15 September 2009
Colleen pressed the mute button on the remote. She turned, frowning. What was that noise? She listened but whatever sound had interrupted her movie was gone now. She shook her head and relaxed into the armchair. Turning up the volume, she let herself get lost in the storyline.
The ghost of hoarse whisper tickled her ear, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She gasped, whirling. The remote clattered to the floor.
Ridley’s Scott’s Alien shrieked on the TV as she stared, wild-eyed behind her.
“What the hell?” Goose bumps rose along her neck and arms.
She saw nothing that could have caused the noise. Her eyes darted around the small house taking in a round dining table and matching chairs, the small kitchenette. She reached for the remote and snatched it up fast. She hated the inky black floors in this house.
Something moved in her periphery. She turned, hand flying to her chest.
A soft blue tattered curtain inhaled and exhaled with the breeze. Colleen closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and crossed the room. She put her hands on the windowsill and pulled downward. It stuck fast. She grunted, leaning backward on her heels. The window still wouldn’t budge. A gust of wind rushed in, cutting through her thin shirt. She gritted her teeth and yanked.
Colleen felt her stomach rush as she fell forward along with the window, which hit wood on wood with an ear-shattering bang. The shock reverberated through her body and when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see the glass hadn’t shattered.
She yanked the curtains closed with trembling fingers and opened the refrigerator.
As promised, there was a full case of beer. She popped the top of one and took a long swig.
Settling back into the armchair, she tried to get back into the movie but couldn’t relax. She jumped every time the faucet dripped or the wind picked up outside. Relenting, she flicked the TV to a comedy station.
Jerry Seinfeld was in the middle of a monologue on airplane bathrooms when she heard the thump.
She turned, eyes flicking to the front door, then around the room. “Houdini?”
Half the time she forgot her cousins even had a cat. He was so quiet and stealthy.
The thump came again. Colleen got up and walked toward the bathroom.
The door creaked when she pushed it. She held her breath, expecting the cat to leap out. Nothing. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The light of a full moon passed through threadbare curtains, playing eerily on a white tiled floor.
Thump.
The sound came from her right. Back in the hallway, she opened the door to the closet, once again bracing herself for a scare. The floor beneath the coats, scarves and jackets was the same inky black as the living room. Something white caught her eye. Lace? She peered closer and her stomach lurched when she saw the small white arm. She squinted, bending to get a closer look. A strand of pearls decorated a slim white neck. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. It was only a doll. She pushed a black duster aside and gasped. It had no head. She reeled back and slammed the closet door. Most likely the dwellers before her cousins moved in had had a child. A destructive one.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
Colleen turned toward this new sound. Now what? She walked back down the hall, pausing in the living room but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Leaning forward, she grabbed the remote and tuned the TV to a local news station, something familiar and rational to drown out the strange sounds. As she turned and headed toward the kitchen something round and furry slid beneath her foot. She shrieked and tumbled backward, elbow hitting the table lamp with a painful crack.
Houdini hissed and streaked off. Colleen cursed, rubbing her bruised elbow. Grabbing the back of the couch, she pulled herself to her feet.
She squinted at a streak of red on the ebony floor. For a panicked moment, she thought she’d injured the cat but a closer inspection told her the streak wasn’t blood. It was too circular, too uniform for that. She crouched, peeling back flakes of black paint with her fingertips.
The curve continued and seemed to connect with a solid line. How had the cat managed to scratch off all of the paint in such a short amount of time? She was staring too hard at the lines. They seemed to glow.
Shaking her head, she rose to her feet. Her imagination was getting the better of her. Whatever lay beneath the black paint was most likely a leftover regret of a bored bunch of college kids on a Saturday night.
She wrestled the recliner backward over the stain and headed to the kitchen.
Grabbing another beer from the fridge, she glanced at the clock. In another twenty-four hours her cousins would be back from their trip. The house-sitting gig was only for a long weekend. She’d get to bed early tonight, feed the cat and the fish and be out before noon.
As she sat listening to the drone of the TV, the alcohol took affect. She realized she hadn’t heard an unusual sound in a while. She felt calm now, a bit detached.
***
Somewhere in the night, a cat screamed.
Colleen woke with a start. Hand shooting forward, it upended the empty beer bottle on the coffee table. It spun and stopped. The open mouth pointed toward her racing heart like the barrel of a gun.
A glance at the clock told her she’d slept for two hours. Might as well go to bed. She got up, took the DVD from the player, straightened the pillows and grabbed the two beer bottles from the table. As she moved toward the kitchen she realized the space between the recliner and the couch was a tighter squeeze than she expected. She’d have to pull the recliner back where it was and explain…
She gasped. One of the beer bottles slipped from her grasp, landing with a loud ‘thwock’ on the hardwood floor. A dark stain leaked out from beneath the recliner. Her eyes followed the stain that continued like a trail of blood on the black floor. It disappeared around the corner and Colleen felt compelled to follow.
Thump.
Colleen stopped, mind whirling.
Thump. Thump.
She watched her hand reach for the closet doorknob. Though she heard the voice in the back of her mind screaming for her to stop, she had no control. An icy heat penetrated her hand as she turned the knob.
Clammy fingers strummed her spine when she saw the furry, twitching tail. The visage before her eyes pieced itself slowly together in her mind. The tail twitched again, mopping the blood it lay in like some macabre windshield wiper. A greasy wave of nausea gripped her.
Thump.
What just moved?
The doll. She’d completely forgotten about the doll!
That’s when she noticed the cats paw. Its claws were extended, filed down to nubs from scratching. Dark blood was matted to the fur. One of the paws seemed to be raised higher than the other.
Thump.
The paw twitched and lifted, twitched and lifted as though the floor had somehow begun to breathe beneath the dead animal. It slid out of the way, landing with a sickening plop as the floorboards finally lifted, revealing a white, round shape.
Colleen staggered, her back striking the wall. Legs jelly, stomach churning, she slid along the wall, every movement a Herculean effort.
She saw the curly auburn hair as the head emerged, poking through the inky black of the floorboards. The cerulean blue eyes shone with animal luminosity. Flecks of black paint clung to an eerily beautiful face.
The thing saw her and grinned, revealing an impossible row of sharp, jagged teeth. It moved toward her, thumping along the ground.
Colleen felt a scream stick in her throat as the headless body of the doll followed, dragging itself along the ground with the rustle and scrape of lace over wood. The head stopped at her feet. The eyes peered up at her and the mouth yawned open, unleashing a demonic scream.
***
“Colleen?” Rich shook his wife. “Honey, hey, wake up. Are you alright?”
Colleen sat bolt upright on the couch, nearly upending the half-finished beer on the table. Rich caught it before it fell and sat beside her.
He chuckled. “Are you okay?”
Colleen took a deep breath and shook her head, eyes greedily drinking in the familiar sights of home. Her racing heart slowed as she looked into the bemused face of her husband.
On the TV screen, Ridley Scott’s famous Alien was putting the moves on Sigourney Weaver.
Colleen smiled then laughed. “Rich, you’ll never going to believe the dream I just had.”
“What was it?”
“Oh forget it,” Colleen said. “You’ll think I’m nuts.” She looked down at the cordless phone in his hand. “Making a call?”
“Oh yeah,” Rich looked down as though he’d forgotten what he was holding. “Mark and Nancy just called. My business trip and their vacation are on the same weekend. They’re going away and want to know if you can house-sit.”
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