Footsteps

The sun sat low in the west when Kyle arrived at the house for the first time. The wrap-around gravel drive arced beneath a massive oak that had begun to shed its leaves, and a cool breeze set some dancing down to the shabby lawn. Kyle began to open the side door of the Econoline van when his mom interrupted him.

“Have fun! And don’t be too late getting home tomorrow. If you want a ride, make sure to call before your father and I go shopping in the morning. It’s supposed to storm tonight, and I don’t want you making a mess of your shoes.” She said.

“Okay mom, I will…” Kyle said, drawing the “okay” out into a teenage cliché.

“If you get home before we’re back, there’s leftover hamburger casserole in the fridge you can heat up.” She said.

“Okay, mom…” Kyle replied, getting a single foot out of the van before being interrupted once more.

“And Kyle...” She said, a bit louder to make certain he didn’t feign being deaf.

Kyle turned to look at her. His mother’s lips were pursed in an expression that clearly implied she wanted a kiss before leaving. He swore she did this just to embarrass him. In front of who, he wasn’t sure, but he loved her and knew she would be hurt if he didn’t oblige. He leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She beamed a smile at him.

“I love you, sweetie.” She said.

“Love you too mom!” Kyle responded, already out the door and closing it with his backpack strapped closely to him. He took in the house with a better appreciation than he had been able to in the van. The light blue stucco exterior seemed to have been caked on by hand from floor to ceiling. The uneven applications were made even more evident by cracks that had formed in some of the thinner spots. Much of the house seemed to be one large rectangular shape, with a high vaulted roof, while another rectangular portion with a much lower roof sat to his left. These two pieces were connected by an even smaller section of the home, forming a sort of U-shaped front porch that was made of concrete.

There was a large window, whose frame was painted white to contrast the rest of the house, that looked in on what he assumed to be the living room. Inside he could see the back of a couch that faced a TV, currently being watched by someone with a ponytail of brunette hair pulled high and tight on the back of her head. He assumed this was Brad’s sister, Lindsey, and he hoped that she wouldn’t be the one answering the door.

Kyle walked to the slab that functioned as a front porch for the house and found the front door attached to what he assumed to be the living room. He pressed the doorbell but didn’t hear anything from inside the house other than the indiscernible noise of voices on the television. He tried one more time to the same effect and decided knocking would be his only option. The screen door was weather-worn metal with elaborate curls of steel on the bottom half. He opened it to the large, crimson wooden door and knocked three times.

“I’ll get it!”

The familiar voice had come from somewhere above him, causing Kyle to look up and find a window directly above him. The western sun was glaring against it, but for just a moment he thought he could see someone standing in the window staring down at him, though he couldn’t make out who it could be. An instant later he heard footsteps bounding through the house, and then the door opened to reveal a teenage boy with a mop of curly brown hair and a babyface.

“You’re late,” Brad said, standing in the doorway.

“I know, I know… my mom insisted she couldn’t leave the house without make-up, even though we were literally only driving over here,” Kyle responded, pushing his way through the door.

“Ugh, you just had to have your friend over the night before the regional semi-finals,” Lindsey said from the couch, not bothering to look away from whatever reality TV show she was watching.

“Nobody cares about your stupid soccer tournament, Lindsey,” Brad said.

“They care a lot more about that than your stupid quiz bowl crap, nerd.” She replied, still zoned in on some overly tan couple who were arguing. Apparently, the shirtless, muscled-up boyfriend had kissed one of the girl’s friends at the bar the night before during some drunken haze. Kyle didn’t understand people’s obsession with reality TV and was certain he never would. He and Brad agreed that the people who partook in that crap were vapid idiots and only watched it because they couldn’t appreciate entertainment that wasn’t as dumb as they were.

“At least it requires a bit more thought than kicking a ball around.” Brad retorted.

“Whatever. You’d better not wake me up tonight with your little night terror business.”

Kyle glanced at Brad, giving him a quizzical look, but Brad didn’t turn to him immediately. When he did, he didn’t make eye contact, but to Kyle, he appeared to be shaken by what Lindsey had said, and Kyle decided he wouldn’t press the issue until they were alone.

“Come on,” Brad said, “I’ll give you the tour.”

The age of the interior of the house seemed to match the exterior perfectly, but whereas the latter seemed decrepit and unkempt with mismatched touch-ups, the former was charming and made Kyle feel immediately at home. The living room was the same light blue as the outside stucco, but clean and untouched by the weather and time that had browned and chipped the exterior. Three thick beams of painted-brown wood ran the length of the ceiling from the front of the house where the large, south-facing window Kyle had first viewed the interior from resided, all the way to the wall where the TV and entertainment center now sat. On the eastern wall, opposite the front door, was the door to Brad’s parent’s room, where Brad’s father was no doubt hiding from the forced company of his child’s friend.

