            Darcy managed a small smile. “Think about it. That means that someone else killed my father, because I wasn’t there to do that to my mother. Someone else is behind this!”

            “I still think it’s concerning that someone killed your parents.”

            The doctor’s smile turned to a flat frown. “Huh. Yeah, you’re right. I actually hadn’t thought about that.”

            Ansel said nothing, just smirking as he watched the gears in Darcy’s head turn.

            “Well.” The doctor mumbled. “S**t.”

---

 

            Looking in the bathroom mirror, Darcy examined his split lip. There was a bit of blood around it, and it seemed to have been split pretty badly, but it was healing, slowly but surely. He thought about washing the blood off, but realized that he may have to rub it off, and that if he did so, he might open the wound again, so he decided against it. The grey t-shirt he wore had a bloodstain on it from when he pressed it against his lip, but it didn’t concern him very much. He had gradually come to admire Ansel’s comment from when they first met, that stains built character, since he was right; the paint stains on Ansel’s pants that were by now also on the bottom of his hoodie revealed that he was the kind of guy who did a job no matter the cost; that he didn’t care about getting his hands dirty so long as he did what was asked of him. The bloodstain that was now on his own t-shirt, however, Darcy was unsure what exactly that said about him.

            “Maybe that I’m clumsy,” he thought in jest, though he felt it was a reasonable conclusion to come to.

            Gazing at his reflection, Darcy’s mood dipped, and he let out a weary sigh. As much as he wanted to pretend that everything was alright, there was no denying that he was probably in some pretty deep s**t. Someone had murdered his father, then made a point of killing his mother just that morning. She had said she’d been called to come in by him, but he knew that was impossible; his cellphone had died on Saturday, and he’d only just plugged it in to charge a few hours ago. Even if it hadn’t, he didn’t actually know how to get in contact with his mother. His father kept saying she loved him, but neither of them had seen each other or even spoken since he was very little. She had cut them out of her life, whether his father chose to see it that way or not.

            There were too many questions. If she hadn’t received a call from him, why had she come in? Who actually called her? Would she have even answered if Darcy found a way to contact her? The only thing that made sense was that she had made an excuse. Perhaps she had heard about her ex-husband’s supposed suicide. Maybe she did care.

            He had more than enough reason to mope, but he found himself thinking about Ansel instead. The few times he saw Ansel over the weekend that he spent doing pretty much nothing other than crying, the younger man had been beside himself with worry, though he always tried to hide it behind concerned smiles and a gentle, patient voice. He’d taken care of him all through his misery, but had also given him space, and suddenly Darcy felt bad. Ansel had his own problems to deal with, but he’d still looked after him with no hesitation. There wasn’t any way he could go back to moping. It would be selfish of him to put that burden onto his friend’s shoulders again.

            It was then that Darcy had a frightening thought: someone was targeting him. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that his parents were killed in the same way. Someone wanted him to suffer. They had taken two people he loved, and really, that only left one more: Ansel. He felt his blood run cold as he vacantly stared at his own eyes in his reflection. What if Ansel was next? There had been a delay between the murders of his mother and father, but that was probably only because she lived out of state. Ansel lived in the same apartment as him. It would be the equivalent of saving the easiest task for last if the killer was working the way that Darcy thought they were.

            The thought scared Darcy so badly that he practically threw himself out of the bathroom, but Ansel wasn’t there.

            “Ansel?” He called out. “Ansel!”

            It took him a minute to remember that Ansel had said that he still wanted to go do his odd job. Where that was, exactly, and who he was doing it for, both were foggy to Darcy. He tried to wrack his brain, remembering that his friend had mentioned one or the other before. But what if it was a different job?

            He had no idea where Ansel was, and that terrified him. Then, the phone started to ring.

---

 

            Ansel huffed as he put down the huge buckets of green and black paint he’d lugged up three flights of stairs. He was working on the set for a Christmas musical, since the original set designer had basically called in ill for the entire month of December. There were the outlines of trees along the walls that were blue and white, for the sky and the snow. Ansel’s job was to paint the trees, including their pines and decorations, optimally before December 1^st. Of course, Ansel had done painting before, quite often, but he was more of an abstract/zentangle type of artist. He could draw people too (though not as well as he wanted), but landscapes were a mystery to him. Even if he didn’t have the faintest idea how to paint a tree realistically, the goal would be impossible anyway: it would probably take him until the 1^st to paint the pines alone.

            Now, why the theater they were doing the production in had to be in the middle of the third floor of the building behind a set of locked doors�"which, across the room, had twins, though the other set of doors couldn’t be opened at all except from the inside since they lacked pull handles�"was beyond Ansel. It was particularly frustrating, since the elevators required keys that Ansel didn’t have… Well, he didn’t have any of the building’s keys, since he wasn’t an employee per se, but that was beside the point. Meaning that he usually had to check in with the production’s director to get the keys to the theater (really, it was more of a conference room with a hollow wooden stage that Ansel kept worrying he may somehow fall through), but for some reason, the door was open when he tried it this time. He wasn’t about to complain: the janitor’s failure to do his job meant less walking for him.

