Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller

by Timothy Hammer

  At the back of the room, Sarah could just make out the stairs leading up to the exterior sloping cellar door. The wind from the outside seemed to rattle the door with each small breeze. Next to that, on the other side of the pillar, she saw what she was looking for. In the far south corner of the room, almost completely hidden by a wooden desk piled with broken sewing machines- an island of sewing machines- was a crooked door jam and another set of stairs down. Sarah’s footfalls echoed throughout the basement as she approached the staircase which she knew would lead down to an attached cellar. The below below, Sarah thought. The desk scraped loudly across the floor as she pushed it away from the doorway. Sarah pointed her light down the staircase, took a deep breath, and headed down into the darkness.

  It didn’t take her long to find the odd little door from her dream. It was directly across from the bottom cellar step. And it didn’t surprise her to find it looking almost exactly the same. This was her talent, and she had finally accepted it. She shone the circle of artificial light all around the narrow room. It was empty minus a few cardboard boxes stacked in a corner and three rows of shelves attached haphazardly to the wall above them. Sarah spied the lone lightbulb with a long pull string dangling from the ceiling just a few feet from the bottom step. She reached up and pulled the string. The light that emerged from the bulb flickered for a moment and then cast a feeble but steady light across the room. Sarah pulled her flashlight back to the little door and examined it. The door was about two feet or so up from the floor, made of a dark brown and relatively sturdy looking wood, hinged on the left and about two by two feet, she guessed.

  Sarah took a closer look. Nailed shut, she realized. Her body shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t going to stop her though. She took a step forward and reached out, feeling at the rusted nails that held the small wooden door in place. Her eyes betrayed her and she quickly glanced off to the corner of the cellar- fully expecting to see the woman from her dream, but there was no one there. Relieved, she took the hammer and began to pry the rusty nails out of the door. The first nail came out quite easily, but the next four took all her effort. She braced herself against the wall with her foot and yanked out the next nail. It was bent, much like the two before it. She again set the claw of the hammer and braced her foot, but this time, before she could put forth a full pulling effort, the door fell off its rusty hinges and backward on top of Sarah. She let out a loud cry as she fell backwards onto the cellar floor. The door wasn’t heavy, but the cloud of dust and dirt that escaped from behind it left Sarah choking and gasping for a breath. Sarah coughed and tried to cover her mouth with her hands. When the cloud of dust finally dissipated, she could make out the opening to a small brick crawl space where the door had previously been. Sarah picked up the flashlight from the floor. She had dropped it in the commotion. She flicked it on and off and then on again. Thankfully, it still worked. She rubbed some of the dirt from her eye and hesitated for just a moment before climbing up into the crawl space, praying that she wouldn’t get stuck and rot in there like some animal wedged in a tight chimney.

  Thankfully, it was only a few seconds until the crawl space opened up into another room. Sarah pointed her light above her head, revealing a concrete reinforced ceiling, and realized that she had more than enough room to stand up. As she stood up, her light bounced along the ceiling further and further into the darkness, and it became clear to her. She was in a tunnel. Her mind tried to make sense of it, but it was too hard to think in here. The air was thin and moist and… decaying, her mind suggested. Sarah looked back the way she had come, tempted to turn around and crawl back out. But she wasn’t just curious, she had to know where the tunnel lead, and there was only one way to find out. And that’s when she found the small kerosene lantern- kicked it over in fact. It had been setting on top of a small foot stool that rested on the ground only a few feet from the crawl space opening. She’d missed seeing it in the stark lighting, that was, until her foot caught the leg of the stool and sent the lantern crashing to the floor. Sarah bent down to pick it up and noticed a stack of disintegrating paperbacks standing next to the overturned stool. The top book was missing it’s cover and clearly had the corners folded in as a place marker. Sarah was tempted to reach out and see what book it was. Which chapter were they on? But she forced herself to look away and instead searched the floor with her flashlight. She quickly found the lantern. It lay on its side, with a long nosed lighter conveniently duct taped to its globe. My lucky day, Sarah shuddered. It was obvious now that someone had been here… and quite recently.

