by Erik Hyrkas
Jax was momentarily stunned. Before he could stand, a massive hand grabbed him by the throat, lifted him into the air, and pinned him against the wall. He tried to call out for Hunter, but he couldn’t get enough air to make more than a hoarse whisper.
“You are coming with me,” the EMT said in a conversational tone.
Chapter Four
Brit stared at the empty space where the light had been, an afterimage etched in her retina. Within the glare, she had distinctly seen an array of rectangular marble blocks resembling stairs leading upward. Her heart was still racing.
“We need to leave here,” Brit whispered.
“I don’t understand what is happening,” Marcy whispered back.
Neither woman moved until the sound of loud scraping noises of plastic on cement reverberated from the backyard.
“Is somebody shoveling?” Marcy asked as she walked into the kitchen, daring to cross through the place the light had been. She froze. “Aiden?”
Marcy ran to the backdoor.
“Wait!” Brit dashed after her. “That’s not Aiden!”
Brit wasn’t sure who, or what, was shoveling in the backyard, but she was certain that, even if Aiden had survived last night, there was no way he was going to shovel anything for a long time.
Marcy opened the backdoor and a blast of cold air tainted with the odor of rotting eggs flooded into the room.
“Aiden!”
There was no reply, not even more scraping of a shovel.
Brit caught up to Marcy at the door and looked outside, afraid of what she might see and yet hoping for some confirmation that what she had seen last night was real. The snowdrifts covering the sidewalk remained, not a single footprint visible. The winter air was causing both women to shiver and clutch their own arms.
“We need to leave,” Brit said, and she tugged on the backdoor against Marcy’s grip. The wind whipped around them and lashed their exposed skin.
Marcy continued to stare outside. “My car is still at the hospital, and Aiden’s car is at your house.”
The image of the rent metal door and the blood-smeared fender was gut-wrenching. Brit didn’t want to think about it. They needed to get out. She pulled out her phone, then remembered the battery was dead.
Brit swore. “I need to use your phone.”
Marcy took a last look around the backyard and finally shut the door. Brit locked the door as Marcy walked to the bedroom, then briskly followed her with a nervous glance at the spot where the light had appeared.
“I forgot to charge my phone last night,” Marcy said.
Brit swore again.
“I still have a little charge, but it probably isn’t going to last long.”
“We don’t need a lot of battery, just enough to say one word to Jax.” Brit had every intention of saying that word with enough urgency and volume that he would come.
Brit took the phone from Marcy and dialed Jax’s number, probably the only one she actually knew from memory. She listened to ringing and more ringing before the prerecorded message told her that her husband was not available.
“Jax, we need you to come pick us up right now! My phone is dead, so call us back on Marcy’s number. Please! Hurry!”
The battery powered clock on the wall said it was 7:00 a.m. Jax had planned to pick Brit up in the morning, but he probably wouldn’t show up until 8:00 or 9:00. The phone’s battery was down to six percent. It possibly had one more call in it, and probably not a long one, she thought.
Brit handed the phone back to Marcy. “I think we should call a cab. Can you look up a number?”
“I have one in my speed dials so I can have a cab pick up Aiden’s parents when they fly in from Boston,” Marcy said.
Marcy pressed a few buttons. “Yes, we need a cab to pick us up at 66 Winter Street.”
Brit grabbed her coat and put it on, then helped Marcy into her coat.
“Do you think that was Aiden’s ghost?” Marcy asked.
“I don’t know,” Brit answered.
Brit did not believe in things for which there was no evidence, but last night she thought she saw something, and now that was confirmed by seeing it again and Marcy seeing it too, she had to decide what it was. She had seen somebody in the backyard, twice, but that wasn’t nearly as unsettling as the floating marble stairs that had appeared in Marcy’s kitchen. In her mind, there was no magic and everything that happened was explainable, but thus far, she had no idea what that explanation was.
For fifteen minutes Brit and Marcy stood by the front door listening to the ticking clock, peering out the front window, and waiting for the cab. Neither woman was willing to go more than a few steps away. It was too cold to stand outside for any length of time, but Brit had considered it.
When the cab arrived, both women nearly sprinted from the house.
“Take us to 98 Wilburn Street,” Brit told the driver.
“I think that Aiden is trying to tell me something,” Marcy whispered.
Brit put a hand on Marcy’s arm. “Aiden is dead,” she whispered.
“I know, but I think that he’s trying to tell me that he’s in heaven,” Marcy said.
Brit wasn’t going to argue with Marcy, but if Aiden really wanted to tell Marcy that he was in heaven, couldn’t he think of a better way than shoveling the sidewalk when the power was out? If he had the ability to make himself appear, why not simply come out and say, “Hey, I’m in heaven now. Everything is great here. Don’t worry about me.”
No, instead he had to show up in the dark, scraping a shovel against the concrete and scaring the shit out of them. And what the hell was up with the glowing stairway? What kind of message was that? If a message was being conveyed, it was not a direct one. Well, Brit conceded, unless he was trying to say, “I want to scare the shit out of you.” Then his message was pretty damn good.
