The Children

I live in a two-story house that's been in my family for several generations. After the passing of my grandmother, the house remained empty for a few years. Both of her sons already had a family and house of their own and they didn't really want to bother with all the work and renovations that this house was screaming for.

I moved in a couple of months ago with three friends and we've been working hard to repair the plumbing and to repaint every room. We want to make this house livable again. We want a place we can call our own. Some of our closest friends have been around to help and we felt we owed them so last Friday we invited them over and made a special dinner for everyone.

I feel lucky and blessed to know them. It’s amazing how the right people can make a difference in your life.

After the meal was over I felt tired and wanted to lie down on my bed, butthe party was just getting started. Everyone agreed we should all go out, but I insisted on staying home. I was completely exhausted because I had been running errands all day. They left around eleven in the evening, after a lot of discussion on who would be the designated drivers.

Even though they told me to leave everything as it was, I couldn’t just let the dirty dishes on the table. I also made a nice cup of chamomile tea, to help me relax and have a better night’s sleep.

I turned off the light in the kitchen after cleaning up a bit and climbed the stairs carefully not to spill my hot cup of tea over myself. I just wanted to lay in bed with a good book and read for a while before going to sleep.

When I turned on the ceiling light in my bedroom - the first door on the right side of the landing - I couldn't help but smile. Everything was new, but there was this cosy cabin look to it that I loved. The wallpaper I had chosen a few weeks back resembled bright cherry wood panelling, just like the one that covered the walls of my great-grandmother's old cottage - I used to go there on vacation with my parents for a week during the summer when I was little and it was one of my favourite places on Earth.

After putting down the tea next to the alarm clock on the beige bedside table, I put my red hair up on a bun and sat on the bed under the covers. Propped up on two fluffy pillows, I took a sip of my tea and started reading the book on my lap.

After living in a big city all my life, I was finding it very hard to get used to the overwhelming silence of the suburbs. I was so accustomed to the constant noise of the bustling streets that even the barking of the dogs that were rummaging through the garbage on the sidewalk sounded distracting and somewhat alien to me in the midst of all that quietness.

A few pages into the book, my mind started to wonder. Harsh wind was blowing heavy raindrops against my window. After a very dry summer, the first rain of October had started to fall earlier that day. We still hadn’t found the time to place the stone pathway between the front gate and the front door, so all the dusty dirt had turned into sticky mud all of a sudden. We needed to get that done as soon as possible because I knew I’d be the one cleaning the muddy footprints every time I it rained. I wished my house mates would be as careful coming in as they had been going out - they had left through the back door so as not to taint their precious snickers and boots with that yucky mess.

I felt a pricking pain in my eyes. Rubbing them didn’t make it go away, so I kept them lightly shut for a few seconds. Without meaning to, I ended up dozing off. I woke up with a start some time later when the doorbell went off.

I glanced at the alarm clock that showed it was just a few minutes after midnight and suddenly felt uneasy. Since we had moved in, no one had rung our doorbell, much less during the night. Peeking through the curtains, I saw two kids standing out in the mud on my front garden. There was something odd about them, but looking up and down the lane, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in sight.

With a racing heart, I walked down the stairs.

“Who is it?” I asked loudly halfway down the hall, my voice trembling a little bit. There had been stories here and there about people being abducted from their homes during the night and I was afraid I was being led outside purposefully by the perpetrators of those crimes.

Despite the chill in the air, my palms were sweaty. There was an uncomfortable feeling on my chest, as if there was something heavy weighing down on me.

“Open the door, we need help.”

Again, I felt there was something definitely wrong in this scenario. Children who needed help were usually scared, maybe even crying, not calm and collected as these two seemed to be. However, I felt compelled to open the door.

My first impression was that the darkness of the night seemed to be thicker than usual, but then I noticed that the nearest street lamp wasn’t on. The rain had stopped.

Both children had their heads covered with hoodies, which hid their faces in the shadows. Judging by their heights, however, I was certain they couldn’t be over 11 years old.

“We need your help” repeated the one on the right. “Let us in.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Let us in, we need to make a phone call.”

His insistence was triggering a warning sign somewhere on my brain. I peeked outside and studied both sides of the street, but I still couldn’t see anyone else.

“Are you alone?” I asked, trying to buy some time. I needed to figure out what do. ”Are you lost?”

“We just need to get inside.”

These two children were rather disturbing but I couldn’t quite understand why. I had a bad feeling about letting them in the house, but my conscience was telling me it was wrong to ignore them.

Maybe it was the darkness that was messing with my mind, placing this irrational fear where it shouldn’t be. After all, what was so scary about two lost children?

I reached for the light-switch and turned it on. As soon as the yellow light fell upon them, they looked up at me in unison. A high-pitched scream pierced through my ears. In the midst of the confusion and shock, it took me a while to recognise my own voice - it was me who had screamed.

Like the depictions of demonic eyes in movies, there was no other colour in these children’s eyes but black. These were not human eyes.

Both of them took a menacing step forward, which made me slam the door and run to the kitchen. I picked up the phone to call the police but when I put it against my ear, there was only silence. The line was dead. I ran upstairs to get my cell phone, but it didn’t work either.

I could feel the blood rushing through my veins, pumped by a heart that was beating very fast - so fast that I was scared it was going to explode. A sharp pain spread across my forehead, threatening to rip it apart. I was vaguely aware of their fists pounding on the door downstairs, but it seemed like a million miles away. I felt myself slip away from consciousness, as if I was being embraced by a dark satin veil. Suddenly I was falling, falling in slow motion, until my knees hit the ground.

 

 

When I regained conscience, there was only silence. The cold sun rays of the first hours of the morning hit my eyes like a feather, as if to greet me. At first, I did not understand why I was lying on the floor, but then the memories of last night washed over me like a terrible wave of fear. I got up cautiously, feeling the light bump on my forehead and wincing at the sharp pain that shot through my skull.

Ignoring the odd deja vu feeling, I peeked through the curtains but saw no one outside, except for an old man with a cane walking his dog. I knew my friends were home because their cars were parked outside and I just hoped the children were already gone when they arrived. I was about to turn around when something else caught my attention.

The footprints on the mud were only coming in.

None were going out.