Dinner was consumed before retreating to his sleeping bag to let the lump digest in his gut with minimal agitation. The box in the corner of the living room stayed prescient in the slanted window light, and the resident wondered if the creature he intended to snare was already bedded inside it.
In lighter stages of sleep, it was difficult to distinguish between sleep and resting his eyes. Sounds from the ever-present intercom broke equally across these differing hemispheres of consciousness, although it was easy to envision footsteps inhabiting both. Murmurings doubled in the walls, and doubled again, yet did not touch one another by mutual repellant force. Momentarily (though it may have been longer than a moment) silence overtook the situation, and its sudden onset was sufficient to rouse him. The intecom rejoined the failed sleeper, for it had never left him.
He rose from his bed—a spasm of pain shot through his body, though its briefness led he to believe it was the late invention of a troubled dream.
The box in the front room was inspected. No animal was bedded in it. However, the folded towel lining the box possessed a sunken outline, which was warm to touch. The searcher’s fingers also struck a small spongy object. Lifting the foam ball into moonlight did not stamp a color to it.
Liam was taking an action that he had, perhaps, only dreamt in the preceding minutes, but he snuck down the creaking cellar steps to where the exterminator’s penlight still flickered atop the electric dryer. It provided enough illumination to proclaim that the ball was a shade of green.
Finding a pet’s toy was a surprising development, but the ivory-tinted switch plate residing in the center in the penlight’s beam merited greater attention. Two weighted toggle levers sat next to each other, one in the up position and the other in the down.
Curious, he flipped down the up-indicated switch and, instantly, the ever-present hum of the intercoms fell silent. The second switch was similarly reoriented, though nothing was seen or heard to happen.
It was unwise to be active in hours better dedicated to the pursuit of sleep, so Liam left both switches in their new positions and would, on the morrow, discover the extent of their function. He returned upstairs with the cat’s toy in hand, but no cat.
The penlight had been removed from the cellar, yet was not needed to determine that a second light now reached the hallway. It originated from the open attic hatch, and its source was likely connected to one of the two switches in the basement.
This reasoning did not survive more than a few seconds—this new attic light was not stationary.
The resident stood unambiguously in his attic, and with each forward step he took, the moving light, which preferred the darkest corner, lurched an equal distance in his direction. This edgeless figure was surely real, and Liam feared what should happen if he overtook his intruder.
His fear was not realized. Only a full-length mirror reflecting his hesitant form bearing the penlight was met.
The paradox that brought him to this discovery was not comprehended until he returned downstairs: How could the penlight’s reflection exist in an attic mirror where the penlight had yet to be introduced to it? How, then, was the reflection paired to its hallway corresponder?
The torch was flung to the floor with sudden revulsion—it shorted out; the creeping light in the attic similarly disappeared.
Liam eyed his sleeping bag in the bedroom floor. Thought was given to returning to it, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins prevented him from acting on this faint-hearted remedy.
Prairie wind was emboldened to approach the porch and rattle the tin lid on the mailbox. The breeze nudged the front door not an inch, but scampered around the outside of the house to thwack a substantial tree limb against an east-facing window. The hearer was inclined to leave imperturbable darkness in these panes, but their disquiet, like the attic light, drew him near.
The summoning branch at once ceased its summons, and the resident was planted with a view over a pacific distance. Light (but not lightening) leapt across small gaps—not from low bulging clouds but from window to window in a far-off house…
Someone else shared his restless evening.
The strange energy of this distant hurricane lamp was not consigned to a methodical search of premises. Its lurching movement suggested a dreadful struggle, as though the shaft of light, like a saber, sought to vanquish a monster. Yet the witness saw nothing more than coruscating glimmers passing back and forth. He imagined curtains, first brushed and then torn from their rods, swabbing pools of blood.
The faint light was lastly extinguished, and the pinnacle of the turret alone remained silhouetted against the constellation of Cassiopeia and her seven sisters.
Liam was only certain of horridness, and his reaction to it. He stepped from the cleft in the porch to the yard and saw nothing more. Moonlight may have deceived him where, further afield, it became increasingly turbid and ghostly in the high grass. The homesteader looked past it to where the weather ran. He was tempted to investigate in this direction, yet was more likely to meet with a fleeing murderer on the midnight road than do good.
Turning back to the door, it was stuck shut. If it was in his mind that a sharp drop in temperature threw the door out of alignment with its frame, this assumption was challenged by his inability to turn the doorknob. It was locked.
Curtains moved in a window. Resourceful wind found a path back into the house that he was denied.
Flurries advanced on Wavery Bean. The trekker, indifferent to this regional, changeable weather, saw hares dart through open stretches in the meadow in pursuit of shelter. Soon he came to the edge of town and penetrated it.
The theater marquee was bare, and its doors were locked. However, the lobby of the post office across the street was graciously heated, and having forgotten gloves, a minute of warmth was appreciated.
Across from him, tacked to the community bulletin board, a flyer for the young woman gone missing commanded attention. The paper’s color was that of holly sprigs, and suggested a wreath and a later month.
A shadow was seen from below, where he supposed her to prepare for bed. Morgan (another shadow) sat grooming his paws in the same window. He ascended the snowy star treads to the door and, on producing his key, turned the lock to find the apartment dark and uninhabited.
He eased up to the corner where once a bed stood, where duty and habit (other names for love) brought him. The imprint was joined, and he felt the influence of her anchor still there these many months later.
Like stars to a navigator, its compass would endure an hour more where inconsolable sorrow searched its windows and clouds of impermanence.
Copyright © 2008-2022 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.