House Call

Every night I wake to the sound of knocking at my door. It starts out faint, almost polite, but grows more insistent if I don’t answer the door. It takes me a minute to get out of bed, not because I’m groggy from being woken up, no, I’m wide awake. Fear has that effect on me. The first time I wasn’t sure what had me so unsettled, I wrote it off as an effect of being woken abruptly. I know better now. Eventually I force myself to peel back the covers and step out of bed. The wooden floor of my bedroom is cool on my bare feet. Normally I would hurry off of it onto the rug in the hall, but not now. I can’t risk the floorboards crying out and giving me away. As I approach the door on cat’s paws, hoping to get a glimpse of the visitor without them knowing I am there, a voice calls out.

“Please, let us in.” The voice belongs to a small child but lacks any of the usual emotion that you would hear in a child’s voice, it was just flat and empty. My heart skips a beat and ice grows in the pit of my stomach. How could they know I’m there? I’m fairly certain I hadn't made a sound. I hold my breath and stand as still as I can manage. The door vibrates as the knocking resumes, this time more forcefully. I can see the doorknob giggling with each knock. I want to move, ideally to run far away, but I can’t. The sheer weight of the dread I feel has rooted me in place.

“We know you’re there. Let us in.”

That breaks me out of my paralysis, and I move to the door and press my eye to the peephole. I see two figures standing on my porch. Their size seems to confirm the assumption I made based on their voice, they are children, or at least they appear to be children. I watch them for a moment. They are eerily still, what kind of child doesn’t fidget? After a moment they tilt their heads, almost in unison. I can’t see their faces, but I can feel them staring at me. It’s like they can see, not only through the door, but through me, straight into my soul. I jump back from the door by a step or two. In my haste to get away from them, I bump into a small table in the hall.

“Let us in…”

I hold my breath again. My heart is racing, and my guts are suddenly filled with ice water.

“Let. Us. IN!” The voice calls through the door, almost screaming. Then the knocking resumes, only this time they are pounding on the door. They beat on the door hard enough that I can hear the framed pictures on the wall next to it rattle. My nerve breaks then, and I run back to my bedroom, diving onto my bed and drawing the comforter up over my head like a scared child. The things outside continue to call out, yelling and demanding to be allowed inside. The pounding continues as well.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

I stay there, cowering under my comforter, all night. Hands pressed to my ears in an attempt to muffle the pounding and screaming, but it doesn’t work. Eventually the sun begins to lighten the sky and they go away, back to wherever they came from. It’s been like this for a while now, I’ve only gotten an hour or two of sleep a night because of it. My doctor gave me a prescription for sleeping pills, but even those don’t stop it and I still get jolted awake by the knocking. I worry that if it keeps on like this, I’m going to go crazy. The lack of sleep alone could do it, even without being terrorized nightly by whatever those things are. If I weren’t so sure that the children at the door preceded my lack of sleep, I would believe they were just a symptom of it and not the cause. That would honestly be a comfort, but no, that is not how it is. Those things, pretending to be children, they won’t let me sleep. They are trying to wear me down.

I decide to go to my uncle’s cabin. It’s out in the woods, well away from people and hopefully well away from my nightly visitors. With any luck I’ll be able to sleep. The lack of sleep has ground my consciousness down to a nub, I’m so exhausted that everything feels like a dream. If I can just get one good night's sleep hopefully everything will get better.

I haven’t been here in years; I was never much of an outdoorsman. I had forgotten how beautiful the area is. The cabin sits alone, near a small lake, pine forest rings the entire thing. It’s so serene here, the only sounds are the calls of birds and the waters of the lake gently lapping at the shore. I rub my achy, tired eyes as I get out of the car and head into the cabin. The sooner I get settled in the sooner I can get to sleep. I breathe in the fresh air as I walk the gravel path to the porch. The cabin is old, but in good repair. The screen door squeaks quietly as I pull it open and slide the key into the deadbolt on the heavy wooden front door.

The cabin’s interior consisted of three rooms. After walking through the front door, you find yourself in the main room, kind of a combination living room and kitchen. To the right is a door that leads to the bedroom and in the bedroom is a door for the bathroom. I make my way to the bedroom and deposit my bag on the bed, the old quilt gives up a small puff of dust when the bag hits it. I unpack my things and wander back into the kitchen to make myself some tea.

I take my tea and the book I brought, a novel about a no-nonsense detective that finds himself in more trouble than he bargained for thanks to a double-crossing dame and settle into the comfortable old leather chair in front of the fireplace. I can feel the tension melting off of me as I sip the steaming cup of tea and let myself become absorbed in the exploits of the private dick on the pages before me. I’m sure I even sigh contentedly once or twice. I sit there so thoroughly enthralled with the experience of relaxing for the first time in what felt like ages that I don’t notice the sun going down.

