by Various
And if that wasn’t fantastic enough, the pile of rubble began to shake like it was set on hydraulics. It settled for a brief moment, and then began to take on a more orderly motion, lifting and falling like a stomach taking air. Moving with a careful precision that indicated life.
Awestruck, fixed to my car seat like I was glued down, I tried to resist the urge to speak. I was the cause of its destruction, after all, and there was no telling what it would do to me because of it. Nevertheless, the urge proved too great, bowling through my inhibitions and rising within me like a swell.
“What are you?” I yelled over the din.
Immediately, a black glass window shard swung around and shifted in my direction. For a moment, we considered each other. Me, a man shocked and awed into an irrational state. It, a thing of irrationality itself. With a sudden rise of wind, a sound came from within the remains: a struggling breath, a grinding, belabored sigh. A death rattle? The debris rose one last time, vibrated with indecision, and fell to rest.
It never moved again.
• • •
That night, while lying next to my sleeping wife, my thoughts dwelled upon that house. Who or what had made it? Who or what had lived in it? And what had happened there to turn it into what it had become? Then I realized none of that mattered. It wasn’t haunted; I felt that much was true. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t inhabited.
The implications clawed at my mind, unsettling the foundation of fifty odd years of stone-etched beliefs. I turned my mind to my own wrinkled, frail body—effete and uninspiring as it was. And for the first time in more than half a century, I wondered if a soul also inhabited me.
MIDNIGHT VISITORS
by Samuel Marzioli
First published in Penumbra eMag (Feb. 2013), edited by Celina Summers
• • • •
ISAT on the cushioned window seat on the second floor of Mrs. Peters’s House, staring out the window to the path that cut a line from the street to the front door. The rain fell in torrents and the winds came in gusts, emitting a howl that hinted at something deeper, more menacing, than just air roiling through our city’s streets. Only moments ago it was calm. Now it seemed as if the world itself raged against the coming hour, in preparation for our midnight visitor.
“What time is it?” said Tony.
I glanced at my watch. “11:40. Two minutes later than when you asked before.”
“Thanks. Let me know when it’s time.”
“Right,” I said. As if I could forget. As if any of us could.
These days, there was nothing left that could offer a proper distraction. But we did our best to try. Mrs. Peters sat in her rocking chair with the same mysterious smile she’d worn since the previous night, still knitting a scarf that was, by now, several feet too long for any normal sized man or woman. Tony sat by the fireplace, reading the same book he’d been working on since as long as I’d known him. And Edna flipped through a photo album of her son John—the only thing she’d grabbed, besides a suitcase stuffed with clothes, before she joined us here for good.
Edna was the most recent addition to our house, came to us two months ago. She said she’d driven three sleepless nights south along the interstate, siphoning gas from abandoned cars, until she stumbled upon our town. She said every other place in between had been abandoned, entire populations snatched away by their own midnight visitors. As far as she knew, we were the last bastion of life in the whole damn world.
The phenomenon began about a year ago: that quiet knocking at our front doors in the still of the night, and the familiar voice that called to us in our sleep. Far too many thought nothing of answering it—and why not? If God or Nature, or even random chance saw fit to bring a loved one back from the dead, who were we to argue? But a few of us remained suspicious and that made all the difference.
I glanced at my watch. “Five minutes left,” I said.
I sighed, returning my attention back to the path outside the window. The rain had frozen into streaks of snowflakes that melted once they met the ground. Soon, it stuck and began covering the streets and yards in a blanket of white. I always wondered if visitors had weight or substance and were capable of leaving footprints behind. In fact, Tony and I had a long standing debate whether they were really ghosts or zombies. I guess this was the night to find out.
“What time is it?” said Tony.
I looked at my watch again and my heart lurched. “11:58. Shit… Cut the lights!”
