He woke up in the chair again, silently damning himself for letting his mind slip, however briefly, into darkness. But being asleep, well, not truly asleep, but on the cusp of it, was just so sweet, so consuming. It was hard to resist, and even harder to come back from.
Only once the man lowered his arms did he realise just how
tightly he’d been gripping the shotgun. His hands were warm, or the metal was.
He stopped to flex them, stretching his fingers like roots creeping beneath the
soil, then replaced his grip. The gentle click of skin against wood and metal was
uncomfortably close to the sound of a dry mouth upon waking. He took his left
hand from the gun and reached towards a small, round coffee table he’d dragged out
from the living room. Sadly, the flask was just as warm as the Remington, but
its contents, tap water with a splash of whiskey, still hit the spot.
This was one of many long nights; dining room chair pulled
up to the front door, the nose of the shotgun propped against the keyhole,
trigger finger cocked in waiting. The only sounds he heard that night were the bones
of the house creaking, and the dull thud of his own heartbeat. Now might have
been a good time to venture upstairs and stretch out those weary limbs. He could
have washed his face at the sink, careful not to peek at his ageing reflection in
the shards of mirror above the basin, and then he might have wandered into the
spare room at the end of the hall, though it did more harm than good to see the
crib still standing, its lone occupant a dead eyed panda bear swaddled in a
single yellow blanket.
But he didn’t move from his seat, he couldn’t. Because
that’s when it would strike. He had no proof of this of course, except for the
way it had happened the first time. And hadn’t it been successful? Hadn’t it
claimed the very thing it wanted just by waiting for the head of the household
to fall asleep? The man scoffed, feeling the shotgun follow the sharp rise and
fall of his chest. There was no chance in Hell or indeed on Earth that he would
allow it to happen again. No, whenever this thing chose to return, the man
would be ready for it, and this time he would not let it get away so easily.
As the sky’s sullen expression turned to one of bashful reverie,
the man finally rose up from his chair, leather boots squeaking beneath his
weight. The crooks of his elbows burned from their ninety-degree pose, and the
gun felt heavier now. He carried it like an infant, weighed down by their own
drowsiness, until he reached the family mantel. There, above the wood framed
faces, his grandmother’s carriage clock with the hands that refused to tick, and
a couple of unlit candles, he hung the Remington. It looked as though it
belonged there among the debris of his old life, and so he felt no reluctance as
he turned his back on it, before retreating, at long last, to bed.
The duvet hadn’t been washed for some time and smelled
strongly of sweat, but by this point, with dawn encroaching, the man revelled
in the small amount of comfort it provided. He’d finished off the flask as he
mounted the stairs, and it burned within him now like the stench of gasoline;
unpleasant to some, sweet as perfume to others. Within moments, the sleep he’d
been evading finally took hold. He watched the backlit curtains flicker and
fade, until they were only an imprint behind his eyes. As he felt himself sink,
his left hand splayed out against the mattress, grasping at the under sheet where
another body used to lie.
Downstairs, on the other side of that previously manned
door, something entered its finger into the lock, and turned. There was just
enough room in front of that old dining chair to slide open the door. The
intruder took a few seconds to adjust to the sight of the place, then closed
the door with little more than a muffled click. It walked at a steady pace into
the living room, scanning the items on the mantel. In the window of the
carriage clock, the thing stooped to counter its own reflection. The face, like
the man’s, was bearded, with pale blue eyes and a slightly crooked nose. When
the thing looked at the photographs, it saw itself in three of them. The fourth
was the lone image of a child, no more than five years old. A long, arthritic
finger traced the face of the child in the photograph, before covering her eyes
with the pad of its thumb.
Then it turned its attention to the shotgun on the wall.