There was a large, flagstone fireplace along the rest of the eastern wall that sat cozily in line with the love seat and couch, creating a nook that would no doubt host warm Christmas gatherings with various friends and family members when the season was right. Opposite the fireplace was a flight of uncarpeted steps barricaded by a thick banister of painted-blue wood. Brad led Kyle past the base of the steps into a tight hallway. He pointed out Lindsey’s room to the left, the door closed to presumably prevent the prying eyes of teen boys from peering in. To the right, catty-cornered from Lindsey’s room, was a simple bathroom. The hall ended where the kitchen began. The room smelled of bleach cleaner and something Kyle thought might have been chili, though there was no evidence remaining to support that theory.

Brad’s mom was at the sink, facing away from them, putting the finishing touches on the remaining dinner dishes. She was lightly singing what Kyle knew from his years of compulsory church attendance to be “The Old Rugged Cross” while she scrubbed.

“Mom, Kyle is here.”

The singing stopped abruptly as she jumped, turning in surprise to face them.

“You scared me half to death!” she said, taking her oversized yellow cleaning gloves off and setting them by the sink.

“Come here and give me a hug!” She said, holding her arms out and motioning in small circles with her hands. Kyle did as he was told and wandered over for the awkward embrace. Debbie was a small woman in almost every sense of the word, and Kyle towered over her. She gave him a tight squeeze with strength only a mother could muster, and then let him go, taking a step back.

“You just missed dinner! Are you hungry? We have some snacks in the pantry if you want. I also made some sweet tea for you. Two cups of sugar, just the way it should be.” She gave him a wink.

“No, I ate before I came over, but I might dive in later,” Kyle said, giving her a wry smile.

“Well just don’t be too loud when you do, Lindsey has soccer tomorrow and I have to be up early to take her. I don’t want to hear her complain all morning about you two waking her up.” She said, turning her attention back to the task at hand.

“Come on, I’ll show you my room,” Brad said, heading back through the hall to the landing of the stairs.

The stairs themselves came up to a door. When Brad opened it, it revealed a landing that had yet another set of steps ascending from the left side into what Kyle found to be more than just a bedroom.

The room in question was one long bay that extended the entire length of the first floor of the portion of the house. It was bigger than any room Kyle had ever had in his life, maybe bigger than all of the rooms he’d ever had combined. There were four built-in beds in the walls running the length of the room and a built-in desk between each pair. The room was musty and dark, lit only by a single bulb overhead and the two windows that lay at the eastern and western ends of it. Even so, Kyle was impressed by the sheer size of it.

“Holy crap, you get this all to yourself?” he asked.

“Yup! Lindsey said she wanted the downstairs room because it was across the hall from the bathroom, but I think she was just creeped out.”

“Her loss! This room is awesome.”

“You haven’t even seen the best part yet.” Brad smiled.

The sun was nearly set, and what little light it lent to the room had taken on the ephemeral quality of light shining through stained glass. Kyle assumed he would see the best part soon enough.

Kyle watched as the wine bottle rolled off the desk and onto the carpeted floor with a light thud.

“You moved it when you were setting it down,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“No, I didn’t, I swear! You can try it yourself if you don’t believe me.” Brad said, extending his hands toward the wooden writing table built into the wall.

“Even if you didn’t, I’m sure the desk is just tilted that way. Did you ever think that maybe things fall off it because the house is old and not as level as it was when they built it?”

“Did you ever think that maybe you’re an asshole?”

They stared at each other for a minute before bursting into laughter. Finally catching his breath, Brad scooped the wine bottle from the floor and placed it back on the desk, saying, “I’m serious, though, weird things always happen up here. Not just stuff falling off the desk, but other stuff.”

“Like what?” Kyle asked.

“Just, you know, weird stuff. Things that you can’t explain.”

“Well maybe you can’t explain it, but ‘stuff’ happens all the time without needing you around to tell anyone why it’s happening,” Kyle said, raising his curled fingers in the air to emphasize his sarcasm with air quotes.

Brad glowered, narrowing his eyes and taking on an expression that was all too familiar to Kyle. He had pushed a little too hard, a bad habit he sometimes let slip out when he was too comfortable with someone.

“Come on,” Kyle pleaded, “You know I’m just messing with you. Besides, if you say things are happening then I believe you. What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t?”

“The asshole kind,” Brad replied, walking to the far side of the room where the TV was. He turned it on wordlessly, immediately flipping through channels without even giving Kyle a glance let alone an invitation.

“Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut?” Kyle thought, walking over and sitting at the edge of the bed nearest the TV.

They sat at the far end of the long room in silence, waiting out the tension while watching a direct-to-TV horror movie about a killer who favored an orange jumpsuit topped with a bunny mask complete with white fur, pink ears, eyes that faced different directions, and jagged teeth that came to points. The mask was meant to be menacing, but it was far too clean and seemed like the killer had purchased it on a whim, picking up murder as a hobby the way a three-year-old might decide to be an astronaut five minutes before becoming a fireman.

