Little Deaths

by John F. D. Taff

  “I think this is it,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.

  She heard him, blew a little puff of disbelieving breath from her pursed lips.

  “It needs a lot of repairs,” she warned.

  “I can see that.”

  “It’s sat vacant for more than two years.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s in a floodplain.”

  He shrugged.

  She gave him a long, measuring look, holding the red pen poised to X through the sheet.

  “Do you even want to look inside?”

  * * *

  Soon, he was signing papers, passing checks, getting keys. A succession of white vans pulled in and out of the gravel driveway, disgorging teams of contractors—carpenters, electricians, plumbers—all of whom noted the house’s imperfections, its failings and put various prices on fixing them.

  The house seemed to have more than its fair share of oddities, something that Martin attributed to its scholarly—and by all accounts eccentric—former owner. A heavy iron door opened onto a space barely big enough to squeeze into, not even large enough to be considered a closet. At the rear of this antechamber, there was another identical iron door, set into an exterior wall, sealed shut, with no corresponding opening on the outside of the house.

  A second electrical box in the attic that seemed to power nothing. A set of switches installed next to it were for motion-control floodlights set on the roof of the house, facing the river.

  The strangest thing, though, was the lack of any porch, veranda, or patio on the back of the house, the side that faced the river and offered what was arguably the best view. The wraparound porch stopped on the left and right sides of the house without actually wrapping around the back.

  Much to his confusion and initial dismay, there was not one window that opened onto the backyard, either.

  He wondered why the good professor wouldn’t have wanted to unwind after a hard day of teaching theoretical physics on a deck overlooking such an idyllic scene.

  * * *

  When Martin had settled into the house, he began to chip away at smaller projects, concentrating first on his bedroom. On the day the siding contractors began replacing the old clapboards, he decided to repair the drywall there.

  The largest hole in this room was at the foot of the bed, halfway up the southern wall that faced the river. Since Martin had every intention of putting windows here, there was no reason to fill it. As he moved away, though, he saw a small glint of light within the hole.

  He stepped back, bent to look, expecting that it went all the way through to the outside. It was roughly the size of a football, its edges ragged, as if something had broken through. The paper backing along its borders was splayed out, as if whatever it was had punched into the room from outside.

  He slowly put his hand to the hole, slipped a finger inside, expecting cobwebs or spiders or any of a number of unpleasant things. Instead, what his finger touched, cool and smooth, was unexpected enough to cause him to jerk it back.

  The light again caught something, something just behind the drywall.

  Martin smiled, brought his hand to the left edge of the hole and ripped a chunk of drywall out, then a larger chunk. He exposed an area roughly four times larger than the original hole, enough to see what lay beyond.

  Outside, Martin found the foreman, a bird-faced man whose white overalls draped his lean form like a bed sheet held up by a pole. He saw Martin coming, and his face fell just a bit.

  Taking a deep breath, Martin smiled. “I found a window… in the back… inside the bedroom. Can we take a look?”

  At the back of the house, two men were busy removing old siding. Martin indicated where the window should be, and the foreman had the men peel back the clapboard.

  Martin watched as the workers stripped the siding, watched as the morning sun caught the glint of glass.

  The foreman removed his cap, scratched his bald head. “Well, I’ll be,” he mused. “Why you’d board over a window, especially one that looks out over the river, is beyond me.”

  Martin laughed, started back in, when something caught his eye.

  The workmen had exposed the entire window now, revealing a hole in the glass about the size of a softball, spiky cracks radiating from it.

  He noticed the shards of glass around the hole were pushed inward, as if something outside had broken it.

  The hole lined up perfectly with the hole he had found in the bedroom drywall.

  * * *

  That evening, Martin carried a book and a mug of tea into his bedroom.

  Feeling all was right with the world, Martin turned down the comforter atop the bed, peeled back the sheet, fluffed a pillow. Standing first on his right foot, then on his left, he peeled his socks off, tossed them into a laundry basket sitting beneath the single item that had made the day complete for him.

  A window.

  A large, reglazed window that looked out across the back of his property, to the river, to the fields that lay beyond the opposite bank.

  The night was cool and breezy, with the tang of growing plants, of mowed grass, of flowers and pollen and damp earth. Smiling again, he raised the sash, opening the window fully.

  The window installer had replaced the broken glass, but there was no screen yet. He’d taken its dimensions and promised Martin a new screen in three or four days. But tonight, pleased with his new window and the perfect evening, Martin decided to sleep with the window open. He’d take his chances with any bugs that might wander in during the night.

  Taking one last look outside, he crawled into bed, read a few pages of his book before the day caught up with him. When his eyelids began to feel heavy, he replaced his bookmark, set the book on the nightstand, and turned out the light.

  * * *

  At around 2 a.m., things began to happen… things Martin slept through.

  The window, whose tracks were antique and well worn, began to slip in its casement, sliding down inch by inch until it was almost closed.

  Outside, there was movement, a shifting, lurching darkness that seemed somehow not part of the landscape the window opened onto, but superimposed over it.

