Can ghosts bleed?
Keith woke up and knew the house was empty.
He slipped out of bed and stood up on shaky legs. The floor was cold under his feet. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and shuffled into the en-suite bathroom to pee. On his way there, he heard a burst of laughter followed by a round of applause.
He changed course and left the bedroom, headed for the stairs, where the sounds had come from. Did someone have the television on? Neither he nor Eleanor watched TV in the morning, and it was all he could do to roll the kids out of bed so they wouldn’t be late for school.
“Ellie,” he called out as he came down the stairs. “Are you up?”
Keith knew she was up because he’d awoken in bed alone, but he wanted to know where she was. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was empty, even though it made no sense. His head felt thick and fuzzy, like he was hungover. He attributed it to waking up from a particularly deep sleep. He tried to remember what he’d been dreaming about last night, but nothing came back to him.
The television was off and the living room was empty. Same for the dining room and the kitchen. He went back upstairs. Calvin’s room was empty. So was Sabrina’s.
Fear began to nibble at him as he went back downstairs. In the kitchen he put on a pot of coffee, the ritual so routine he performed the actions automatically. While he was scooping fresh grounds into the filter tray, a low chuckle sounded to his right, and he snapped his head in that direction. It seemed to have come from the sink, which would have made sense since the sound was similar to that of water going down the drain. Only he hadn’t been running the faucet, and the chuckling didn’t sound like water. It sounded like a person actually chuckling.
Keith leaned down, tilting his head toward the drain.
A loud clapping sound caused him to jerk upright. At first he thought it was applause, which made him think of the sounds he’d heard when he was upstairs. He spun around and his eyes fell on the refrigerator, a huge two-door stainless steel beast. The clapping resolved into a low, staccato rumbling that he recognized. It was the icemaker, doing its business. That’s all it was, he told himself. Normal sounds playing tricks on him.
Keith turned back around, took the glass carafe out of the coffeemaker, and filled it with water from the sink. As he was pouring the water into the coffeemaker’s reservoir, he glanced up at the kitchen window.
A face was looking back at him from the other side.
Something was wrong with it.
It was melting.
That was the word that came into his mind, which at that moment was like a deep, dark well. The word—melting—was a small stone tossed down that well. A small plink in the darkness, an invisible ripple in the water, then it was gone.
But the face was still there.
He didn’t know if it was male or female. It was too distorted to tell. One eye was turned upward, the other down, like a yin-yang symbol rendered in flesh. The mouth was twisted in a freakish smile that continued to spread and spread as the face stretched and stretched.
Melted, Keith thought.
The face leaned forward and pressed itself against the window, which only seemed to increase the melting effect. The skin began to darken as if it were bruising, turning a depthless black as the face continued to stretch—to melt—into a Munchian ghoul.
The carafe slipped out of Keith’s slack hand and shattered on the floor. It felt like his mind was doing the same thing. As though his sanity was something brittle and it had been struck hard enough to fracture into a thousand pieces. This, he realized, was what it was like to go insane. To feel the planet of one’s mind being ripped apart by a black hole. Or in this case, a dark face that was no longer a face, on the other side of a pane of glass.
It must not come through, he thought in a panic.
The drain chuckled. The refrigerator applauded.
Keith stumbled backward into the dining room. He bumped into the table and it shifted under his weight, the legs squeaking on the hardwood floor.
Keith! Are you there?
“Eleanor!” he called out. Her voice was a balm. A cold hand on a fever-hot brow. He looked around the dining room but couldn’t see her. “Eleanor, where are you?”
I’m here, she said, which told him nothing, and everything. It was enough just to hear her voice, to know the house wasn’t empty, that he wasn’t alone.
He looked back at the window. The face was still there, mouth open wider than any mouth could possibly stretch. An ear-splitting yowl came rising out of its depths like a siren. It wasn’t a sound of anger. It was a sound of pain. Intense, torturous pain. Oddly, it was a sound Keith recognized.
