A Block of Broken Houses

Inherited (Part Two)

The seconds clicked by in conjured shrieks of laughter, and even at six I began to feel silly when those seconds slipped past and nothing happened. Eventually a soft, subtle confidence eased back into me.

Before I could open my eyes, hot, thick breath enveloped my face, and what felt like the windborne seeds from a dandelion brushed against my cheeks. This caused me to sneeze, and for one moment I saw the force of that sneeze sending my head deep into its waiting, yawning mouth. It didn't, but it felt as though I had just plunged my head under water. There was a pressure on my skin and my ears which, briefly, felt clogged, my hearing distorted. When it faded, I heard faint clicking mere inches in front of me. I imagined its wicked, moist grin widening.

With my heart choked high in my throat, I waited for something to take hold of me—cold, stiff fingers or pointed teeth—but nothing did.

Then a heavy and dead silence fell around me, as if the air had been sucked from the room, and I felt like I was floating in the blackest depths of space. My ears popped and I sneezed again.

My eyes shot open, a reaction I had no control over (perhaps it had forced them), and although I could not see it immediately I knew it was there. The room brightened and dimmed—not consecutively but simultaneously—and when the darkness adjusted to my vision I caught the outline of it, a billowing bulk of shadows, perched high in the corner opposite my bed.

It was about then that liquid warmth spread beneath me.

Describing the thing in the shadows has always been difficult, and the best I can manage is this: it was like trying to define the ever-changing specifics of a large crowd.

The shadow was long and then significant, frail and then thick, heavy. Its features and the cloud of fluttering rags draped around it varied too widely to give examples. The only constants were what I would call its eyes, stale and empty spots of orange holding tight to secrets too numerous to quantify. Its shape expanded and retracted continually, and although I still equal that movement to breathing I cannot imagine a thing so unearthly needing to do so.

I was unable to move, unable to think, seemingly unable to breathe.

The corner of my bedroom began hissing, whispers—not words but sensations—and I felt bottomless hatred easing from it like the slow stench of baked garbage. Images dashed before me: a church ablaze; its face—closer to human—grinning wildly; a young boy (me, perhaps?) falling eternally into obscurity; countless bodies stacked atop one another. I suddenly felt hot and irritated, my skin itchy, but even if I could have moved I wouldn't have and simply endured the discomfort.

Its hissing continued, growing gradually from whispers to screeches. Its face shifted through countless expressions with increasing speed, like the quickly turned pages in a child's flip-book. A rattling hum grew around me, eventually so loud and brightly invasive I thought I'd gone blind. And then the shadow was gone, as if it had possessed the darkened corner and then exercised itself from it.

I became aware of a distant ringing in my ears, and not until my father stumbled into my bedroom and turned on the light did I realize I was screaming, a sound so malicious he was wincing. Drunk with sleep, my father scampered to me.

I remember the concern on his face, but it sat distant—nearly buried—behind the remorseful gaze his eyes held, but even that—his unspoken apology—was overshadowed by cold and hard familiarity. I was six, but even then I realized that my father knew more than he would ever let on. Perhaps he knew not the entire story, but I am certain he knew something.

He and I never spoke of it; he passed too early for me to discuss it with him, and although this may be paranoia, I believe that the darkness, the shadows, were the cause of his death.

After that night, he made sure I had not one but two nightlights.

The thing in the corner had managed to prickle my feet with his vague fingers but failed to grab them. Perhaps it was my father's buried understanding that saved me. Perhaps it was only his presence that had frightened the shadows away that night and then again nearly every night following that one, until I left home and was on my own. When the shadows came to me then, visiting my one-bedroom apartment in a low-rise complex by the water, constant light was my closest friend. I got used to it. When the alternative is insomnia, you make it work.

For twenty years those shadows teased and terrified me. I managed to dodge their grasp—by luck or skill, it makes no real difference—but knew they would be back to yank me into their darkened hole of existence for good.

And when Spencer sneezed, the shadows did just that.

(CONTINUED IN PART THREE)