Liam shambled to consciousness. A lit flashlight lay across the desk next to his make-do bed. Its aluminum casing was cold as windowpane; the riser wondered how long it had sat there. He shuffled backwards, more than a few steps, and with no less briskness pushed his commandeered resource through the doorway to the neighboring door, which now stood ajar.
The obstruction of ointment was not thoroughly removed from his eyes. Regardless, his vision adapted rapidly to the situation.
White bed linen rose in his beam, but the diffuse light shone less effectively along the walls, and not at all in the corners where shadowy recesses resembled floor-to-ceiling caverns. He did not delay but, in entering the bedroom, grabbed its desk’s drawer pull. No flashlight rolled forward in the tray—no rent in received reality occurred: Was the flashlight in his hand formerly the one sheltered here? Who but Howard would have removed it?
The calendar illustration in the same tray held him a moment longer—its color was vividly restored. This raised the specter of another false awakening, yet 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 an unmistakable verdigris patina.
Scuttling down the stairs, he heard additional steps. A moment was required to push his light into the parlor; and a minute more to walk across its threshold and comprehend what could barely be comprehended.
His light grazed the easel and streaked 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.
Astonishment delayed reaction to other information—the ping of a small bell alerted him to the exposed fireplace. Paw prints stirred the cinders around the hearth where the terrier quit its track!
The bell rang again from deeper within the brickwork. The path taken by the reanimated animal led oppositely. Liam knelt over the hole and follow his light into this parallel house.
Emerging from the sooty bottleneck revealed the second parlor, which was identical in every regard except for the painting. This one was less saturated with color, and reproduced the memory of his original.
A flashlight beam was spotted out of the wall of his eye withdrawing up the dark stairs past the easel. His light went to trace it, yet strangely absorbed it. When he reached the first step, nothing was seen of a second light bearer.
Liam did not hesitate but charged up the stairs.
The bay window, against which the armoire made a blackish shape, showed an abatement in the weather. Here flickered the second flashlight in its loose mirror-panel door. Its path projected backwards through the reflection and into the contractual bedroom.
Stepping in this direction, Liam imagined himself again entrained in a path. His fingertips tested the dim grey barrier of the half-opened door.
Past it, someone with a broad shadowy 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 was closed, but surely this was 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 where he held a shadow darker than any other in the room: a shadow that yielded to no light.
Doubtless 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 in debates with himself for it to hardened into a full-throated accusation. He was nonetheless powerless to approach the bed.
Instantly the light in the desk went out—the same thing occurred to the flashlight in his hand. Liam dropped the torch, feeling it become something reptilian under his touch. He paddled backwards into the dark hall and quietly shut the bedroom door—this action was immediately regretted.
Without delay, scratching leapt to the opposing door face.
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. A few treads were gained when the motion detector light—at last—switched on. Yet this was no motion light at all but a premature daybreak issuing from the front door, which stood open.
The fleer stepped under the portico. The doorjamb was smashed from where Howard presumably forced it. Was the person sleeping upstairs his friend? Unthinkingly, Liam shut the door
This impossible idea could not be connected in the time allowed; Liam shut the door unthinkingly—
Scratching followed him to this door, also.
The storm that had, in the quarter hour before, pushed everything of its manufacture in direction of the house was now some ways east. 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 cover 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 fleer had strayed into uncharted territory.
The fog, chased away by rain and wind during the night, rebounded. It conspired with the gray wash of his afflicted corneas. 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. Without his bicycle to safeguard a breathing space, this phantom seemed disconcertingly close and malleable in his imagination. Scratching in the leaves may have been its calling card—or was it shedding a husk of skin? In view of his tribulation, he recalled the cast of characters connected to this foolhardy venture, and their theatrical costume changes.
When he was down to his last scintilla of resolve, a clearcut broke through the enveloping veil and supplied power line transmission towers, tethered together as a compass. Liam assumed he had walked too far north, and since these lines travelled diagonally from northeast to southwest from the Otis Plant to the dam, his aunt’s house should bear along a southern course—or at least these lines should intersect that road.
The sun never materialized in the east. He 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 fog and 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 at his back 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 from north to south 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, or so he believed.
From the top step, his aunt’s electric dryer was heard tumbling in the darkness below: Was the scratching at its metal door due to buttons or the zipper of a garment inside the rotating drum?
Without aid of light, the resident descended the wheezing stairs against his fear and 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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