About a year ago, their cat Nibbs had shown up one morning on the back step, returned from his nightly adventures. Eleanor had let him inside and he immediately began to make a horrible yowling sound. It came from deep down inside of him, like he was scouring the depths of his body to bring it up and out. It was a horrible sound, full of pain and sorrow, and it had brought Keith and the kids racing into the kitchen. As Nibbs paced around the kitchen floor, blood began to drip from his rear end. Keith would always remember the soft pitter-patter the droplets made when they struck the tile floor. They rushed Nibbs to the vet, but it was too late. He had eaten something bad, maybe something rotten, possibly poison. They never found out. The kids were devastated. Nibbs had only been six years old. They’d got him when Calvin was born and he’d always been good with the kids. He never scratched or bit. Eleanor had bad dreams for the next three weeks. She told Keith she kept hearing Nibbs yowling in her sleep, and sometimes when she woke up she thought she saw drops of blood on the sheets.
The dark face on the other side of the window was making that exact same sound. The sound of Nibbs dying.
Keith was no longer afraid. Now he was angry. There was something wrong, something obscene, about the face making that sound. He started toward the window, his hands curling into fists, when he heard Eleanor again.
I don’t hear him. I think I lost him.
Keith stopped and turned around. The dining room was empty. He walked through the rest of the rooms on the main floor, but there was no one here. He ended up back in the kitchen. The face at the window was gone.
“Eleanor?” he said. “Are you there?”
Keith! I’m here!
“Where?” he shouted. “I can’t see you. I can hear you but I can’t . . . ”
Could he hear her? He cocked his head to the side.
The drain chuckled. The fridge applauded.
Those things he could hear. But Eleanor . . . her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else.
And that was when he first began to suspect.
“Eleanor?” Keith said. “Tell me where you are.”
He could make out her voice. It was lower now, like she was talking to someone else. He could hear another voice, less clear than Eleanor’s but it was definitely there.
“Who’s that with you, Eleanor?”
Keith, Eleanor said. Is it really you?
“Yes!” He was getting exasperated. Who else would he be? And where the hell was she?
He strained his ears to hear her, but to no avail. She wasn’t here, that much was clear. He tried to do the same thing with his mind, focussing his thoughts in an effort to bring her words forward so he could make them out.
I think it’s him.
Her voice was in his head. And yet he also felt she was close by, although he couldn’t see her. The second speaker said something in response, but the words were too low for Keith to make out. Not like a whisper, more like a radio with the volume turned almost all the way down. It was another woman, that was all he could tell, and she was saying something Eleanor didn’t seem to like.
No, she said in a vehement tone. It’s him. I’m sure of it.
The other voice said something else. Then he heard Eleanor again.
Keith, she says we need to make sure it’s you.
“Who is ‘she’?” Keith said. “What the hell is going on?”
He didn’t really want an answer to the second question. He thought he already knew.
“Are the kids with you?” he called out. “Calvin! Sabrina!”
Eleanor sobbed. Please, Keith. We need to know it’s you we’re talking to and not . . . something else.
Keith felt a cold tickle in the middle of his chest. He looked back at the window for the dark face, but it was still gone.
“I’m not dead!” Keith shouted at the empty room. “I’M NOT DEAD!”
Eleanor sobbed again. Keith heard the other voice making consoling sounds.
“I’m not dead,” he said in a quieter, more petulant tone. The floor was cool under his feet. The fact that he could feel it was proof he was still alive. Ghosts created cold spots, they didn’t feel cold. They didn’t feel anything. He slapped himself across the face, and he could feel that, too. It hurt, and it felt good to feel pain. It meant he was alive.
Keith, I’m sitting at the dining room table. Can you see me?
Keith went into the dining room. It was empty. There was no one sitting at the table. But he thought he could hear her better, as if the signal of her voice was stronger in this room.
“I can’t see you,” Keith said. He tried to focus his eyes the way he’d focused his thoughts, but the room remained empty. He went around the table, waving his hand through the space in front of each chair, hoping to feel something, a pocket of warmth, some kind of electric sizzle, anything to tell him he wasn’t alone.
