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.
