That Feeling When

The peaceful nights dreams are broken by the banshee wails of your alarm clock; with a swift hand you silence them. The afterimages of a cosmic ballet float away from you as you try to recall your dream, or was it a nightmare? You sigh into the morning light, heart skipping a beat as you feel a cold draft on your foot. You slowly move it back under the safety and warmth of your weighted blanket, if you’re stealthy they won’t notice, you tell yourself. How long has your foot been dangling over the abyss, a tempting snack for what lurks beneath the bed. You wonder if you should check, just in case, for old times sake, that no monsters are there. You carefully peer over the side, eyes lingering on the ground where the light fades into a shadowy unknown. If you step down from your bed, will gnarled hands with long claw-like nails reach out and grab your ankles?

#

The familiar bell of your cat Jellybean’s collar rings with each bounce up the stairs to greet you and demand breakfast. She waltzes over to you, a loud meow piercing the morning calm. Catching sight of the darkness beneath you, Jellybean dives under the bed.

You lean over a bit further, brow furrowed, “Jellybelly?”

Jellybean leaps up at you from under the bed, catching you off guard. Collar bell jingling for all to hear her triumph.

You jump back, cursing at yourself for being startled so easily. The only true monster that lurks under your bed, you think, is a hungry cat. A shudder moves over your shoulders as you sit up to start the day. Jellybean right on your heels.

#

You walk into the bathroom, pausing at the closed shower curtain. You should open it. Check behind it. Make certain no serial killers have snuck past the ever vigilant Jellybelly Security System™. You throw the curtain aside, Jellybean hops into the tub, batting at a toy she left behind in the night. You shake your head with a bemused laugh, the moment soon forgotten as you mumble to yourself that you need to have another chat with your roommate about who makes coffee on the weekend.

#

You head to the kitchen after dressing to fix your coffee and trail snacks to go, and make a hungry cat very happy. Sunday hikes to clear the mind. Jellybean’s large, golden eyes are fixated on the corner of the living room. You go to pet your cat.

“You okay Jellybelly? Did you find a bug?” you ask, carefully following her golden-eyed gaze to a seemingly empty corner. The fern you’ve managed to keep alive rests on its perch alone.

Jellybean sits in gargoyle protectiveness upon the arm of the chair.

“Come on, let’s get breakfast.” You try to dissuade, tapping her on the side.

A low growl responds. Her eyes never waver.

You brush it off, it’s just silly cat things, you tell yourself.

#

All your gear packed up and ready to go, you set off on your day hike. You’ve decided to go to a new trail today, this one recommended for a view overlooking a waterfall at the end. This early in the morning, trails can be all but devoid of other humans. You take a deep breath in, the smell of pine intertwined with last night’s rainfall brings a smile to your face. Double checking the map you’ve downloaded, you head off along the dirt trail, thumbs looped on your backpack straps. Bird songs cheer you along toward your goal, the wind moves through the trees above, rustling the branches together in leafy whispers. A part of you feels as though this place can’t possibly be real, how can something so peaceful exist?

#

The farther down the path you get, the more you begin to notice the birds have become quieter, low profile evergreen bushes stick out onto the once well maintained path. You hike early to avoid the din of other humans, but no noise at all never bodes well. You pause to grab your water bottle, can’t hurt to check the map again, you tell yourself. The whispering of the pines around you grows louder; the wind keeps to its steady course, offset from the whispers you overhear. You scan the tree line. There is something there, you know there must be. You can feel its eyes on you. Replacing your water bottle, you decide this is a hike that can be finished another day. A day with more people around. A day with more boot prints in the slowly drying dirt. You retreat as quickly and calmly as you can back toward your car. Every so often you stop to scan behind you. The eyes feel closer. Everywhere. Just when you think you’ve convinced yourself it’s all in your imagination, that you could have kept going, the birds sing their songs around you again, and you feel like Alice leaving Wonderland, back into the safety of reality. You stare back at the trail, the tree line, was it real?

“You okay?” A fellow hiker comes up behind you, her voice chipper for the early hour.

You turn, shoulders jerking ever so much at the appearance of another human. At the sound replacing the whispers of the pines.

“How’s the trail today?” She continues, smiling as she adjusts her backpack straps.

Shaking your head free of the daze, “uh, it-it was good. A bit overgrown in some areas though…”

“Thanks for the heads up! Have a good one!” She whistles and sets off past you down the trail.

You follow the sight of her disappearing into the forest. Should you have told her to be careful? That something may be lurking in the trees ready and waiting for a willing soul. You scan the treeline again, then look back toward your car, were you being watched? You ponder a moment more, perhaps you weren’t the only one on the trail this morning after all, you tell yourself. Shaking off the residual feeling you head home.

