He walked a lap around the main level, halting in the hallway that connected the kitchen to the front door entry. Normally on the hallway’s walls hung a handful of family portraits, a mixture of memories of both their time before kids and with kids. Instead, the pictures lay on the floor, frames splintered apart, glass shattered in multiple directions.
A wreath hung on the entryway closet door, and in it sat Snowball, his felt arms hugging the wreath’s body, legs dangling over the edge as if sitting on a swing. And, of course, his crooked stare looking toward the hallway.
Brandon studied the elf. Didn’t his eyes used to look the other direction? he wondered, but he couldn’t say for sure.
He took careful steps down the hallway, a keen eye on the floor to not step on any shards of glass. All of the pictures had somehow landed face down, the black backside of the frames the only thing visible. Brandon flipped over one frame and an instant chill blazed down his back. The glass had shattered in long cracks that looked more like claw marks all running in the same direction, meeting in a small circle—like a bullet hole—over Brandon’s face.
It’s just a coincidence, he told himself. There have to be a billion possible ways for the glass to crack, and this just happened to be the one combination for this picture.
The photo was of him and Erin smiling with the Statue of Liberty standing tall in the background, a shot from one of their first trips together as a couple, a year before they got engaged.
Brandon flipped another frame and found the same thing, only this one had a crack running to Erin’s face, a chunk of glass missing right where her grin was. He reluctantly flipped over the rest of the photos, finding them all to have a similar pattern of various cracks leading to a family member’s face. The ones with the kids disturbed him even more, their innocent smiles tainted by the sinister, seemingly intentional, rifts in the glass.
“Erin!” he called up the stairs. “Can you come down here?”
A moment of silence passed before the sound of bedsprings creaked, her feet hitting the floor with a heavy thump and continuing as she stumbled toward the stairs.
“What’s wrong?” she called from the top in a loud whisper to not wake the kids.
“I’m not sure—all of our pictures are broken on the floor.”
Brandon stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up as his wife slid into a robe.
“What do you mean?” she asked, descending the steps. He guided her to the hallway where the remains lay scattered across the hardwood floor. “What the hell is this?”
“I don’t know. I came down and found it all like this.”
“Was there an earthquake last night that we didn’t feel?”
“I don’t think so. There’d be more things knocked off the walls and shelves.”
“Are the other pictures still on the wall?”
The other pictures she referred to were the ones hanging in the living room. Brandon hadn’t checked, and at this point, was afraid to go look. He shrugged his shoulders, prompting Erin to pivot and go check for herself.
“These ones are fine,” she called out, Brandon sighing relief, not that it helped explain what had happened in the hallway. Erin returned with her arms crossed, eyes studying the mess on the floor. “Do you think it was Nemo?”
“How could Nemo have done this?”
Nemo slept on the main level and was currently the only witness to what had occurred last night. He snored on his bed tucked in the corner of the kitchen, next to the doggy door that led outside.
“He must have been chased a spider or something right up the wall and knocked the pictures off. How else do you explain it?”
“I mean, that’s possible, but that sounds more like something a cat would do. I don’t think dogs chase bugs, at least not to the point of trying to run up the wall. I’d think we would have heard all of that noise, too.”
“Not necessarily. When the heater kicks on, it’s almost impossible to hear what’s happening down here.”
Brandon stroked his face as he considered this. It was by no means a satisfactory explanation, but it was an explanation nonetheless.
“I’m late and need to go,” Brandon said, checking the time on his phone.
“Yes, go,” Erin said, waving him away with her hands. “I’ll clean this up and we’ll plan to get some new frames this weekend. Can you look at some of those in-home security cameras we’ve been talking about? I’ve been wanting some for months now. If we had them, we’d know exactly what happened last night.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll see what I can find.”
He kissed his wife before rushing out of the house, Snowball the Elf the furthest thing from his distracted mind.
4
December 10
Monday had passed without further thought on the fallen pictures. Returning to the routine grind of the work week had a way of clearing the mind of anything significant, the drag and lull making the upcoming week seem like a never-ending marathon to the finish line of Friday evening.
It wasn’t until Brandon returned home for the night that he remembered what had happened in the morning, but the surprise had long since faded. Erin’s theory now made sense, having stewed in his subconscious all day. Nothing else had been knocked off the walls in the house, and Nemo wasn’t the biggest of dogs, so perhaps he did become a bit skittish at the sight of a bug.
Even being home for the evening brought its own comforting routines. Brandon prepared dinner so the family could eat as soon as Erin and the kids arrived home at six, followed by bath time for the kids before bedtime. They then enjoyed a couple hours together watching TV and unwinding from the day, sipping tea or eggnog until Erin went up for bed at 10:30.
“Don’t forget to move Snowball,” she said before ascending the steps. “The kids loved him in the wreath today.”
Brag about it, why don’t ya?
Before heading up for bed, he grabbed the elf and moved it to their kitchen table, propping it up in a sitting position against the napkin holder. Brandon scanned the area for a prop and found a small children’s book, the kind made of cardboard and usually handed out as part of a fast food restaurant’s kid’s meal. He swiped the book off the floor, lost and forgotten under the lounge chair in the family room. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star was the book, a solid, dark blue cover with a grinning yellow star and owl floating in the sky. He opened the book and placed it in the elf’s lap, adjusting his bulky cotton arms to give the appearance of reading.
