The Guest

You leap from your seat and run on loose, shaky joints of a string-cut marionette, still screaming. You don't know where you're going, your eyes still glued to the thing, arms flailing wildly in front of you. You run a circle round the room, crashing into the wine stool and fracturing your shin but not noticing, running with your arms out in front and your head turned back till you reach the door that leads out of this place, your screams trailing behind like streamers.

Maybe, you fantasize, he might let me join him in his truck!

I cannot see what happens to you in reality, but in my mind's eye, the image is just as clear. It is what has happened to me a thousand times in those dreams that were more than just the product of an active mind in those long hours of night when sleep evaded me, and the only sound was the tripping of my own overdriven heartbeat.

The thing stays behind the chair as you dash out of the living room.

I see it in my visions, as I always have. In a way, you also knew.

With a blur of movement so fast you first think it's just the dancing shadows of the fireplace, something twitches in the corner of your eye. You drop the door handle as I open mine to the car, leaving it to dangle. The thing runs for you with that horrid limp, grinning wide, showing the endless black of its mouth, laughing, arms reaching out in front as if asking for a hug. An eternal embrace. It moves with an unnatural speed that would destroy your mind if it were not already crumbled.

A long, final scream tears through your lips as the hand-things hold you close to that shaking, grinning face. The fingers go round your neck. Your scream mutates into an insane laugh. A laugh that keeps on going.

I sit in the driver's seat and slam the door shut. A push of a button and the doors are locked. But I know that will do me no good if the time comes that it is needed. A feeling of relief washes over me as I reach for my keys, sensing a last hope that I may be able to get away from all this after all. Far, far away, I still hear you laughing like you were shot full of a dentist's neurotoxin. My hands rummage unconsciously through my pockets. And come out of my jacket.

Empty.

My heart does a double take at the realization. It burns. I can feel it pushing up into my throat.

Outside the window, in the mud and the rain, I see the shining bunch of metal lying at the foot of the porch's stairs not more than fifty feet away. Alone.

I can make it!

As I open the door, your laughing stops. Is stopped.

I freeze first but force my body out of the car. Each drop of rain is a bead of ice. The door dangles behind me like a broken limb. Glass shatters from somewhere in the house. A window. I know it in the same way I know I will not escape this night. But I keep on trying anyway. The will to survive is the only thing stronger than fear, but it does not always come out victorious.

My legs find a strength I did not know they had, and they run to the porch, carrying my body with it. My eyes search for the slightest hint of movement as my legs piston forward without my control. My back bends and my hand snatches the keys from the mud.

What if the car doesn't start?

I have no choice. I know I will never make it out there on foot. Not tonight, not any night. It has come for its master and creator.

I grip the keyring with a desperate strength and dash back to the car. I see no movement, but I can sense it. I can feel it moving. Feel it coming closer for me. Still, I run for the car door. Its panting breath might as well be roaring in my ear.

Almost there!

The thing is closer now, running madly through the mud and rain. Its shaggy fur matted to the skin like a carpet. There is red stickiness over most of its front. I reach my car and throw open the door, tumbling inside and pulling my legs in after. One hand slams the door, the other locks it.

And then there is silence. The running, the hot breath of panting, the heavy limping footsteps. All gone.

A deep sigh of relief escapes my throat and I close my eyes for a generous moment, savoring the victory.

The keyring is still in my hand. I can feel the comforting plastic head of the key that should drive into the ignition and speed me away from this nightmare. I hold it up as if to make sure that I have the right key. I do. But a sudden strangeness grips me at this new silence.

?

It stopped...because—

I ignore that frail voice of fading fear, that alien voice in my head. I lean forward to put the key into its slot and the scene leaps into my head:

Dashing out to get the key, leaving the (rain on the leather seats) door open. Getting the key. Running back through mud and rain with fear clinging to my back. Then, (oh God oh God) opening the door—

My heart stops but reality keeps on moving. That independent arm jerks and throws the keys on the floor near the brake pedal. I freeze, leaving the keys on the floor of my car, not bothering to pick them up. It would be no use. It stopped...because—

—because it is already here.

A large shape shifts forward in the shadows of the rear seat, and I scream one last time before the arms reach for me.

Four

Believe.

Or don't.

Ahead is fear, cold and raw. A fear that will remain to grip and devour even if the closet doors are flung open and exposed to the light. A fear that will consume you in your bed, even as the blanket falls over your body and covers it in its protective shield. A blanket is more than just a metaphor; it is a concrete representation of all that stands for safety and wished reality and the very sanity of your mind. With the blanket, you are safe as Little Red Riding Hood in her grandmother's bedroom.

Exactly.

Because you refuse to believe and face it.

Tonight, your other half sleeps beside you, but might as well be in another world. You are alone tonight. Awake, and alone.

The thing from the closet steps out and leans over your face.

Through clenched eyes, you can feel its shadow hanging over you. You refuse to open them, shivering under your false woolen security. As long as you do not see it, it cannot harm you.

But not tonight. Tonight is the night of reckoning when all that has been forced into the corner of disbelief will be revealed.

The blanket is torn from you with a ripping jerk. Beyond their own will, your eyelids fling open and are forced to stare into the shadow that stands hunched over you, tall thin and sharp.

Your spouse sleeps on unaware. The ticking of your bedside clock is deafening. Then it stops, as if time has paused on this fateful night and left you out, stranded in this moment of eternity where things live and rule. Your lover might as well be dead. It is a wonder they do not turn over and breathe icy graveyard breath into the back of your neck. The hairs on your body prick. The thing standing over your bed twitches, but it never takes its eyes off you.

In the foggy shadow of its shapeless head, a dark line spreads into a hollow grin.

What is it waiting f—?

Something moves under your bed.

Before your mind has time to comprehend the movement, to make reasoning or explanation for what that might or might not be, the thing leaning over your body falls onto you with reaching arms and a spreading face, the body behind you turns and hugs you with ropy gray arms and long nailed fingers. The wardrobe flings open, a flock of dark laughing coat-things race out, and cold hands reach out from under the bed to grab your ankles.

Five

So far, I have done my best. I have shown you the path, but you must talk the first step to walk it.

If you're ready, let's journey into the waiting land ahead. It's easy. I don't promise you will return the same, or return at all, but I guarantee a ride you won't forget.

All you have to do is take my hand, walk with me, and believe.

*

Jesse De Rozario

Singapore, November 2003

Copyright © 2003 De Rozario Jesse

All rights reserved.