            It was a tad warmer than usual in the room, so Ansel slipped off his coat, laying it on a table in front of the other doors that only he could open. However, he left on Darcy’s scarf, which he had taken with him since he preferred walking to his destinations. After removing his coat, he took his phone out from his sweater pocket almost impulsively, then scoffed. He had wanted to spontaneously text Darcy a random movie quote he’d just thought of, a thing he usually did, but remembered that he couldn’t get cell service in this building, at least not in the conference room-turned-theater. So, he put his phone back into his pocket and turned, walking back across the stage to the left-most tree.

            “Who the hell needs this many goddamn Christmas trees?” He grumbled to himself as he counted four trees on the walls, two of which were beside each other between the two arches to backstage on either side. He had never been expressly told not go to backstage, but he figured it would be in his best interest to stay in eyeshot of anyone looking through the windows on the doors, if only just so that the janitor wouldn’t assume the room was empty and turn off the lights.

            He pushed up his sleeves, then opened the paint buckets and pulled out the small pail he’d brought up with them. It was difficult as hell to pour the green paint, which was a full three liters, into the pail without knocking over the pail or spilling the paint onto the floor (this, he had been expressly told not to do), but he managed by using the edge of the makeshift stage as a table. Then, he got the black paint, which was half empty, and it was easier to pour in. He used the thick brush he’d been given to roughly mix the colors, coming up with a dark green that looked like it belonged on a pine tree, so he sighed and stood up from the edge of the stage, which he had been sitting on while mixing the paint, and walked over to the Christmas tree. After running the sides of the brush against the edge of the pail (it could have been a yogurt container for all Ansel knew), he dipped the brush into the paint and spun it to catch any excess paint from dripping off, then put the brush against the wall. Despite all of his efforts, the paint abruptly dripped off of the brush, and he looked down to see two or three tiny dollops of paint on the floor.

            “Eh,” he grunted, “f**k it.”

            Undeterred, he continued painting, no longer caring whether or not the paint dripped onto the wooden floor. The director knew him, and knew that he was the kind of guy who usually left a mess behind if he was determined to get a job done on a time crunch. Hell, he even left messes behind when he had all of the time in the world. He merely figured that no one would notice, and even if they did, it wasn’t like anyone watching the production ever would; most of them probably wouldn’t even be able to see the floor of the stage from the height.

            He was only finished the first layer of paint for the top three bristles of pines when there was knocking on the glass portion of the doors to his left. He had been told that he would be unbothered until mid-afternoon, so he curiously took a step back to look at who was knocking, but there wasn’t anybody there. He paused there for a moment, waiting to see if anyone would poke their head in, but no one did.

            “Huh.”

            Shaking it off, he stepped back to the wall. He was just about to put the brush back up against it when someone knocked again, and he whipped his head around. After a second, he stepped backward again. No one. Immediately, he figured that someone was screwing with him, but that conclusion didn’t make sense. The only kids that should have been there were the actors and singers in the musical, but they weren’t supposed to be around until that afternoon, and it didn’t make sense for a grown adult to be pulling such an immature prank on him. The door was unlocked, but Ansel wasn’t sure that anyone else knew that.

            “If they want in,” he thought to himself, “they’ll try to open the door.” However, the second he stepped forward and put the window out of his line of sight again, there was more knocking, so he stepped back into clear sight and put down the pail of paint, laying the brush across it before he marched over to the double doors.

            Even glancing out through the windows yielded no results. He couldn’t hear anyone walking down the hall, or even running, so he opened one of the doors and stepped out into the hall, looking left, then right. There wasn’t anyone there. When he turned around, confused, he noticed that the door was still open, so he looked down. The kick-down door stop was still up, but for some reason, the door wasn’t closing. He then looked up at the door closer, which wasn’t moving. With his jaw hanging agape, Ansel tilted his head. It was very strange. He didn’t understand what was going on. Still puzzled, he slowly stepped back into the conference room, only to jump when the door closed behind him. Again, he turned. He shoved the door open, then watched as it slowly drifted shut on its own.

            Silently, the young man mouthed, “What the f**k…?”

            If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve said that something was going on. Though he couldn’t explain who was knocking, or why the door had stayed open, he decided to sluggishly shake his head clear of his uncertainty. He had a job to do, and he wasn’t about to let some weird door malfunction distract him. He was then so focused on continuing to paint that he failed to notice that, at some point during his fascination with the door, the backstage light had been turned off.