New Girl

It was a dreary monday night and Shelby had just got off a long shift at the hospital. Her first day had been exhausting, she was new to the hospital and felt lost her whole shift. The hospital ER had been slow and there wasn’t much to do, so the head nurse had asked her to take inventory in the back. Her whole shift had been spent in the back room counting syringes and gauze pads. After staring mindlessly at the shelves for awhile, she decided to take her dinner break at around 5pm. As she walked up the back stairwell to get to the break room she reached into her scrub top pocket and took out her phone. A text popped up on the screen stating that the moving truck had arrived at her house. Since it was a slow night the nurses agreed to let her leave early, so she grabbed her jacket off the hook and headed to the parking lot. As she left the building her phone started buzzing, it was her mom.

“Hey mom, what’s up?”

“Just wondering how your first day was? Do you like the nurses? Was it busy? Her mom asked

“It was pretty slow, I am heading home early, the moving truck just got here”

“Oh good, well I just called to make sure everything was okay, you know your dad and I worry now that you’ve moved across the country away from us.” her mom sounded worried.

“Yah I am just tired, but I really like it here mom”

“Well it is Monday night, maybe you could find the local church and go to adoration, I know you’ve been a little stressed from the move.” What a good catholic mom Shelby thought, but it did sound like a good idea, she had been feeling stressed and tired from the move. Shelby had just moved from Wisconsin to across the country to a good sized town in Oregon. She wanted to get out of the tiny town she grew up in. Shelby started up her volkswagen black jetta and plugged the nearest catholic church into her GPS. It was only five minutes away.

She pulled up to the church, it was around 7 pm at this time. It was a huge church with gothic accents. It loomed over her casting a dark shadow onto the parking lot. Shelby thought to herself that the place did not look very inviting, but she wanted to give it a try. She got out of her car and walked up to the dimly lit entrance and entered.

Once she entered the church it took her a second for her eyes to adjust to the poorly lit church. There were only candles to provide light. There were only few people in the church and a single clergy member walking around with a candle. He did not look friendly, so Shelby thought she would just take a seat on one of the pews in the back. She sat in a corner of the church that wasn’t well lit. there was a hallway to her left, but it was not lit, so Shelby could not see what was at the end of it. When she sat down she looked around and started to awe at how large this cathedral was. It had huge vaulted ceilings with round chandeliers hanging from them. There were stained glass windows behind the altar and the church was filled with heavy oak pews. The pews were lined with red plush cushions. Just then as she looked up a strike of lightning hit near by and created a loud boom. The rain then started to pelt the stained glass windows. Shelby kneeled onto the wooden kneeler and began to pray. She closed her eyes and started to reflect back on her day. She asked Jesus to help guide her in this new place and to calm her parents worries. As she was praying she heard the doors at the back of the church open and footsteps of someone coming in.There was a breeze from the wind that swept through the church. Some candles went out. Shelby assumed it was just another person coming to pray. The footsteps were heavy like the sound of leather boots. They squeaked with the fresh rain on their soles. As the footsteps grew closer Shelbys attention shifted from her praying to the footsteps. Shelby had this nagging feeling to open her eyes, turn around, and see who it was, but that would be rude right? She could not just turn around and stare at someone, so she sat there. Her heartbeat began to elevate slightly. The footsteps stopped at the pew behind her and squeaked and the boots pivoted to turn into the pew. She could hear this persons breathe. It was heavy, deep, and menacing.

The person behind her sat down calmly. The bench creaked under the person's weight. Shelby had decided she had prayed enough and that the movers were probably getting antsy, so she grabbed her jacket, flipped up the kneeler, and left abruptly. She had left so quick she did not even get a chance to see the person who was sitting behind her. She ran to her car to escape the rain and the nagging feeling someone was following her. As Shelby approached her car she began to fumble in her purse for her keys. Her phone then began to go off loudly. Shelby started to panic because she couldn’t find her phone or keys and now her obnoxious ringtone was drawing attention to herself. She reached in her pocket and sighed a sigh of relief there were her keys. She jumped in her car and locked the doors. She looked down into her lap to search through her purse for her phone. Digging through the front pocket Shelby saw a shadow of a person catch her eye. She looked up, but nothing was there. She continued to dig through her bag and atlast there it was. She called back the number. Nobody answered. Weird she thought, the number that had called her had an area code for Rockaway, the town she had just moved to. She has not given her number out yet to anyone here.

