A Thief In The Night

A Thief in the Night

Copyright: Demented Thinking Productions 1998

As Anne Stevenson descended the steep stairs of her two story Tudor home  with dismay she nervously surveyed her surroundings. It wasn’t the  first night since her beloved husband died that she woke up in a cold  sweat with the inevitable feeling someone or something was watching her  from the blackness of the shadows. Everything was as she left it when  she retired to bed. All the antique furniture she’d spent years  collecting were complete and in their respective places and every  little nick knack she’d picked up here and there were left undisturbed  on the tops of the relics decorating her home. Still, she could not  shake the terrible feeling of eerie eyes scanning her every single move.

Feeling  did not begin to explain what the neat, structured woman in her mid  40’s experienced. Utter fear was more like it. Anne carefully mounted  the last step and peeked around the corner expecting…what? Little green  men in space suits reciting “Take me to your leader.” No, she didn’t  expect that at all, the terror gripped her insides far worse than  little green men would. Anne had to face it; she more or less expected  a demon from hell to poke its head out of some piece of forgotten  furniture. She forced a smile on her face in spite of herself to keep  the unease at a manageable level, but the fear of what might of coiled  itself around the darkest of corners of her heart forced her to shutter  uncontrollably.

Anne  quietly tiptoed across the huge, unyielding living room until she  cautiously settled into the light and airy kitchen doorway. Although  the kitchen did not look a bit light and airy on this dreary morning,  she stood motionless, allowing the moonlight to play upon the already  graying swigs of hair she desperately tried to stamp out with  everything from special shampoos to professional dyes.

The empty house lay still and apparently sleeping. Anne listened intently for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing.

Deciding  possibly her mid-life crisis was getting the best of her, Anne  sauntered the rest of the way into the darkened kitchen and flipped the  light switch on quickly ready for anything or anyone that might jump  out of the depths at her. Anne carefully stepped over to the kitchen  stainless steel sink, turned on the faucet clearly marked “C” in blue  shading and grabbed the glass Mr. Coffee pot out of the dish drainer.  “Might as well have some coffee,” she said aloud to no one in  particular trying her best to shake the eyes she felt boring into the  back of her skull. Checking the quartz clock mounted promptly over the  small kitchen dinette suit, she filled the coffee grounds into their  rightful place, poured water into the top of the coffee maker as if it  were some miniature steam engine and clicked the brilliant red switch  to the “on” position. The cat shaped clock cheerfully read 2:15 a.m. as  its tail swept back and forth like it was going to pounce on a unaware  mouse, ticking away the seconds of the wee hours in the morning. Anne  shivered frantically at the very thought of the cat clock leaping to  life off the wall and attacking a defenseless mouse in her shiny  kitchen.

Dismissing  her misgivings about the clock for now, Anne closed her tired eyes and  pictured a serene scene. A picturesque meadow came into focus just  beneath her swollen lids and she began to relax a little. Butterflies  gracefully skittered just above the daises and somewhere in the  distance she could hear a babbling brook just like the small creek she  played in as a young girl…

A  loud rap at the back kitchen door startled Anne back into an uncanny  reality and she lit out a little yelp in spite of herself. As her pulse  and surprise died down, she recognized her next-door neighbor, Hank  Stuart grinning like the inappropriate Cheshire cat. Anne opened the  heavy, wooden kitchen door, still disoriented from her shock out of a  perfect fantasy world, and muttered an unpleasant, “Hello, Hank.”  Hank  Stuart, a short, pudgy, balding man in his late forties, winked at Anne  and declared in a loud, boisterous voice as if she were deaf, “Is  everything okay over here, honey?” Anne shuddered. She hated the way  Hank Stuart winker at her, she hated being called honey, and most of  all she hated the way he undressed her with his eyes every time their  paths crossed.

Anne gestured half-heartily to a neat, cozy wicker back chair, “Coffee?”

“Please.”  Hank returned with that evil smile. Adjusting his position in the chair  to clearly get a better look at Anne, Hank added, “Why are you up at  this time in the morning? Mr. Sleepy man retreat from your pretty  little head?” Anne gazed at him trying desperately to show no emotion  even though that comment made her skin crawl with displeasure, “Hardly,  “ she countered not displaying her contempt for Hank if at all  possible. I f Hank noticed it did not register on his face. His eyes  still danced with that giddy schoolboy expression stricken there every  since Anne could remember. When her late husband, Herb, was alive, Hank  Stuart still always had a thing for Anne, and she hated him with every  fiber of her being. It wasn’t right. It felt completely unnatural  someway, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. His attitudes and  mannerisms always displayed way more affection than they should have  and made Anne feel at unease.