Mrs. Peters lowered her knitting, but kept that inexplicable smile. Tony dropped his book and turned to me with a pleading look in his eyes. Edna leaped up and flipped the switch. I turned back to watch the path outside the window. My watch ticked like a drumbeat in that pervading silence, counting down each solemn second.
Sixty.
Thirty.
Ten.
Two.
“Now,” I whispered.
Everyone held their breath. Edna slid to the ground, cradled her photo album, and proceeded to rock back and forth. Tony got to his feet and took a few steps toward me.
“Who is it this time?” he said, his voice almost manic.
“Quiet,” I whispered, straining to see through the white flurry.
As usual, the visitor came alone. The winds continued their merciless dash through the streets, rippling his suit, causing his tie to whip around like a flag. He hunched against the cold, taking careful tottering steps, rubbing his arms as if for warmth. And as he made his way up the path toward the house, he punched actual footprints into the snow.
“Who is it, Victor?” said Tony.
I turned to Mrs. Peters, found her wet glistening eyes in that soft firelight. “It’s your husband again.”
Last week, from Friday to Sunday, it’d been Tony’s boyfriend Patrick. From Monday to Thursday it’d been Edna’s brother Tom. Before then, it’d been a steady rotation of parents or grandparents, of uncles or aunts, of friends, or even neighbors. As if certain nights were set aside to target us in turns.
But Mr. Peters had come every night for the present week, and Mrs. Peters was faltering. She pressed her fist against her mouth.
“Does he look well?” she said, her voice quivering.
I didn’t answer, just threw a knowing glare at Tony, who nodded and sidled up beside her. He placed an arm around her, comforted her with a gentle pat against he shoulder—but his other arm looked tense and ready to pin her down if need be.
“I asked you if he looked well,” she said.
I tried to spot him, but Mr. Peters was nowhere in sight, probably already under the house’s eaves, standing at the door.
“Victor, tell me how he looks!”
“You know I can’t do that. It’d only make things harder for you.”
She shifted, made as if to rise. Tony stepped behind her and held her down by her shoulders.
“Let me go. That’s my husband out there. Let me go!”
“Shush, Mrs. Peters, it isn’t safe,” I whispered. I threw a glance out the window, not knowing what to expect had Mr. Peters heard her.
“Let me go!” she continued, her voice rising into a scream.
Edna started to weep, hugging her photo album tighter. “What does it matter?” she said. “Let her go. She needs to be with her husband.”
Mrs. Peters continued to struggle. Though she was old, and looked as brittle as porcelain, she put up a vicious fight that took Tony by surprise. I jumped off the window seat and helped him hold her down, pinning her legs between mine.
There was a knock at the front door. A voice swept into the house, sliding through the walls and rising up through the floor, as if only distance—not wood, pipes and insulation—separated us from the visitor. “Martha? Martha, where are you?” said that voice.
“Frank! They won’t let me come down,” said Mrs. Peters.
I tried smothering her mouth with my hand and she bit me. Not hard enough to break skin, but enough to hurt, and with a warning in her expression that said
I might not be so lucky if I dared to try it again.
“Get something to gag her,” I said, my hand flopping as I tried to shake away the pain.
Tony and I exchanged places. He ran off, just as Edna rose to her feet and stomped over to me. Her hands were fisted at her sides and, even in the dim light, it was easy to see her face was steeped with rage. She shook from head to toe and halted only when she stood beside me.
“Let her go, or so help me I’ll make you,” she said, hissing through clenched teeth.
“Edna, you don’t want to do this,” I said, in my most placating voice. “Mrs. Peters needs our help. She’s not in her right mind.”
“Last chance.” She raised her arms, spreading her fingers like claws.
“That’s not going to happen.”
Without another word, she threw herself on me and knocked me to the ground. I tried to push her off, though gently because I didn’t want to hurt her. Edna may have been a stranger only weeks ago, but we’d bonded since then, were almost family now. And the madness that took her—and Mrs. Peters too—wasn’t that different than what had previously taken me or Tony. So I jerked, I thrashed, but I couldn’t knock her off.