By the time they arrived at Brit’s house, she already felt better. Not that she could explain what had happened, but in the light of day and away from Marcy’s house, whatever had happened was not nearly as scary.
Brit paid for the cab, and then she and Marcy walked up Brit’s sidewalk through a shallow drift of snow.
“Is that a note on your door?” Marcy pointed at the door.
Brit looked up and noticed a small yellow piece of paper taped to the fogged glass of the storm door. When she reached the door, she pulled it off and read it.
LOST PHONE SCREEN
Prototype phone screen was lost in this vicinity. Looks like a tinted piece of glass.
Please call Peter immediately with information: (555)828-3231
$200 REWARD
Brit shoved the note into her back pocket next to the tinted glass and pulled out her house key to unlock the door. Then she noticed that the door was slightly ajar. Jax would never leave the door open—not at night and especially not in the winter. He was always so conscientious about the heat bill that he would have never left it open.
“Jax?” Brit called. “We’re home!”
“Who gives a crap!” called Hunter from the spare room. “Some of us are trying to sleep! Keep it down!”
A faint snore from upstairs told Brit that Michael was still asleep, but the rest of the living room looked much the way it always did. Jax had not taken the time to put away the poker table and clean up the mess of beer cans and snacks from the previous night.
Then she spotted Jax’s phone on the floor in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. He often spent more time looking at that phone than her, a fact that irritated her, which made her more than a little scared that it was lying there. He held that phone from the moment he woke up until the moment he fell asleep.
Brit ran over and picked up his phone. The numbers 9-1-1 were on the surface. On the floor was a broken picture. She peered into the kitchen and saw that the fridge door was open. A carton of eggs was sitting on the counter and a frying pan sat on the glowing red stovetop. An unsigned sympathy card sat on the counter next to a pie
with a fork sticking out of it.
She grabbed the carton of eggs, hesitated for a moment, then shut the fridge door and stared at the frying pan for a moment.
“What is it?” Marcy asked.
“The eggs are warm.” Brit turned off the stove and ran to the living room. “Michael! Wake up!” She shouted loud enough for him to hear her upstairs or in the next house.
“Shut up!” Hunter called.
Michael came to the top of the stairs, bleary eyed and yawning.
“What?” he asked.
“Where is Jax?” Brit asked.
“What?” he asked again.
“Where is Jax?” Brit repeated slowly and loudly.
“I’m trying to sleep!” Hunter called out.
“Go to hell!” Brit shouted at him. “Where is Jax?” she repeated.
“I… I don’t know.” Michael looked around as if expecting to see Jax and point him out.
Brit ran upstairs to their bedroom and flipped on the light. She didn’t want to be in a dark room ever again. Their bed was disheveled and filled with chip crumbs and a wrinkled magazine. His dirty socks were on the floor.
She saw her charger plugged into the wall next to the bed. She ran to it and pulled out her phone from her purse, plugged it in, and pressed the button on the side to wake it up. It showed the empty battery symbol for a full minute, and all she could do was stare at it. Then it had enough charge to unlock.
She pulled out the note from the front door and dialed. Whoever had dropped off this note had at least been to her house last night or this morning. Maybe he knew what happened to Jax. She couldn’t call the police because he hadn’t been missing long enough, but it occurred to her that maybe there was nothing nefarious happening. Maybe he had seen somebody outside through the kitchen window who desperately needed help and he left the fridge open, stove on, and then dropped his phone to go help them. And the whole reason he wasn’t back yet was…?
This was Jax she was thinking about. He always kept his head and probably would have even remembered to shut the fridge door and shut off the stove before running outside to help anybody. Hell, if ninjas attacked him, he’d probably use his dying breath to ask them to shut the fridge door so they didn’t waste any electricity.
“Hello?” a male voice asked impatiently, like this wasn’t the first time he had spoken to her.
Brit remembered that she was holding her phone and why she had called the number.
“Um, is this,” she paused, looked at the note, and continued, “Peter?”
“Yes,” he said. “Did you find my phone screen prototype?” he asked.
“When you came to my house this morning, was the front door open?”
“Do you have my phone screen prototype?” he repeated. “It is very valuable.”
“I might have it, but look, my husband is missing and I need to know if you noticed whether the front door was open when you put that note on it.”
“No, it wasn’t open when I put the note on the door. I really need that phone screen. It is pretty urgent.”
“What time did you put the note on the door?” Brit asked, hoping to narrow down how long ago Jax had left. He wouldn’t have made breakfast before sun-up, she reasoned, and so it was probably recently.
“Look lady, I’m losing my patience,” Peter said. “I’d guess that your husband will come back home right after I find my prototype.”
Then Brit heard a muffled moan. “Do you have Jax?”
“I’ll be there in a few moments. If I get what I need, then you’ll get what you need.”
The phone emitted a soft beep. Brit looked at it and saw that the call had ended. She dialed 9-1-1. Nothing happened. She looked at her phone and it read: Call Failed. Her phone had no signal, which wasn’t right, since she had always had a signal from her bedroom before but now it didn’t have a single bar. Hell, moments ago her signal was fine.
The lights in the bedroom flickered and went out, then the phone’s screen briefly showed a large white outline of an empty battery before going black as well.
