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Emily Stewart enjoyed a rather quiet life in a small town in Scotland. The only things in the town besides houses were a small convenience store, a post office, a school that taught children from six to eighteen, a run-down park, and a library. And cows. Lots and lots of cows.
She lived alone with her son, Jack. He was a very active boy and was only eight, so he was even more excited when he got home. Emily did her best to entertain him, but between household chores and her work, which she did mostly at home, she ran low on energy. So she would drop him off at the library and let him browse the shelves, play with the other kids there, and listen to the old woman that read books to children whenever they showed up. It was an easy system. She loved Jack dearly, but dear lord, sometimes she just needed an uninterrupted nap.
When she came by to pick him up, he would begin talking about whatever book he had read or listened to. Emily was a bit nervous about her system because the old woman (Linda? Laura? Lily?) had passed away. She had been a godsend; she had seemed to just be someone who truly loved children and spending time with them.
But Jack began talking about the new storyteller. Emily was already planning to meet this person so that she could explain the situation, but once Jack described him, she only became more anxious to do so.
“He had these... marks! All over his face! Circles! And long hair (I didn’t know boys could do that)! And whenever he talked it sounded like men from movies, not a fairytale!” Jack practically screamed from the backseat.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah! Logan asked him where he got them and he said his friend’s cat did it!”
“What was his name?” Emily asked.
“Uhm...Jon, I think it was. There was another man with him...he was big. But Jon was small for a grown-up. He dresses like a librarian! He has the same glasses as Ms. Anderson, with the little string around them!”
“He sounds interesting, Jack, I’ll be sure to meet him next time.”
“Mama?” Jack asked. “Do you think I can go tomorrow?”
Emily didn’t leave Jack there often, maybe once or twice a month, but she had never heard Jack ask to go again so soon. “Of course.”
---
It was the next day and Emily had just walked into the library, with Jack guiding (i.e., pulling her arm in the vague direction of where he wanted to go) her to the corner where the storyteller would sit. The job was that of an old person, a retired one that didn’t really need money, just something to do. It was usually a widow who missed having company.
Jon was not that person. His age was hard to pin down--no prominent wrinkles, graying hair, bags under his eyes, gaunt cheeks, bright eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for a long time. He had scars, large circular ones, about the size of coins, covering his body like freckles. One of his hands looked severely burnt, the palm rough and smooth and peaked. He had slash marks across his throat and Emily wouldn’t be surprised if there were more.
Jon looked as though he had worked somewhere...bad. Illegal bad. Mafia or gangs or something. He certainly had the demeanor of it; suspicious, watchful, jumpy. His shoulders hunched in as though expecting an attack.
Emily just sat down on the other side of the room and waited for him to begin. There was already a small crowd of children sat around him. And so he started.
It was a simple story; some kind of folktale that is trying to tell the children “Hey, don’t go out in the woods at night!” in a family-friendly way. But Jon made the story, well, he made it scary. He had voices for each character--not comical, but subtle ones. The story was captivating and by the end Emily didn’t know what had just happened.
As the other children slowly filed out (after all their questions, of which there were many) Emily approached him. The other man that Jack had mentioned was there. He was a blond man, tall and heavy-set, with tired eyes. He had a small stack of books in one hand and was speaking softly to Jon.
She cleared her throat, catching his attention. “So you must be this ‘Jon’ character my son is so excited by! He told me all about your stories yesterday and insisted on coming back tonight!”
Jon looked into her eyes and she had the strangest sensation that she was being watched. “Ah, yes, the children seem to love the stories, don’t they? Thanks for stopping by, Emily, Jack was getting bored by this time yesterday.” He spoke in a British accent that she would’ve said was posh. Official.
“I find that hard to imagine, given how much he...wait, sorry, have we met?”
“No, we haven’t. Why?”
“I don’t remember telling you my name, is all.”
Jon looked embarrassed. And as though he would rather be anywhere than here. “Oh, I apologize, Emily, didn’t mean to do that. Anyway, I was just heading out, so…” He mumbled. The large man with him gave her an apologetic look as he patted Jon’s shoulder.
“I know I must sound like a child, but where did you get those scars? Don’t look like anything a cat could do, to me.”
“Alright Jon, let’s go home, get you some food, huh?” The large man interrupted as he guided Jon out of the building.
Well that was odd.
