The Silent Hand

The room was silent. Outside the trees creaked, the animals scurried, and the wind brushed the cares of the day down the grass-lined road. None of those sounds could penetrate into this room. She eyed the plate before her, the seemingly benign experience of sitting down for some dessert rudely interrupted.

There was nothing extraordinary about what she saw. The plate was a pale blue, cheaply made, bought from the local big box store. She didn’t have time for frivolous things like nice plates.

What she did have time for was baking. She loved to bake, always from scratch. Deborah had always approved. She would rave about how amazing her baking was, especially her chocolate cakes. She should enter them in a contest, Deborah would say, then everyone will agree that she was the luckiest woman alive.

That was years ago, before Deborah passed. She had been thinking of her as she made this cake, softly layering the coca powder through the sifter and beating the egg whites separately to add a light airiness to the cake. She had cried softly as she made the frosting, remembering how Deborah would always insist on coming up behind her for a hug, a kiss, and a cheeky sneak of a taste of frosting before she could slap her hand away.

The tears were still drying on her cheeks as she had cut herself a slice and sat down at the empty dining room table, with the twilight glancing through the windows at her.

Now, she could only sit and stare as plate, cake, and frosting slowly slid away from her to rest in the center of the table.

Her breath caught in her lungs. She hadn’t just imagined that had she? Surely she must have pushed it away, a grief laden gesture that her brain had seemingly forgotten. But even as she contemplated this, she realized that the plate was too far for her to reach, the cake too perfectly settled for it to be thrust from her. And as she stared, in the dimming light, the tip of the cake slowly disappeared as if it was being bitten off.

She jumped to her feet and rushed across the kitchen to the wall light switch. Flicking it on, the gloomy shadows of the encroaching evening were burned away in harsh reality. She held herself against the wall for a moment, her exertion and fear freezing her in place. Slowly she righted herself, moving back towards the table and the plate sitting ominously in front of her.

Indeed it looked as though a big bite had been taken out of the tip of the cake, so much so that the little curved indentations of teeth were individually preserved in the frosting. She stared in disbelief. That was impossible. She tried to reason, to make sense, even going as far as running her tongue across her own teeth to check for latent frosting, just to confirm that it wasn’t she who was the culprit.

The light flicked off again. She froze in place, the darkness now overwhelming her senses. The cake, barely illuminated, in front of her as the last glimpses of sunlight hit it perfectly. Her breath came in halting gasps, and she realized with absolute amazement that she could see her breath fogging up the air before her. She shuddered and looked around wildly, tears blearing in her eyes as she succumbed to the fear that had been scratching behind the floor of disbelief.

Suddenly, she felt something behind her; not cold, but warm. The terror gripped her as she felt it wrap around her, tightening, closing in. She wanted to scream but her lungs were bereft of air. She tried to move but she was glued in time to this place.

Ever so softly the frosting on the cake moved. She watched with eyes wide as an invisible finger traced through the frosting. Then the warm feeling came again, this time on the side of her neck. It was gentle and sweet, almost as though she was being kissed. The breath came back to her as she wept.