  Sarah cautiously made her way down the pitch-black tunnel, glancing back at the small light marking her starting point. She had decided to light the lantern to mark the location of the crawl space. Just in case. Sarah tightened her grip on the flashlight, wishing she was holding the hammer instead. The artificial light caught something on the floor of the tunnel up ahead. She walked over and picked it up, slowly turning it over in the beam of the flashlight. Sarah immediately regretted picking it up, as the light revealed exactly what it was- the old gas mask the figure from her dream had been wearing. She dropped the mask, as the details of the dream came rushing back into her mind. “I don’t want to remember,” her lips silently mouthed as her face drained of all color and the cold feeling returned. A new horrifying idea was beginning to take shape inside Sarah’s head. She quickened her step. Is this what her aunt was trying to show her? Trying to warn her? And then, as if in an answer, a tiny light peered out from up ahead. The exit. As she reached the end, the tunnel began to narrow and was no longer reinforced with concrete. By the time she reached the growing light she was actually down on her hands and knees crawling along the dirt floor. She reached forward and pushed her way through the small tangled tree branches that were blocking her exit.

  Sarah struggled a bit as she made her way out of the tunnel and into the late afternoon sunlight. Her lungs were relieved to take in the fresh air, but the sunlight seemed much too bright after her journey. She moved a number of the small leaf covered tree branches that seemed to have been strategically placed in front of the tunnel entrance for camouflage. As she moved the last branch, she looked up and saw the park. The kids’ swings. The merry-go-round and the teeter-totter. There was a family at a picnic table. But it was the lone girl jogging down the curving dirt path, next to the quiet stream, that really grabbed her attention. She thought of the missing school teacher. She could see the newspaper clippings in her mind. It was all starting to make a horrible sort of sense. Sarah accidentally dropped the flashlight as she fumbled for her cell phone.

  “Shit!” She shouted as she looked down at the broken flashlight. The lens had exploded immediately as it hit the hard ground.

  When her shaking fingers finally grasped her phone, she tried to call Nick, but it went straight to voicemail.

  “Hey you’ve reached Nick Fielding. Leave a message.”

  “Nick, it’s Sarah. This is crazy- really crazy, but I just found this tunnel from the house and what if someone...” The phone beeped in response. No Service. The call dropped. “Damn it!” Sarah whispered as she looked at the bars on her phone in disgust. She held it high in the air and ridiculously moved it around, but her quest for service was quickly interrupted by the sound of twigs snapping off in the thick trees to her left.

  “Hello? Is someone there?” No response. She listened intently, holding her breath for what seemed like ages, but there was nothing more. She let out her deep, stale breath, took in another, and then slowly walked in the direction of the sound. Sarah tightened her grip on her cell phone and pushed her way through the tree line. Nothing. No one. This made her even more paranoid, but she was still driven. She checked over her shoulder- still nothing, but the chills ran her spine just the same. She picked up the pace, her steps were short, but quick and determined.

  She reached into her pocket and looked at her phone. No Service. She stopped, and slowly rolled her head from side to side trying to calm herself. Once a
little calmer, she looked around and realized that she didn’t know where she was anymore. Which direction had she come from? Which direction should she be going? She picked the nearest path and starting walking.

  The sunlight had now started to grow thinner between the canopy of the towering pine trees that surrounded her. Sarah stubbornly continued to follow what she believed to be the path back to the tunnel, but soon she came to the realization that she was wrong. She now found herself standing in front of a decaying iron fence.

  The cold, rusting iron fence surrounded a small round cemetery of old tombstones and small crosses- a small family plot. There was a weathered sign on the gate of the cemetery that read “Gate 17”. A strong flash of familiarity hit Sarah, but she couldn’t place the why or the where. Curiosity, however, got the better of her and she opened the gate. She walked through the wild grass and stepped around the tombstones. Sarah didn’t really know what she was looking for, but it didn’t take her long to find it. She stopped. The last name on all the headstones was the same... BAYARD. Her breath was yanked from her lungs.