A  rattled chill ran the entire length of Anne’s spine and she shivered as  if the act of doing so would shake the relentless uneasy sensation  boring into her back scanning every nook, crack, and cranny.

“One  lump, or two?” Anne smiled wanly as she pictured herself picking up a  cartoon sledgehammer and knocking Hank over the head bluntly with it  like Buggs Bunny might do to Elmer Fudd. “A Bleeeee,…A Bleeee,…A  Bleeee,…ah,…That’s all folks!” Anne muttered under her breath.

“Pardon me?” Hank asked with a slightly confused look on his face.

“Nothing.” Anne assured him as she plopped the hot, swirling coffee in front of him.

Shrugging,  Hank posed his original question again as if the second time around  after Anne’s extreme deafness he believed she suffered from would get  the response he knew to be right. “Why are you up at,” he glanced at  the wall clock nervously ticking away, “…2:35 a.m.? You, uh, got the  willy’s or something?” Hank reached across the small butcher-block  table and nudged Anne’s shoulder gently. Stifling the immediate impulse  to shrink away from his touch, Anne offered quickly, “Yeah, something  like that.”

Hank’s  smile broadened to expose the gold-capped molars as if to say, “There,  I knew I was right, I always am.” Anne disliked Hank Stuart with a  passion, and she loathed his undulating advances.

For  a long time the two sat in silence in Anne’s cozy kitchen, Anne trying  to shake the gloom and despaired sleep from her troubled mind and Hank,  no doubt, envisioning what he’d like to do to her if she ever halfway  consented to his ludicrous proposals. The feline clock chimed a meow  three times and startled the dank silence hanging in midair.

As  if the clock’s odd chime had stirred an interest deep within Anne’s  subconscious she blurt out, “Hank? Do you believe in ghosts?” The words  hung there in the air and she could do nothing to take them back even  though she wished she could. For the first time since Hank stepped into  Anne Stevenson’s warm kitchen his smile faltered and faded all together  from his hard, weathered face. “Do you?” He countered seriously. Anne  contemplated the question for several moments before answering  reluctantly, “Yes and no.” Anne felt her face flush as she thought  about how silly she must sound. “That was indecisive.” Hank deduced.  “What I mean is…well, I guess it’s just plain silly, but sometimes I  just feel like Herb is by my side in the kitchen or in the bedroom just  like he always was when he was alive.” Hank appeared to turn this  information over in his sordid mind a few times before finally  answering, “It’s not silly, so just get that thought out of your pretty  little head. Sometimes when we lose someone close we notice things we  wouldn’t of usually realized. Its just part of the healing process.”

With  that settled Hank downed the last bit of coffee and handed the cup back  to Anne gingerly, “Another round, please ma’am.” She stared at the cup  like it was a foreign object for a moment and refilled it with ease and  grace. Steam swilled from the cup in a mini fog-like display and Anne  slid the sugar, spoon and cream unconsciously across the table. Hank  accepted her offer and began dipping the spoon into the sugar absently.

Dumbfounded,  she stared at the swirls of steam coming out of the coffee cup as if in  a trance while Hank stirred. She couldn’t believe she’d even asked his  opinion on something so personal and trivial. She would have kicked  herself under the table, but Hank surely would think the bats in her  belfry were loose again. Instead, she made a mental note not to engage  in any more ghost stories or anything else for that matter with Hank  Stuart.

As  if that was the end of the subject, Anne stood up a little too abruptly  and checked the clock once more. It twitched 3:15 a.m. Sensing the time  had come for him to leave, Hank swallowed the last bits of coffee, put  on his best Sunday school smile, and cooed, “Sweet dreams, Anne.” Anne  nodded groggily and opened the kitchen door. Hank stepped outside into  the frigid Michigan morning, turned and winked at her one more time for  good measure, and marched across the snow moistened lawn to his own  darkened home while Anne sleepily watched. Pitching a thick hand up in  the cold morning air simulating a wave, Hank Stuart disappeared out of  the black night into his own warm home.

