by Brian Harmon
Daniel pulled the trigger and watched as the man in the fire staggered backward…and out of the fire.
He watched, his smoky eyes filled with delight, as his life-long foe fell into the unburned grass, writhing and squirming before him. Thick smoke rose from the creature’s mouth as he screamed and kicked upon the ground just inches beyond the ash that had been his anchor to the earth.
“How does it feel?” Daniel asked as black and rancid blood boiled from the holes his shotgun had made in his victim. “How does it feel to have someone take everything from you? Does it hurt?” His grin widened and a grim chuckle rose from his raspy throat. At his feet, flames rose up from the already scorched ground and danced happily about his ankles as he laughed down at the killer of his family. For the first time in many years, he felt joy rising within his heart. “It feels pretty damn good up here!”
Gradually, the monster’s heaving and wriggling died down to a bare twitch. Then he was still. An icy mist rose from his body as the blood froze upon his blistered skin. Finally, with a sickening crackle, the carcass frosted over, and the breeze began to carry it away, one bloody snowflake at a time.
The man in the fire was no more.
For several seconds, he stared down at the gun in his hands, then sighed and tossed it into the burning brush. He who had destroyed his life was dead, but he could not start over. He had nothing left. He considered returning to the cabin, but there was nothing left there either.
All around him, flames caressed him, rising up out of the burned ground like living creatures to touch him, then slinking away. The hatred they had showered him with before was now replaced with adoration, and its touches were now intimate and soft. All of the pain was gone.
He turned and walked away. It was all over. Each time he lifted his feet, yellow flames would dance momentarily in a hellish footprint before dying again into darkness.
He turned and walked toward the warm and inviting glow of the fire. It was still waiting for him. It could not leave him, and he could not leave it. They belonged together, just as they always had. He no longer had a life. He no longer had a soul. He was nothing more than another man in the fire.
From Such Small Things
“Did you drop something?”
Allan glanced up at his wife as he placed the bowl of potatoes on the dining room table. “What?”
“A little while ago,” Selena clarified as she seated herself at the table. “Did you drop something in the kitchen?”
Allan tried to remember. “I don’t think so. No. Wait. I did drop some mixing bowls a while ago,” he realized. He turned and walked back into the kitchen for some serving spoons.
Selena considered this. “No. I don’t think that was it.”
“Oh.” Allan returned with the spoons, laid them on the table and sat down in his chair.
She shook her head decisively. “No. I remember hearing that now. That was different.”
“Huh. I don’t remember dropping anything else.” He helped himself to some potatoes while Selena cut into the meatloaf. “Did it come from the kitchen?”
She shook her head again. “No, actually. It sounded like it came from over there.” She gestured toward the spare bedroom, which adjoined the living room where she’d been watching television while he prepared dinner. “I just thought maybe it was you. I have no idea where else it would’ve come from.”
“What did it sound like?”
“Just a loud bang. It startled me.”
“Maybe it was Kikki.” Kikki was their four-year-old gray tabby.
Selena took a swallow of her tea and shook her head. “She was by my feet.”
“Huh.” Allan finished filling his plate and reached for his fork. “I didn’t hear anything from the kitchen.”
“Really good food, Baby.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”
“I always do.”
“Maybe it was something outside,” Allan suggested, returning to the subject of the mystery noise. “I’ll have a look around after dinner.”
But he found nothing out of the ordinary when he ventured outside later. Nor did he find anything out of place in the spare bedroom or its closet. With no other idea as to where the mystery noise may have originated, he dismissed it completely and joined Selena and Kikki on the couch. It was, after all, such a small thing.
The following day, however, as he was retrieving his shoes from beside the door in the living room, Allan heard the distinctive sound of footsteps from the upstairs bedroom above him.
Selena was in the bathroom at the far end of the first floor, nowhere near the master bedroom, and there was no one else in the house. It was only the two of them. But this was unmistakably the sound of footsteps overhead. He could hear the floor creaking beneath the feet of something with significant weight. It sounded as if someone moved from the window to the middle of the floor, and then abruptly toward the corner of the room.
He placed his shoes back onto the floor and hurried upstairs. There, in his and Selena’s bedroom, everything was just as they’d left it. No one was there, which of course was no surprise, since there was no one else in the house. But something must have been up here. What else could’ve made such a noise?
He couldn’t help but think about those paranormal investigation shows he loved to watch. Ghostly footsteps were among the most common forms of supernatural activity, and the idea of being in the presence of a ghost was exciting. He’d love to have his own ghost stories to tell. He’d never experienced anything that couldn’t be easily explained away if he tried.
But he knew there were no ghosts in the house. He and Selena had lived here for almost six years now. Never before was there ever anything out of the ordinary within these walls. Why would it suddenly be haunted now? That made no sense.
Still, the creaking noise certainly sounded to him like footsteps, and he’d never heard anything like it before, except of course for real footsteps.
He returned downstairs and again picked up his shoes.
