Happy Halloween to one and all! On this most frightening of nights, please enjoy this offering of a chilling tale written when my partner travelled internationally for the opportunity of a lifetime. It was the first time I ever lived alone, and I couldn’t help but wonder if something else was in the apartment, watching, and waiting…
TW: Gore
1
Thaddeus trudged up the stairs to their apartment. Over three hours ago he dropped Lena off at the airport. A full tank of gas, the crawling traffic of I-95, and a few select curses later, he made it home.
“You’ll come to visit soon?” she asked.
“As soon as I can.”
“It’s not too long, only twelve months. Years can just fly by,” she cupped the small of his back and smiled.
Thaddeus memorized every inch of her face before pulling her into a hug.
“I’ll see you soon,” the ends of her hair tickled his nose and chin.
“Goodbye Thad,” she whispered.
At the door of his apartment, Thaddeus wiped the last bit of tear residue from his eyes and pulled out his keys. The tumblers in their apartment door released, and he walked in.
A mournful cry from the tuxedo cat inside reminded him he wasn’t quite alone. Billie helped Lena with the transition to Richmond years ago, now the cat would help Thaddeus learn how to live on his own. Tail stretched to the sky, Billie sauntered over.
The cat rammed his wet nose into Thaddeus’s hand.
A few headrubs later, Billie looked back out the window.
“I know bud, she’ll be back soon enough. It’s just us now,” Billie purred and consented to a few more scratches behind the ears.
Across the living room, at the dinner table the two of them shared for months sat a closed sketchbook and tray of sketch pencils. Thaddeus settled into the dining room chair and opened the book.
“You should draw more,” Lena had told him some time back after looking through a few of his old college sketches. “These are really good.”
The smell of the pencils and the feel of the sketch paper under his fingers slowed down his heartbeat. Instead of a million worries about her flight landing, making her connection, and what this all meant for the two of them, he could concentrate on something else.
The only problem was, he didn’t know what to draw.
Inspiration was overrated, at least that was what counted for wisdom in all the how to draw books he had read. Practicing the movements and lines on the page where what mattered, building a fundamental feel for where to set the eyes, extend the nose, or place the ears.
A few pencil strokes later, Thaddeus created the outline of a face. A set of circles that signified the edges of a skull, ears, and eyes. A hairless, wide eyed imitation of a human took shape. The nose little more than a line that bisected the face, and the mouth nothing but a dash.
Thaddeus stuck the eraser in his mouth, and leaned back in the chair. The outline was there alright, but no details, he couldn’t see the shape of the eyelashes, the curve of the hair, or the edges of the mouth with any clarity.
The face would stay undefined, close to human, almost living, a blank slate.
He frowned and tried again.
Over and over the first steps of a face appeared on his paper. A circle for the skull, two lines below to signify the neck, and a pair of oblong orbs for the eyes. The almost faces filled up the page of his sketchbook, technically perfect.
But none of the creatures had any life. The page was a mausoleum of blank slates.
A low growl in Thaddeus’s stomach pulled him out of his creative mood. Outside the sun had already set, and Billie was meowing beside his dish. Thaddeus walked over and opened the pantry, scanning to try and find the special wet food she would want him to feed the cat. The small can was right in front of his face.
He doled out the correct portion, set the tray down on the ground, and grabbed a piece of pizza from the fridge for himself.
Halfway through the slice of cold pizza, he glanced back over to the collection of almost people on his sketch sheet. All empty, all waiting for him to make them more than strange in between things that looked into his soul.
He slammed the sketchbook shut, he’d make them real in the morning.
Thaddeus couldn’t move. Sweat caked the back of his neck and his forehead.
This wasn’t the first time he woke up paralyzed. Three major attacks shook him while he lived with Lena. Every time she reassured him he was safe, and nothing could hurt him.
When he was a child he sometimes would wake, and saw dark shapes at the edge of his vision, or the foot of his bed. Lena’s comforting voice seemed to sing the creatures away.
But now he was alone, he couldn’t even see Billie.
On his right was the closet that still held much of Lena’s clothes and half of her scarf collection. Coats and hangers covered both closet walls framing a hatch in the center of the ceiling.
To his left was a screen door to the outside deck. A set of vertical blinds covered the glass doors from curious eyes.
