59.
a man sits at the bar, slowly turning the drink in its glass. the woman to his right keeps touching his arm and laughing while he smiles politely; the man on his left thinks he's playing it cool by only staring at his reflection, but the man in the middle meets his gaze periodically.
the woman is telling a story about her coworker who swears she's being haunted. people tell him things. all kinds of things. everything.
the man knows each person in this room by name. Martin, the barkeep, drops his kids off at school every morning before he goes to sleep, and picks them up every afternoon. on weekends he takes the eldest to piano lessons, and the youngest to maths tutoring. Angela, in the far corner, picks flowers out of people's gardens on her morning walks. everyone hates her doing it, but she's just so bubbly and sweet that no one can bring themselves to say anything.
but this woman, she's new. and her story? that's why he comes here. he collects information, always searching for rumours, local ghost stories. anything that might be a clue.
the man is impossibly beautiful. genuinely impossibly. on paper, he should be roughly average. a little tall, a little lean. dark hair, roughly cut, falling messily about his face. on paper, photo paper, he's roughly average, but in person... his eyes are a few shades too light; they seem to shimmer in daylight and softly shine in the darkness. his skin is radiant, an ethereal glimmer surrounding him in the same way dust dances in the sunlight. his smile glows like a dying fire. maybe that's why Martin keeps topping off his drink and never asks him for a cent. perhaps it's why the woman, Joanna, can't stop talking to him.
”... that's when she first noticed the broken shards, right befo-”
“wait, you described a broken plate before. is this what you meant?”
“well yeah, but that's the thing: she didn't have any plates like that. the pattern on it, blood-red lines like spider webs, small flecks of gold...”
“does she have the pieces, do you know?” the man's smile was gone. whatever this was, it meant something to him, something direly important.
“well sh-”
the door opens slowly, silently, yet everyone hears it anyway. not exactly hears, per se. senses. every head is turned, every eye following the footsteps.
Her footsteps.