  It flitted in the distance, an eldritch shade that seemed to have no shape or substance, no color or depth. It flowed over the fields across the river, fell into its furrows, skidded atop its ploughed ridges.

  It crept, a dark, suffuse mist, crept until it piled atop the bank of the river, seemed to collect itself, coalesce until it possessed not just color and depth, but mass… and form.

  Pulling into itself, like a cat preparing to lunge, it shimmered in dire anticipation, shuddered like an animal.

  At that moment, the window slipped the final inch or so in its casement, closed with a click.

  Upstairs, in the attic, there was a brief electrical snap, the hum of a circuit being closed, and the floodlights mounted on the roof exploded into light.

  To a person standing in Martin’s backyard, the halogens lit a perfectly ordinary scene, a backyard at night, trees limned in white, flecked with shadow. Farther, their light fell diffuse and patinate on the riverbanks, an iridescent mist on the fields.

  To a person standing in Martin’s bedroom, though, to a person looking through his new window, the lights fell on a far different scene.

  The scene that Martin’s window showed was primal and alien, elsewhere… otherwhere. Instead of his backyard, there was a dense and impenetrable wall of green foliage, lush as a jungle, damp and rank as a rainforest. Its leaves, of unfamiliar shape and hue, brushed against each other in a wind that smelled vaguely of nutmeg and eucalyptus, whispered warnings in a language that was not of this earth.

  Limned in the glow of the floodlights, was a shape, bestial and menacing, vibrating with some suppressed emotion that reeked of anger, of bile, of thwarted intent.

  For a moment. And then it flowed back, back through the alien foliage and the alien shadows, back to wherever it had stepped from.

&nbs
p; The halogens remained on, though, splashing the scene with crisp, unreal light, forcing the thing, the shape, the shadow to remain hidden within the denser black of its realm, out of the glare of the lights.

  But eyes, carious and yellow, peered from the leaves, throbbed in time with the unseen thing’s breathing.

  The floodlights remained on until dawn.

  For a few hours more, Martin slumbered, the window now showing only his backyard, the river, the fields.

  * * *

  In the morning, Martin lay for a few seconds feeling the deliciously high thread count of his sheets, the weight of his comforter, the warmth of the sun shafting in through the window.

  He listened for the sound of birds, the rush of the river, the breeze blowing through the open window.

  No sound reached his ears; no air stirred the room.

  The window was closed, not open, as he’d left it last night.

  Martin threw the covers back, approached the window. He looked through the clean sheet of glass before tentatively raising it, as if it might be jammed or stuck.

  The window slid smoothly, and he threw it all the way open. When he did, the breeze slipped in like a cat that had been waiting patiently outside. He caught the scent of honeysuckle, the rich miasma of the river.

  As he stood there letting the breeze curl around him, he looked at the casement. The channel the window fit into was old and worn. Martin’s eye was caught by a small brass plate, no more than an inch square, embedded into the bottom of the windowsill. He looked to the left and saw another. From each, a thin wire, painted over, ran to the middle of the sill, disappeared into a small hole that had been drilled there.

  Wondering what purpose these two contacts might have, he looked up at the bottom of the window frame, pushed the casement up as far as it would go. Sure enough, there were two of these small brass plates embedded there, positioned to contact the two placed in the sill when the window was closed.

  Yet another eccentricity from the good professor, he supposed. He wondered what this one did, though as far as he could tell, none of the other little oddities served any conceivable function.

  He pulled the window down, closed it, waited for something… a sound, a movement of some kind.

  Shrugging, he opened the window, went into the bathroom to start the day’s rituals, and promptly, entirely put it out of his mind.

  * * *

  The next day, Martin was busy inside the house as the contractors finished the new siding. Afterward, he was exhausted. The sun had only just set when he decided he didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to do anything but go to bed.

  A quick, very hot shower later, he pulled back the bedcovers. His freshly scrubbed, still damp skin felt a wisp of air curl from the open window, still screenless. Tonight he would need that air, so he didn’t want the window closing in the middle of the night.

  Looking around, he saw the supplies he’d left out from the day’s work, arranged neatly on a small drop cloth in the corner. A used paint paddle lay across a can of mud. He took the stick of wood, about a foot in length, and propped the window open with it.

  Pleased, he almost literally fell in bed, pulled the thin sheet over him, turned off the light.

  And slept… for a while.

  * * *

  A noise awakened him, a noise so unfamiliar, so outside his experience, that he lay there, eyes open, not yet afraid.

  It sounded, all at once, mechanical and animal, metallic and organic. It came through the window, outside, nearby, vibrating the glass. But it also seemed distant, not just physically, but in a sense that it seemed to be slightly out of synch with reality. As if it was vibrating through some other dimension to reach his ears.

  He lay there motionless, listening to this phantom sound, trying to place it, when it came to him.

  It was the roar of some creature.

  Cautiously, as if it might attract unwanted attention, he crept to the window, crouched to look outside.