A shape was on their porch, casting a broken shadow onto the carpet. The shadow stretched to the base of the bed.
Billie meowed from the hallway.
“It’s not real,” Thaddeus clenched his jaw. The shadow disappeared from the window. The moment must be ending, he thought, in just a second, he would be able to move again.
A thump came from the side of the apartment, then another, as if something was climbing up the wall, or treading on the roof.
Like the uncoiling of a twisted spring, he could move his limbs again.
His fingers found his phone and he hit the flashlight. In moments, every light in the apartment was on. After illuminating every corner, he approached the porch.
His hands trembled, and he yanked back the blinds.
Nothing was there, only the small table and chair that they bought last summer.
Thaddeus sighed and sank to the base of the bed. The phone clock read almost three in the morning, in only four hours was his report time for work. His middle school students wouldn’t care that the love of his life was flying thousands of miles away.
Billie walked up and purred. Thaddeus reached out his hand, and the cat curled up around his arm.
“I guess that’s the first time I’ve had an episode alone in years,” he ran his hands through Billie’s fur a few more times. The worst attacks had been before his college graduation, and during his first year teaching.
Heightened periods of stress seemed to be a trigger. The last few days certainly counted.
He rubbed his eyes, he needed to get back into bed, he didn’t want to fall asleep on the floor. Before long he was curled under the covers and ran his hand over the empty spot beside him.
“Wish you were here.”
A pounding sound woke Thaddeus. Light came through the window and he scrambled to his phone. The clock read six ten so he was alright, he still had a little time.
Thaddeus recognized the pounding as the bathroom door. He leapt from his bed and ran down the hallway. A pitiful meow came from behind the closed door and Thaddeus sighed.
Billie had never been declawed because Lena would have more likely cut off her own fingers than hurt the cat. As a result, Billie knew if he hooked his claws under the door, he could cause enough of a racket to wake the dead.
Mumbling a few curses, Thaddeus turned the doorknob. A streak of black and white fur sprinted to freedom.
A quick sniff of the air confirmed his suspicions. Small pools of alternating cat vomit and urine covered the floor. Thaddeus looked at Billie, who had taken up position in the living room. Both of the cat’s wide eyes were studying him, daring him to say something.
“You couldn’t have used the toilet?” said Thaddeus.
Billie licked himself, blinked and walked away.
In twenty minutes Thaddeus repaired most of the damage. The garbage bin clicked after
receiving the last few clorox wipes sacrificed for the struggle.
Thaddeus scratched his face feeling stubble. He pulled out a razor and shaved, one of the only things that separated him from the middle school children was that his facial hair was neatly trimmed.
After washing his face he was certainly late. The bowl of the sink was covered in facial hair, if Lena were here she would want him to clean it.
But she wasn’t, and he had to go.
He pulled the messenger bag over his shoulder and gave Billie one more glare before he pulled the door shut behind him.
2
Thaddeus swung the door open, and stepped inside the apartment.
Billie was sitting on top of the bookshelf on the right side of the apartment. The cat blinked and meowed out the window.
“Not for a couple hundred more days buddy,” Thaddeus rubbed Billie’s head. The cat purred a bit but kept his eyes scanning for Lena’s familiar silhouette.
Thaddeus sat on the couch, took off his shoes, and rubbed his eyes. The sun dipped below the horizon, faculty meetings were always long days.
Especially given the minimal sleep he had gotten due to last night’s episode.
After a few moments to rest his feet, he walked into the kitchen. The fridge was barren
except for the last two slices of pizza he hadn’t finished the night before.
Thaddeus sighed, he’d have to find something real to eat later.
The pizza sizzled in the microwave, and Thaddeus knew he was forgetting something. A chore he needed to do, a reason he thought Lena would be upset at him.
The buzzer on the microwave went off. He pulled out the pizza and took a bite. Halfway through his second slice, he remembered the hairs in the sink.
He strode to the bathroom and opened the door with his right hand, holding paper towels in his left. He flipped on the lights and his eyes adjusted to the bright bulbs.
The sink was empty.
Thaddeus ran his finger over the porcelain, and peered below the pipes. Other than the faint smell of cat piss, the bathroom was spotless.