Mrs. Peters wasted no time jumping from the rocker and hobbling toward the door.
“Tony!” I yelled. “She’s getting away!”
“What the fuck!” he screamed back.
A door slammed aside. There was a scramble across the hallway floorboards, and then Tony appeared, towering over Mrs. Peters as she stepped beneath the door frame. His arms encircled her in an unrelenting bear hug.
There was another knock at the front door. “Martha, please come out. I miss you so much.”
The sadness in that voice could have melted hearts of stone. We all froze in place. Mrs. Peters wept softly against Tony’s chest, her body limp as a rag doll. His grip went slack and his expression fell into a gloomy confusion. Edna’s anger dissipated as she searched each of our faces for comfort that none of us were capable of giving. Even I felt tears trickle down my cheeks, before I even realized I was crying.
In that moment, I felt the loss of all my loved ones like a palpable weight upon my shoulders. Felt the strength that held me through so many days of torment shred into fragments. My mom and dad—who I’d known to be alive and well, at least until the power gave out two months back—had been visitors last month. My brother John, who’d died at twenty in a car crash, was a visitor two weeks ago—still as young and sound and alive as the day I last saw him standing in my doorway during his final Christmas visit. And, most of all, my wife Kathy. My first and only love. She was taken by a visitor while I slept in peace and ignorance during the first night this whole damn nightmare began.
I couldn’t speak for the others, but I thought I saw a glimmer in their eyes that spoke of the same kind of reminiscing. Just like that, the fight was gone from all of us.
“Release me,” said Mrs. Peters.
Tony let go, stepped away and slumped against the window seat cushion.
“I know what you’re doing is out of love,” said Mrs. Peters. “But you should know I’ve thought about this for a long time, well before Frank’s visitations. I don’t know if that’s really him standing on my doorstep, but if there’s a chance, a sliver of hope that it’s true, then I can’t let him walk away without me. I’ve done it six times already, seven if you count his death. But never again.”
She met our eyes one by one. I saw peace there and a hint of satisfaction, not the madness that usually took hold whenever a visitor came for us. When she turned and left the room, none of us moved to stop her. Instead, we listened, eyes averted, as her steps took her to the landing, down the stairs, and to the entryway.
There was a knock. “Martha?”
The door opened.
“Oh Frank.”
And then silence.
Edna and I ran up behind Tony, put a hand upon his shoulders. Together, we all stared out the window. Mr. and Mrs. Peters tramped the path to the sidewalk, and then down the road, until the sight of them was hidden in a wall of drifting snow.
• • •
The next morning, while in the backyard, Tony and I split firewood. After we took a batch inside and stacked it by the upstairs fireplace, we went out front and poked at the footprints on the pathway. For the remainder of the day we passed each other money as if to settle the bet—which neither of us had ever taken sides upon. We threw the word “zombie” around as a joke, talking about our favorite films and TV shows, and laughing about how wrong every one had gotten it.
It was better that way, at least for us. Not to sound cliché, but men hid grief in different ways and this was ours. Edna, on the other hand, couldn’t stop crying. She said she didn’t know why she’d tried to stop us, only that it seemed right at the time. She blamed herself for Mrs. Peters’s disappearance, and no amount of comforting from either Tony or me could change that.
We gave her space, left her in the master bedroom to sleep away her grief. From anywhere in the house, it was impossible to ignore her sobbing, as she called out for Mrs. Peters, for her mom and dad, for her brother Tom, but mostly for her son.
“John. John. Oh, my baby boy. Where are you, sweetheart? Why don’t you come for mommy like the others do?”
• • •
Night came again and we all headed for the spare bedroom upstairs. I lit the fire. Tony went for his book and Edna for her photo album. The minutes flew by far quicker than ever before. I suppose it was because there was an underlying current within us now, the knowledge that the parting of last night might soon be multiplied. The will of our group had broken, and nothing stood between us and the visitors.