He felt nothing.
The other voice said something to Eleanor. It spoke at length, in a firm, emphatic tone.
Keith, I need to ask you some questions. To make sure it’s really you. There’s a woman here with me. She’s a psychic. She’s the one who’s helping me talk to you. She says we have to ask you these questions because other . . . other spirits and non . . . nonhuman entities will sometimes masquerade as other people. They do it to get access to the physical plane. That’s . . . that’s how she put it. Do you understand?
Keith slumped back against the wall and closed his eyes. Sure, he understood. He was dead and his wife needed to ask him some security questions to make sure she was talking to his ghost and not someone else’s. Or the thing lurking outside the house. It made perfect sense.
Keith, are you there? I need you to tell me your full name.
Keith opened his eyes and pushed away from the wall. Fine, okay. He could play this game.
“Keith Aaron Shaw,” he said, loudly and clearly, like he was doing roll call at school. Only he never gave his full name when the teacher took attendance. He tried to think back to the last time he had spoken his full name. It was probably at their wedding. It had taken place in the fall, thirteen years ago. A beautiful outdoor ceremony with the crisp tangy air and the red and yellow leaves falling all around. The weather had turned cold suddenly and it started to rain. The rain soon turned to sleet. He and Eleanor had laughed it off, and Keith remembered how grateful he was that Eleanor’s parents had insisted on a tent, just in case.
The other voice said something, too low and too distorted to make out. Keith thought it sounded a bit like the warbling voices of the adults in a Peanuts cartoon.
Keith, Eleanor said, she says it isn’t enough. I need to ask you something only you would know. Something we shared together. A memory or a . . . Her voice dimmed, and for a moment Keith thought she was gone, that she had left him. Then her voice came back, louder and with a smile in it. He could hear that smile. He always could.
Keith, the woman who’s helping me, she’s called a spiritual medium. You remember that TV show we used to watch? The one with Patricia Arquette playing the psychic who helps the police solve crimes? We used to see commercials for it. Eleanor intoned in a TV announcer voice: Coming up next: a new episode of “Medium.”
“Followed by a new episode of ‘Large,’ ” Keith said.
He fell to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob.
Yes! Eleanor cried. It’s him! It’s him! I know it’s him!
Keith continued to cry. He could feel the tears dripping onto his hands, he could feel the hardwood floor under his knees, but none of that mattered. It didn’t change anything.
“What’s happening to me?” he shouted in a wet, choked voice. “WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!”
Keith. Eleanor’s voice, speaking in that firm tone, the one she used to calm him down when he was upset about something. The one that said I love you, but cut the shit, okay?
Keith nodded his head, as if she was there in the room, as if she could see him. He wiped his eyes and stood up. “What am I doing here, El?”
You died, she said, stating the plainly obvious. It was a brain tumor. Something called a glioblastoma. It’s very rare and very hard to detect. It came on fast and caused a stroke. You died in your sleep.
Keith’s hand drifted up to his head, his fingers grazing the soft skin of his temple. That was why he didn’t remember. It had happened suddenly. He went to bed a living, breathing person and woke up a ghost.
Eleanor was still talking.
We were all in shock. Me and the kids. We still are. There are days I wake up and roll over in bed expecting you to be there. Calvin and Sabrina, they don’t know what to make of this, any of this. Losing you was bad enough, but now . . . It’s like we keeping losing you over and over again.
Keith opened his mouth to ask what she meant and a burst of wild maniacal laughter came blasting out of the living room. Not from the television. It wasn’t on.
We had a funeral, Eleanor said. The kind you always said you wanted. Nothing sad. A celebration of life. We told stories, the great things you did, the funny things, the embarrassing things. She laughed quietly to herself. I told the story of when we were both in college and you went streaking past the girl’s dorm. You said you thought it would impress me. Show me what an unpredictable guy you were. Because who wanted to date some dud who couldn’t surprise you? Only it had rained that day and you ended up slipping on the pavement and landing on a piece of broken glass. No one could have predicted that. I certainly didn’t think I’d end up marrying the bonehead who got six stiches in his ass that night. I remember how hard we laughed about it afterward. I didn’t think we’d ever stop.