A meow echoed behind him, Billie rubbed himself up against Thaddeus’s legs.
“Did you clean the sink?”
Billie meowed, stood up on his hind legs and batted at Thaddeus’s thighs.
“I guess it’s your dinner time,” Thaddeus tossed the last few paper towels into the
bathroom trash and flipped the light off. Maybe the water turned on at some point during the day, or he hadn’t left that much of a mess.
Thaddeus scooped out a bit of wet food to appease the now howling cat. He finished his dinner and crawled into bed refusing to look at the empty gulf next to him.
Something in the apartment was chirping. Thaddeus sat up, happy to have use of his muscles.
The chirping was coming from the closet, persistent as a leaking showerhead. After he realized the noise wasn’t going to stop, he threw off his covers and turned on the closet light.
Billie was sitting on the dresser at the far closet wall. His yellow eyes were fixed on the small maintenance hatch in the center of the ceiling. Every few seconds, Billie would chirp and dart his head, following something on the other side of the hatch.
“There’s nothing there,” Thaddeus reached to pick Billie up but the cat darted away. The closet was silent and Thaddeus listened, wondering if he could hear whatever rodent was scurrying around on the roof.
The hatch stayed silent.
Thaddeus turned around and shut the door behind him. The bed was warm and, his eyes started to droop.
Before sleep took him, he heard claws scratch at the closet door.
“Come on,” Thaddeus tried to shoo Billie away from the door from the bed but the cat wouldn’t budge. He grasped for the cat to get it to move.
Billie sprinted away into the other room. Thaddeus followed him and shut the door, in his dresser was a doorstop that would foil the cat’s door slamming instincts.
As soon as his head hit the pillow he fell back asleep.
The morning alarm woke Thaddeus. He felt like he laid down only moments ago, but the bit of light streaking in from the window made it clear he had to get up.
He turned his phone’s alarm off and rubbed his face.
The closet door was open. Cracked a bit, it must have come open sometime during the night, or perhaps he hadn’t closed it properly.
A small pain bothered Thaddeus in his right forearm. He scratched it for a second, and wondered if Billie had perhaps cut him when he put the cat out of the room.
After pulling out the doorstop he went into the other room to feed the howling cat.
After mollifying his furry roommate, Thaddeus stepped into the shower.
The warm water washed over his scalp and he took a deep breath. He read somewhere that people took longer showers when they were lacking human contact.
Lena had always made fun of him for his long showers, but the warm water almost felt like her arms wrapping around the small of his back.
He stayed under the water for a few moments longer than he should. A sharp pain came from his right forearm when he pulled back the shower curtain. In the pit of his elbow was a small scratch that twinged in the cold air.
He scratched at it a few times and the irritant subsided. He flipped the sink on and running water started to pour inside the bowl. The bristles of the toothbrush ran over his teeth and he felt one wobble.
A bit of blood gushed into his mouth and he dropped the toothbrush. Leaning closer to the mirror, Thaddeus saw the offending tooth. It was a front canine, on the right side, stained red.
He knew his gums were bad, but wasn’t aware that they were one of his teeth might fall out bad. A call to his dentist was a part of his future. Hopefully distant future.
The itch in his forearm would not stop, so he examined it again. It was a round scratch, almost like a puncture right at the vein. Two summers ago, Thaddeus had gone to a plasma donation site in the hopes of making a bit of extra cash. The scars from the improperly placed needles had never really healed.
The mark on his arm was similar.
The ringing of Thaddeus’s alarm penetrated the door and he ran to stop it. He must have just reset the alarm instead of turning it off. After canceling the alarm, he saw the time.
“Shit,” he was going to be late this morning.
He tried not to think about the strange mark on his arm as he pulled on his shirt.
Thaddeus woke up with a mouth full of cotton. Somewhere deep in the back of his throat, he felt the tin aftertaste of blood.
He checked his phone, his alarm was set to go off within the next twenty minutes. No point in trying to go back to sleep, so he rolled out of bed.
The cream he applied to the cut on his arm had not helped, it made the cut even more red and angry. He heaped more cream on top of the wound not knowing what else to do.
He turned on the faucet to brush his teeth, cycling the toothbrush under the water a few times until he could get some feeling in his mouth. He ran the brush over his left canine, both bottom incisors until the toothbrush scraped his gums.