Anne  closed the door carefully, latched it and flipped the deadbolt into its  place. Walking back to the dinette table Anne murmured to herself, “Why  do I feel like I’ve just been raped?” She shivered to her very core. No  matter what she did she couldn’t shake the sensation of his eyes boring  into her and caressing her inside her head. Shaking her head to clear  her thoughts as much as she possibly could under the circumstances,  Anne plopped back into her original chair with a thud and dropped her  head into her trembling hands rubbing her temples.

Snow  began to silently fall outside and Anne was more than tired. She was  exhausted. Yawning again, she stood up and stole a look at the menacing  cat clock on the wall ticking away, taunting her with every flick of  its tail. “I’ve got to replace that damn clock,” she said aloud and her  own voice reverberated in her sensitive ears enveloping the desperate  silence of the enormous house. As if to answer, the clock chimed once  and Anne clicked the kitchen light off. The clock seemed to glow in the  shrouded darkness as the eyes turned an ominous, piercing green. Anne  rubbed her weary eyes disbelievingly and it was gone.

Shaking  her head, Anne made her way back to the stairs in the darkness more by  familiarity than by sight and slowly began the long climb to her empty  bedroom. She lay awake staring at the blown ceiling watching shadows of  trees dancing across it like poised fingers gripping for the edges of  her sanity she hoped she still possessed. The limbs pitched back and  forth in the upcoming storm outside as the shadows frantically  performed their ominous ballet.

Anne  shot a glance at the bright red digital clock positioned delicately on  her nightstand and gasped. “I must have dozed off,” she mumbled  incoherently. Summoning an answer the digital promptly faded from 4:51  to 4:52 a.m., and she realized with terrifying certainty she hadn’t  fallen asleep at all, but merely into a trance-like state for over an  hour. Dismissing this thought as quickly as it came Anne slung the  colorful comforter off her sweat-drenched body unto the floor.

For  a brief moment she laid in her bed, the same bed she shared with her  late husband for 25 years, in total disbelief. Paralyzed with fear, she  slowly began to reconstruct in her fogged mind what might have happened  to cause her to be totally naked. Coming up with no believable  solutions she began to test every muscle in her body slowly. Puzzled,  Anne couldn’t even begin to fathom why, let alone how, she had gotten  undressed. Kicking her feet over the edge of the bed she quickly went  over earlier events in her mind. She absently slipped her terry cloth  robe on and zipped it up to the top of her neck pinching her in the  process to counteract the Goosebumps springing up everywhere claiming  their own spontaneous territories.

Thinking  hard, she remembered coming upstairs after coffee with Hank, she  remembered getting into bed with clothes on, and she remembered lying  awake for some time, but past that she didn’t have a clue about her  present humbled condition. In fact, she distinctly remembered wearing a  nightgown because she’d fished out her favorite flannel when she got  dressed for bed that evening.

Confusion  threatened to overwhelm her into a fit of unanswered questions and an  uncontrollable bout of tears. Anne sank slowly back unto the bedside  holding her head in her hands fighting the urge to cry and get it over  with. The morning stilled and the silence filtered through the entire  house like fog rolling in over a vast amount of water. Snow fell  outside by the truckloads and unable to fight any longer Anne plummeted  her unraveling face into the soft goose down pillow sobbing loudly and  uncontrollably.

Sure  she’d gained enough control of herself and equally sure she wouldn’t  start again, Anne rose slowly and walked into the master bathroom with  a grace and strength she didn’t quite possess. Splashing cold water  from the bathroom tap on her pale, ashen face she tried her best to  collect her thoughts and shake the sensation of absolute terror  creeping up into her spine and in her crumbling mind. “I can’t believe  this is happening,” Anne spoke to her distraught reflection the  bathroom mirror without much certainty.

Tears  streamed down her face in waves and Anne sucked them back in like a  Hoover vacuum cleaner, switched off the bathroom light and made her way  back to the side of the bed. She crawled back underneath the covers  waiting for sleep to come and relieve her of this nightmare. Sleep did  not come. Instead, she watched the tree figures dance their eerie  ballet on the ceiling silently. Tears won again and Anne buried her  face.

The  small hairs on the nape of her neck prickled and alerted her to the  danger before her eyes became totally aware of what she was seeing.  Chills ran deep down her spine and she gawked at the intruder present  in her bedroom. She began to frantically look around like a caged  animal at the zoo trying to discern where it came from and how it was  standing right there after she always locked all the doors and windows  every night before bed.