  The window was propped open at least a foot and a half by the paint stirrer. Martin looked through this gap, saw his backyard. He saw the sparse trees, the featureless lawn that fell away to the river just a few feet below.

  Nothing more.

  The sound continued, grated at his nerves. It definitely seemed to be coming from somewhere outside the window, but Martin could not tell from where.

  And it seemed to be getting closer.

  Again, not just in feet and inches, but in dimensions, as if it were dragging itself through realities to get at him. There was a wrongness to it, a sense of violation that tinged the air, as if this sound was not meant to be heard in this place.

  It’s probably a raccoon, he laughed. A deer in rut or something completely ridiculous.

  That roar was so angry, though, so full of rage, so completely alien, that Martin decided to close the window for the evening… just in case.

  Standing, he lifted the window slightly, unwedged the paint stirrer.

  As he did, he looked out again, this time, though, through the glass.

  It should have been his backyard at night, the sparse trees, the featureless lawn that fell away to the river.

  But it wasn’t.

  The first thing he noticed, through the glass, was the moon… a moon. It was halfway up the deep indigo of the sky and large, larger than he’d ever seen. Not the mottled grey he was accustomed to, but a pale, purplish silver, iridescent, like oil on water.

  Its violet light fell on a jungle so lush, so aggressively verdant, that it seemed to muscle up against the house. The moon’s nacreous light fell on the edges of all kinds of dark leaves, oblong, serrated, thin like the blades of knives, broad and flat and as big as elephant ears.

  These dark, silver-tipped leaves smelled of tropical flowers, of citrus and honey. They stirred in a cool, lushly humid breeze redolent of nutmeg, of coriander, of something sharp and medicinal.

  Martin didn’t—as characters do in a movie—rub his eyes or blink comically. Instead, he frowned at this, then slowly, slowly lowered his head.

  He lowered his head until he looked under the sash of the window, through the open area between it and the windowsill.

  Sparse trees, the featureless lawn that fell away to the river just a few feet below.

  No lush rainforest whose trees whispered one to another in a secret, unearthly tongue.

  Swallowing, he raised his head back to the window, to peer through the glass.

  And started, lurched backward.

  For there, clearly superimposed over the shadowed, swaying jungle, was a dark, amorphous form that blotted out the trees behind it. Its edges were indistinct, blurred.

  Its eyes, for there were eyes within its darkness, were a jaundiced yellow, so malevolent that they seemed to drip venom.

  Suddenly, the shape moved, detached itself from the greater blackness and heaved itself toward the house.

  As it did so, that roar, so oddly natural and artificial at the same time, reverberated through the glass, entered Martin’s bedroom like a physical presence. It hurt his eardrums, hurt his mind, the more so because it seemed horribly out of place, not designed to vibrate this air, not meant to be detected and processed by his senses.

  Shivering involuntarily, Martin pushed from the window, fell back against the foot of his bed.

  The window, no longer propped open by the paint stirrer, slid closed in its tracks.

  As it shut, there was an audible click, a buzz of electricity somewhere in the house.

  The floodlights mounted on the roof facing the river snapped on.

  Where the pale light of that huge moon had been soft and lyrical, the halogens were harsh, clinical. The wall of the dark jungle seemed to lean away from their light, pull its branches back as if attempting to shield itself.

  There, cast in stark relief by the halogens, was something so alien, so outside of human experience, that Martin’s brain simply could not take it in, could not process it.

  It pulsated with
some dark energy that crackled from it like lightning. A maw, huge, cavernous, and yet another, different shade of black, opened within the twisting, billowing form, opened and opened and opened.

  Its eyes boiled like lava, fixed on Martin.

  Martin knew, knew in an instant that the lights—those lights, mounted on the roof—were meant to keep it at bay, keep it from the window.

  It was too late for the lights to do any good now.

  The thing was too close.

  The creature roared again, this time in mingled rage and pain, and it leapt, hurled itself against the house.

  Martin fell to the floor, scrabbled to the bedroom door.

  His hand reached for the doorknob, and as it closed on it, as he pulled himself up from the floor, there was a violent concussion. The window and part of the wall it was on exploded, sending a blast of broken glass, splintered lathing, and a cloud of powdered plaster into the room.

  And it… the thing… the creature.

  Martin was shoved against the wall from the force of the explosion, and he felt more than saw the thing billow into his room, like ink blooming in water. Wreckage rained down upon it, but didn’t seem to touch it. Nor was the debris absorbed by the creature’s dark, formless mass.

  Rather, shards of glass, knife-sharp splinters of lathing passed through its body, slowing somewhat, as if they were falling through a thick gel.

  The thing pulled itself in through the hole where the window once was, gathered, expanded.

  Part of it, little more than a wisp, touched Martin’s outstretched bare foot. Where it contacted Martin’s flesh, a mouth opened on the tendril, as if by reflex, opened as wide as the maw of a shark. And though Martin could see no teeth within that fathomless opening, he was sure of its purpose.

  He tried to jerk his foot back.

  Too late.