Skulking up the stairs, the killer rabbit was brandishing a large chef’s knife in true horror cliché. The scene panned to the protagonist, who was currently enjoying a steaming hot shower, oblivious of the danger lurking just outside. Through the opaque shower curtain, the door to the bathroom began to creak slowly open, the sound of the falling water masking the noise from the would-be victim. The killer’s hand reached slowly around the edge of the curtain, fingers strumming against it for a moment to provide dramatic effect, before ripping it wide open, causing the victim to-

“AHHH!”

Brad and Kyle jumped simultaneously, heads whipping around to the source of the scream. It was Lindsey, Brad’s sister, her scream replaced by snide laughter.

“You know it’s probably crap like this that’s causing all those nightmares you keep having. You should stick to cartoons.” She said, crossing her arms and smirking.

“The only thing giving me nightmares is your stupid face.” Brad retorted. While he looked indignant, Kyle thought there was also something else in Brad’s expression. Did he seem worried? He couldn’t tell, but he did know that this wasn’t exactly Brad’s best comeback to his sister.

Facing Kyle now, she asked, “Didn’t he tell you he was having nightmares before he invited you to stay the night? Talking in his sleep and everything. He’ll probably have to go to therapy for the rest of his life.”

Looking more embarrassed than angry, Brad said, “With any luck, they’ll help me forget all about you. What do you want anyway?”

“Mom said to turn the TV down and to stop banging around up here. Dad’s going to bed and you know how mad he gets if you wake him up.”

“Whatever,” Brad replied, turning the volume on the TV down, nevertheless.

“That’s what I thought,” Lindsey said, turning on the balls of her feet and heading out of the bedroom, the stairs creaking under the weight of her movement.

Kyle turned back toward Brad and the television, the cheerleader now pleading with a police officer in stammered words while the officer kept insisting she calm down and explain what was going on.

“Was it true what she said? You know, about the nightmares and sleep-talking and stuff?” Kyle asked.

“Oh, so you believe her, huh? I guess now you’re mister trusting.” Brad retorted. Kyle could hear the frustration in his friend’s voice and felt like an even bigger jerk than before.

“Come on man, I’m really sorry. I do believe you, I was just being an asshole like you said. I didn’t mean it.”

Brad sighed and sat on the bench seat that was built into the wall, rain starting to tap slowly on the window behind him.

“I know you didn’t mean it,” he said, “I’m just tired of everyone giving me a hard time about it.”

“Is Lindsey being even worse than usual?” Kyle asked.

Brad took a deep breath, hunching his shoulders and clasping his hands in his lap. He looked up at Kyle, making eye contact, his expression dire.

“If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?” Brad asked.

“Of course! When have I ever told any of your secrets?” Kyle said.

“I mean it. Even if you think I’m weird or crazy after I tell you, you have to swear that you won’t tell another soul.”

Kyle flinched. Rarely was Brad as serious as he was now. If he was being honest with himself, he may have never seen him be this serious. He leaned forward, clasping his hands together in his lap, saying, “Yeah, sure. Of course.”

Brad sighed, his eyes moving to focus on the floor in front of him.

“Ever since we moved into this house, weird things have been happening. I don’t just mean things falling off the desk, but other things.” Brad began.

“Yeah, I think we covered that earlier, but what else is happening?” Kyle said. He was thankful to hear the concern he felt reflected in his tone.

“Things keep moving on their own. I don’t actually see it happen, but I’ll put the remote on the bench next to the TV, and the next day it will be across the room on the floor. One night I set my backpack on the desk across the room, and the next day my biology book was sitting on the bed next to me. Kyle, that book was in between two other books. I remember exactly how I put it in my bag before leaving school.” Now Brad was looking across the long room, staring at nothing in particular.

“Do you think Lindsey might just be messing with you? It wouldn’t be the first time she spent way too much time harassing you.” Kyle asked.

“I thought that at first too, but she spent the night at a friend’s house two weeks ago and that was the same night the biology book moved. Then there’s the footsteps…”

“Footsteps?”

“At first, I thought I was just hearing things or that there was something in the house making the sound, like pipes or creaky boards, but it always stops first thing in the morning. It’s the same every night, they start at the foot of the stairs, walk up to the landing, and then all the way to the top of the steps. They stop there and start over again in less than a minute.”

“You actually timed it?” Kyle asked.

“I thought if I could establish a pattern of some sort, I could figure out what was causing them. Instead, I feel like I just proved to myself that it wasn’t explainable.”

“I’m guessing you told your parents about it already?”

“Lindsey told them. I thought maybe she had heard the footsteps too since her room is right next to the foot of the stairs. Not only was I wrong, but now my parents think I’m afraid of the dark. I even overheard them talking about sending me to a therapist. They think I’m acting out because of the move or something.”

“Well, I’m here tonight, why don’t we prove you’re not crazy together?” Kyle said, smiling.

