At The Window (Spooky Story)

Hello again, Readers, if you're out there. If you're not, well then, that's about the same amount of people that got a chance to read this short story when I sent it to an online magazine, but maybe someone, someday will find this blog and think it's a magnificent work of art. But, the most important step to greatness is the first one, and the only way this story will be found on this blog is if I post it here. Enjoy my attempt at a spooky story.

At the Window

Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . . Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . . Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . .

     Andrew Dellard moved hazily across his bedroom to the window. He peered out into the dimly lit and foggy street before realizing that he had abandoned his glasses on the bedside table. He glided over to the queen-size bed, his cotton slippers sliding silently across the wooden floor, and retrieved his bifocals. Adjusting them onto his liver-spotted hook of a nose, Andrew snatched the digital TIMEX on the table and brought it up

to his face. The red match stick numbers showed 2:23 AM. He sneered at the time and set the black box back onto the table. Four hours I need to be up, Andrew thought annoyingly to himself. Four hours I got to get up for work and for some damned reason I’m up and strutting about. He made his way back to the window. Not even a sliver of needing to take a leak. So why in the- He paused briefly at the quiet dragging coming from the night air outside. Andrew squinted his peepers and again observed the dark and empty street for the mysterious sounds. There was nothing to be seen. Nothing to be seen? Then why was Andrew getting a sickly feeling in the pit of his aged and thin belly.

     Wait a minute, thought Andrew. He readjusted his thick glasses again with the thumb and fore finger of his right hand. His eyes strained to make out the dark shape hobbling from one side of the road to the other. At first, Andrew perceived a blackened demon, bent into an impossible shape; almost like a question mark that had fallen face first. Or maybe a humongous black snake; slithering across the asphalt with its mid-section hunched and its head drooped over and pulling the thick tail behind it. Andrew followed that thought with an image of the snakes oversized fangs buried into the road like claws helping to stabilize the crawl. None of these theories were plausible, Andrew knew that for sure, but he still couldn’t rationalize what he was seeing down on the road three houses down from where he stood in his wrinkled blue pajamas. That was until the song that woke him up began playing again though his head.

Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . . Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . . Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . .

     All at once Andrew’s breath stopped, as did his heart for a moment before rebooting with a thunderous array of beats. What in Sam Hill? Andrew thought unbelieving, That be a man with a body. He leaned closer to the pane of glass. His own reflection leaning in as well like a ghostly jack in the box. He looked past it to get a better view, and couldn’t help but notice how it resembled a skull. The mysterious man was hard to make out from such a distance. That and the poor lighting coming from the days away from burning out street lamp, and the oddly thick cloud of mist cascading around the ground like steam from a charcoal grill ready for the meat.

The shuffling man appeared fairly tall. Maybe six and a half feet. Maybe even more if it can be believed, and Andrew assumed the man was slimmer than most. He was wearing a long black overcoat that dangled and flapped freely with each side step the man made. The coat hung loosely around the body like a black dress. Andrew couldn’t make out any hugged body parts, so he guessed that it was either strangely oversized, or the mysterious man was strangely undersized. Andrew’s neck stretched to the window to give his aged eyes a few more inches of clarity. The thing being dragged behind the tall skinny man. The thing he had at once knew to be a body only because that’s how someone in a movie looked when they were walking with a corpse. Freshly made or recently desecrated. The man had both hands closed over the end of a beige bed sheet that was now taking the role of a cotton trash bag. Whatever was inside

(That be a man with a body)

must’ve been a heavy because the struggle of the man dragging it across the asphalt was clearly audible. Each pull echoed across the rows of houses as if the body inside was using his last chance to call upon anyone to rescue him from whatever unspeakable act might be in store for him at the other end of the dark street. Andrew stepped half a foot closer to the window sill. He needed to be a just a little bit closer. His right foot rose a few inches from the ground, moved the same number of inches to the wall, and came down on the unseen tail of Andrew’s black cat, Midnight. There was a loud Mrroww as Midnight jumped and sprawled across the smooth wood floor of the bedroom. Andrew jumped as well and almost fell straight into the window. He threw up a hand and slapped it flat against the glass to keep his balance. He locked eyes with Midnight, who was now perched on the foot of Andrew’s bed. His eyes glowed menacingly green at Andrew. They both breathed hard after the incident, but Andrew’s stopped abruptly; as did his heart, when he found the shuffling man and his mysterious bag outside again. The man had stopped a few steps from the curb on the right side of the street. His neck twisted and his head cocked to the side like a curious dog investigating a strange noise. With the distance, it was hard to see, but Andrew knew what the man was gawking at. He could feel the cold stare over his entire body.

     Andrew readjusted the thick panes of glass resting on his nose. “What in the -” He spun his head around again at the thump of Midnight’s paws landing on the wood floor. Andrew squinted back out the window to investigate the shuffling man’s movements, but down the road and lying across the street like a giant sack of abandoned potatoes was what Andrew has pretty much concluded was a body. Its owner was nowhere to be seen.

