The Shadow at My Door: Part 1

 

1: That Feeling of Being Watched

It all started one innocuous evening.

A long day of work had taken so much from me that I was barely holding on. After spending an obscene amount of time struggling with the creaky iron gate, I labored the car into my compound, unable to tell right from left, top from bottom, because the day completely drained me.

I parked the car, got out, and slumbered into the house, dragging my sullen body along like a sack.

As soon as I set foot into the house, I was immediately overcome with a sense of unease, as though I was in the presence of a threat that I was yet to lay my eyes on. A familiar scent hit my nose, and immediately all the fatigue that was weighing me down dissolved like salt in warm water, the brain fog in my brain clearing like actual fog in the face of the morning sun.

It was the scent of my wife’s perfume. My dead wife’s perfume!

That explosion of the rosebud and jasmine struck my nasal nerves with the ferocity of a wild animal, and with that scent flooded the memories: the good, the bad, the sorrowful memories.

The house was dead, the living room beckoning with the faint orange hue of the setting sun, while the stairway stayed solemn and dark as though it was bearing some more bad news.

I set my car keys down on the table that stood at the centre of the living room as the scent brought with it the last moments of my wife.

On our marital bed, her body frail, with nothing left on her except for her bones, sunken dead eyes, and hair thinning on her head, each wisp seemingly falling off each time you stroked her head, a sad scowl permanent on her face.

I closed my eyes as a lump filled my throat and felt the sorrow rush back into my eyes and fall as warm tears; a grief that was supposed to be seven months old still felt as fresh as freshly plucked fruit.

I turned my attention to the stairs, where the rising steps beckoned, the light fading gradually with each rising step until there was nothing but looming shadows at the top landing.

I gave a deep sigh as I walked to the bottom step and looked up. Someone, something was watching me. I could feel it; I just hadn’t yet seen it.

Tentatively, I put my right foot on the first step. I was trembling like a leaf in the wind.

I put my left foot on the second step. I could feel the piercing eyes of this as-of-yet-unseen enemy stare right into my wildly beating heart.

I was breathing hard, every cell of my body screaming in discomfort and fear.

I got to the top landing barely able to hear, because my heart was thumping so hard I felt in in my ears. I put my hand on my chest and gasped, trying to catch my breath and, at the same time, trying to keep the viciously beating heart from tearing through my sternum.

I waddled to my bedroom door and stopped just outside.

My dead wife’s scent was very strong right now, almost as though she was standing right in front of me. No, actually, the scent was as strong as though I was hugging her tightly. I thought I heard someone hum and shuffle about in the room.

I was trembling viciously, my breathing sounding as though I was gasping with each breath. My palms were sweaty, and I couldn’t even wrap my fingers properly around the door now as my finger were benumbed. All coordination was gone. It took all the might I could muster, along with both hands, to turn the knob and push open the door.

As soon as I opened the door, my wife’s favorite nightgown, a red, satin nightgown that she wore each time we would get dirty in the sheets and, sometimes even outside the sheets, dropped to the floor. A slight breeze blew my way from the half-open window and, with it, blew the rosebud and jasmine scent, strong enough as though I was intimately on my wife’s skin.

I had hung this nightgown on her closet door since her death, a constant reminder of the love I had lost, but I knew that it could not easily fall to the floor as I had just seen because I had hung it using a hanger with hooks that held the straps in place. No strong wind would blow it without also dropping the hanger. Someone surely must have moved it. Perhaps I was the one who had accidentally moved it and had forgotten?

I ambled into the room, tears welling in my eyes, picked up the gown and fell on the bed, hugging it as memories of my wife came flooding back. In that moment, I was crying, laughing, regretting, and thinking all at once until a wave of sleep washed over me –

2: The Phantom

I was startled awake and was instantly drawn to the blurry sight of a figure standing in the dark in my open bedroom doorway. I sat up, my wife's red nightgown still held firmly in my hands as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the figure, all at once, becoming clearer yet at the same time, blending seamlessly into the darkness. I rubbed my eyes and looked once again. The darkness seeping in through my bedroom door stared blankly at me, and almost imperceptibly, the shadowy figure seemed to dissolve into the darkness.

I put the nightgown back on the closet door and turned on the light. I looked down the corridor. Nobody was there. I was seeing things again.