“I keep hearing laughter,” Keith said. “And applause.”
The other voice said something to Eleanor.
The medium says you’re picking up memories of your old life. She says the house is like a radio receiver and it’s pulling in all kinds of signals from you, but they’re random and distorted.
More from the other voice. Keith couldn’t discern the words, but the tone was clear and it wasn’t good.
She says you have to be careful, Keith. You can lose yourself in the noise, in the static. It can cause you to feel anger, sadness, fear, and these feelings can attract negative entities. She says these things are extremely dangerous.
“There’s something outside the house,” Keith said. He looked at the window over the sink. There was nothing there, but he thought he could hear a faint yowling.
The medium said something else to Eleanor and she relayed it to Keith.
Whatever you do, don’t let it in.
Something suddenly occurred to Keith.
“Eleanor, why am I here? Why are you here?”
He heard her sob again and wondered what could be worse than finding out he was dead.
The sound of Eleanor crying dissolved into a distant, drawn-out yowl.
The medium said something, and even though Keith was no closer to understanding her words, the tone of her voice came through loud and clear: she was prodding Eleanor to do something. Something she didn’t want to do.
Keith, she finally said. Keith, I need you to leave.
“What? But I . . . I came back for you.” He didn’t know if that was true, but it was what he wanted to believe. “I came back to be with you and the kids.”
You can’t stay here. You’re . . . you’re scaring us. Oh God, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, Keith, but you’re scaring the kids. And me. You’re scaring me. I’m so sorry. I love you.
Keith was too stunned to speak. The medium was saying something else to Eleanor. She passed her words along to Keith.
This is the natural order of things. Spirits aren’t meant to exist on the physical plane. Your spirit is tethered to the house because you died here. Also because you have a strong connection to this place. This is where you lived, where you spent your life, with me, with Calvin and Sabrina. But the pain you’re causing is equally strong and it’s creating a . . . schism. A divide between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. That’s . . . that’s what the medium says. You’re not meant to be here. You have to leave.
She said this last in a small, pained voice, like she was breaking up with him. Like they were back in college and she had changed her mind, she didn’t want to be with a guy who was unpredictable and had six stitches in his ass. She wanted to live a different kind of life, one that didn’t have him in it. And wasn’t that what death really was? A breakup you couldn’t argue yourself out of? There was no pleading your case, no baring your feelings to show you deserved another chance. Nothing except the quiet solitude of being completely and utterly alone.
Strangely, at that moment Keith thought of a joke. He couldn’t recall who had told it to him. Maybe it was one of the idiot friends he’d gone streaking with that night all those years ago.
What’s the difference between a lightbulb and a pregnant woman?
You can unscrew a lightbulb.
It was a dumb joke, kind of crude, and yet it contained multitudes of truth. Death was something else that couldn’t be reversed. He was dead and that was that. He couldn’t be unscrewed.
“What do I have to do?” he asked the empty room.
The medium was the one who responded, and from her tone Keith could tell she was giving Eleanor a list of instructions.
You have to leave the house.
A pause as the medium spoke again, this time in a stricter voice.
It’s . . . difficult. You have to leave the house without letting the . . . the Other in.
Keith thought of the dark face at the window. He hadn’t seen it again since, but he’d heard it, the yowling of his dying cat, moving around the outside of the house like a strong wind whistling through the eaves.
You need to be fast, Keith. You have to go to the front door. Open it and cross the threshold.
More words from the medium, spoken so firmly, so stridently, that Keith could almost make them out.
Don’t hesitate. If you do, it will get in.
Keith almost asked what would happen, then decided he didn’t want to know. He was scared enough already.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
The refrigerator applauded. The sink chuckled.
Nibbs yowled.
Keith looked at the window over the sink. The dark melted-wax face was back, its mouth bulging and stretching in its endless lava-lamp scream.
Go! Eleanor shouted. Now!
