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.
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. 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 never left him.
The box in the front room was approached. Liam did not recall turning it on its side, but conceivably a cat may have tipped it over in fleeing the scene when it heard the resident rise.
The angle of the box aligned with the cellar door, which stood ajar. The exterminator’s flashlight still shown where she left it on the dryer. A search would be made for the elusive cat by aid of this light, but before this plan could be put into action, the lamp’s narrow beam brought him to two toggle switches in the nearby circuit breaker box: one in the up position and the other in the down.
The up-indicated switch was flipped down and, instantly, the ever-present hum of the intercoms fell silent. The second switch was also reoriented. 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 light, but no cat.
A second light now reached him from 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 pull-down ladder was ascended, and the resident stood unambiguously in his attic. With each forward step he took, the mysterious light, which preferred the darkest corner, lurched an equal distance in his direction. The edgeless figure who wielded this light 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 flashlight was met.
The paradox that brought him to this discovery was not comprehended until he returned downstairs: How could the flashlight’s reflection exist in an attic mirror where the flashlight had yet to be introduced to it? How, then, was the reflection paired to its hallway corresponder?
His light shorted out—or was the attic light turned off to produce this impression? Footsteps did not materialize overhead, but in peering into the open hatch from below, the darkness was too much like staring into the full-length mirror again.
Thought was given to returning to the sleeping bag, 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 lamp was not consigned to a methodical search of premises. Its lurching movement suggested a dreadful struggle, and then 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.
The witness stepped from the cleft in the porch to the yard, but 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 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 Waverly 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 sat grooming his paws in the same window. He ascended the snowy stair treads to the door and, on producing his key, turned the lock to find the apartment dark and uninhabited.
He stepped into the imprint left in the carpet, and marked out the four corners where the bedstead once stood—where duty and habit (other names for love) brought him. Like stars to a navigator, their compass would endure an hour more while inconsolable sorrow searched the windows and clouds of impermanence.
Copyright © 2008-2022 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.