Liam shambled to consciousness. His skin was as cold as windowpane. He hurried into the hall, and with no less briskness pushed through the opposite bedroom doorway, where no one was met.
Diffuse light shone along the walls, but not in the corners, which resembled floor-to-ceiling caverns. He approached the desk and yanked on its drawer—the lit flashlight rolled forward in the tray. No rent in reality occurred, but the quality of light was peculiar: The calendar illustration in the same tray had its color vividly restored.
The captive fled the room for the stairhead, and was not mistaken in thinking the color of the stair runner a deep viridian green. His flashlight blinked ahead of it, down the balusters and rail, and uncovered more disquieting evidence among brass sconces on the first floor: These bore a verdigris patina.
Scuttling down the stairs, he pushed his light into the parlor. His beam grazed the easel before streaking passages of oil paint still wet on the canvas. The strong chroma exhibited was absorbed in his cornea as from a glass dropper, and the resulting sensation underscored, what had been, his loss of the vital pigment, which had deteriorated too incrementally over the years to merit alarm. The artist reacted to the slashing strokes of phthalocyanine green, which sparred with the aplomb of a younger artist. He could not place the verdant colors inconvertibly in the setting, or doubt that a somnambulist finished the painting.
The ping of a small bell alerted him to the exposed fireplace. Paw prints stirred the cinders and sawdust around the hearth where the terrier had quit its track! Small hard nails—on four scampering feet—drew his attention to the stairs, but his flashlight could not catch the black dog.
A flicker was spotted in the tail of his eye rounding the stairhead. The armoire made a blackish shape against the bay window, and this reflection of a flashlight, snagged in the swinging mirror-panel door, was believed to be his. Instantly this second beam projected backwards through the glass and into his original bedroom.
Liam felt himself entrained in its path, and stepped toward the half-opened door. Past it, someone lay facing away on the bed. This person showed no reaction to the painter’s squeaking presence in the doorway. Splinters of light seeped from the desk alongside this bed. Its drawer concealed the second flashlight.
A dreadfulness lingered over the bedstead, having moreover migrated to the person on it. The sleeper’s arms were interlocked and pulled close to his chest. There he held a shadow darker than any other in the room: a shadow that yielded to no light.
Surely this person pretended to be asleep. His act was brazen, and the framer of this evaluation did not understand the strategy in pursuing it. The painter had not doubted deception, but did not permit time in his fumbling about for it to hardened into a full-throated accusation. He was nonetheless powerless to approach the bed.
The floor was searched for the dog, but both flashlights blinked out simultaneously. Liam dropped his torch, feeling it become something reptilian under his touch. Panicking, he paddled backwards into the hall and quietly shut the bedroom door—this action was immediately regretted.
Without delay, scratching leapt to the opposing door face.
Was this the dog?
A swallow in the listener’s throat found no bottom, and had the door reopened at that moment, his petrified state rendered him helpless from whatever or whoever should step through it. The nature of this creeping torment was unchanged from its first occurrence that prior afternoon, as the scratcher was content, for a while longer, to scratch.
Liam bounded toward the stairs. He heard the switch of the overhead motion light, but this was not the light he met: Daybreak poured through the open front door.
The fleer stepped under the portico and realized, against every possibility, that this was the door forced by Howard. Was the person sleeping upstairs his friend? This idea did not connect in the moment. Liam shut the door—
Scratching followed him to this door, also.
To dash across the yard to the road would be expedience itself, but snapping twigs underfoot might sound like alerting thunderclaps. His bicycle was not seen in the high grass, and a search for it was not attempted.
The concealment of the northern woods came into sight. The turret was visible some minutes into his escape, but gradually the gables and stovepipes in its company disintegrated beneath a grey screen of branches.
The fog rebounded. Sunrise was in reach of the hour, but heavy cloud cover drained the paper birch of any tonality. His intention was to rejoin the field further west, but recrossing this lateral ground gave him no prospect of meadowland. Due to poor visibility, the trekker was unconvinced that he moved in anything like a straight line.
He imagined un-enlisted company in his escape, not unlike the companion who mirrored his travel days before. Scratching in the leaves may have been its calling card—or was it shedding a husk of skin?
A small dark figure was seen hopping through desiccated grass ahead. The dog traveled diagonally away from him, moving deeper into the prospect of northern woods. Liam kept his distance, watching as trees intersected the animal, but the terrier’s size did not change relative to the shrinking tree line as both figure and ground closed on the horizon. If he had supposed the dog’s trek to be of typical difficulty in the undergrowth, this was less clear as its size seemingly increased. A crackle of deadwood echoed widely over the open field, despite the muffling effect of fog, and suggested the campaign of not a dog but a large determined bear. And yet, this imprecise shape better compared to a child’s frenetic scribble, which both defanged his fear and required a whole new order in his mind for it.
Liam assumed this creature moved north, so wisely corrected his path westwardly. Still, trees along this northern prospect continued to intrude: A light—and not a beam—flickered.. This flame blazed as a torch.
No sooner had this idea formed than a whitish body was discerned in the vaporous air. Her neck again bore comparison to a taper of wax, and the struggling flame atop it rose in place of her head. In bare-hosed feet, the unseeing woman stumbled through the brush. Was she searching for her dog? Her light did not avail her were this the case, but was the illumination to aid another in this search?
It might have been better to leave this anguished ghost among her thicket of trees, but the moment he set his path on hers, the mist swallowed her whole.
Down to his last scintilla of resolve, a clearcut broke through the enveloping veil and supplied transmission towers as a compass needle. Since these lines travelled diagonally from northeast to southwest from the Otis Plant to the dam, they should intersect the road leading to his aunt’s house further south.
Liam stepped into the traffic of towers and squinted northward. No more than three towers were counted before fog claimed the remainder. Should his terrifying companion stumble into this clearing and turn onto his path, they were too far back to see him.
The sun never materialized in the east. The trekker had stumbled around more hours than he had supposed to lose an entire day. Coming finally to his juncture, he was only assured of it when he walked a quarter mile on the accompanying rural road to locate familiar landmarks. He almost impaled himself on the iron gate of the cemetery before his location was determined: The marble angel, as if rising from a Cytherean cloud over the hill, pointed the way back over much of the subsequent ground gained.
The homestead give no indication of its existence until he came within a few yards of it. His shoe bumped the first step of its porch—the front door stood open past this step.
Had mewling wind seized the occasion to disturb it?
Liam would not close the door behind him for fear of his scratching pursuer. Moreover, every interior door in the house was flung open in his tour of the property, including the back door. A draft cut a course through the house, and any door yielding to it, that showed a propensity to shut, was prevented doing so by the nearest available object serving as a stop. He did spare the medicine cabinet door, or those attached to cupboards in the kitchen.
The basement door was the last door to be confronted. From the top step, methodical scratching was heard in the darkness below. The black terrier was pictured rearing up on his aunt’s electric dryer. A light switch dispatched this nightmare—
There was no dog.
The purring dryer tumbled in counterpoise. The scratching at its metal door was due to buttons on a garment rotating inside the drum.
The resident descended the wheezing stairs and, against his fear, opened the appliance door. No warmth issued from its empty interior. Only the earthy chill of a disinterred grave greeted him.
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