Emily tried to talk to Jon after every storytime. He spoke on occasion, but seemed to prefer talking to the children and answering their questions. After three weeks, she had learned that the other man, Martin, was his boyfriend, and that they were living in that old house that had seemingly been abandoned for years. They used to work together but quit and moved up to Scotland a few weeks back.
She never got more information on the source of his scars, though once, Martin rushed into the library, out of breath, and fearful until he saw Jon. He waited until the story was over, and then walked up to Jon. He said he was worried because he wasn’t answering his texts. “Jon,” he’d said softly, “please make sure to keep your phone on, I was scared.”
“Oh, I’m always at the library, Martin, what could’ve happened?”
Martin gave Jon what could only be called a death stare and said, “Well, you could’ve been kidnapped again, for one.”
Emily really hoped that she had misheard that last part.
At this point, though, she was honestly fed up with their crap. She wanted to know who they were, what their deal was. Why they had dropped whatever shady job they had in London and moved to the middle-of-nowhere Scotland. So she asked Jon and Martin if they would like to come over for dinner.
Jon looked awkwardly at Martin, clearly hoping he would take this over. Martin sighed and said, “Emily, look, you’re nice and all, but we should really be getting home.”
Deflecting as usual. “Oh, not tonight? How about tomorrow? I know pretty much everyone that lives here but I don’t know you two, and I’ve seen you so much! Do you have any allergies or dietary restrictions I should know before I start cooking?”
The couple glanced at each other, having a silent argument, before Jon responded through gritted teeth, “No, we do not.”
---
Emily made a rather delicious baked ziti with a garden salad on the side. Martin and Jon sat on one side of the table. Both were awkward in their own ways; Martin stuttered his way through pleasantries while Jon sat quietly, eyeing the admittedly small room with caution.
“So, why did you two move here? Kinda weird, if you ask me, two Londoners coming to live out in this tiny town. You two seem much too young to retire.”
Martin smiled passive-aggressively, as though he had hoped this topic would be avoided. “Oh, we both worked at the same place, but it shut down, and we had the money to move out here. Lovely town, love the cows.”
“Where’d you work?”
“It was a...well, it was like this--”
Jon cut him off. “It was a private detective company that dealt with solving cases that were unsolved.”
“Well that’s fascinating? Is that what got you kidnapped?” The moment Emily asked she knew she had made a mistake, but to be fair, she wanted to know exactly who this guy was. He spent a lot of time with her son, after all.
The two guests both almost jumped out of their seats. Jon’s eyebrows furrowed, and the subtle feeling of being watched became nearly unbearable. “Who do you work for?” His voice sounded, well. It sounded powerful in some way she couldn’t explain.
“I work as a journalist on a website.” She said without thinking. “Wait, what? Why does that matter?”
Jon looked even more infuriated and Martin looked confused and scared. “How do you know about that?” He asked.
“I just overheard Martin saying it at after one of your sessions! Why were you kidnapped?”
“Why do you care?”
The reply slipped from her like a wet bar of soap being pulled from her hands. “I am worried about my son! You two just waltz into town one day, reclusive except for you going and reading to children at a library! No one knows who you are, why you came here, and what you did before, and I certainly don’t buy all your other explanations. They are obviously incomplete or just straight-up lies. So, yes, I’d like to know what you’ve done that warrants a kidnapping.”
Jon now just looked guilty, if mortified, and Martin was just apologetic (as usual). Martin was the first one to speak up.
“I...I think that if we told you everything, you wouldn’t believe us. But we’ve never had any bad intentions by coming here. We’ve just been trying to stay safe from something that we can’t control and is a lot bigger than us. We never signed up for what our jobs actually were, but we couldn’t quit, and ran into a lot of bad things along the way. I know it still sounds super shady, but really, we didn’t know. We are just trying to survive. I’m sorry, we’ll get out of your hair.”
Emily was speechless as the two men left her house.
After a few moments of silence Jack piped up. “Can they come back soon?” God, she forgot he was here.
“No, Jack, I don’t believe so.”
---
Jon continued his job at the library, but was even more reclusive than before. He seemed to genuinely enjoy the storytelling and answering kids' questions, but he left once the last hand went down. Emily didn’t speak to him and he didn’t speak to her.
She didn’t think about it much until the sky became eyes.
She didn’t know why, but she knew it was their fault.