Brad smiled back, relief flooding his face. Apparently, Brad hadn’t expected him to believe what he was saying, which only made him believe it more. Brad had never been one to shy away from the unknown and he certainly had never minded putting himself in danger for the sake of fun. Kyle recalled the time Brad had set his hair on fire accidentally when he wanted to see what would happen when he sprayed hairspray through the flame of a lighter but hadn’t been prepared for the size or intensity of the fireball. They both ended up laughing until they cried, with Brad making jokes about it for days after. To see him so distressed was concerning.

“So, where do we start?” Kyle asked.

“Let’s put things on the desk that can’t just fall off on their own. That seems to be a hot spot for sure.” Brad said.

“Maybe we should place something on each step too, to see if the footsteps make them move?”

Brad’s eyes lit up as he exclaimed, “That’s a great idea! I have my old Hot Wheels in a storage bin in the closet.”

The two set about placing their ghost traps, Kyle placing the wine bottle upright on the desk, as well as a few volumes of the encyclopedia Brad’s family kept, a stuffed white tiger from a long-ago zoo trip they found in a box in the closet, and finally, a copy of the Bible Brad’s parents had bought for him before they went to church camp this past summer.

Meanwhile, Brad precariously placed the small toy cars at different angles and distances on each step. He could only place them starting at the landing, which was where the door to his room was, but they ascertained that this should still be a sufficient test since the footsteps always went all the way up the stairs.

Once they were satisfied that no spirit could possibly escape detection, they decided it was time for more TV. They were able to tune in just in time to see that the bunny-masked killer was revealed to be none other than the heroine’s mother, who had been conveniently away visiting family during the events of the film, driven to madness and murder by the dreams she was forced to sacrifice for her family.

Now the cheerleader rode in the passenger seat of her mom’s car, realizing far too late the truth of what was happening. Helpless to jump from the vehicle, the heroine decided to take drastic measures, rolling her window down before grabbing the steering wheel of the moving vehicle, causing it to careen off a bridge into the river below.

The cheerleader escaped via the open window, presumably leaving her mother to drown. As the film ends, however, and things seem to be settling into some sense of stability, the scene cuts back to the bridge and the river below, revealing a figure escaping from raging waters onto a nearby shore. The scene faded out and the credits began rolling across the screen, the producers believing that silence would instill a sense of seriousness to the ending.

Thud.

The sound jolted Brad and Kyle out of zombie-like fixation with the TV, heads turning for the second time this evening to locate the source of the sound. It wasn’t Lindsey this time, however, and they nearly simultaneously laid their eyes on the wine bottle, still rolling on the floor a short distance from where it had fallen off the desk.

Brad turned to Kyle from his spot on the floor and said, “See?”

Kyle didn’t look back. Still staring at the bottle, he was trying to recall how he had placed the bottle on the desk. He stood up and walked over to where it lay, picked up the semi-clear green glass bottle, and held it up to the uncovered light bulb that adorned the center beam of the vaulted ceiling. The bottle gave the light an eldritch quality, revealing that the bottle was indeed empty.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Kyle said, taking the bottle back to the desk. As he was going to set the bottle back in its place, he realized that it had been sitting near the center of the desk, a volume of the encyclopedia between it and the edge of the desk.

His brow furrowed as he turned to Brad, who had risen from his place on the floor to join him.

“How did it…” Kyle began.

“Fall off without moving anything else? Your guess is as good as mine, but this is exactly what I was telling you.”

“So, when do we start hearing the footsteps?” Kyle asked, placing the bottle back in place carefully.

“They usually don’t start until I go to bed, or maybe I just don’t notice them. Either way, I hope you hear them too. Then maybe I’ll feel a little less crazy.”

Kyle did hear them. They had gone back to the TV, this time electing to watch late-night cartoons. Brad had made himself a pallet on the floor to sleep on, comprised of a sleeping bag for padding, two pillows with mismatched cases, and a wool blanket. The room had a total of four spaces for beds that were built into the walls, but only one of them currently had a mattress, and Brad’s parents insisted that he let guests sleep in the bed and not on the floor. This left them with two options, either sleep in the bed together, or Brad could sleep on the floor. As teenage boys, there was only one clear choice.

Around 2 am the cartoons had grown disinteresting and nothing else seemed to be on that was worth watching. They had both started yawning nearly an hour before and decided it was time for sleep.

Outside, the rain had started to come in more heavily, but Kyle hadn’t noticed it until they turned the TV off. Now he could hear it washing against the window, cascading in sheets as the wind blew and relented in waves. Turning off the overhead bulb, the windows at either end of the room let an amber glow from the sodium street lights that flanked the corners of the small block.

On a normal night, Kyle and Brad would stay up for another hour or so just talking as best friends are wont to do. This night, however, they both sat in silence, neither able to bring up the subject that was surely on their minds. Kyle lay on his side, facing away from the room eyes growing heavy in the dark.

He was starting to drift off when the first creak of the stairs drove him to a lucid state. Brad was letting out small, breathy snores, but he could still hear it clearly. He focused his attention and heard the second creak. This time he felt certain the sound had come from downstairs. There was another and another, as the noises worked their way up the stairs. Now they were on the landing and working their way up to the bedroom. Kyle was trying to remember how many steps there were after the landing, but couldn’t, and cursed himself for not thinking to count them earlier.

