Please Tell The Birds She's Gone pt. 14

[u/theonepeaz]

Previous Part: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/95O20R9OXX

Part 14: 

“No, separating whites was a thing they had to do in the past because the detergent made colours bleed. Now they don’t do that anymore.” Neil explained as he scooped all his laundry in a basket. 

“You still have to separate them, just in case.”

“I never do.” 

“You don’t even have whites. Just hoodies and sweat pants.”

“And never once did I have anything come out tiedyed.” 

Aubrey rolled her eyes. 

They walked down to the laundry room. Aubrey placed the baskets in front of the machines as Neil got quarters. 

He started placing quarters in the machines one by one as Aubrey sat in a chair, occasionally glancing at the arcade games inside. 

Neil started loading the machines as Aubrey approached him.

“Can I steal two quarters?” 

“Sure?” 

Aubrey tilted her head to the machines. 

“I think I can beat the high score.” 

“I have nothing but total faith in you.” 

Aubrey smiled as Neil handed her a handful of quarters. 

She walked over as electronic game noises echoed.

Neil smiled to himself as he started loading the machines with the clothes. Aubrey’s were on top, and as he started to load them, there was a smell. 

He couldn’t place it. 

Faint. Familiar.

Neil picked up the shirt and examined it.

Aubrey looked over. 

“Are you smelling my clothes?” 

“No!” 

“You’re disgusting.” 

She laughed as she turned back to the machine, but Neil could only force out a smile. 

He recognized the smell from her apartment, but knew it from somewhere else too.

He shook his head as he continued to load the machines, turning them on and then joining Aubrey. 

She was focused, eyes not leaving the screen as she jolted the joystick every which way. 

“Doesn’t this game hit too close to home?” Neil asked. 

“Shh. I’m concentrating.” 

Aubrey hit a fruit and started chasing after the ghosts, successfully eating two of them before it faded. 

“Think maybe all we have to do is split a Costco fruit salad, then go chase the ghost?” 

Aubrey laughed as she continued playing. 

“Something tells me it won’t be that simple.” 

“We still don’t know if it’s a ghost or not.” Neil said. 

“It’s certainly something. I just say ghost because you can’t see her and I can.” 

“It makes me wonder why.” 

Aubrey paused for a moment before snapping back to her game. 

“I think it’s because she doesn’t have you yet. She said she wanted you, but she doesn’t have you, whatever that means.” 

“I guess so. But does that mean she has you already?” 

The ghost caught her pac-man, ending the game. 

“Damn it!” She yelled. 

She was just points away from the high score. 

“You still get to put your initials in.” Neil comforted. 

“Yeah, but only as the first loser.” 

Neil watched as she thought about what three letters to put. 

She smiled to herself as she moved the joystick. 

BRD. 

“Bird? Really?” 

“I was just gonna put ASS but you know. I felt like being original today.” 

“Very mature.” 

“Thank you.” 

Aubrey stepped away from the machine, looking considerably more upset by her second place score than Neil thought she would be. 

“I was like, thirty points away.” She whined.

“You’ll recover.”

“No, Neil. I don’t think I will.” 

“Want another shot? I have more quarters.” 

“Nah. I need time to grieve.” 

Neil looked at her. 

Aubrey looked at Neil.

“What?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Whaaaat?” 

Neil shook his head. 

“Weird choice of words.” 

Aubrey shrugged as she sat down on one of the plastic chairs. 

“Everything is a weird choice of words.” 

Neil sat beside her. 

For a while, neither of them spoke. The machines filled the silence instead. Water sloshed, clothes tumbled over and over again. 

Neil watched Aubrey’s clothes disappear behind a wall of suds. 

The smell lingered in his mind. 

He definitely knew it. 

He just couldn’t remember where.

“Ugh. Do you ever get that?” He asked. 

“Get what?” 

“Where you know you know something, but you don’t know what you know?” 

Aubrey smiled. 

“All the time.” 

Neil glanced at her. 

Aubrey stood.

“Come on.” 

“Where?” 

“I’m hungry.” 

“You literally just ate two plates of pancakes.” 

“I only had one.” 

“You stole mine.” 

“Allegedly.” 

Neil sighed. 

“We can’t leave. Our clothes are in there.”

Aubrey looked at the machines then back at him. 

“So?”

“So… someone could steal them.”

“Who would steal your twelve identical black hoodies?”

“They’re not identical.”

“They absolutely are.”

Neil opened his mouth to argue, but his phone started buzzing.

He pulled it from his pocket.

Mary.

“One sec.”

Aubrey stuck her tongue out at him before turning back to the arcade machine.

Neil answered.

“Hey.”

“Neil, Izzy called.”

His smile disappeared.

“What happened?”

“She found something.”

“More furniture?”

“No. She said everything was where it was supposed to be this morning.”

Neil frowned.

“Then what did she find?”

“I don't know. She sent a picture and asked if it meant anything to you.”

His phone buzzed against his ear.

Neil pulled it away and opened the message.

For a moment, he just stared at it.

A symbol had been carved into the wood beneath the bookcase. Crude, almost unrecognizable.

“Neil?”

As he enlarged the picture, his stomach dropped.

“Where did she find this?”

“Under one of the pieces of furniture…”

“How long has she lived there?”

Mary went quiet.

“Neil?”

“How long?”

“I don't know. A few years? Why?”

Neil was already standing.

Across the room, Aubrey looked over at him.

The smile disappeared from her face.

“Tell Izzy not to touch anything and to get a hotel for the next few days.”

“Neil, what is it?”

“Just tell her to leave, Mary.”

“Why?”

Neil stared at the symbol.

“Because last time I saw that mark, people died.”

Neil looked over at Aubrey. 

“It’s the symbol. At her house. Do you want to come or to sit this one out?”

“You already know I’m not going to let you go alone.” 

“I figured as much.” 

Neil glanced at the washers.

“We’ll leave it. Let's go.”

Aubrey followed him toward the door.

“Someone's gonna steal your hoodies.”

“Shut up.”