     A sheet of cold sweat sheathed the old man’s body as his eyes frantically darted from one corner of the window to the other. What in Jesus H. Christ is going on here? Andrew thought in a panic. He left the window and for a moment regarded picking up the small blackberry cell phone his daughter had given him for Christmas five years ago, and dialing the police. He made it one step to the bedside table when a terrifying screech pierced through the house, up the stairs, and into the most cowardly part of his brain. An image of the old screen door to the backyard flashed though Andrew’s head like a lightning bolt. “I knew I should’ve gotten that damned rusty door fixed.” He bellyached to no one. Andrew wouldn’t come to realize until much later after that night just how lucky he was that that squeaky spring that he always neglected to fix was the one true thing that gave him any kind of chance against the monster now within his walls.

     Frozen where he stood, two steps from the bedside table and ten from the rifle he kept in the closet, Andrew listened for the footsteps that would signal where the burglar was below him. He waited for the moment when he could move quickly, and oh so quietly, to his trusty pea-shooter sitting just inside the closet door. He honed in on is sense of sound while at the same time dulling the other four, but there was nothing. The world had gone as silent as a church mouse during morning prayer, aside from the gentle purring of Midnight somewhere in the room. Andrew clenched his eyes shut to gain more concentration, but it was no use. Still nothing to hear. He almost let his mind slip to the positive notion of maybe the man had moved on, but he waited another minute just to be sure. Now two minutes of nothing. Then three. After five minutes of ghostly stillness he lowered his guard. Andrew breathed a relieved sigh and decided to go ahead and grab his rifle out of the closet anyway. Just in case that shufflin’ bastard decides to make another go at me.

     Just before Andrew Dellard reaches into the darkness, a small click pops through the air. He turns and stares in horror as the handle of his bedroom door slowly turns. He finds his pea-shooter and grips it tightly. Andrew points the barrel shakily at the wooden door as it slowly swings open, revealing the black hallway. This can’t be happening thinks Andrew as a blackened shape hobbles bent-over into the moonlit bedroom. Andrew’s nose twitches at the sour smell of the grotesquely humanoid shape as it steps inside. “You ain’t real.” Andrew hears himself croak to the creature. “Can’t be real.”

     The shuffling man, or what used to look like a man from a great distance, straightened its back and stretched itself until its head almost grazed the ceiling. Its long-blackened leather jacket still hung close to the floor and stretched with the body like pulled licorice. Andrew gaped upward, following the man/creature’s head as it rose menacingly above him. The thing’s face was concealed behind what at first seemed to Andrew like a black mask, but now appeared to be nothing but living shadow swirling and shifting like a Rorschach test. Andrew’s mind, on the verge of snapping, could only repeat the same phrase of denial to the monster as a last shred of hope. “You ain’t real. You ain’t real. You ain’t real. You ain’t-”

     A long black hand with claws like talons rose, stretched, and swooped from the body of the creature like a hawk diving for a mouse. Andrew was unaware of the strike from both disbelief at what was happening and the immense speed at which it occurred. Three of the things claws dug deep into Andrew’s chest; shredding his night shirt and causing the remains to go warm and damp with his life blood. The only thing keeping the black shape from slicing him clean through like a hot knife in butter was Andrew’s subconscious tensing of his body which caused the bolt-action Remington in his hands to fire off an explosion of hot lead at the creature.

     Andrew watched first in triumph and then terror as the bullet flew straight through the creature’s mid-section; leaving a grapefruit sized hole and digging into the plaster and wallpaper behind. The thing that once resembled a man shuffling across the street backed away in surprise as it rose another clawed hand to finish the job of the first. Andrew stared at the hole, as did his target, and could see the spot on the wall where the bullet had hit like the creature had gained its own personal window. A low grumble emitted from the shape that sounded to Andrew a little too much like laughing, but with a pinch of madness for taste. The space inside the hole was beginning to close in and shrink like it was being swallowed by the black shadow surrounding it. Andrew stumbled back and fired another round. This time nailing the thing’s coal-colored eye. The side of its head stretched like a marshmallow in the microwave and popped; leaving an empty space that, to Andrew, resembled Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts. The shadow thing continued to gurgle its laugh as its head formed together with ease.