Finally, after a few more creaks that seemed to ascend nearly all the way into the room, the sound stopped. Kyle waited, lying still under the comforter he had been provided. It felt like an eternity, but no more than a minute had passed when the sounds started again. How did no one else in the house hear them? They weren’t deafening, but they certainly weren’t quiet.

Kyle turned onto his other side, eyes peering through the soft amber darkness. He was scanning the darkness of the room, trying to discern the shape of anything or anyone who might have made the noise, when a crack of lightning illuminated the dark. His eyes fixed immediately on a figure, standing on the landing above the stairs, no longer fully visible, but backlit by the pale light of the sodium bulb outside. He sat bolt upright, heart pounding in his chest, and… it was gone. Nothing at the other end of the room but the window. He rubbed the palms of his hands against his eyes and looked again. Still nothing.

It had been a figment of his imagination, he decided, nothing more and nothing less. He took a deep breath and let out a sigh. His heart began to return to normal and it was then that he realized he needed to go pee.

The image of the figure still fresh in his mind, he tossed his legs over the side of the bed and walked slowly towards the stairs, eyes searching about for anything that might be lurking in the shadows. He made it both to and down the stairs without incident. He thought briefly about turning on a light or two during his trip down but decided he didn’t want to wake anyone up who might ask why he was lighting up the whole house just to use the bathroom. Besides, he had just been imagining things. All this business with the wine bottle and the creaky stairs had him on edge and his brain had made the whole thing up.

Once in the bathroom, he flipped the light on and let out a sigh, shoulders dropping a little. He took his time doing his business, making a point to wash up thoroughly afterward and using the hand towel to mop every drop of water from wrist to finger before he was satisfied the job was done. He paused to look at himself in the mirror, scruffy brown hair already a mop from lying in the bed. He knew it would be even worse once he fell asleep.

If he fell asleep. The thought annoyed him, and he pushed it from his mind. He took a breath and flipped off the light. His trip back to the bedroom was as uneventful as the trip down had been. He was mounting the last step to the landing when he stopped. Something was wrong. It was just a feeling at first, but then the nebulous threads of instinct gave birth to realization. The toy cars! He should have been tripping over them in comical Home Alone fashion, but there was nothing.

He scanned the step he was on in the near dark, looking for signs of them. Initially he saw nothing, just old wood that could use some sanding and a new finish. Then his eyes adjusted to the low light and he saw them. Every single car had been moved to the sides of the steps. He turned around looking back from where he had just come. Every single step was the same, cars pushed to either side.

Kyle leaned over to pick one up and examine it. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find, but it felt like the right thing to do. The car was black and white, as best he could tell, with something mounted to the top of it. It was a police car, the logo on the sides clearly visible as he turned the toy around in the light. Carefully taking in each part of the tiny squad car, he couldn’t find anything unusual.

This had to be Lindsey’s handiwork. It would explain the footsteps, the wine bottle falling onto the floor while the books remained in place, and it would explain the figure he saw in the shadows. How had they not seen her after the wine bottle, though? Could she have moved the toy cars while she was coming up the stairs? If so, how did she do it without making any noise and how the hell did she go back down the stairs so quietly?

He couldn’t think of the answers to any of these questions just yet, but he had an idea that there was one that he could answer right now. She must have hidden in the closet next to the landing after he saw her shadow earlier. It was the only place she could have gone so quickly without being seen. The flash of lightning would have left his eyes unadjusted just long enough for her to move into it. What’s more, she could still be there now, waiting for him to go lay back down so she could continue antagonizing him.

Still holding the toy car in his hand, he took the last step up into the room, careful to be as quiet as possible. Turning to his left where the closet door would be, he stopped, the deepness of the dark surprising him.

Kyle took a breath, reminding himself that this was all the doing of a teenage girl who liked to pick on her little brother and his friend. He stepped into the darkness, hand on the wall searching for the door to the closet. He had taken only a couple of steps when a sound caught his attention. Not just any sound, a footstep. It was downstairs, and now it was followed by another of the same. This was perfect! He would wait at the top of the stairs and once Lindsey had taken that final step up, he would give her a scare of her own.

The climbing footsteps followed the exact pattern they had earlier, coming up from downstairs, stopping briefly midway, and turning 90 degrees to come the rest of the way into the room. Kyle tensed, a smile creeping on his face in the pitch black. As the sounds came close to the last couple of steps, he jumped from the shadows, turning towards the steps and letting out a brief and hushed “AGGGH!” for extra effect.

There was no one in front of him. He stared in disbelief, arms falling to his sides and dropping the toy car. This couldn’t be right. He knew someone was coming up the steps, knew it. Yet the proof was right in front of him, or wasn’t in front of him, he supposed. He heard a small clack at his feet and looked down to find the car he had been holding had rolled down to the step below him. It kept rolling until it reached the edge of the step and fell off. To his surprise and wonder it kept rolling on to the next step and the next until at last hit fell onto the midway landing.