  Jonathan Bayard

  September 23, 1818 - October 17, 1859

  James Eric Bayard

  March 19, 1844 - April 1, 1889

  Peter J. Bayard

  December 25, 1870 - November 21, 1900

  Eli Marcus Bayard

  June 7, 1917 - October 17, 1965

  Grace Louisa Bayard

  December 3, 1922 - September 25, 1970

  Sarah stared at the second to last tombstone. The tomb of Eli Marcus Bayard. There was something to it, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Some connection she wanted to make. I know this answer, she wanted to shout. It was just on the outside of her mind, but the air was too thin here- slippy. It made it hard to think. And then giving in to some deep unknown desire, Sarah reached out and placed her hand on the tombstone. Immediately she was taken by a violent vision. Her body stiffened, and seized up as her hand seemed to be frozen in place.

  Her mind was jolted with images of a red river. At the same time, the sounds of gunshots and screams rang inside her head. The vision flipped to the image of a wounded man crossing the vast, empty, grassy plains on the back of a horse. He leaned forward in his saddle, visibly bleeding, and barely clinging to the animal beneath him. He looked miniscule against the massive panoramic view of the grassy hills and blue sky around him. Sarah looked down at her feet, her bare toes wiggled up at her from the tall grass below. She looked back up to the bleeding man, wanting to get a better look at his face, but he was gone.

  The edges of this world seemed to grow blurry, and then the vision flipped again. Sarah saw Eli’s tombstone and the date... 1965. Her bare feet were cold as she found herself standing in a very familiar kitchen with butterfly wallpaper. The scattered pieces of a broken blue vase were on the floor to her left. To her right, two bodies were lying on the cold tile of the kitchen, their blood was mixing together into a shallow crimson pool. All at once everything began to shift and turn grey. It was as if this world was being sucked through a small vacuum tube and turned inside out.

  And then she was rid of it and back in the graveyard. Her hand still stuck to the tombstone. The force of the ending vision suddenly and violently threw Sarah backwards. The back of her head hit the ground hard, knocking her unconscious. In the darkness of her mind, Sarah heard a woman singing her name in the distance. Follow me… come with me through the trees.

  When Sarah came to, she was staring up into the dark canopy of the tall pine trees. It was late. She’d been unconscious for some time, it seemed. She sat up and was shocked to see that she was no longer surrounded by tombstones or the iron fence. In fact, there was no cemetery at all. She was sure she hadn’t dreamt it, she could still feel the cold of the tombstone on her hand- so where was it? Her thoughts were quickly interrupted as she heard the snapping of branches again. Sarah froze, and now there was the sound of muffled voices as well. Sarah picked up on the distinct sense that someone was watching her from the trees. The sensation of eyes upon her was strong and heavy.

  We’ve been checking you out, and we like what we see. Sarah’s mind was conjuring up memories of the two animals from the bar. Nick had protected her last night, but now, she was alone and lost in the woods. She began to panic. Sarah jumped to her feet and began to run away from the sounds, cutting through the trees. The branches grasped at her, tearing at her shirt and scratching her face. Sweat ran down her cheeks and mixed with the new stinging cuts on her face. She looked back in the direction of the voices. They were gaining on her. Sarah’s foot hit an old tree root, she stumbled and fell face first, sliding to a stop in a pile of dead leaves. She scrambled awkwardly to get up, but it was too late. Two figures made their way out of the tree line. They were silhouetted against the backdrop of the lowering sun. Sarah’s heart stopped, but then, she started to make out the two figures. They were wearing jogging suits and headbands. The male jogger turned and said something to his female counterpart. Sarah couldn’t make it out, but they were soon at her side.

  “Are you alright Miss?” The concerned male jogger asked.