“Enjoy story time, you little creep,” Brandon said with a chuckle. The elf gazed sideways toward the wall, looking nowhere near the book in its lap. Brandon turned off the lights and headed upstairs for bed.
* * *
Brandon jumped out of bed as soon as his alarm sounded. The events of the prior morning had made him late, and he vowed to not let it happen again. Once he was ready for the day, he kissed Erin and poked his head into the kids’ room before running downstairs.
There were no broken pictures on the floor, just a quiet house as normal. Snowball had tipped forward, face first, into the book, so Brandon sat him back up before leaving. The garage door hummed as it slid open, revealing a gray, dismal sky. Cold air whooshed inside, making Brandon shiver as he approached his car. The fresh smell of an upcoming snowfall filled his nose, and he prayed it would hold off so he could avoid shoveling the driveway when he returned home.
He dropped into the driver’s seat, tossing his backpack to the passenger side, and grabbing the car keys out of his pocket to turn on the ignition.
Clickclickclickclickclick.
The lights on the dashboard flashed, his car’s way of telling him something was wrong, but unable to specify what exactly. He tried again.
Clickclickclickclickclick.
“Goddammit!” he shouted, punching the steering wheel and stepping out of the car. His first thought was a dead battery.
He reached back in and pulled the lever to unlock the car’s hood, shuffling around and
throwing it open as rage boiled within.
I actually got out of bed with my alarm, and now this shit happens?!
Brandon rarely knew what he was looking for under the hood of a car, only hoping to identify something that appeared out of the ordinary.
Everything seemed perfectly fine.
The ground felt slick beneath his sneakers, and Brandon looked down to find a puddle of liquid oozing out from underneath the car. “What the fuck?” he whispered, shuffling his feet to dry ground, a trail of clear, shiny liquid following his steps. He squatted and dipped his pinky finger into the liquid for closer examination.
He studied his fingertip, the liquid’s color lighter than oil, and somehow slicker. He whipped out his cell phone, turned on its flashlight, and dropped to all fours, craning his neck for a view underneath the vehicle.
He saw drips from three different areas, the liquids falling from frayed cables. The droplets gathered in the middle of the car before flowing like a river to the front where he had stepped in the puddle.
“Someone did this,” he said, jumping to his feet, fear swallowing his rational senses as he spun around, frantically searching for someone hiding in the garage. “Show yourself!” he barked, his voice echoing.
The garage didn’t have much space beyond the two cars it housed, but that didn’t matter to Brandon. He walked laps around it, checking the corners and even the rafters that served as overhead storage space. Why would someone do this? His heart thwacked his ribcage, adrenaline pulsing in his fingertips as he anticipated someone jumping out and attacking him. But there was physically nowhere for someone to hide unless they were the size of a child. He dropped to the ground again, this time to check underneath Erin’s SUV, finding the ground below her car dry as a desert in the middle of July.
He rushed inside the house, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the walls.
“Erin!” he cried out. “We have a problem.”
Again, he thought, briefly remembering the fallen picture frames. No movement came from the bedroom upstairs, so Brandon ran up the steps to find Erin undisturbed, an arm slung over her eyes to block the daylight.
“Erin!”
She moaned before rolling to her side, slow blinking as she woke.
“Erin!” He nudged her arm, startling her into consciousness. “Someone cut the lines under my car. There’s fluid all over the garage and the car won’t start.”
She sat up, too slow for Brandon’s urgency, and stretched her neck.
“What do you mean someone ‘cut the lines’?”
“I looked, and they’re cut. Someone did this.”
Erin rolled out of bed, still not as distraught as her husband. “I highly doubt someone broke into our garage, cut your lines, and left.”
“I know what I saw. I need to take your car to go get my stuff at the office so I can work from home.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation. Relax.”
Brandon’s frustration reached a tipping point and he had to make a conscious effort to not unleash it on Erin. He checked the time and saw he was now running fifteen minutes late, again, and this time with no vehicle to get to work.
“Just take my car, get your things, and I’ll call a mechanic to come out and take a look.” She spoke calmly as she embraced Brandon. Normally he was the one calming her down, but the roles had reversed on this flustering morning. “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Just breathe and it will all be fine.”
Brandon took a deep breath, feeling his nerves physically settle down. “Thank you.” He gave her a kiss before leaving, a distant and subtle sensation growing within that suggested some horrible entity was personally coming for him. Something felt off, and not quite so coincidental about the events of the last two mornings.
5
December 11
Brandon woke on Wednesday, reluctant to get out of bed. He made no promises of arriving early to work, and still had his computer should he need to stay home again.
A mechanic had come over yesterday afternoon to repair the damaged lines, believing it may have been a raccoon by the looks of the chew marks. “You’ve a gap underneath your backdoor of an inch and a half,” the mechanic had explained as he pointed to the door in the garage that connected to the backyard. “That’s all a small ‘coon needs to squeeze into a place. I’ve seen this plenty of times before; I’d suggest closing up that gap with a rubber strip. Won’t keep out smaller creatures like mice, but they don’t do damage like this.”