Kyle had lost sight of it and didn’t hear it rolling anymore, so he started down the steps to retrieve it, nervous, confused, but enthralled by teenage curiosity. He had only made it down three steps when the cars exploded at him. A barrage of trucks, hot rods, vans, and almost any type of imaginary vehicle from each side of the steps rained down on him. He fell backward, his tailbone landing squarely on the corner of a stair, the pain adding confusion to his already racing thoughts. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He found he could do neither.

Underneath the sounds of cars hitting the walls on either side of the steps was something else, something more sinister. What was it?! It was familiar, but the chaos of the situation left him unable to place it for a moment. Then a mental key clicked perfectly into the lock of his recollection, and he came to a horrifying realization. It was footsteps… coming up the stairs, coming for him!

The fear jolted through his body, bringing his senses back to him and lifting his paralysis. Now he was moving. His hands searched desperately behind him for something to grab hold of. Step. His feet clamored beneath him, trying to gain balance. Step. His thoughts raced with the word, “Oh,” followed by each four-letter word he knew in a procession that would have made his Sunday School teacher blush. Step.

The footsteps were close to the landing below him now, and any moment he thought, no, he knew, he would be seeing something horrible. Kyle’s fear had escalated to full-blown panic, his mind constructing images of his pursuer into intrusive and uncontrollable thoughts. Would it have cloven hooves and horns? His left hand found leverage and he worked his way up a step. Would it be covered in thick fur with yellow eyes and a razor-teethed snarl? Limbs working out of cadence, he struggled up another step.

A foot appeared on the landing. No, not a foot, a shoe. A black and white Chuck Taylor shoe. Kyle had his own pair just like it. Above the shoe was a bright orange pant leg. Where had he seen those pants before? A moment later, as if in psychic response to his question, the rest of the thing stepped onto the landing and fully into view. It was the killer rabbit from the movie he and Brad had watched, but now it had changed into something truly terrifying. The orange prison jumper that was clean in the film was now tattered and covered in grime. The mask was no longer a mask at all, but a hideous visage torn from the depths of nightmares he had long since forgotten and given new life.

The air hummed as the bunny-thing turned to fully face Kyle, the darkness electrifying around him. Its eyes were glowing embers in the night, red rings that burned through the blackness, no longer facing opposite directions, but boring directly into him. The fur of the mask had become real, matted clumps, caked together with what appeared to be dirt. It began to smile as it took another step, its mouth pulling back to reveal inky gums set against alabaster teeth that could have belonged to a shark.

Now Kyle could see that something was moving under the jumper. Black tendrils writhed and coiled within the tears in the fabric, like a bed of eels that decided to leave the sea and impersonate a man. The thing climbed up another step, and another, until it was looming directly over Kyle. With the light to its back, all he could see now were the crimson circles of its eyes, glowing with an inner light.

The monster stooped closer, leaving its hands on its hips in a manner that made it look as though it were going to explain something to a small child. With its face no more than a foot away from his, the clown began to open its mouth. Pointed teeth drew apart from each other the way a bear trap would while it was being set to catch its prey. The jerky, unnatural motion was made worse by what the opening revealed. The maw was filled with more dark tendrils, with no clear beginning or end to any of them. One of the coils began to unfurl itself from the rest, sagging out of the open clown mouth and dropping towards Kyle’s own, now screaming mouth. Then the lights came on.

It was Lindsey. She hadn’t turned on the lights as Kyle had thought, but she was holding a flashlight that was now pointed directly at him. There was nothing on the stairs between them except toy cars, now scattered about as randomly as if they had been dumped from a bucket. The look on Lindsey’s face was the patented expression of disgust that only a teenage girl whose erudite sensibilities had been offended can possibly wear.

“Umm, what are you doing up this late? Playing with toy cars?” She said.

Kyle’s eyes darted around the room, looking for any sign of the clown, but there were none. The room was as it had always been, with only the cars, himself, and Brad’s sister being out of place.

“Hello? Earth to stupid… did you forget how to speak?” Lindsey said.

“Did you see that just a second ago?” Kyle asked.

“See what…?”

“That thing… that rabbit-thing! It was right here when you came in!” Kyle got to his feet, motioning with upturned hands at the staircase.

“All I see is my brother’s weird little friend apparently playing with toy cars in the middle of the night and making a ton of noise. You’re probably just imagining things. Didn’t that movie you were watching earlier have a killer rabbit?”

“It wasn’t the same, and I wasn’t playing with the cars!” Kyle protested.

“Whatever you say, big guy, just keep it down when you’re not playing with them, because all that not playing is sure making a lot of noise downstairs and you’re bound to wake my parents up, freak.”

She turned to head back downstairs when Kyle stopped her.

“Wait, what did you hear?”

“What? From you not playing up here? Just some ruckus on the steps. Did you slip on a car you definitely weren’t playing with or something?”

