He reached out to flatten the drape of deep burgundy, which hung parallel to a blowing baseboard vent. Arresting its movement was to prevent it lapping against his knees and thereby prevent it from becoming a living thing. This decision was not conducive to sleep, for in staying mindful of the curtain the sleeper grasped how it climbed an exceeding height. Any draft would be difficult to constrain should the voluminous material, throughout its length, take a notion to stir.
A hole was felt beneath the cloth. Its discoverer pulled aside the covering to reveal the thready view of the hallway outside the apartment. Doubtless his brother strung the shari to hide this rupture.
Presently two blurry individuals were glimpsed carrying a blue bag between them. Its length and weight suggested a body of someone just deceased. The carriers were careful not to jostle the contents, or allow any protruding edge from it to brush the corridor walls. They were heard to pass through an exterior door without pause, which was presumably left open for them. No one came to shut this door, leaving a draft to enter the premises and arrive at his brother’s apartment through the hole.
For what other reason was this door left ajar than for the recently removed deceased resident to return…
Liam anticipated her arrival to this point in the wall.
The tapestry billowed and grazed his forearm, nightmarishly modeling a second forearm—someone seized on the occasion of the hole to probe the interior wall of the apartment. Seconds were needed to complete the terrifying picture—this arm was fully detached! Its movement was blind and searching. It speedily climbed the wall beneath the hanging and disappeared near the ceiling.
Liam launched away from the wall. Slanted light from the parking lot outside revealed nothing overhead but textured ceiling tiles. The tapestry beside him, in like conspiracy, had resumed its natural dimensions.
Yet while his impression lingered, Liam was convinced that battering against the far side of wall had been genuine. Groggily he pursued this impression to the door. The grimy spyglass found no one in the hallway. Glass globe light fixtures in the common area were clogged with dead insects, and the reduced illumination encouraged free-ranging shadows of dubious description, yet none produced a physical body.
Fading footsteps was chalked up to pinecones striking the wood-framed roof, but when the sleeper again faced the wall beside his bed, halting tread, nearer his ear, returned. It did not originate from shoes but from small cushioned feet, possibly those of a toddler in macramé booties. An infant, it was reasonable to assume, would not be roaming the building at this unholy hour.
Another rapid succession of gentle thumps traveled along the wall in precisely the same manner as before, only he was wide awake in count them. This tapping had included the distinct sound of rapid fingernails, and suggested—not the inarticulate pudgy digits of a baby—but nails like those of a small dog.
Lucien lumbered in a dark current beside his brother in the floor. The twins no longer shared an embryonic sack, or a bed where, huddled together as children, one might wake the other from a nightmare.
The sibling rose to unlatch the door chain and peek out. He surveyed more than was available through the spyglass. A baby gate blocked off the lower trends of a dimly lit staircase; this went to the theory of a toddler on the first floor, although no gallivanting baby presently charged the rampart.
Having ventured into the common area, ambient light of a television screen seeped toward the searcher from the darkest corner of the downstairs. This beacon was mere insinuation since the soft light emanated from the cracked door of another apartment.
Did the tot use this accessible apartment as a base of operation? There was no other place among these chthonic chambers from which the child could vanish so utterly.
Liam approached this apartment’s threshold and spied a dark grey head bobbing over the back of a broad leather-bound recliner. Here dozed the seeming guardian in front of a television set.
Something lay in the doorway: a small brightly colored plastic key. The trespasser looked it over and thought it a poor toy for a teething toddler, so slipped it into the pocket of his pajamas, as if removing a hazard.
Were the child hereabout, it was aware of his presence, although with guardedness too self-possessing for an adolescent. This idea, more than the fact of an unsupervised, perambulating baby, unnerved…
Instantly a door slammed shut behind Liam—the only other door known to be ajar was the one belonging to his brother’s apartment. He hurriedly returned to it.
A shove produced little effect—the door only gave in its upper half. Someone of short brawny stature pushed back from the other side!
The barrier at last recoiled and groaned; a draft pried it open where battering had failed. Lucien still slept soundly, leaving his terrified guest to survey the dark room from the shelter of the doorway.
Nothing was seen of the beetling child.
Copyright © 2008-2024 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.