Keith turned and ran down the hallway. He threw open the front door, expecting to see . . . he didn’t know what. Heaven? Hell? The dark void of limbo?
It was only the same view of the yard he always saw when he opened the front door. The day outside was bright and sunny and completely normal. He looked down at the wooden doorsill. His toes edged over it.
Nibbs yowled again, the siren cry rising stridently.
For a split second, Eleanor’s voice managed to be even louder.
KEITH, PLEASE!
Keith closed his eyes.
“Eleanor, I love y—”
He crossed the threshold.
Keith woke up and knew the house was full.
He could hear Calvin yelling at Sabrina in the hallway, the two of them arguing over whose turn it was in the bathroom. Sabrina said something to her brother that ended with “jerk” and then slammed her bedroom door. A moment later, Calvin responded in kind. Keith could still hear them shouting at each other through the walls, then their voices gradually faded.
Lying next to him, her voice muffled by the pillow her face was buried in, Eleanor said, “You wanted kids. I wanted another cat.”
Keith said, “I want coffee.”
“Typical man.” Eleanor raised her hand, index finger pointed upward. “Make mine a double.”
Keith reached out and clasped her hand. He kissed the palm and it was cool against his lips. Cold, actually. Like she’d left it out of the covers all night. It made him think of something . . . a dream he’d had last night? He tried to remember what it was, but all that came to him was an image of their old cat Nibbs. He was probably thinking of Nibbs because of Eleanor’s remark about getting another cat.
He went into the en-suite bathroom to pee. After he was finished he caught his reflection in the mirror and froze in his tracks. He had a full beard and his usually short hair was long and shaggy. He went back into the bedroom and stood over Eleanor.
“Babe, what’s wrong with this picture?”
Eleanor rolled over and looked at him blearily. “Um, you don’t have a hot cup of coffee in your hand?”
“I mean this,” Keith said, gesturing at his hair, his beard. “Why do I look like I’ve been shipwrecked?”
Eleanor frowned. “Are you kidding?”
Keith shook his head to show that he wasn’t.
“You told me you were growing it out,” Eleanor said. “You said you wanted to look like Benicio del Toro in The Wolfman.”
“Hilarious,” Keith said. But as he looked down at Eleanor and stared into her sleep-puffy eyes, he thought he did remember. They had watched that movie, which wasn’t great, and Eleanor had said at least del Toro looked good in it. Keith said oh really, then maybe he should grow some extra fur. Go full Benicio was how he’d put it. Yes, he remembered now.
“Are you okay?” Eleanor was looking at him with mild concern.
Keith heard a distant sound, a pained yowl that caused him to feel an unexpected pang of sadness.
Eleanor stood up and took his hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Keith put on a smile. “I’m fine. I just . . . had a strange feeling. But it’s gone now.”
“Are you sure?” Eleanor said. “For a moment you looked like you’d seen a ghost.” She bit her lip.
“I’m fine, really,” Keith said. He raised his hand and touched her face. Her cheek was as cold as her hand. And . . . damp? He pulled his hand away, rubbed his fingers together, but they were dry.
Eleanor was looking at him strangely. “I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you put the coffee on?”
“Sure,” Keith said.
He went downstairs to the kitchen. He took out the bag of coffee grounds and set it on the counter. While he was running water to fill the carafe, he stopped and listened to it pouring down the drain. He became entranced by the sound it made, the playful gurgling that was almost like laugher. Then, from behind him, the grind and grumble of the refrigerator’s icemaker snapped him out of his reverie. He finished filling the reservoir and turned on the coffeemaker.
Keith leaned against the counter, listening to the coffee perk. As he stood there, a dark feeling descended upon him like the talons of a large bird digging into his shoulders.
Someone was watching him.
He could feel it. The unmistakable sensation of eyes burning into the back of his skull. He was afraid to turn around, although he couldn’t explain why. He was convinced there was a face on the other side of the window above the sink. A terrible face that he didn’t want to see.