She hadn’t heard him screaming. Now he was beginning to wonder if he had been screaming at all or if he had imagined that somehow. The whole scenario was starting to creep into the recesses of his mind like a bad dream.

“I must have tripped over one when I was coming back up from the bathroom.” He lied.

“Whatever… just keep it down. And next time you should take my advice and stick to cartoons.” She turned and slipped out of the room and down the stairs.

Darkness clouded the room again and it took a minute for Kyle’s eyes to adjust to it. He walked slowly back to the bed, realizing Brad was still sound asleep on the floor, his snores droning in metronomic cadence. How had he slept through that whole ordeal if the sounds had been loud enough to wake Lindsey? Kyle sat on the edge of the bed, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself. Had any of that been real just now? He replayed the events in his head, but they were gaining an ethereal quality and even now the memory started to fray at the edges.

Kyle was tired and just wanted this night to be over. He decided he was going to lay in bed, face the inside of the nook, and not turn around until sunrise, regardless of what he heard. Then he would call his mom and have her come pick him up as soon as possible. As he laid down and covered himself back up, he closed his eyes and imagined sleeping in his own bed in his own room in his own house, far away from nighttime footsteps and creaking stairs. Granted far away was only a few blocks but given the situation, it felt like a million miles to Kyle. His mind began to wander, drifting from thinking of his bed to what video games he wanted to play when he got home. He hoped his mom remembered to pick up cherry soda and barbecue chips tomorrow. He thought about the biology homework he still had to do and wondered absent-mindedly how much trouble he would be in if he just didn’t turn it in. His final waking thought was of the hamburger casserole his mom had made for dinner and if there would be any leftovers for him to eat for lunch tomorrow. As he drifted off to sleep, some distant part of his mind wondered if he had heard a footstep.

“STOP IT!”

The man in Kyle’s dream screamed at him, but it seemed distant, as though the man had his volume turned down far too low. He didn’t know why the man was screaming at him, and he wasn’t sure if he cared. He seemed to be alternating between short sentences that made sense, and longer, unintelligible ramblings.

“Arggggritssaaaafluuuhhh…” The man said. Kyle tried to move closer, but no matter how much distance he covered, the man simply stayed the same distance away. Kyle was aware he was dreaming, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t a nightmare, and he wasn’t naked in front of his classmates about to deliver the most important speech of his life, and most importantly the only other person in the dream wasn’t a rabbit. All things considered; this dream was pretty okay. He walked casually toward the low volume man, nothing between them or around them but darkness.

“PLEASE!” the man said. This time it was louder. Someone had found the man’s remote and was turning him up.

“Ugggggvvvvveeemeeaaaaanss…” the man said.

Kyle stopped walking, waiting for the man to say more.

“STOP IIIIIT!” the man screamed. This time it was at full volume, and he recognized the voice coming from the man. It was Brad’s voice.

Kyle woke with a start. He was still facing the inside of the nook the bed was in. That was good. Brad was muttering something garbled on the floor behind him. That was less good. It seemed as though it was still dark out, but he didn’t dare turn around to look at the rest of the room. Brad stopped muttering and the room fell silent. A few moments passed and Kyle began to close his eyes again. Didn’t Lindsey say something about Brad talking in his sleep? Kyle had never noticed it before during any of their sleepovers, but maybe it wasn’t an every night occurrence. Besides, someone talking in their sleep is far from supernatural. It happens to lots of people. The stairs creaked.

Kyle’s eyes shot open. No matter what, he told himself, he was not turning around. He didn’t care. He was just going to ignore it. The footsteps worked their way up the stairs as they had earlier, winding on the midway landing and coming up the final flight to the bedroom. This time, though, they didn’t stop at the top of the stairs. They kept coming into the room, working steadily towards them.

“Fffffttoofffffff…” Brad muttered.

The steps were past the first bed nook.

“FFSSSSSSSTTOPPP…”

Now they were by the desk.

“SSSTOPPPPPP!” Brad had escalated to a full scream.

This was a nightmare, Kyle told himself. He had never woken up at all and was still dreaming. He would wake up any minute and find himself in the bedroom, sunlight breaking through the windows, and Brad snoring instead of screaming.

“STOOOOP IIIIT!”

The footsteps had gone directly to where Brad was lying and with his last shout had stopped. Silence fell over the room, thick and unnatural. Kyle lay perfectly still, breathing in and out slowly through his mouth. Brad was no longer muttering, no longer screaming, and, so far as he could hear, no longer snoring. He wasn’t making any noise at all. Kyle noticed that the rain had stopped as well, and that the wind seemed to have died down to nothing. A sudden, horrible thought gripped Kyle. What if Brad had a seizure or something? What if his friend was dying right behind him and he didn’t turn to even look to see if he was okay because he was afraid of an old creaky house and imaginary rabbit-persons?