There was a hole where his right canine should be.
He ran the toothbrush over the empty space, hoping his mouth was just still too numb. He bared his teeth and looked in the mirror.
“What the hell,” Thaddeus leaned closer to the mirror, feeling around the cavity in his mouth with his tongue.
The tooth was gone.
Back in his bedroom he pulled off all of the sheets scrambling to find the missing tooth. He searched in between the mattress, under the bed, and in the pillowcases, but could find no sign of the missing bone.
Billie meowed for his breakfast.
“Give me a second,” Thaddeus said as he threw away one of his pillows in frustration. Taking a deep breath, Thaddeus pulled out his phone hoping to figure out what to do next.
A few fruitless searches later his time was running out again. Feeling returned to his mouth, not pain but it was hard to keep his tongue out of the void where his tooth used to be. The fleshy opening that his tongue seemed almost drawn to run over.
He was halfway out of the apartment when he saw Billy stretch out on the floor. Thaddeus scratched the cat behind the ears and wished Lena was here to help him figure out what to do.
“Not till next Tuesday? That’s the earliest you can see me?” Barked Thaddeus into his phone.
“I’m sorry sir, but your situation doesn’t really qualify as an emergency, we can still replace the tooth with a crown next week.”
“Fine,” Thaddeus hung up the phone before the woman could respond. All day his mouth tasted like tin.
He turned into the parking lot of their apartment complex and tried to take a deep breath, but his breathing was ragged. The itch from his arm, and the strange feeling in his mouth seemed to blot out any other thought, and the lack of sleep from the last two nights made everything hazy and undefined. He had another two days to get through the rest of the week, and his third floor apartment loomed above him.
He took two deep breaths, pulled out his phone and dialed Lena’s number.
A few moments later he reached her voicemail, he knew she must be doing something important. The phone beeped prompting him to leave a message.
“Hi, it’s me. I just wanted to see how you were? It has been a few days, I know that you’ve been busy but it would just be nice to hear your voice., I just wanted to say I missed you, and I wish you were here, alot.”
Thadeus clicked the phone off. She would respond when she could. He stumbled up the stairs and into the apartment. The kitchen had nothing suitable to eat, and he couldn’t stand the thought of going back out.
He was tired, so tired from the late night after he dropped her off, the night Bille wouldn’t shut up about the closet, and being awake early that morning. Just a quick nap, and then he would fix his missing tooth and his empty fridge.
3
Two small points of pressure bore into Thaddeus’s chest. The apartment was pitch dark and he wondered how long he had been asleep. Billie was standing over him, but wasn’t purring.
Thaddeus tried to push the cat off of him and check the time.
He couldn’t move.
Every muscle in his body was like an extended rubber band. His eyes were the only thing he could shift.
Billie’s yellow orbs focused on the closet, his mouth making small chirps.
Hinges squeaked, and the hatch in the closet ceiling opened. Two long legs of a dark shadow slithered their way through the portal. Saliva beaded on Thaddeus’s lips, his eyes turned as far as they could to the dark closet to his right.
The figure inched its way down, until its outstretched legs touched the floor.
Billie chirped at the shape.
It’s not real, Thaddeus thought. In a second the figure would disappear and Thaddeus’s muscles would unclench.
The floor cracked as heavy footfalls shook the bed. Billie hissed and bared his teeth.
The figure walked by the bed down the hall to the bathroom.
The light in the bathroom turned on.
Someone was in the apartment with Thaddeus, someone real, and he still couldn’t move.
A low voice murmured from the bathroom. It just kept repeating, “blood, hair, and bone.”
The chanting ceased and the heavy treads of the intruder came close. A hunched shape of a man stood in the doorway, backlit by the bathroom light.
The thing walked to the side of the bed.
Billie hissed and clawed at it. The figure picked up the cat and tossed it into the closet. Billie tried to grasp the underside of the door with his claws but the shape reached into the dresser and pulled out the wedge Thaddeus used the other night.
The cat yowled but could not slam the door.
Thaddeus couldn’t move his eyes anymore, they were fixed to the ceiling, frozen like every one of his limbs. A few tears were running down the side of his face, he couldn’t move his mouth to ask the intruder what it wanted.
