Footsteps

The NIGHTMARE

It started again. The tapping. This time, it manifested when I was dreaming and somehow broke through the walls of sleep and into the waking world once more. For I now was sitting up in my bed, listening to this noise.

Tap, tap, tap.

It was in the place that it had started before. I suspected the attic. But it’d been sealed off. There was no way in and no way out. Had something become trapped in there it would be long dead by now. No creature dependent on sustenance could have ever survived up there. Be it vermin or insect: rat or cockroach.

And it didn’t stop like it had before. It just didn’t stop until my body gave up and my mind gave in.

Slower, then faster.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Softer, then louder and louder.

Tap, tap, tap, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP.

Sometimes it felt as if the roof would loosen and come down right upon me.

It got so loud at times I thought the whole world could hear it. But no one else did. If they did, no one came. And right after its climax, it would cease until the next night, around eleven, when it would come again.

Slower, then faster.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Softer, then louder and louder.

Tap, tap, tap, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP.

By the third day I could take it no more. I rushed up to the place on the roof at the highest point on the stairs with a broom handle in my hand. And with the tapping at its worst, I banged that sealed entry at mine. Perhaps I was in the state of hallucination brought on by my deprivation of sleep, but as I banged, plaster and splinters of wood weakened and fell. And with those fragments I fell too, my body weakened not by the force of broom, but by sheer exhaustion.

I came to the next morning, or what I thought was. I awoke in the position I had fallen asleep in, broken plaster and splinters of wood still surrounded me. When my mind and eyes focused, I looked up at the entry to the attic. It was open. I gazed into that darkness, which seemed to stretch beyond the perimeters of that entryway and knew I had to go in. I ventured downstairs and fetched a ladder and some light. I quickly headed back up and placed the ladder against the wall. Before I stepped upon its lowest rung, I looked up once more, took in a deep breath and ascended.

At the top I could feel a chill come from the attic’s mouth. A breeze without a source seemed to lure me, though I knew to heed. I entered with a candle’s flame as ward to whatever harm may lurk inside the shadows that dwelled there. As a proceeded, they fleeted from the flickering flame, revealing a room in a frozen state of neglect. Before me a blanket of dust lay upon floorboards that creaked and groaned with every step I carefully took. Cobwebs hung from where wooden ribs joined with spine and danced like tattered ribbons of curtains moving with the breeze. I could feel no wind, though I could feel its chill, leaving me to consider that their movement was directed by some other unseen, and unfelt, source. Boxes, too, were stacked along the sides of the floor and revealed a jagged path from myself to a chest that seemed to hold a most enigmatic, unnatural presence. Unlike the boxes around it, it was clean, its color and detail defined. And it looked recently disturbed. That’s when I looked down at something that nearly caused me to drop the candle I held and fall through the entry behind me. From the ground at my feet to the crate at the attic’s opposite wall I saw it, marked in the dust. Small, distinct circles preceding flat oval marks of a much greater size. They looked like tracks, prints of some kind created by something beyond my comprehension. I followed them on to the crate where they led. When I arrived there I could feel a unique chill that seemed to come from it. I stood before it, frozen, scared. But I had to know. I bent down and searched for a lock, an opening and, to my surprise I found the crate to be unlocked. Slowly, I opened it and lifted the candle to see what lurked inside.

Then, within a breath’s moment, the flickering light that I held onto with trembling fingers went out.

The END

A ten-year-old boy by the name of Seymour Duncan. Great kid. He is the product of an overbearing, sympathetic mother and perhaps a community as well. To this day I’m not sure exactly why such a bright, outgoing lad such as Duncan would want to have anything to do with this scholar, this bibliophile, this hermit.

…

That’s what they said the day Duncan found me…hanging by my neck above that crate in the attic. And in that crate they found my motive, my reason for taking my own life. There, inside that crate below me they found my Lilith with her bony fingers still clenching that knife I had placed between her ribs the night my jealousy and suspicions had become too great. And on her feet they found her favorite red shoes, their heels now nearly worn to a nub.

And though our bodies are now removed and the place is now occupied by new lovers, they sometimes tell of a strange presence occupying my study at night; books leaving the shelves to rest upon the desk— their pages and opening and turning, only to return as effortlessly as they had left and the same strange sounds of tap, tap, tapping from within the attic; which has now been sealed once more.

END