The Enemy Within
#3 of Fear Trilogy
Setting: San Fransisco Bay Area, California, 1996
It had been just a week since the death of her husband but Mrs. Andrea Garcia-Fox (she used a hyphen to separate her maiden name from the name of her dead-husband) was ready to live the life of an ultra-wealthy widow. The vixen would live alone in a residence even more gracious than the bungalow she shared with David, who was the CEO of a San Jose telecommunications company, which boomed with the popularization of the cellular phone. The hilltop mansion itself was large enough for herself and five others but she was the only one who would live there. There was a guest house for any one of her now grown-up offspring to temporarily live in but right now, she wanted to live alone. It was far from the corrupting influence of the Bay Area's three cities, which she viewed with disdain and it had a view of the Pacific Ocean which stretched on forever. This $5 million-dollar home would be her luxurious escape from the world- the kind of place that David wanted her to live in, even though it took his death by cancer and 35 years of marriage to accomplish this.
The only thing that really upset her were the unsightly bushes that the previous owner of the house had left behind. Ugly things that honestly should have been taken down before she came in. But this was Andrea's storybook ending to a great life- a kitchen well-stocked with food, high-speed Internet to solve the 62-year-old's loneliness problem and bring the world to her, a full library to capture her imagination, and a lounge with a bay window to look over the ocean and contemplate all the fortunate events that brought her to this time in her life. Her hard-scrabble childhood in the slums of San Fransisco, her marriage to a young and fairly successful businessman and the acquisition of a lucrative Mexican computer equipment company named Estrella Corp., David becoming the sixth-wealthiest man in California- all these swam through her memories.
She would think of David and her cubs from the lounge while reading "Psychology Today"- the now-elderly vixen had always derived perverse enjoyment from bizarre accounts of psychosis and insanity more so than the scientific articles explaining what psychology was. The history of this study with its inhuman prisons for the insane and strange practices held a sway over her more than the innovations in treating diseases. In a way, she was just like her youngest cub who as a child would read comics about mad scientists rather than the actual science textbooks. But he now worked at a laboratory in Oregon so eccentricism helped him out just like it helped his parents.
Her neighbors were just as old as she, a retired bobcat painter named James Thackeray and his wife Susan. He was an avid fisherman and every once in a while, he would donate his artwork to the museums in San Jose, San Fransisco, and Oakland- three cities which Thackeray would call the Golden Triangle, an obvious reference of course to California's history of gold-mining. The Thackerays held a house-warming party for Andrea Garcia-Fox complete with poached Alaska salmon and the best wines that the Napa Valley could offer- they seemed like a happy, friendly couple but all the same their house was a half-mile away.
Then the rustling happened. The noise came from behind those awful bushes late on a June night, in the wee hours of the morning. Andrea awoke with a start and heard it- what could be crawling in the darkness, a stalker, a murderer. Her imagination got her started as to what could be out there. She cowered under the blanket trying to do anything to distract her from the rustling outside until finally, mercifully the sun rose over the horizon. A close examination with in full daylight revealed nothing out of the ordinary. And yet as the days went by, the solitude was having a negative impact on Andrea. Her sons came to visit her and she could see beyond their smiles, ungrateful children waiting for their massive inheritance.The shadows across her window were the sleeves of Death's robe encroaching on her property ready to take her away. And the rustling continued not only at night but in daylight- she would go out and check but her cowardice was too great.
Realizing that her sanity was making a last stand, she confronted the rustling one day with a baseball bat. When she whacked whatever was making the rustling sound was multiple times, Andrea saw the bobcat Thackeray now lying in a pool of his own blood next to a drawing pad and pencils. She let out a shriek of horror when she realized what she had done. In her vicious attack, she had unknowingly killed her neighbor and that was when Andrea realized that James had told her of his interest in drawing plants. His house had drawings of bushes and paintings of the very house that Andrea lived. James Thackeray himself was the cause of the rustling noises, drawing the bushes and trees and foilage of the house. He didn't mean any harm and there was no way that he could be cast as a villain. There was also no way for Andrea to run- she would face a trial
In a while, the police came and arrested her- Susan would call the vixen a monster but she didn't know. Andrea did not know that Thackeray was out there and in her mind, that rustling could have been caused by a murderer. It didn't matter to the court that she had no idea what that sound was. She was convicted but her lawyers were able to work something out- she was declared not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to live in an asylum. She had read in her psychology magazines about psychoses and mental asylums- now she would become herself labeled psychotic and instead of spending the rest of her years in a private retreat with her artist neighbors, she would live in St. Mary's House for the Mentally Insane.