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When Elliot came to Seattle, she reluctantly found roommates, and they reluctantly accepted her into their home. The other three, Carrie, Melinda, and Judy, all had gone to Washington State University together, and when they graduated they naturally gravitated to Seattle for work and culture and all of the things a hip city attracted the young and social to. They all shared a townhouse in the Rainier Beach neighborhood — “the ghetto,” Elliot’s roommates whispered excitedly to each other, all three human, and light skinned, except for Judy, who was Vietnamese American. Elliot had once asked them why they called it that, and they mumbled something about being on MLK and the kind of people who live on MLK.
“Oh, so like, racism,” Elliot said. That was the end of the conversation. It was also one of the better conversations she had with them. The rest of the time, especially on the weekends, it was one loud party after another. This had not come up when they talked before Elliot joined them. What had come up was “Oh, we went to Wazzu, so you know what that means.” Elliot had not. She had not known what that meant.
They gave Elliot what they called “the Murder Room.” She was on the ground floor with the garage, which meant she was also the first room any murderer would come across before venturing upstairs. It was damp and a little musty, and sometimes smelled a little like car exhaust from Melinda’s car, but it was nice enough. She had a sliding glass door that opened up to a tiny patch of yard, which meant light and fresh air when it was nice enough. She had done her best to make it her own, with posters of her favorite cryptids on the wall — Sasquatch and the Flatwoods Monster and the Fresno Nightwalkers, and of course Mothman. She also had an attached bathroom with a shower, which meant she rarely had to leave when there were parties, just as long as the wifi was working.
Elliot slipped into her room, using the sliding door instead of the front door. She left the door unlocked, open just a little to let air in, but held mostly shut by a jimmy bar. She looked around, up and down the back of the townhouses, and pointed discretely at the jimmy bar. She waited until she could feel it, and flicked her wrist. The bar popped out of the door track, and Elliot slipped inside.
She wasn’t supposed to be able to do that, of course. She discovered it on accident when she was young, so young that she really couldn’t pin down when she had learned it. She replaced the bar, dropped her bag by the door, and collapsed on her bed.
Elliot went over everything in her head. She put losing her job upfront, because that was probably the important part. She’d have to update her resume again, and she groaned. At 26, she had cultivated a fine selection of service jobs, and losing her last job would make five jobs in the last four years. That wasn’t her fault. What had been available to her had been garbage, barely over minimum wage. Kingway, the last job she had, had felt like she was going somewhere. She worked in an office with other young professionals, could quietly come and go when she please — Zerina was always happy to clock out for her, which she knows was super against the rules, but Kingway was paying her a reluctant fifteen dollars an hour, Seattle minimum wage, and minimum wage meant minimum effort. And of course, now her whole office was out of work.
But the other things too started to creep back into her head. How had she disturbed a banshee’s nest? She was just walking in Pioneer Square when it came out of nowhere. The woman from the night before said she knows why the banshee was attracted to her. She didn’t believe it.
A door in her mind opened, one she had shut ages ago. She remembered her old house, the one she had grown up in. It had been an old farm house, and the neighborhood had grown around it. It had been at least a hundred years old, creaking out its story every night as it settled down to sleep with the rest of them. She remembered being alone in the house, the things that moved in the corners of her periphery. She had figured it was because she had stayed up late so much. But she had also locked away the time she decided to try to see the things just outside of her vision. Her parents found her that night hiding behind the couch, the claw marks on her face still bleeding. They didn’t believe her, of course, chalking it up to the burrow lizards that always interfered with their garden.
She never sought to disturb those things again. She closed the door on that memory, but retained the lesson. She sat up in her bed, shaking. Carefully, she crept to the bathroom and splashed her face with water.
Elliot looked at herself in the mirror. How many times had she seen something she had ignored? How much had she locked away because she didn’t want to think about it. Was Mothman in there? She’d be so mad if she locked Mothman away.
And she thought about the nerd on the train. What had he wanted? The phrase Out of Town kept repeating in her head. Was he from Out of Town. Was she?
For a moment, she sat on her bed, staring down at her phone. She knew what the next step was, she just didn’t want to. She resented that she had to.
She texted Zerina. “We need to talk about Out of Town.”
Elliot watched the typing indicator pulse, trying to push her shaking out of herself.
“OMG I’ve been waiting for this,” Zerina texted back.
“What does it mean?”
“You know what it means ;3”
“Don’t you winky face me. I’ve been through too much in the last day.”
“Okokok I’ll be over in like four seconds.”
Elliot looked around. “You’re not like actually here, are you?”
“Look in your bathroom…”
Elliot stood and carefully kept back to her bathroom, pushing the door open slowly.
It was empty.
“Just kidding, I’ll have to bus it. Want to meet somewhere? I know a few good places.”
Elliot sighed. “Yeah, wherever. I just want to know what’s going on.”
Zerina sent her a location, just off of 23rd in the Central District. “See you there.”
Elliot stared at her phone, at the little location dot on the map. She turned it off, grabbed her bag and a toaster pastry from under her bed, and left the townhouse.
[g]