Brit heard a faint knock on the front door, and dropped her phone on the floor. She pulled out the dark glass rectangle that this person named Peter wanted. A teardrop splashed onto the perfect surface and rolled off without leaving the tiniest droplet or track behind. She brushed her finger to wipe the screen clean, despite the fact that it was pristine. Then she remembered the small disk she had found. She pulled it out and tucked it under the mattress. She couldn’t explain why she did this. Maybe the thought that this person who had her husband might want it was enough to assume she might have to go to the cops and that disk could be some sort of evidence. She knew this made no sense, but she was having a hard time thinking.
The door leading to the master bedroom’s bathroom made a soft click. She stared at the door, trying to remember whether it had already been closed or whether the house had simply been settling. Had somebody been in there listening this whole time? Brit knew that Hunter was downstairs in the guest room. She had heard him and knew he was way too lazy to get out of bed before he had to. Michael was probably on the couch by this time, and there was no way into the master bathroom except through the master bedroom that she had been standing in front of for at least a minute now. With the power out, the bathroom darkness would be impenetrable.
Another faint knock came from the front door. Brit wanted to shout at Michael to not open the door for anybody.
“Jax?” Brit asked the door in a whisper.
There was a flush from the bathroom toilet. Brit crept closer.
“I’ll get it,” Michael called loudly from the couch, which was only a dozen or so steps from the front door.
Brit heard water running from the bathroom sink for a moment, then she opened the bathroom door a crack but found nothing but darkness.
She pushed open the door wider and saw nobody. She stared at the shower curtain in the nearly black room with her heart racing. Jax wouldn’t hide from her in the dark. She slammed the door shut and ran downstairs.
Michael was standing up as the knock was repeated at the front door. “Oh, I was going to get that,” he said.
Marcy’s eyes went wide when she saw Brit. “What happened? Why are you crying?”
Chapter Five
Hunter ambled into the room, his hair sticking up in different directions, his clothing rumpled and stained. He belched.
“Jax has been kidnapped,” Brit whispered urgently. “The guy who kidnapped him is at the front door, and I think somebody is hiding in the upstairs bathroom.”
Hunter hurried to the kitchen and grabbed a knife, then returned. “Well, then maybe we should let him in.”
“We should call the police,” Marcy whispered. She pulled out her phone, and they could both see that she had no signal and her battery was nearly drained.
“I had no signal either,” Brit whispered.
The knock on the front door became more insistent and louder, as if the person was pounding on it with his fist, and then the lock on the door clicked.
Brit, Michael, Hunter, and Marcy all stared at the door as it slowly opened.
“It is rude to leave somebody standing out in the cold for so long,” Peter said. He was wearing a tan sports coat and orange dress shirt, a much different wardrobe than the night before, but they recognized his scraggly, blond beard and disheveled hair. He was holding a dark, glossy cylinder in his right hand, which he casually pointed at them.
Brit’s voice cracked as she asked, “Where is Jax?”
Peter smiled. “Give me the prototype, and I’ll be on my way. This will all be a bad dream that you can still wake up from.”
“We don’t have your fucking prototype,” Hunter said as he closed on the man.
Peter gave his hand the slightest flick, and Hunter flew back into the wall hard enough to dent the drywall. “I have other things to do today. Let’s not play games.”
Brit ran her finger around the edge of the dark glass pro
totype, the thing that Peter wanted so badly. He noticed. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Be careful with that!”
A bright light sprung up behind her. She turned and saw the stairs that she had seen in Marcy’s kitchen. Whether from panic or madness, Marcy walked toward the stairs and the light.
“Aiden?” Marcy whispered as she put a foot on the first stair.
“Where is Jax?” Brit repeated.
Peter looked at her warily. “He’ll be back as soon as you hand the prototype to me.”
Brit edged closer to the glowing stairs. “How do I know he isn’t dead? Hell, how do I know that you won’t kill us?”
Peter grinned. “You don’t.”
Marcy had already ascended the stairs and was gone. Wherever the staircase went, it couldn’t be worse than were she was, Brit thought. Brit jumped into the light and onto the white marble stairs. She took a few steps into a thick gray mist, felt a momentary sensation of falling, then fell hard onto loose gravel.
The sky was an array of blues, oranges, and gold that reminded her of sunrise. The air was warm and humid. The ground was red coarse gravel that stretched away in one direction as a series of rolling barren hills. She was lying on the edge of a steep drop into a dark crevasse. On the other side of the crevasse was a lush green rainforest. This wasn’t Minnesota.
Marcy stood a few feet away, holding herself tightly and glancing nervously around. “I thought heaven would be prettier,” she whispered. Then, after a frightened moment, she asked, “What if this is hell?”
Brit didn’t have time to answer. In a flash of light, Peter landed gracefully on the ground in front of her. He pointed the cylinder at her that he had used to throw Hunter into a wall.
“That’s a long fall,” he said with a nod to the cliff. “You know that I could blast you over the edge. Give me the prototype. Now!”
There was another flash of white light and Hunter landed on top of Peter. There was nothing graceful about his landing. Hunter was flailing at the moment he appeared, and the two men fell hard to the ground.
