I hear very faint movement on my right. I turn toward it and the kitchen opens up in front of me. There they are. The mother, the father and the two brothers sitting around a circular kitchen table. Dirty plates are in front of each of them. They must have just had dinner. No one is speaking or even looking at one another.
I hesitate for a second in the doorway, waiting for them to move, to notice my presence, but they don’t. They sit together in silence with straight backs but empty eyes and lowered heads. I guess it’s been a tough day for them, too. Still, something feels strange, slightly off, about this sparkling image of family. But I have bigger problems right now, so I ignore it and walk in to join them.
Bec, 11 January 2003
It was almost one in the morning when Bec finally closed her bedroom door, slipped between her bedsheets and switched off the light. She’d been too tired to move quickly. Standing in the shower for almost twenty minutes, she scrubbed the grease off her arms and tried to get the smell of burnt meat out of her nostrils. She groaned with relief at finally being horizontal. The cotton sheets felt clean and soft against her skin. She considered telling Ellen she didn’t want to do closes anymore. One hour of extra pay wasn’t worth this aching, overtired feeling.
Her mind was moving too slowly to think about it now. Tomorrow was her day off anyway; she’d decide then. A whole day to do whatever she wanted. It would be great. Lying down in her own quiet room felt too exquisite to ruin it by worrying. The hot weight of the cat, Hector, pressed against her leg as he stretched, his bell jingling softly.
Something shifted. That’s what woke her. The creaking sound of shifting weight. There was someone in her room.
Bec was too afraid to open her eyes. She didn’t want to see what was there. It was enough just to feel its presence, that heaviness of the air that meant another person was breathing it. Underneath the warmth of her sheets, her skin prickled cold. It couldn’t be happening again.
She listened. Seconds flicked by. Not a sound. Maybe it was a nightmare.
Bec knew she should open her eyes. Just to check. Just to be sure. A sound rose from beneath the silence, so soft it was barely audible. The gravelly hum of the cat’s purr. Very slowly, she opened her eyes.
The first thing she noticed was that Hector wasn’t on her bed anymore. She could see the small pear shape of his furry back. He was sitting in the corner, looking at something, purring. Bec knew she should laugh at herself; it was just the cat. But her limbs were still frozen. Something wasn’t right.
As her eyes adjusted she had to hold in a gasp. There was a shadow in the corner that shouldn’t be there. She could only just see it, onyx against charcoal, a splodge that didn’t belong. Her heart slammed against her ribs as it began to move.
Very slowly, it twisted. Limbs stretching. Growing bigger in a way that wasn’t human. She clamped her eyes shut, a scream trapped in her throat. Bec didn’t want to see what it looked like when it stepped out of the corner. She didn’t want to see its face.
Ice-cold fear soaked through her as she waited for the shadow to touch her. To feel that cold hand on her cheek again. She held her breath, just waiting.
The door squeaked.
Had it gone? Bec wanted to let out her breath, but she felt like fear had paralyzed her. Then something heavy slammed against her knees. She scrambled out away from it, the sheet wrapping around her ankle so that she fell onto the carpet with a thud. Pain spread down from her shoulder but she tried to ignore it, reaching up to turn on her bedside light.
For a moment the light blinded her. And then she saw him. The cat, Hector. Sitting in the middle of her mattress, blinking at her. She picked him up, swearing, and he howled at her. The noise seemed piercing in the silence. She held him against her, the feeling of his tiny heartbeat against her chest calming her enough that she could get up and close her bedroom door again. She wedged her chair under the handle.
Something had been in here; it wasn’t just the cat. She was sure of it. Her hands were still sweating and shaking and adrenaline raced through her veins.
Bec picked up her phone; she needed to talk to someone. To tell someone what had just happened so she didn’t feel like she was mad. The last time was probably just a nightmare, but this time was real. It was past three in the morning, though. Lizzie would be pissed off if she woke her up.
She looked at herself from the outside for a moment. Lizzie would probably laugh at her, like she was a little kid afraid of ghosts. How lame. She wrote a text instead: There was something in my room. I think my house is haunted. She put the phone back on her bedside table.
Just before she turned the light off she noticed the little silver bell was gone from Hector’s collar. A ghost couldn’t do that.
Perhaps he hadn’t been wearing it before, she told herself, and wrapped herself in a ball under the blanket.
It had taken her a long time to get back to sleep. When she had, her dreams were feverish and violent. She woke up with a start, slick with sweat. Checking her phone, she saw it was quarter past eleven. There were three missed calls from Lizzie and two messages. The first: Ha-ha scary. Then after the missed calls: You okay? Bec texted back: Yep. Still on for the city? I’ll tell you all about it.
Her room looked different in the morning light. Peaceful and entirely her own. Johnny Depp’s and Gwen Stefani’s faces, photographs of her and her friends, Destiny’s Child posing together perfectly. The slats of her closet doors, the shelf of books above her bed; everything was so warmly familiar. Last night’s nightmare seemed exactly that: a nightmare. Not something that could have really happened in her own bedroom. But when she closed her eyes, Bec could see the dark shape again, bending in that unnatural way in the corner. That was a real memory, as clear as mopping the floors at work and walking home from the bus stop.
Her phone buzzed, Lizzie: One hour, Silver Cushion. She pushed herself out of bed and had a look at her shoulder in the mirror. There was a pale grey bruise from where she’d fallen out of bed last night. That bloody cat.
She’d thought the house might look different, somehow. As though some kind of trace would be left behind by the extra presence that had been there last night. But no, everything felt exactly the same as she opened her bedroom door. The cream carpet had the same velvety feel between her toes as she padded down the hallway.
Peering into Paul and Andy’s room, she wanted to laugh. That was definitely the same: clothes and Legos strewn all over the floor, sheets on the two single beds twisted into heaps. She remembered how much of a scene they’d made when her mom suggested it was time one of them move into the spare room. She pulled their door shut. The sweaty old socks were starting to reek. You could smell puberty approaching.
The white wooden banister felt as smooth and warm under her palm as it always did. Her bare feet made squeaking sounds as she walked across the polished floorboards of the bottom level. The sound of giggling came from the kitchen; the boys must be home. She checked her parents’ room; their precisely made double bed alone in the middle of the spotlessly empty space. The spare room next door was filled with plastic tubs of winter clothes. Her mother’s writing desk propped in the corner, still unused. She looked into the laundry. Behind the washing baskets was a door that continued on to their garage. It was slightly open. The garage was the creepiest part of Bec’s house and none of them went in there if they could avoid it. Dark and dank smelling, crammed with piled-up cardboard boxes and a dirty concrete floor. They didn’t even park their car in there anymore. She was sure the place was infested with spiders. The blackness of the room seemed to spill out from the crack in the doorway, the dark of nighttime trying to recapture her and pull her back into the nightmare. She pulled the door shut.