Liam shambled to consciousness. His skin was as cold as the windowpanes. He hurried forward, and with no less briskness pushed through the opposite doorway, where the door now stood ajar. His friend’s name formed tentatively in his mouth, but he met with no one.
The obstruction of ointment was rubbed from his eyes, but this did not harden the diffuse light. It shone along the walls, but not in the corners, where recesses resembled floor-to-ceiling caverns. He approached the source, and without delay jerked the desk’s drawer opened—the bright torch rolled forward in the tray. No rent in reality occurred, but the quality of light was peculiar: The calendar illustration in the same tray had its color vividly restored.
The captive fled the room for the stairhead, and was not mistaken in thinking the color of the stair runner a deep viridian green. His flashlight blinked ahead of it, down the balusters and rail, and uncovered more disquieting evidence among brass sconces on the first floor: These bore a verdigris patina.
Scuttling down the stairs, a moment was spared to push his light into the parlor. His beam grazed the easel before streaking those passages of oil paint still wet on the canvas. The strong chroma exhibited was absorbed in his cornea as from a glass dropper, and the resulting sensation underscored, what had been, his loss of the vital pigment, which had deteriorated too incrementally over the years to merit alarm. The artist reacted to the slashing strokes of phthalocyanine green, which sparred with the aplomb of a younger artist. He could not place the verdant colors inconvertibly in the setting, or doubt that a somnambulist finished the painting.
The ping of a small bell alerted him to the exposed fireplace. Paw prints stirred the cinders and sawdust around the hearth where the terrier had quit its track!
Small hard nails—on four scampering feet—drew his attention to the stairs, but his flashlight could not catch the black dog.
A flicker was spotted in the tail of his eye rounding the stairhead. The armoire made a blackish shape against the bay window, and this reflection of a flashlight, snagged in the swinging mirror-panel door, was first thought to be his. Instantly this second beam projected backwards through the glass and into the contractual bedroom.
Liam felt himself entrained in its path. His fingertips tested the dim barrier of the half-opened door.
Past it, someone with a broad back lay on his bed. This person showed no reaction to the painter’s squeaking presence in the doorway. Splinters of light seeped from the desk alongside the bed. Its drawer concealed the second flashlight.
A dreadfulness lingered over the bedstead, having moreover migrated to the person on it. The sleeper’s arms were interlocked and pulled close to his chest. There he held a shadow darker than any other in the room: a shadow that yielded to no light.
Surely this person pretended to be asleep. His act was brazen, and the framer of this evaluation did not understand the strategy in pursuing it. The painter had not doubted deception, but did not permit time in his fumbling about for it to hardened into a full-throated accusation. He was nonetheless powerless to approach the bed.
The floor was searched for the dog, but both flashlights blinked out simultaneously. Liam dropped his torch, feeling it become something reptilian under his touch. Panicking, he paddled backwards into the hall and quietly shut the bedroom door—this action was immediately regretted.
Without delay, scratching leapt to the opposing door face.
Was this the dog?
A swallow in the listener’s throat found no bottom, and had the door reopened at that moment, his petrified state rendered him helpless from whatever or whoever should step through it. The nature of this creeping torment was unchanged from its first occurrence that prior afternoon, as the scratcher was content, for a while longer, to scratch.
This was opportunity to stir from the spot and bound down the stairs. What was first thought to be motion light on the treads was, instead, daybreak issuing from the front door, which now stood open.
The fleer stepped under the portico and realized, against every possibility, that this was the door forced by Howard. Was the person sleeping upstairs his friend? This idea could not be connected in the time allowed. Liam shut the door—
Scratching followed him to this door, also.
To dash across the yard to the road would be expedience itself, but snapping twigs underfoot might sound like alerting thunderclaps.
His bicycle was not seen in the high grass, and a search for it was not attempted.
The concealment of the northern woods came into sight. The turret was visible some minutes into his escape, but gradually the gables and stovepipes in its company disintegrated beneath a grey screen of branches.
The fog rebounded. More of his afflicted corneas were needed to separate shadow from shadow. Sunrise was in reach of the hour, but heavy cloud cover drained the paper birch of any tonality. His intention was to rejoin the field further west, but recrossing this lateral ground gave him no prospect of meadowland. A point was reached in his desperation where walking back the way he came seemed advisable. Yet due to the lack of visibility, the trekker was unconvinced that he moved in anything like a straight line.
He imagined un-enlisted company in his escape, not unlike the companion who mirrored his travel days before. This phantom seemed disconcertingly close, and was too malleable in his imagination. Scratching in the leaves may have been its calling card—or was it shedding a husk of skin?
A small dark figure was seen hopping through swaths of desiccated grass ahead. The dog traveled diagonally away from him, moving deeper into the prospect of northern woods. Liam kept his distance, watching as trees intersected the animal at intervals. He did not know why this picture disturbed him, but within the minute an answer was provided: The terrier’s size did not change relative to the shrinking tree line, even though both figure and ground closed on the horizon. If he had supposed the dog’s trek to be of typical difficulty in the undergrowth, this was less clear as its size seemingly increased. A crackle of deadwood echoed widely over the open field, despite the muffling effect of fog, and suggested an encumbered and determined bear. And yet, this imprecise shape better compared to a child’s frenetic scribble, which both defanged his fear and required a whole new order in his mind for it.
Liam was relieved that the ‘creature’s’ track took it north.
Down to his last scintilla of resolve, a clearcut broke through the enveloping veil and supplied transmission towers. They were tethered together like a compass. Since these lines travelled diagonally from northeast to southwest from the Otis Plant to the dam, they should intersect the road leading to his aunt’s house further south.
Liam stepped into the traffic of towers and squinted northward. No more than three towers were traceable through wisps of condensation, but he could imagine his terrifying companion stumbling into this clearing and turning onto his path.
The sun never materialized in the east. The trekker had stumbled around more hours than he had supposed to lose an entire day. Coming finally to his juncture, he was only assured of it when he walked a quarter mile on the accompanying rural road to locate familiar landmarks. These did not come readily due to the onset of twilight. He almost impaled himself on the iron gate of the cemetery before his location was determined: The marble angel, as if rising from a Cytherean cloud over the hill, pointed the way back over much of the subsequent ground gained.
The homestead give no indication of its existence until he came within a few yards of it. His shoe bumped the first step of its porch; the front door stood open past this step.
Had the mewling wind seized the occasion to disturb it?
Liam would not close the door behind him for fear of his scratching pursuer. Moreover, every interior door in the house was flung open in his tour of the property, including the back door. A draft cut a course through the house, and any door yielding to it, that showed a propensity to shut, was prevented doing so by the nearest available object serving as a stop. He did spare the medicine cabinet door, or those attached to cupboards in the kitchen.
The basement door was the last door to be confronted. From the top step, methodical scratching was heard in the darkness below. The black terrier was pictured rearing up on his aunt’s electric dryer. A light switch dispatched this nightmare—
There was no dog.
The purring dryer tumbled in counterpoise. The scratching at its metal door was due to buttons on a garment rotating inside the drum.
The resident descended the wheezing stairs and, against his fear, opened the appliance door. No warmth issued from its empty interior. Only the earthy chill of a disinterred grave greeted him.
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