The following day, Liam was resolved to eat whatever was subject to spoil in his refrigerator. This left his bicycle’s basket free to be filled with toiletries, bedclothes, and a few non-perishables. Determined to set out before sunset, a satchel of artist’s supplies was slung over his shoulder to complete his provisions, and the cyclist journeyed between retreat and an unresolved course.
Snow intercepted him, and matched, in tone and tint, cloud cover infused with a pinkish dusk. It also revealed a prospect of company ahead on a road quickly succumbed by snowfall.
The figure was edgeless and grayed-out in the straightaway, and if it was thought that he or she was stationary, this was un-demonstrated in view of decided movement about the body, which the observer interpreted as the gait of someone striding, with effort, toward him. The distance between this individual and himself did not appreciably close in the quarter mile, which meant the walker was turned the other way and shared his eastward trek.
If this were a true reading of the situation, then no tracks were counted in the snow to add to those made by his bicycle tires. The continual deposition of freezing precipitation should bury any print in a short time, although the rider thought it strange, regardless, that this person remained fixed on the horizon like a range of mountains, and that the biker’s faster means of transportation did not alter this relationship.
An episode of heavier snow intervened, and sight of the stranger was lost. Liam presumed he had overtaken the man, but this development was not greeted happily. Gradients rose in places to chop up the road. Moreover, deeper snow in these clefts slowed his progress.
Despite these hazards, the road was less of a concern to him that what abutted it.
In passing the graveyard, he reflected on the dull marble statue overseeing it. Whoever went this way before him assumed he would pay little attention to an arrangement of tombstones in a small, ill-kept cemetery, or to the number of winged sentries manning its summit. The second figure might have been a snowman that aspired to recreate the prominent sculpture, but given the brief duration of snowfall, it was unlikely anyone other than a deranged, maniacal child would seize the occasion of building it.
The cyclist gained speed of the downhill slope, and did not glance behind him again, although a thready stand of trees became his next preoccupation. The snow’s interference played tricks with his faltering eyesight. Low light meant increased pupil size, which meant more of his defected corneas were required to give shape to his surroundings. Had Liam doubled back more than the few yards he willingly surrendered, he might have glimpsed someone progressing on a parallel track. The backside of a possible pursuer was spotted periodically moving away within thin winter branches, and then, closer by, emerging from the next copse—still heading away. Yet how was it possible that this individual should walk in an opposite lateral direction and simultaneously gain on him with each sighting?
Night’s advancing remnant maintained a sharp boundary from east to west. It waited on him, and whatever nightmare lurked in this direction used the dim concealment like a stage curtain, through which it peeked, taunted, and finally withdrew.
In coming onto a part of the road never traveled before, a low star marked the horizon as a guide where clouds dissipated. It rose not as a companion, but as a distant lamp-shaded window: Curtains and drawstring were imagined to dance on its open sill, and with the steps of a ghostly companion swallowed in agony.
The structure before him was nothing he had pictured. A Victorian house, with excrescences, rose in a flecked grey light. Gables erupted over an outcrop of thorny shrubs in the very moment of his arrival. Loose shutters clamored under the same fierce wind that had dispatched snow-laded clouds. Their blows sounded like a hunter’s cracking rifle targeting distant prey.
Two enormous chimneys buttressed the bleak dwelling; a four-story turret added to its imposing aspect. A weathervane, forged with bluing, and stultified, formed an apex over a slate-shingled mansard roof, although its bent attitude made it an unreliable report of the wind’s direction.
A row of upper windows showed a calamity of untied curtains. Where they rushed together and separated, shadows in their folds resembled heaving bowers of sweet gum trees. These dark sleeves were more material than the curtains themselves, and extruded from the corbels to become long columnar fingers, which, like stanchions, reached nearly to where the visitor stood in the gathering dusk.
Liam thought this entrainment of drapery, such was seen by him from the road, might signal other passersby to the presence of an empty house, though it was the thought of a horror running unabated upstairs of which he chiefly despaired. The longer he delayed in sealing this breach, the more likely these shadows would splinter and become a hundred disparate shadows of greater threat.
He approached a portico of Italianate design, under which two substantial doors greeted him. These were not double doors but sat side by side with a slapdash portion of wall separating them. He knocked on one, and when no one came to let him in, he knocked on the other.
Meeting with no success, he circled the property in search of another entrance and found a third door banging at the rear; it was a beat behind the shutters. This racket was imagined to cover frightful footfalls emanating from a nearby wood, as the northern face of the house likely attracted morbid processes: A tint of green mold (he was certain of this hue) had replaced the original color of house paint on this side.
With only the aboral gale left at his back, the intended guest stuck his head over a peeling edge of linoleum floor around the doorsill and apprehended the house’s true uninhabited state.
“Hello!” he shouted. “I am the artist!”
No response came.
The hour put him at a disadvantage in the dark house. However, a step over the threshold activated a motion sensor and a lamp in a forward room. Liam’s second hello was less confident and fell dully at his feet in a kitchen area. He shoved a dense woolen drape aside and surveyed his gamble.