An odd noise caught his attention and he turned. Kikki had been lying on the ottoman, bathing herself, when he entered the room. Now, suddenly, her head was up, her ears perked intently. One white-tipped paw was still raised. She was staring at the spare bedroom door with intense eyes. She made the odd noise again. It was a cross between a cry and a growl, somewhat similar to the noises she made when she spotted birds through the window, but lower, more guttural.
Allan stood up and walked over to the open bedroom door. There didn’t appear to be anything unusual. Did she perhaps see a mouse scurry past? Something like that should have sent her stalking after it, though. She’d proven her hunting prowess before, much to Selena’s horror.
He stepped into the bedroom and looked around. His eyes fell on the closet door, which for some reason stood wide open.
He walked over and peered inside. Their winter coats and formal attire were hung in here. There were also several boxes of junk they’d never gotten around to unpacking. Atop the shelf was their collection of jigsaw puzzles and board games. It was exactly as it was the night before when he was looking for the source of Selena’s mysterious noise.
Yes. He’d almost forgotten about the mystery bang. Selena claimed to have heard it from this part of the house, although at the time she assumed that she’d mistaken the direction of the origin, since no one was in here and he was conveniently dropping things in the kitchen. This was also the direction the disembodied footsteps had been heading when they fell silent, he now realized.
And yet he couldn’t quite make himself believe that anything unearthly was going on in these walls.
He must’ve simply left the closet door open last night.
He heard Selena take her jacket from the hook in the living room. She was ready to go. He closed the closet door firmly, double-checking that it was latched, and then turned to join her.
“There you are,” she said as Allan walked through the door and reached for his own coat.<
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“Here I am,” he agreed. He sat down with his coat in his lap and hurriedly slipped into his shoes. As he tied his laces, he looked over at the cat, who was again bathing herself as if she’d never been distracted. Sometimes he wondered if a cat’s favorite game was “Made You Look.”
“Let’s get those groceries and get back before the snow comes,” Selena said.
Allan grabbed his keys. He’d almost forgotten about the snow storm. “Definitely.” He locked the front door behind him and dismissed everything. He didn’t think about it again until later that night, as they were sitting in the living room.
“That’s weird.”
Allan glanced up from his book, curious. “What?”
Selena was sitting in the armchair, looking at the display on the cordless telephone handset. A moment ago she’d been talking to her mother. “It cut me off.”
“Weird.”
“It says there’s no line.”
Allan put down his book and leaned over to look at the phone’s base, which sat on the end table beside him. Both the power cord and the telephone line were as they should be. And the answering machine was still on. “I don’t get it.”
“It better not be broken.” Selena was pressing every button on the handset, trying to get some kind of response. “It’s still new.” They had replaced the old phone only a few weeks prior when its battery quit holding a charge.
“Strange,” was all Allan could think to say about it. He had no idea how to go about fixing it. “Maybe it’s the snow.”
“Maybe.” Selena listened into the phone again. “There it is.”
“You got it working?”
“I guess so.” She redialed her mother’s number and returned it to her ear. “Hi. Sorry. I don’t know what happened. The phone just quit working for a minute.”
Allan sat looking at the telephone base beside him. The large red zero that told them there were no messages stared back at him like an emotionless eye. He found himself remembering the strange footsteps he heard that morning, and the mysterious noise Selena heard the night before. They were all trivial things, but it was strange how they were all happening so close together.
He said nothing to Selena. If he did she would only scold him for trying to scare her. She’d always been easily frightened. (It was one of her most charming qualities, he thought.) And she was an adamant skeptic. She would tell him he was imagining things and point out all the rational explanations he’d already thought of. Besides, as a fan of ghost stories, he was having a little bit of fun with the idea of a sudden and unexpected invasion of spirits. It was harmless fantasy. He wasn’t sure he really believed in these things anyway.
And the next couple of days would prove perfectly normal. He almost forgot all about it. But two nights later, as he lay in bed reading his book, he heard a strange knocking sound from the wall behind his bed. It was almost like knuckles rapping against the drywall, making a “nok-nok” kind of noise over and over again. “Nok-nok…nok-nok…nok-nok…nok-nok…”
At first, he thought it must be Selena, but she was already asleep.
The noise stopped as quickly as it started and the room remained silent the rest of the night. The following morning, however, as he walked down the stairs, he found Kikki crouched in the living room, again staring intently into the spare bedroom. She wasn’t making that strange noise this time, but he could tell, even from the landing, that her hackles were raised. As he approached, she bolted out of the living room, past his feet and up the stairs. Again there was nothing in the spare bedroom. But again, the closet door stood wide open.
Over the next few weeks, the cat continued this strange behavior, but the occurrences were not limited to the spare bedroom. On different days he found her at odds with something unseen in the bathroom, kitchen and upstairs bedroom. Also, he heard the footsteps on several more occasions, not only from the upstairs bedroom, but from almost every room in the house.