The figure pulled off his comforter and he saw an old face lined with a million wrinkles and with only a few yellow teeth in its mouth.
“Up,” it whispered.
Thaddeus’s legs moved but he didn’t control where, he stepped off the bed and his skin burst into goosebumps.
The breath, and presence of whatever was behind him lingered on the back of his neck.
“Time,” rasped the voice behind him.
Thaddeus walked towards the bathroom.
If he could just open his mouth, he could scream or beg, or ask the creature what it wanted, but he couldn’t do anything but plod ahead.
At the door Thaddeus turned to enter the fluorescent lit room. The smell of blood flooded into his nose, and he caught a glimpse of the sink which held a small pool of blood mixed with hair. Peaking above the puddle, was a jagged tooth with a red root.
On the edge of the sink sat the collection of sharp knives his parents had given him and Lena last Christmas.
He inhaled, hoping to harness a scream, but his jaw was clenched shut, and his tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth. Breath whistled behind his teeth.
The invader stopped, but Thaddeus kept walking. He stepped over the lid of the tub and faced the faucet. The drain was right under his feet, and his head bowed beneath the showerhead.
The roller ball rings clicked as the curtain was pulled shut. Thaddeus’s eyes were locked ahead at the plastic paneling of the tub.
Outside of the tub, on the other side of the curtain, was the unmistakable sound of metal rubbing against metal. A few steel shrieks later he heard whatever was there muttering, “hair, bone, blood, hair bone blood…” over and over.
A warm spout of liquid slid down his right thigh and around his feet.
He tried to turn his eyes to see what was happening on the other side of the curtain but his muscles were so rigid they trembled.
The chanting ended. The apartment settled with a crack, and footfalls came towards the shower. The curtain shifted as the raspy breath returned to the back of Thaddeus’s neck.
The creature inhaled like it was about to take a deep plunge then gasped. A sound like tearing fabric or paper filled the bathroom. A warm fluid covered Thaddeus’s feet.
It was blood surging from behind him and running towards the drain. The waves of blood grew until they were lapping over his feet, over his ankle, to the base of his shin.
His mouth tasted like tin.
The blood rushed around the drain until something solid bumped into Thaddeus’s foot. The object bobbed in the pool and turned over.
It was an ear.
Thaddeus’s vomited, bile dripping down his chest.
Behind him, the tearing would not stop, and more and more pieces of matter accumulated around his feet.
With one last tear, the sound stopped and the blood drained. Flesh lay coiled on the floor, much too large to spiral through the pipes. The being behind Thaddeus grunted, and stepped out of the tub.
Thaddeus’s feet moved, stepping out of the bundles of flesh. His legs spread themselves, and his arms stretched out, completely open, totally vulnerable.
Standing in front of him was the impression of a man. Nothing but right angles and slender lines. The angular first steps of an artists inspiration.
Just like the nine faces he had sketched days ago.
The human impression pulled out a black garbage bag and gathered up the different parts that were left in the tub. Each piece of flesh squelched when it was forced inside the bag.
The being hung the garbage bag on the towel rack and fixed its empty orbs on Thaddeus. The mouth barely moved as it rasped the word, “time.”
Thaddeus’s legs shifted and he turned until he was facing the wall of the bathroom. The different squares of tile mosaic connecting in front of his eyes.
A voice murmured behind him, “stretch.”
Thaddeus’s muscles tensed harder. With quiet popping sounds his muscles ripped away from the bones in his legs, his feet, and finally his back.
Remarkably, he was still standing upright. His muscles tensed until all that was left of him was a shell of flesh, nerves, and organs, detached from the bone.
The cold steel of a knife brushed the small of his back.
Lena walked past passport control and picked up her bags. Thad was waiting for her on the other side of customs with a grin. She ran up to him, and he spun her around with a big hug. She kissed him, grasping the back of his head.
“I’ve missed you.”
Her hand strayed down to cup the small of his back. His skin was tough and hard like tree bark. She tried to pull up his shirt to explore the scar tissue beneath, but one of his hands brought hers higher up his back. While he embraced her in the airport, she wondered what else had changed about the man she loved.
Nathan Buchholz 