  “Um, yeah. I just lost my footing. I’m faster than I thought... I guess.” Sarah forced an embarrassed smile. The joggers weren’t smiling.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You’re bleeding.” The female jogger asked.

  “Yes I’m fine. Thank you.”

  The man helped Sarah to her feet, but continued to frown at her. “You really shouldn’t be jogging out here alone. It’s not safe.”

  “I said I’m fine! I’m fine... thank you.” Sarah turned, brushing herself off as she walked away from the concerned joggers. The two exchanged a look and then jogged on. The female jogger looked back and tried to send a smile Sarah’s way, but Sarah just nodded.

  “Damn it, Sarah.” Her fingers found their way to the painful scratches on her face like fingers tend to do. She cringed at her touch. She grabbed her cell once more, but she still didn’t have service. She gave up and followed the jogger's path through the trees. It didn’t take her very long to find the right path back to the tunnel. How was I so lost before? Her mind questioned. She tried not think about it, and instead bent down and crawled into the tunnel. She had only moved a few feet before she thought better of it and crawled back out. Sarah picked up some of the leafy branches and carefully pulled them into the tunnel behind her to camouflage the entrance, before disappearing into darkness.

  Night had officially fallen by the time Sarah climbed out of the small opening and back into the damp, dank smelling cellar beneath the Bayard house. The unlit trip back through the tunnel had been nearly impossible without a flashlight, but she had made do with her cell phone light and endorphins; and was very thankful she had lit the lantern by the entrance to the crawl space. Sarah really wanted to board the little doorway back up, but instead she immediately headed up the cellar stairs, where she pushed the desk stacked with sewing machines back in front of the open cellar entryway. She then ran up the basement stairs to the main floor of the house, and locked the door behind her.

  The first thing Sarah did when she got upstairs was make herself a drink, three fingers of whiskey. Then she grabbed her cell, but got Nick’s voicemail again.

  “Hey you’ve reached Nick Fielding. Leave a message.”

  She started speaking after the beep, “Nick, it’s Sarah again. I’m sorry to keep calling, but please call me as soon as you get this. It’s important.”

  Sarah hung up and debated calling the police, but decided she should wait for Nick. He probably has the answer, she reassured herself, you’re jumping to crazy conclusions.

  Sarah took her drink and sat down in front of her laptop at the kitchen table. She’d decided to do some more research on her late relatives. She searched a number of different combinations using the name Bayard, but nothing of note came up. Then she typed in “Eli Bayard October 17, 1965”. There was something there. In a link from the chat room blog entitled “Dark Death�
�s list: Part Deux”, Sarah found an obscure video blogger talking about murders and strange deaths in Nebraska. She hit play.

  “So I’ve blogged at length about weird deaths in Nebraska lore, but here’s the topper. Pretty twisted stuff here for such a small town. Eli Bayard, father of three and devoted husband gets shot down in his own kitchen on October 17th of ‘65. October 17th.... Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s right folks, remember what we talked about in my third blog? Connecting the dots, connecting the dots and BOOM! Same exact date that his great grandad dies from a gunshot wound after the freakin’ Iktomi Indian Massacre! You remember the massacre right? One of the bloodiest and strangest battles in Nebraska, and this guy... the lone survivor lives just long enough to tell the story. How can it get any weirder, you ask me? Well, the bullet that killed Eli in his own home seemed to have actually been meant for the forty-eight year old dude’s daughter, Michelle! According to multiple sources in this old newspaper article, Michelle was the target of a scorned, disturbed PRO-Vietnam high school boy - turned crazed gunman. His name was Matthew Miller and he took exception to Michelle’s outspoken anti-war stance. According to one interview, she despised Matthew and belittled him every chance she got. Even turning down an invitation to the school’s formal. Wow... just wow, right? But that’s not all...”

  The blogger continued to talk, but Sarah had stopped listening. She took a big swig of her drink and closed her laptop. Her eyes fell on the photograph of young Sarah on the fridge. They began to water.