The telephone continued to lose its signal for no apparent reason, but he found it difficult to convince himself that this wasn’t some kind of problem with the line or perhaps a defect with the new phone. Likely, this was just a timely coincidence. But then again, what did he know about it?
The strange “nok-nok” noise recurred as well on several occasions, always from the bedroom wall behind the headboard. Even Selena heard it one night, but she dismissed it fairly quickly. Allan guessed that it probably gave her the creeps and she simply refused to acknowledge it further. He chose to let her ignore it. Even if she allowed herself to notice all the strange things that were suddenly happening around the house, she wasn’t likely to talk about it. She wouldn’t want to believe even for a second that there was anything in the house that she couldn’t see or understand.
But with each odd occurrence, he only became more immersed in the idea of something supernatural going on. He even found himself plagued by foul phantom odors, odd whispering noises and strange shadows that apparently were only visible from the corners of his eyes. But he wasn’t certain that any of these were actually real, as his imagination seemed to be gaining momentum with each perceived phenomenon.
He didn’t realize it yet, but as January came to a close, he was rapidly approaching a point when the perception of something supernatural would turn to an undeniable fact and the fun and intrigue would be replaced by something far more frightening.
It was a cold Saturday morning when Selena kissed him goodbye and left him alone in the house. One of her friends was being thrown a bridal shower, and she’d arranged to stay the night, since the party was a two-hour drive from their home and she didn’t want to be on the road after dark.
“I’ll be back sometime tomorrow afternoon,” she promised.
“Just drive safe.”
“I will.”
Allan watched her from the front door as she backed out of the driveway. Once she was out of sight, he turned and looked around at the silent house. It felt emptier somehow than when she was only at work. And it felt emptier still without the cat. He hadn’t so much as caught a glimpse of her in several days.
Selena hadn’t seemed concerned about Kikki, but she’d been very excited about seeing her friends this weekend, so she probably hadn’t noticed. After all, the cat spent most of her time curled up in hiding places, napping. But it wasn’t like her to be gone for so long.
He started to walk toward the kitchen, intending to pour himself a glass of milk, but he paused as he heard a floorboard creak overhead. He listened, but the sound didn’t repeat itself, so he moved forward again. After a couple of steps, he heard the noise again. When he stopped, so did the creaking. Again he moved forward. Upstairs, something moved after him.
This was new. The mysterious footsteps he’d been hearing off and on these past few weeks seemed aimless, like something simply passing through. “Residual” was what the paranormal investigators called it. They described it as a sound or image imprinted on a physical space and playing over and over again in an endless loop.
He moved toward the stairs, intending to check the bedroom and satisfy his curiosity, but stopped when he realized that the footsteps were also moving toward the stairs. He stood near the bottom step, looking up toward the shadowy landing above him. The footsteps had stopped as well, and it seemed to him that there was something standing there, waiting just out of sight.
Allan felt an involuntary shudder creep through him. As stupid as it made him feel, he simply did not want to go up there. He turned instead and walked toward the kitchen again. There was nothing up there anyway, he told himself. He hadn’t found anything in all the times he’d investigated the footsteps. But as he entered the kitchen, he heard them creaking overhead, still stalking him through the house.
He went about his business, listening as he poured himself a glass of milk and then returned the jug to the refrigerator. Every time he crossed the room, the phantom feet followed.
He knew there was nobody up there. There couldn’t be. It was si
mply not possible. There was no one else in the house. But he could not find a way to convince his rational mind that this sound was anything other than heavy feet falling against the upstairs floor. And now that he could hear it just overhead, following him through the house step for step, he was finally beginning to feel a little unnerved.
But the footsteps fell silent as he was finishing his milk, and nothing more pursued him as he went about his chores. In fact, the house remained perfectly unremarkable for the rest of the day. But Allan couldn’t stop thinking about those strange, creaking footsteps. For just a moment, it had seemed that the unusual goings-on that he’d become so interested in these past few weeks was suddenly taking an interest in him as well. For the first time, this didn’t seem quite so fun anymore.
Although nothing more happened that day, there was something about this experience that remained with him. And it was still nagging at his mind when he turned off the lamp and let his head sink into his pillow that night.
It was always a little harder to fall asleep when Selena wasn’t beside him. He supposed it was because he was simply used to the sound of her breathing, the warmth of her body. But it was also simply that he missed her. This night, however, he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the strange activity in the house. He tossed and turned, trying to find a spot comfortable enough to calm his troubled thoughts.
The house was not haunted. He never believed that it was. He imagined that it was. He fantasized that it was. He’d enjoyed an extended game of make-believe with all the delightful little oddities his imagination had perceived. But he knew at his core that there was a perfectly logical explanation for everything. He just wasn’t looking for one. It was too much fun to imagine that a ghost had suddenly moved in with them.
Perhaps a family of squirrels was responsible for everything. Maybe they found a way into the attic spaces. That could explain the creaking and the tapping on the wall, and even why the cat had been acting so weird.