The time was 11.53 PM. A short nap had turned into a whole six-hour sleep. My stomach grumbled in hunger. I needed something to eat.

As I sat down to eat the heated leftovers from the previous day, the wind slowly began to howl outside. Expected. This was January, so the dry and warm Kaskazi N/NE trade winds were in their full blow, aided by the humid weather and sweltering heat. But there was something eerie about the wind tonight. It felt as though it was whispering, as though it carried voices of unseen entities as it screamed across the Kajiado plains, howling right outside my house and rattling my rafters and windows.

I leaned back in the seat, turned on the TV and put on one of those terrible background movies as I focused on my phone.

The winds blew harder and at some point, it felt as though it would uproot the trees and even my house. It howled and bayed, like the cries of people in eternal damnation, and the more it blew, the higher it pitched, and soon, it sounded like a theremin in high pitch.

I put my plate down and sat up, the hairs on the back of my head standing up. I was trembling slightly, not from fear but from the sudden chilliness that had seeped into the room.

I walked over to the window overlooking my backyard. My security light was on, illuminating, in a lonely yellow glow, the trees that swayed, creaked, and groaned to the forceful wind. Amongst these trees, I caught sight of a rabbit standing perfectly still, seemingly looking at my window. It then scampered away as soon as I had laid my eyes on it.

Then, there was a gentle, almost imperceptible tap at my front door. Tap. Tap. Very soft, easy to miss. I turned and looked at the front door. Maybe it was just loose dust getting blown against the door?

I went back and sat down, now cozying myself in my wife’s favorite seat, where I continued to be haunted by the memories of our lives until her death.

A short while later, some noise came from my bedroom floor above my head. I paused and sat up, head askance, ears perked. Indeed, there were some faint, albeit quite perceptible sounds of footsteps upstairs.

I lived in a place where my closest neighbour was about a kilometer or so away from me. The lands that we lived in were recently developed suburbs, and thus, there were very few houses in close proximity. I loved this about Village Spring Estate because I had never been too keen on living with a neighbor right next to my walls.

I made my way into the kitchen, my dinner plate in hand, and pulled out a pipe wrench from under the sink. A knife would be too violent, and I hated the sight of blood. I put the cold food into the microwave, ready for re-heating once I had dealt with whatever was making noise upstairs.

I crept down the corridor and slowly made my way up the stairs.

Indeed, the sounds were not coming from my tired brain. Something was indeed ransacking through my bedroom. I could hear the noises of cabinet doors whirring open and the soft thud of things falling on the floor. The closer I got to the bedroom, the more I felt it once again – the unmistakable scent of my wife’s perfume.

I was shaking violently, the wrench rattling noisily down by my side. My heartbeat so forceful that it thudded against my head and gave me a slight headache. My skin tingled, and my mouth dried. I reached for the doorknob and sighed. I psyched myself up. It was my house! My home!

I opened the door with a sudden lunge and leaped into the room, swinging the wrench wildly, eyes closed, and screaming like a maniac. I kept swinging until my arms were sore and my throat was coarse. I opened my eyes to a room in disarray, all contents from my wife's closet, her clothes, shoes and jewelry, strewn down on the floor, spread all over the carpet like butter spread thin on bread, her closet doors wide open.

All except her red sleeping gown, which was laid neatly on the bed, her perfume right next to it, the Jasmine and Rosebud scent wafting gently throughout the room and giving me some major surge of old memories, memories that I was trying to push at the back of my mind.

I turned around and scanned the room, checked the bathroom, empty, in my closet, nothing. I rushed out of the room, down into the sitting room, and checked the room right under the staircase because that would be a good place for an intruder to hide. Nothing.

I scoured through the house, checking every nook and cranny, but came up short.

I then stepped outside, to the wind howling and baying across the flat plains and walked around the parking, looking into and under the two cars in the parking lot, my wife’s and mine. Nothing.

I move around to the backyard, once again, catching a glimpse of a rabbit, which, upon seeing me, scampered amongst the creaking trees and disappeared into the darkness.

But just as I was about to turn, I caught a glimpse of a human silhouette standing among the trees. It was a split-second sight, such that by the time I was shining my light on where I thought I had seen it, it was gone.

Was I losing my mind or what?