Keith pushed away from the counter and strode swiftly out of the kitchen and into the dining room. His eyes were closed in order to resist the temptation to look back over his shoulder. He didn’t want to see. The moment he was in the other room, the feeling of being watched vanished. He opened his eyes.
The kids were sitting at the dining room table.
“What are you guys doing down here?” Keith said.
Calvin and Sabrina exchanged a look.
“This is where we always sit for breakfast,” Calvin said.
“I meant, how did you get down here so fast? I thought you were upstairs fighting over the shower.”
“We already showered,” Sabrina said.
Keith could see that. Their hair was still wet. Which would have made sense except it was really wet. As in dripping. Like they hadn’t dried it at all.
As he looked at them more closely, he realized their clothes were wet, too. As if they’d worn them in the shower. He became aware of a low tip-tapping sound, and realized it was water dripping off their sodden clothes.
“You’re wet,” Keith said stupidly. “Why are you both wet?”
The kids sat with their heads hanging down, like they were being scolded. Their shoulders began to tremble, then to shiver uncontrollably. It was no wonder, Keith thought. They must have been freezing.
“You let it in,” Calvin said. His voice was trembling as badly as his body, causing his words to come out warped and distorted. “Why did you let it in?”
“We were dead,” Sabrina said. Her voice was as twisted as her brother’s. “Dead and happy. Happy and dead.”
They raised their heads.
Keith’s breath caught in his throat.
Their faces were melting.
And darkening. Like they were made of hot black wax.
The kids began to lose form. Their bodies slumped in their seats like soft clay collapsing on a spinning pottery wheel. Calvin slapped a hand on the table as black and shapeless as a glob of tar. His accusing finger curled and twisted like a wriggling worm.
“Why did you let it in?” he demanded.
Sabrina fell off her seat and began to flop on the floor like a landed fish.
“Why, Daddy, why?”
Keith shook his head in silent negation as he backed away into the kitchen. This couldn’t be real. Something had to be wrong with him. He was sick, hallucinating. He must have a brain tumour or something.
He was so focussed on the dark things that used to be his kids that he didn’t see Eleanor until he stumbled into her. He turned instinctively, his eyes widening at what he was afraid he would see. But she looked normal. Her face was still her face. Only it was wet. Dripping like she’d just come out of the shower. Keith began to feel the dread rising in him again.
“Please,” he said in a small, desperate voice. “Please, don’t.”
“It’s okay,” Eleanor said. She put her hand on his arm. Her touch was cold, and when she pulled it away, it left a wet mark on his skin. She frowned. “It’s starting again. Faster this time.”
“I don’t understand,” Keith said. He felt completely lost. And he had a feeling this had happened before.
Eleanor reached out and touched his beard, then twined her fingers through his long hair. “You’ve stayed with us for so long. But you can’t stay forever. You have to leave.”
Keith closed his eyes, luxuriating in her touch even though it was cold and wet.
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Want doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Eleanor said. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re dead, Keith. Don’t you remember? You can if you try. If you really want to.”
“You said want doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
Eleanor smiled at him, then the smile fell and she became solemn, sad.
“There was an accident. You were working late, so I picked the kids up from school. We were on our way home and the roads were icy. I lost control of the car and drove off a bridge. We survived the impact, but the car landed in the river. We drowned before anyone could help us.”
Keith nodded his head slowly. Even though he didn’t see the accident, he could now remember the police officer telling him about it. The words coming out of his mouth had sounded normal at first, then his voice got lower and distorted, like a radio signal becoming fainter with distance. This, Keith recalled, was when he fainted and collapsed to the floor.
“How did you . . . come back?”
“You talked to a psychic,” Eleanor said. “A spiritual medium. Do you remember?”
Keith tried, he really did. He strained his mind and came up with a random memory, one that didn’t seem to make any sense. “Followed by a new episode of ‘Large,’” he said.
Eleanor smiled. “That was the joke we used to make. Whenever we saw commercials for that TV show. The psychic told you about us. That we had died before our intended time and this ended up creating a schism. A divide between the world of the living and the realm of the dead.” She took his hand. “You brought us back. Here to our house. We were so happy to see you, to know we could still be together. But then . . . ”
Keith didn’t need her to finish. He remembered now.