My eyes start to become heavy, and I don’t have it in me to fight it, I nod off right there in the chair and I dream. I dream I’m on a hunting trip, even though I have never actually been on one. My uncle is there, stalking through the woods, rifle sling over his shoulder. He turns to me and shoots me a smile, one big enough to show his missing tooth on the right side. I smile back and look around. It’s still light out and the forest is thick around us. I can hear animals skittering away from us, the occasional twig snapping in the distance. Uncle John doesn’t seem to pay any notice to any of those sounds though. I turn to him and ask what we are hunting. His response is to simply hold a finger to his lips, shush me and then point forward.

I follow him, deeper into the forest, still unsure where we are going or what our quarry even is. The further forward we push, the gloomier the forest becomes and the more nervous I grow with this whole situation. Ahead of us I begin to see a break in the trees. I look to my uncle, he nods and moves forward. We get to the break, and I can see the lake, there is something on the shore, but I can’t really make it out, it’s just a dark mass to me. My uncle takes his rifle from his shoulder and looks through the scope, I follow suit.

Through the scope I get a clearer view of the thing in the clearing. It’s a chair with a man slumped in it. The identity of the slumbering man hits me like a kick to the temple when he turns his head towards us. It’s me. I’m looking at myself through the lens of a rifle scope. I mutter “what the fuck” to myself. I hear my uncle say, “It’s not safe you know.” I turn to ask him what he means, just in time to see him pull the trigger.

BANG!

I’m startled awake, knocking the half full mug of cold tea to the floor. My heart is racing, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to how dark it is in the room. “Jesus Christ that was a weird one.” I let out a long breath, trying to calm myself. “Just a dream.”

BANG!

My breath catches in my throat and my heart stops for a moment. That bang was real, and it came from the front door. I push myself up out of the chair, my eyes fixed on the front door. I try to tell myself it’s just the wind banging the screen door against its frame. But, I know, deep inside that I can’t possibly be that lucky.

BANG!

I move towards the door, slowly and I run a shaky hand across my face.

“It’s just the wind. It has to be, they always ask to be let in.” I whisper to myself in a halfhearted attempt to settle my nerves. I continue towards the door, knowing the only thing I can do is check, just open the door and see for myself that it’s a simple matter of an unsecured screen door. I cautiously place a hand on the doorknob and draw a deep breath, before jerking it open.

Through the worn screen I see two smallish figures standing on the porch, the moonlight is bright outside, and I can see that one of them is wearing a pair of tattered jeans and a striped t-shirt. The other, the taller of the two, is wearing a blue windbreaker and khaki-colored slacks. In spite of the moonlight being fully capable of illuminating the pair, their faces are fully in shadow. Deep, black shadow, almost as if their faces were absorbing any light that dared get too close to them.

“Let us in.” The voice seemed to come from the smaller one.

“How…how did you find me?” My voice shakes as I speak the words.

The taller one responds by rapping on the door again. “You need to let us in.”

I shake my head and take a step back involuntarily. I reach for the wooden door, intent on closing it. The smaller of the two tilts his head to the side and raises a hand to the screen. Then it drags it’s nails down the screen. I can feel it’s eyes on me, boring into me. My palms begin to sweat. “Such a thin barrier.” It whispers in that dead, flat tone of theirs. I slam the front door shut and close the dead bolt as quickly as I can manage.

“Go away!” I yell through the door. “I won’t let you in!”

I jump back with a yelp as two figures step through the door. A heavy, solid wood door and they just walked right through it like it wasn’t there, like specters from some old ghost story. I scramble back, not knowing where I can go, but desperate to get away from them.

“I wasn’t talking about the screen.” The small one says, its head scanning the interior. “The threshold is… weak…this is not a real home.”

I stare in horror as the shadows obscuring their faces ooze down and cover their entire bodies until it looks like someone punched two person shaped holes in reality. Black tendrils begin to snake out from them and all of the light in the room grows dim and hazy. As the light dims, I feel all the strength leave my body, I fall to the floor with a thud. There is still just enough moonlight visible through the windows for me to see them approach me. I feel cold slither across my body, like snakes made of ice, as their shadows fall across me. They kneel next to me and the taller one bends to place its head near my face, I can feel the cold radiating from it.

“You should have stayed home.” The tall one whispers in my ear, it’s voice dripping with menace. “You were much safer there.”