Anne  slowly shifted her head from the dancing tree limbs to the grotesque  figure standing, (swaying was more like it), at the foot of her bed.  The ghostly, floating cloud darkened the already black room with every  shift of motion it contained. Feeling the encompassing evil through her  unbelieving eyes and skin before the goose pimples broke out completely  and the small hairs all over her body stood at attention, Anne began to  scream, but instead a stifled yelp died on her lips as quickly as it  manifested itself. She gripped the edges of the bed in horror until her  knuckles were white and tired. Breathlessly she stared at her new found  friend with horror and contempt.

Anne  laid motionless, afraid to move a muscle as the ghost cloud drifted  around the room oblivious to her immediate distress. It seemed to stake  out the entire room like a bad police movie checking every inch for  what, Anne surely didn’t know. She watched unable to move and waited.  The cloud, apparently assured nothing or no one else lurked in the  lucid shadows of Anne’s once quaint bedroom, turned its attention to  her stiff, fragile shape trembling beneath the capsizing bed linens.  Anne realized in horror the ghost was not looking at her, but through  her into the dark depths of her soul.

She  reluctantly closed her eyes as if this retaliation would have some  adverse effect on the supernatural being and re-opened them blinking in  utter disbelief. Her voice left her lips and dangled in midair for what  seemed like a lifetime and no sound escaped her. Her breath, taken away  as the hideous creature moved back and forth like a balloon swaying in  the wind, puffed out her lungs in short staggering pants. It was still  there and not leaving any time soon. Anne knew deep down inside all the  wishing she could possibly believe in doing would not exterminate her  wide awake nightmare, and it was real, oh so real. She felt as though  she could reach out and touch it without disturbing a thing, but she  didn’t dare for the fright of losing her small, bony hand within it’s  cascading shrouds.

White  ghostly matter mixed with the obscure gray as the figure floated at the  foot of the queen size bed indecisive as to which route to take to it’s  scared prey. It was as if the thing was being guided by some other life  form unknown to her at that moment. It stopped abruptly. Peering deep  inside her soul Anne felt it’s probing tentacles reaching out to  encompass her very life line and the ghost, for a fleeting moment,  seemed to smile. Anne saw only murderous intentions in it’s demeanor  and cowered against the headboard, clawing frantically at the sheets.  The thing scaled the edge of the bed with the utmost ease as it  whistled by her ear so quickly her eyes did not register it moving at  all.

Anne  tried to scream, but no saving scream would come. All sound choked far  back into her lungs and she could not even catch her breath much less  scream for the neighbors. Forgetting this undisputed fact and gazing at  her unwelcomed intruder, she tried again, but this time only harder and  to no avail.

The  foreboding sense of unspeakable evil filled the room igniting the  darkest corners and Anne Stevenson began to cry uncontrollably. The  demon ghost laughed heartily knowing it’s victory was at hand and it  started drawing acrid breaths, small at first, sucking in everything  possible. Anne’s chest hurt. She felt as though she was dying and she  knew she was. Her head slipped into a dull throb, constant and sure. As  the demon’s breaths became larger, Anne felt her usually strong will  diminish and succumb to the terrifying beast in front of her blinding  eyes.

Sucking  her now willing soul into it’s jaded heart little by little; the ghost  grinned with sheer pleasure as she wisped the last little bits of fresh  air out of her lungs and frail body. Her nostrils flared with each  passing breath and her lungs were afire with pain she couldn’t even  begin to fathom or explain. The obscure being took its last breaths  from Anne’s existence. As she braced herself for the final blow Anne  couldn’t shake the feeling someone or something was watching this and  doing nothing. Her flesh crawled for the last time in her short life  and a fleeting vision surfed through her mind. It was a vision of Hank  Stuart. Just as the vision came it was gone. Anne Stevenson lay dead  still in her own bed as the entity swept through the wall and  disappeared forever.

Hank  Stuart let the curtains drift back to their rightful place with a smile  on his lips, “You should of let me in, Anney,” he whispered quietly.  “Everything would have been right and you would not of been a  sacrifice, honey.” Hank Stuart stopped back into his easy chair  unwrapped the daily newspaper and began to read as if nothing happened.