     Andrew Dellard, 56-year-old forklift driver at Locked-On Ammo Industries, squeezed the trigger of his rifle a third time, but the only thing that came out was the heart-dropping clicks of an empty barrel. He glared at the gun like a disappointed parent. Two rounds? He thought, why in Sam Hill would I only load two rounds into this thing? He pondered for a moment if maybe that is how he’d know he was in a dream. A simple mistake of detail such as that. He read once that an easy tell would be to look at a clock and see what it did. The hands would either be spinning rapidly around or at a standstill. But, his TIMEX seemed correct even if it was digital and not analog. Clocks can’t be the only way to know if you’re dreaming. Maybe this half-loaded rifle was his. He tightened his eyes and cleared his head the best he could. He closed his hands together over the gun’s barrel and set the butt on the wooden floor like a kick stand. Maybe if I can think hard enough I’ll be able to wake up and-

     Andrew’s hand press against his slightly rounded belly and he feels the stickiness of drying blood there. His eyes open and when he looks down at the scary amount of blood that has leaked out of his chest he becomes all too aware of the pain. Real pain. Straight ahead of him he notices the shadow man still standing there. Just inside of his door. His real door, and his real bedroom. No matter how bizarre the scene around him, Andrew knew there was no waking up from this nightmare.

     The creature slid forward across the floor, and Andrew simultaneously felt warm liquid sliding down his legs. His jaw fell open and shut multiple times with no noise as if his voice was testing the hinges before trying them out. To save his vocal cords some time to make themselves known, Andrew lifted the rifle and swung it over his shoulder like a baseball bat. The shadow man hesitated a moment at this movement. He rocked back and forth menacingly to survey what he was seeing before making his advance. It took a curious step toward the urine-stained man and jumped back as the butt of his rifle whipped at the air in front of his face. Andrew swung a second time, back-handedly to further hinder any more of the thing’s progress toward him.

     The shadow man lunged like a hungry lion and surged toward Andrew at inhuman speed. Andrew was caught momentarily off guard by the quickness and only managed to swing the rifle out in front of him halfway before its wooden stock was caught by the shadow man’s black hand. The two of them wrestled with the gun for a few seconds. Andrew pulled the gun with everything he had, which was a surprising amount considering the wear and tear his aged body has undertaken after 20 plus years working in a warehouse, but with one easy yank the shadow man brought the rifle, and Andrew, inches away from his grisly black mask. Andrew could smell the sour stench of decaying corpses with each one of the thing’s breaths. So potent that it made his eyes burn and his nose crinkle with disgust. Andrew forced himself to look at the creature’s face, but it was still no use. Nothing but a swirling mass of dark abyss. Like a never-ending storm of sorrow. That must be what the depression looks like Andrew thinks to himself.

     With hot tears spilling from his eyes running rivers down his cheeks, Andrew’s lips slowly part, “What . . . What do you want from me?”

     The shadow man pulls Andrew in closer. Close enough for a kiss. The storm of shadows calm and recede from the bottom half of its face revealing two thin gray lips also pulling back into a sickly snarl revealing jagged yellow teeth the size of miniature butcher knives. The shadow creature’s voice rumbled from somewhere deep inside its throat. Its breath was heavy as it said, “I want . . . for you to fly.”

     And before Andrew could register the request, the living shadow thrust his hand forward and launched Andrew through the second story window. His arms twirling in large circles, reaching for the rapidly approaching ground. Andrew managed to turn his head to look at the grass, sparkling with fresh dew, before meeting it spine first. He hit the Earth with not enough speed to kill him just from impact alone, but the sound of his work-torn vertebra snapping broke through the empty air quick and painless. He might’ve have survived even that ordeal and lived another twenty years or more confined to a wheelchair. If only he had not met the ground with his head still turned to look at it. That twist is what put an end to Andrew and everything he knew.

     It wouldn’t be until late morning when Andrew’s bent up body would be found by little Charlie Cupp when his game-winning buzzer-beater bounced off the front of the basketball rim and made its way into Mr. Dellard’s yard. For the police, Andrew Dellard’s death was nothing but a simple suicide. (as simple as suicide can be) Even excusing the lacerations on his chest as nothing but cuts from the broken window. Little Charlie Cupp, however; had other theories. Even though he was but eight and not even old enough to walk to school by himself, Charlie was no idiot. One look at the old man’s contorted corpse surrounded by the shards of glass from the window and Charlie’s first thought was seemingly obvious. Why didn’t he open the window?

     That is a question that most people wouldn’t consider really when it comes to something as trivial as self-slaughter. Some of the townsfolk say it was a spur of the moment type of thing. That Andrew just broke down mentally and leaped at the window without a second-thought. Others won’t even give that question the time of day when asked. “Don’t look too deep into that rabbit hole, kid,” they’d say, “You might get your head stuck, and then you’ll be in the same spot that Dellard was.”

     Little Charlie Cupp eventually forgot about the day he found Old Man Dellard lying dead in the grass. Too distracted with childhood matters, I guess. It wouldn’t be until Charlie’s third semester at the University of Southern Missouri, twelve years down the road, that he would awake in the middle of the night to a peculiar sound coming from outside his dormitory window.

Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . . Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . . Step, step, step . . . Drag, drag . . .