As she drove home she was so caught up in thinking about today's event she did not even notice the radio was not on. She was almost home when she glanced up in her rearview mirror to see a car riding her bumper close. Shelby was paranoid at this point and decided to take some back roads to her house. After all she did not want to have someone know where she lived. At some point shelby had taken too many lefts and too many rights to the extent she no longer knew where she was and this car was still following her. She decided maybe the car wanted to pass her, so she pulled over, not only to let the car pass her, but also so she could put her address into her GPS. The car pulled in behind her. Shelby was looking down at her phone and didn't even notice. She heard a knocking on her window and jumped in fear. She spent no time putting her car back in drive and speeding off. That was a close call Shelby thought. She was so fed up and paranoid she was ready to call the cops.

“This is 911 dispatch what do you need help with?”

“Hi, um I think this person is following me I think I am being stalked. I am new to town and I am so scared” Shelby was shaking as she held the phone.

“Where are you, I will send officers” dispatch questioned.

“I don’t know I was driving and this car followed me, so I took a bunch of turns and now I am lost, please help me.”

“Can you  tell me what you see around you”

“I am in a neighborhood”

“Can you tell me someones house number” Shelby gave dispatch the nearest house number she saw.

“I am sending police to your location, hold tight” dispatch reassured her. A few minutes later Shelby saw flashing lights in her rear view mirror; the police had arrived. Feeling relieved Shelby got out of her car to go back and talk to the officers. They were understanding and wrote down every detail Shelby said.

“The church was dark, I didn’t even get a chance to see the man's face” Shelby said when questioned by the officers.

“Well because of the storm, the power has been out for a few hours, that is probably why there were only candles in the church.” the first officer said. Just then the car that had been following her pulled in behind the two cop cars.

Shelby flipped out,  yelling “that’s him, that is the car that was following me the whole time. He is here help, help, help.”

“Ma’am please try and be calm” the first officer responded. “That is a cop, you were being followed by a cop”. Just then another officer walks up and began to explain himself.

“I was following you because I was running your plates, I thought you might be lost, you had out of state plates, and you were driving in circles” he said with a hint of worry in his voice. “Ma’am I came up to your car and knocked on the window because I thought you might need directions, I didn't mean to scare you.” Now completely embarrassed by the whole situation Shelby realized she had just called 911 for no reason and that she was completely paranoid for no reason. Thinking back to the strange telephone call she had received she questioned the officers.

“I never gave my number to anyone here how would someone have my number”

“Did they leave you a voicemail?” Shelby looked down at her phone to see that in fact they did leave her a voicemail.

“Hi, this is Movers And Bros calling to let you know we’re here at your address, we’ll wait around for a bit until you get here, thanks, bye.” You cannot imagine how silly Shelby felt. She apologized profusely to the officers for wasting their time. What a big deal she had made over nothing.

“You had mentioned someone sitting behind you in church right?” questioned the second officer.

“Yes, yes he was very creepy, I think he followed me to my car.”

“Well, you see I called the church to follow up on that and the guy sitting behind you said that he knew you were new to the church and he was just trying to make you more comfortable since you were sitting alone” Shelby was in awe… “He said he is really sorry that he made you feel uncomfortable, he also mentioned that he did go out to the parking lot, he said he had forgotten his bible in his car.” At this point Shelby felt relief, but also extremely embarrassed. She apologized again. Now she was stumped at how wrong she was, all these people had good intentions and Shelby had completely misread them. After the officers had left Shelby got in her car and laughed it off. What a day she thought… what a day.