He had tried to live both lives—the one he had in the living world, and the one here with his family. But every time he left the house—for work, for groceries, even to get the mail—it was like a piece of them went away, too. Eleanor. Calvin. Sabrina. They began to fade like a photograph left out in the sun.
That was when he stopped leaving the house. He wanted to hold onto his family for as long as he could. And for a while they let him. They even tried to help by making him forget what happened to them. They tried to make everything seem normal. Only it wasn’t.
Eleanor looked at him deeply. “We aren’t meant to be here, Keith.”
“What can I do?” he asked desperately.
“You have to leave the house,” Eleanor replied. “You have to leave us.”
After a long, drawn-out moment, Keith reluctantly let go of her hand. He started down the hallway, looking back over his shoulder. Eleanor was watching him. On the floor near her feet, something black and amorphous shifted into view. It might have been Calvin or Sabrina. He couldn’t tell anymore.
Keith reached the front door and opened it. The day outside was bright and sunny and completely normal. He looked back again and said, “I love you.”
Eleanor opened her mouth and it kept opening, wider and wider as her skin began to darken. A deep yowling sound came ripping out of her throat.
Keith crossed the threshold.
Keith woke up and didn’t know anything.
He slipped out of bed and headed toward the bathroom, more out of habit than an actual urge to pee. In fact, he didn’t feel the need to urinate at all, so he changed course and went downstairs.
In the kitchen he took out the bag of coffee grounds and ran the water to fill the coffeemaker’s carafe. He stood for a moment, head lowered, watching the steady flow of water going down the drain. It glugged and gurgled with a bright, cheerful sound.
There was a loud clapping sound behind him. Keith gasped and dropped the carafe. It exploded on the floor. He looked down at the spray of broken glass, then over at the refrigerator. The icemaker clicked and grumbled.
He turned back around and raised his eyes to the window over the sink, doing it slowly, very slowly, a feeling of dread rising inside him like freezing cold water.
There was nothing in the window. Nothing at all. Darkness pressed against the glass.
Keith looked instinctively at his wrist, then remembered he hadn’t worn a watch in years. He glanced around the kitchen, even though he knew there was no clock on any of the walls. The readout on the stove was as dark as the view out the window. Same went for the microwave.
He went over to the back door, put his hand on the knob. It was cold. He turned it and pulled the door open.
The back yard was draped in darkness. The patio furniture and the tool shed were darker shadows, vague shapes cut out of construction paper. The sky was cloudless, starless, depthless. Keith closed the door.
Why was it dark? He had just woken up. It didn’t feel like nighttime.
It didn’t feel like anything, now that he thought about it. And where was everyone?
He had a sudden thought. Was it a memory? Or was it caused by fear brought on by anxiety? He didn’t know where it came from, but it came through loud and clear.
Someone died.
Was it him? Was it Eleanor? Calvin? Sabrina?
The thought slipped away from him, taunting and teasing. Lost in the fog that clouded his mind.
“I’m not dead,” he told himself.
The sink chuckled.
Keith shot a look in its direction, frowning. He crouched down and picked up a piece of glass from the broken carafe. He hesitated a moment, then slashed himself across the palm of his hand. Blood seeped out of the wound and dripped onto the floor. The sound it made, a low tip-tapping as it struck the tile, brought on another surge of unexplained dread.
Can ghosts bleed? he wondered.
The refrigerator applauded.
Keith dropped the bloody fang of glass in the sink and went down the hallway to the front door. He steeled himself, then opened it.
The day outside was bright and sunny and completely normal. The exact opposite of what he’d seen out the back door. He looked down at the wooden doorsill. Blood from his wounded hand dripped onto it in bright red droplets.
He heard laughter behind him. It grew louder and louder as if the source was coming up closer and closer.
Keith stepped across the threshold to thunderous applause.
Something yowled in the distance.