With midnight fast approaching, I took up my spot by the window to act as lookout. Tony continued reading his book, but like every time before I never heard the pages turn. Edna eventually stopped flipping through her photo album and took to pacing around the room, sometimes looking over my shoulder out the window. She was far more anxious than she’d ever been, much too eager for what had always been a solemn hour.
At midnight the visitor came, pressing footprints into the snowy path alongside the ones left behind by the Peterses. I didn’t recognize this one’s face, though I had a firm suspicion of who it might be.
I turned to Edna. “It’s a little boy.”
Edna’s face lit up. Tony dropped his book and crossed his arms. I took in a stuttering breath and let it out in a loud sigh.
“You know what I’m going to do?” said Edna.
We nodded.
“I love you both so much. Thank you for everything.”
She went up to Tony and hugged him, whispering something in his ear before kissing his cheek. She came up to me next, hugged me and whispered, “If I can, I’ll try to let you know what happens when they take us. Okay?” She kissed my cheek too.
I nodded, sniffling, blinking hard to keep the tears from streaming out. I wanted to believe that everything was as it seemed, that the moment my friends walked out the door they were safe in the arms of their loved ones. I wanted to believe it, but I couldn’t. If there was one thing I’d learned from life it was that nothing was ever as good as it appeared to be.
There was a knock at the door.
“Mommy?”
Tony and I watched Edna leave. When the front door closed behind her, we stood without a word and went to our separate rooms.
• • •
Tony and I sat at the kitchen table and ate lunch in silence. There were no jokes shared between us, only the sound of chewing stale bread—one of the few things left to eat that didn’t have to be prepared. We didn’t have the energy to cook, or do much of anything, really.
Tony’s face was set in a grimace the whole morning, his eyebrows furrowed so hard they almost touched. He was obviously upset and sometimes made as if to speak, but then shook his head and fell back into the privacy of his thoughts. After the fifteenth failed attempt, I shouted, “Oh, what is it already?”
/> “Is it that obvious?”
“You think louder than you chew.”
He laughed, but the sound slipped fast, and his face restored its grimace. “What if Mrs. Peters and Edna are right? What if all this time all we’ve been doing is missing out on something special, and these visitors are just escorts to a better place?”
“To where? Huh? Answer me that. And why now and not a hundred, or even a thousand years ago? And if they’re just escorts, why does their arrival seem less like a blessing and more like a temptation?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”
“Not you too. Tony, you’re all I got left.”
“I know, Victor.” He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “But if you care for me even half as much as you did Mrs. Peters and Edna, you have to let me go. I’m tired. I miss Patrick. I don’t want to be without him anymore.”
I yanked my hand away. “Goddamn it Tony, those aren’t people out there, they’re bodies. You know when Patrick died. You saw his corpse lying his coffin. You were there when they lowered him into the ground and buried him under hundreds of pounds of dirt.”
“I know what I saw Victor!”
“Well, what if this better place you’re imagining is just a comforting fantasy? What if all of you are wrong?”
“Then we’re wrong,” he shrugged.
“Fine,” I said, standing so quickly my legs struck the chair, causing it to skid back. “But I won’t be there when it comes for you. I can’t sit back and watch you let yourself get killed.”
“You were there for the others. Why am I different?”
“Too much too soon.”
“But I need you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. You’ve made your decision, and I’ve made mine.”
• • •
I turned in around ten, leaving Tony downstairs alone. I took the master bedroom this time, since there was no one else to claim it. As I lay in the bed, I could smell Mrs. Peters’s scent stuck on all the blankets. And I thought I could smell Edna’s favorite shampoo upon every pillow. It wasn’t long before I started inhaling deep through my nose, and I laughed at the absurdity of it, how much I resembled some scorned lover pining for his sweetheart.