An oven sat cattycorner to the backdoor, and doubled, either through innovation or convenience, as a trash bin overflowing with garbage bags. More refuse sat between rusted legs of an old drop-leaf metal table in the center of the room. Bakelite appliances appeared at appropriate intervals on the counter, whereas an overturned cutlery tray, whose utensils were scattered in and among the range top’s burner coils, disrupted the functional flow.
If he were to be fed, meals would not be prepared here.
Failing light could be seen between a section of baseboard and floor. And yet, the hardwood planks underfoot cracked like green pecans, and indicated that the foundation was essentially sound.
Candy wrappers suggested the presence of a transient, squatter, or other recent visitor. They baited the corridor communicating with an entryway. A second lamp, bolted to the staircase’s newel, came on at a calculated interval and encouraged the tracker into a hospitable part of the house.
As Liam was then passing a closet under the stairs, something was heard to crumple inside it. The door was ajar, enough to uncover a glowing patch of blue. A vinyl sleeping bag (mostly upright) was shoved into one corner like an unstrung shower curtain, and since this was not a natural orientation, it was in the incremental process of collapsing, with each added crimp pressing ever so gently against the door’s lock rail. Its predicament read like an hourglass recently turned over, which was to surmise that the sleeping bag had been abandoned in haste before the painter stepped through the backdoor. Discoloration and a whiff of body odor lent urgency to its discovery, as did discarded boxes of turkey and dressing TV dinners lying in the same closet.
These comestibles recorded distress and desperation: The trays of food, in all instances, had not been heated before being consumed, but were merely thawed out; and perhaps not even fully thawed when a fork began chipping away at them.
Gravity supplied another crease to the bag while Liam lingered over these troubling details: The plastic’s rigidity was insufficient to keep the object vertical indefinitely, so the door was closed on its dilemma.
A note from the same model typewriter as the instruction card he received that morning was taped to a staircase baluster: Second bedroom on left at top. Meals will be in dumbwaiter opposite side of hall.
Before passing upstairs, the front door was examined. The examiner could only declare this provisionally since one door was confronted and not two. The second exterior door, seen from outside, was apparently walled over during restoration. Regardless, there was a triangular pediment over the entrance, of which the existing door was not centered beneath it.
The prevailing chill did not emanate from any ground floor doorway, yet led him to the top stair step into a hall. The designated bedroom was immediately to the right, and uon entering it Liam saw the same haunted lamp seen from the road. An open window blew the curtains wildly and threatened to overturn this desktop lamp; the houseguest moved to cut off both the source of discomfort and danger.
Shutting the sash, the drape lapping at his waist skittered up his arm. It resembled cold boney fingers, and its contact sent him shrinking into the center of the room. The curtains, meanwhile, dropped to their full length with unnatural abruptness, and in touching the heavy fustian fabric, Liam could not imagine how anything but the strongest gust should knock it about.
The guest considered the compass of his action: Every curtain in the upstairs had ceased movement simultaneously, and the scene beyond the mullions and panes played into this uncanny stillness. He attempted to reopen the window, to better study the sequence of events, but the sash, swollen with generational coats of lead paint, was stuck.
While unpacking his toiletries, chalk marks were noticed in the floor: They circled every contact point of furniture in the room.
A cursory examination of the upper bedrooms was inconclusive in linking the house to its history. No more than six bedrooms were counted. His deduction of a seventh room had a strong corollary to a freestanding armoire occupying a wall in this upstairs hallway, which covered another doorway (based on a section of post and lintel spied behind it). This was left to a better hour to explore.
What exploration could not be delayed was due to open doorways east of a bay window. A smell of mildew drew him closer, where sagging (or collapsing) ceiling plaster was dimly glimpsed. Such disrepair, like a metastasizing malignancy invading contiguous tissue, spread down walls to the floorboards, although fear of returning too hastily to the first floor by one of these routes was ample excuse to keep to the hallway.
Perhaps because of these hazards, the upstairs had less furniture than downstairs, although jardinières spotted on window ledges were numerous. Vining plants in these pots, even in their demise, had cemented their desiccated branches to mullions and sashes. Their networks resembled (in their thoroughness) cage wire over windows in a mental hospital. Such decay did not touch the curtains, however, either because the wind picked them clean each day or because they were recently installed.
The bedsteads connected to these accessible rooms were also in deplorable condition. The freshly made bed intended for him, however, was in all ways suitable, as were other amenities since these respects differed from the neglect found at his improvised entrance.
A rotary telephone sat on the same desk as the lamp; it did not possess a dial tone.
This left him to settle into an upholstered chair with the object of reading. Precise placement of the furniture appeared to be the universal condition of the household, yet on evaluating the chair’s position relevant to the chalk marks, Liam realized he had stepped cavalierly into the mysterious arrangement. He could not picture anyone living permanently under these conditions on the denuded landscape.
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