  I can’t wait to see you once again. All the time I’ve spent away, I’ve thought about none but you, my dear. I’ve almost returned to you, and when we once again meet, I’ll give to you the gift I promised. Take care, sweet darling. -Your kindest one “You know I’ll always wait, dear,” she said as she closed the screen holding her only link with her world, her love. Justine had found the email light blinking on her desktop. She had opened the letter and read it, smiling, remembering her husband on his way back home from the Canaries.
He was always old-fashioned and refused to take the usual trans-Atlantic flight, opting instead for a passenger ship. She prepared for her evening walk. Never one to shrink from the cold of night, she nevertheless found the familiar chirping of the night insects frightful, the usual ominous shadows oddly repulsive, her own breathing more shallow than could be comforting, and so decided against the stroll.
Unfurling the scarf from around her neck and placing it alongside her jacket on the coat-rack, she thought instead that she would comfort herself by the warmth of the fireplace with the poem Beowulf in old English she had been reading lately, rationalizing that she needed practice on her Anglo-Saxon anyway. There was a feeling of unease as Justine read, a feeling that she had not been able to shake for the last three days. That was when her husband had begun sending her his electronic love messages that so comforted her yet left her strangely confused.
For though she enjoyed knowing that he missed her still, signed himself her kindest one, and longed to be there, there seemed something otherworldly about the messages themselves. The idea was something that Brian would do, but not the words themselves. Nothing of course that she could pinpoint, no startling displays of wildly differing syntax, but something subtle.
She had told herself, matter-of-factly, that the differences were in her mind, something easily imagined in the house so full of her memories of him, the spacious, old Victorian house they had found isolated from the rest of civilization, exactly how they liked it to be. Sleep found her, laying in the gaze of the fire, curled around a poem of long forgotten, heroic deeds. The gradual creeping of the sunlight across her face gently awoke the lonely wife, and she was surprised to find herself out of her bed.
Rising, she replaced her book and quickly prepared for a shower. As she washed herself, she thought of all the things she wanted to accomplish. There was a used book store that had been recently opened in town and she planned on stopping by when she went in for grocery shopping. Since she had the time, she decided that both should coincide today. The car’s headlights shone through the misty air as they bounced slowly up the driveway to Justine’s home. She certainly had not planned on spending that much time out, but did not regret a moment of it. An armful each of bags, she deftly unlocked and opened her front door, a feat only possible after years of steady practice.
“God awfully dusty in here,” she murmured, not wanting too long to go before a voice was heard in that house, that house seemingly unending in its growing ever distant from the reality of the town she loved, and her life that she remembered. She placed the groceries, books, and other assorted items on the dining room table. She found the light switches, lit her house so that it shone its warmth and light throughout the rooms she called home.
The day had been tiring. She looked forward to a relaxing bath before bed, and made her way through the twisting corridors to her bedroom to undress. Brian had never been quite happy with their bedroom. He complained that it was far too large, with enough empty space to make it a dining room. But she insisted that it was perfect and he relented, as always. There was an armchair to the left of the bed. Numerous lamps dotted the room, allowing for light wherever one may wish to shine it. The thought of this did not escape Justine as she fumbled about in the dark, trying the main light, then a nightstand table lamp, then a free standing lamp by the bureau, lighting none. Panic set in, the kind that no one truly experiences until a situation arises where one knows that there is absolutely no way that a predicament can be pure accident, that some outside force has tampered with the way things should be, a primal fear that things are not right at all and that danger is imminent.
Her frozen form was instantly illuminated from any figure that might be on the opposite side of the room at the clicking on of the brightest lamp by the desk which sat before aforesaid armchair. And, indeed there was a figure there, as evidenced by the sharp outline of a man in the armchair, behind which was the lamp.
Justine’s panic became cautious relief when she saw by the light filling the room that there were rose petals covering the bed. Just the sort of over-the-top romantic thing that Brian would do. But as she opened her mouth to speak, another voice, not her husband’s silenced any thoughts of peace she would ever again experience in her tormented mind. Before the words themselves registered, the voice, the memories it evoked, came charging back into her consciousness with a ferocity that left her numb.
The memories - the love, the loss, the long frightful nights never feeling safe, so much that she had spent six years forgetting, all of it at once accessible to her every whim. It pained her to know, and she knew that she would never be safe again, it had all been illusory. And then she began hearing what he said, “Good evening, my sweet Justine. You didn’t forget me did you? You wouldn’t forget me. You wouldn’t dare. I’m so glad that you’ve been preparing for my eventual return, making this house for us. It’s sweet, and I’d not expected it.” “This isn’t your house, you filth. Nothing of mine is yours. We settled this long ago. Why are you here? Why don’t you leave?” her shaking voice responded, unable to keep out the absolute fear.
“Oh, and I told you the last time I saw you that I would be your only. I meant that. I said that anyone who got in between us would have to answer to me. And that I would allow you the satisfaction of knowing his fate. I made that promise and tonight, I deliver. Here is your gift, Justine, from me. I also told you never to forget, I am your kindest one.” He reached back to find another light switch, this one apparently in working order, and cast an eerie glow on the entire scene. The body of Justine’s late husband lay spread across the rose petal covered bed, his head in the lap of the man in the armchair. 