Brandon accepted the blame. The gap was one of the tasks on the ever-growing list of house chores that needed to be done since they moved in five years ago. A list that grew every week, but was prioritized on whatever was wreaking havoc at the moment. A rubber strip for the door now became the top priority after spending $700 on repairs to fix three destroyed lines.
He felt sick swiping his credit card. An unexpected expense of this amount with two weeks until Christmas presented a new stress they didn’t need. They hadn’t even started shopping for gifts. Brandon had a Christmas bonus arriving soon, but it would now all go toward paying off this new debt.
A fucking raccoon? he thought after the mechanic left, sulking in his pity. These joyous memories ran through his mind briefly when he woke up on Wednesday, curious as to what disaster awaited him today. The holiday season had stressed him out ever since Riley was born. On top of the horrendous Christmas music, he had to juggle shopping, family, in-laws, holiday parties he had no interest in, and wrapping those purchased gifts, usually the night of December 23rd. They seemed to have six different places to visit between Christmas Eve and Christmas day, and he longed for the day they’d get to be the ones staying at home while others visited them.
Every day that inched closer to Christmas brought another steady drop of stress for Brandon, dripping gradually into his system as if he were hooked to an IV full of red and green chaos. The car troubles rushed this process, making him long for December 26th sooner than normal.
He pushed these thoughts aside and got ready for the day ahead without a shred of enthusiasm. Wednesday was the halfway point in the work week, and getting over the hump always seemed the longest of days. He forgot to move the elf last night, and hoped Erin had done so, rushing down the stairs to see.
Brandon stopped when he entered the family room to the sight of what appeared to be fake snow covering the entirety of the room.
“What the fuck?”
It was a whiteout, the floor mostly invisible, smothered by pure, white cotton. The couch and two armchairs were also concealed beneath the blanket of white. Nemo lay in his bed in the corner of the kitchen, watching Brandon with guilty, droopy eyes. The thick cotton in the family room dissipated as it trailed off into the kitchen, toward Nemo’s bed where a dozen stuffed animal carcasses lay spread out in a semicircle around the dog.
“Nemo, are you shitting me?” Brandon shouted. “Since when?”
They had Nemo for a little over three years and he had never shown an interest in the kids’ toys scattered throughout the house. He may have sniffed them on occasion, but never took one for his own pleasure.
Nemo whined, curling his head into his body as he tried to shy away from the situation.
Brandon pivoted to inspect the family room. “How did you even do this much? The couches and chairs, really?”
He counted twelve different stuffed animals that had been gutted, their bodies nothing but shreds of felt and colored cotton. A pair of plastic eyes belonging to a stuffed monkey stared out from the rubble, watching Brandon as his anger levels elevated once again.
“Three fucking mornings in a row with some bullshit. Unbelievable!”
Erin’s feet banged from above, her footsteps creaking as she came down the stairs. “Brandon, what’s going on?” She froze when she turned into the family room, eyes bulging at the sight.
“Oh, Nemo decided today would be a good day to destroy every stuffed animal in the house.” His words dripped with disgust. “I don
’t even know how to go about cleaning this.”
Erin dropped her hands to her hips as she examined the situation. “I think we’ll want to sweep first to get the big chunks out of the way, then vacuum whatever sticks to the ground.”
“And the couch. And the chairs.” Brandon shook his head, arms crossed, his eyelids starting to twitch. “We’re gonna find this shit coming out of the cracks of our furniture for months.”
“Just go to work and I’ll take care of this.”
“Nope. I’m gonna work from home. Again. At this point, I’m terrified to leave the house. Something seems to go wrong the second I wake up, so I’m gonna stay here. I’m sure if I leave, my windshield will catch a rock, or maybe I’ll get a flat tire.”
“Babe, you’re being dramatic. It hasn’t been that bad. Your car is fixed, the mess from the broken pictures is cleaned up, and this is the first time Nemo has done something like this. I’ve heard horror stories from friends who have dogs that do this every week.”
“I know nothing has been a huge deal, but it’s a shitty way to start every single day. Made me late Monday, yesterday was a shit show, and now here we are today. If I go in I’ll be late.” He checked the time. “I’ll still probably be late even working from home. I can’t just let you clean all this by yourself.”
“Let’s get started then,” Erin said, crossing through the stuffed animal guts like an Eskimo trekking through a blizzard. “We have two brooms, it’s really just the family room with a little bit in the kitchen.”
She pulled open the garage door and disappeared into its darkness to retrieve the brooms.
For that brief moment as he stood alone in the family room, the house silent, the sensation of an invisible presence in the room washed over him. A shiver ran from his neck down his back, and the temperature seemed to drop in the room as if it was actual snow covering the floor instead of cotton. His gaze locked on the pair of plastic eyes, and he wondered if they once had a soul behind them. They didn’t have the neutral appearance of a toy, and Brandon believed he saw life swimming behind its mindless stare.
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