Kyle steeled himself with a deep inhalation through his nose and began to roll over in bed. Brad wasn’t having a seizure at all. Brad was standing perfectly still next to the bed, looming over Kyle in the dark. Backlit by the window, Brad’s features were shrouded in darkness, but his eyes… no not his eyes at all! The twin red circles glared at Kyle through the shadows, a smile growing on Brad’s face. Kyle opened his mouth to scream, and as he did the Brad-thing grabbed him by the arms, a wet heat emanating from its hands. Brad brought his face within inches of Kyle’s and opened its mouth to reveal jet black coils that began to uncurl themselves. The last thing Kyle remembered was the cold, mucous-covered slug worming its way down his throat.

“Wake up buddy, breakfast is ready,” Brad said, shaking Kyle by the shoulder.

Kyle blinked at the bright sunlight coming in through the window.

“There he is! I thought you were gonna sleep the rest of the day if I didn’t wake you up.” Brad said.

Kyle brought his legs around, sitting up and putting his feet on the floor. He put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the exhaustion he was feeling.

“I slept like crap last night,” Kyle said. “I kept having these weird dreams about rabbit-people and… what was it? Eels?”

“Sounds more like nightmares to me,” Brad said.

“Yeah, I guess they were.”

“Well, the good news is that nothing weird seems to have happened during the night. The cars are where we left them and everything on the desk seems to have stayed in place after the wine bottle incident.”

“I suppose that’s good. I vaguely remember hearing some footsteps last night, but I guess I could have been dreaming that too.”

“I actually didn’t hear any at all last night. Not to brag, but I think that was the best night’s sleep I’ve gotten since we moved here.” Brad said.

After picking up the toy cars from the stairs, they went down to a breakfast of doughnuts, speculating on the supernatural and what they were going to do next time Kyle came over. They tossed around the idea of a Ouija board, but weren’t sure how they were going to get their hands on one considering how staunchly religious both of their families were. A séance certainly wasn’t out of the question. They agreed that they would need several candles to achieve the atmosphere required by ghosts before they would let the living become aware of their presence.

Kyle finished his cinnamon-sugar doughnut, while Brad was polishing off a second chocolate cake. Kyle found that he was still exhausted and concluded he just needed to get home and relax in his own room for the rest of the day. Maybe he would work on some of the homework that he had been neglecting… but it was far more likely he would veg out playing a game and listening to one of the new CDs he had bought behind his mom’s back when she had taken him to the mall for back-to-school shopping.

Kyle decided he was going to walk home instead of calling his mom, so he packed his backpack, exchanged goodbyes with Brad, and set off in the crisp fall day. The ground was littered with wet leaves that the storm had shorn from the tree in front of Brad’s house. As he made his way down the mostly empty streets of their small town, Kyle kept hearing splashes in the puddles behind him. He turned around at one point to see what was causing the noise but found only a vacant sidewalk. He must be hearing things. He was tired and when you were sleep-deprived your mind had a way of making you think things were happening that really weren’t. He sauntered on, deciding he was going to bed right after dinner tonight.

Kyle didn’t live up to his own promise to himself. His parents had brought home fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls from town. He finished off two helpings and adjourned to his room, turned on his TV, put his headphones in, and zoned out. Eventually, his mom came in to tell him goodnight, which was when he realized it was already eleven o’clock, and they had church in the morning.

He switched his CD player off, making a mental note to change the batteries tomorrow when he got home, then turned off the TV. He took his shirt off and wrapped himself up in his sheets and comforter. Glad to be home in the comfort of his own bed and in a far more familiar space, he began to drift off nearly immediately. Kyle thought about how he used to want to live in a big two-story house, just so he could have an upstairs bedroom, but now he felt more comfortable in a nice, flat, one-story. He wasn’t exactly sure why this was, but his half-asleep brain didn’t quite care either. He was on the precipice of total slumber when a sound caused him to rise to consciousness with the speed of an inflated beach ball escaping deep water.

Kyle sat in the total stillness, trying to discern what the sound had been. He listened, eyes facing the window his bed was pushed next to, waiting anxiously but unsure why. Then he heard it. It was a shuffling sound, coming from the hallway outside his room. What was that? It sounded almost like… footsteps. All at once, the events of the previous night came back to Kyle, images of bunnies and eels flooding his thoughts like a wine glass caught under a waterfall, threatening to shatter his sanity and leave him utterly ruined.

The door to the bedroom slowly pulled open behind him. Kyle’s heart was beating audibly in his chest, quickening its pace with each passing moment. He focused all his attention on the window, looking at the bedroom door reflected in it, expecting to see the rabbit-thing at any second. He was frozen in fear, unable to move or scream. When the figure outside the door finally did appear, Kyle let out a huge sigh of relief. It was his mom. Probably just checking on him as she did sometimes, even though she knew he hated it. He turned over in bed, coming to a half-sitting position.

“Mom, you don’t need to check on me anymore, I’m just fi…”

The last word caught in his throat. There was his mother, illuminated by the pale moonlight coming through the window, but her smile was that of a shark, the porcelain teeth zigzagging in sharp points. Then there were the eyes… the glowing red eyes…