#

The next morning, you stare outside the living room window, waiting for the coffee to cool in your mug. It’s a dense, foggy predawn that looms across your yard. The illumination of the solitary lamppost just starting to be at odds with the first rays of light. Condensation swirls above the blades of grass, you furrow your brow as you watch the fog twist and contort into spectral creatures stalking ever closer to their next prized possession. Floating toward you the way steam drifts over a hot drink. Those who watch the watcher. You stare transfixed, the fog a master hypnotist.

“Hey, I might be home late tonight, or I might decide to stay in and have a spa night.” Your roommate says, a whirlwind of extroversion on their way out the door. “I’ll text you.”

Your reverie broken, the fog returns to its stagnant form. “Yeah, um, be safe out there, have fun.”

You take a sip of your coffee, only to find it has gone cold. How long were you standing there in the fog’s dewy grasp?

#

The day at work goes monotonously slow per usual. Do Mondays offer anything else? Your mind drifts to Jellybean, wondering what she was so intent about yesterday morning. That corner is just a corner. That fern is just a fern. No, that fern is surviving out of spite, you tell yourself, it deserves better. You wonder if your cat would still stare if you moved the plant.

You take your lunch, staring at the pine trees outside. The wind has them whispering here as well. Your mind drifts back to the hike, and you find yourself looking up the trail’s history. Just an average run of the mill National Park trail. Shaking your head like a broken etch-a-sketch, you try to remove the thoughts and return to work. The reports are not going to deal with themselves.

Back at your simple desk, in your cubicle by the supply room, you open the closest file. The program on your computer prompts you to input data on the new property acquisition. A task you have done so many times that you wonder why it doesn’t haunt your sleep. The office is not as busy today as it normally is, you can’t quite recall why; was there a memo about it? No matter, you think, the lack of chatty coworkers makes your job easier to concentrate on. Not that it requires much to begin with.

#

Your roommate texts asking if you’re still at work, you glance at the clock— 18:12—those reports were more distracting than you anticipated. At least you weren’t thinking about yesterday. About the whispers on the wind, how they weaved through the pines, how they watched—no, text them back, stop thinking about yesterday, you tell yourself. You let them know you’re coming home now and will even spring for takeout on the way; adding in a joke about how your roommate’s spa night won out in the end. You take one final glance at your typed report on the monitor before turning off your computer. The heading is wrong, you think, staring at the repeated words in the report; ‘Sight without seeing, in golden eyes trust, maliferous melodies are not luck,’ despite staring at the words, no solution comes to you, the header is tomorrow’s problem. You pack your bag and head toward the garage, passing empty desks and dark offices. The office is still at night, you think, still like an early morning hike.

#

Turning the corner to the north exit, you face a long and gradually darkening hallway. You pause. The flickering of the cheap fluorescent bulbs that buzz overhead burrow into your mind the way maggots devour flesh. The lights at the end of the hallway become a void as they flicker and turn off. The buzzing of the light overhead gnaws on your brain. With each new flicker of the light now furthest away, the void grows closer. The gnawing louder. You know with each blink of the lights a surprise party may await at the end of the line. A line now one moment, one breath, closer to you. Surprises can be fun though… can’t they? The buzzing vibrates through your body. Why are your feet not moving? You told them to leave. Don’t fail now. Take the other hallway, the other stairway. Move. Do anything but stare at the void, you tell yourself.

“You okay?” a maintenance worker asks from behind you, his face betraying his otherwise friendly tone.

Was today the day maintenance was doing work? You knew you should have paid more attention to that memo. To any memo.

“F-fine. Just forgot about…” you gesture vaguely at the still darkening hallway.

“The east exit to the garage is all good to go.” He nods with his head in the direction of the east exit, hand clicking his flashlight on and off several times to quell impatience.

You nod and take your leave. The buzzing gone, the void at the end of the line no longer as impenetrably dark and tempting.

#

The long day has you ready to finally get some rest. You switch off the light in the living room before heading upstairs, the lingering sensation that you aren’t alone in the dark crawls its way across you; the way spiders flee the floods of a cranberry bog, covering your very being with hundreds of tiny legs until it threatens to consume you. You think you hear a faint buzzing sound in the back of your mind. Lurking. You wonder, as Jellybean darts up the staircase past you and into the light of the hallway above; has the dimming of the light revealed a new secret hidden away from sunlights vigilance? An issue to ponder another day, you think, and press forward. The faint creaks of the floor overhead as your roommate gets ready for bed remind you of the light cracking branches of the pines underfoot on your hike… were they branches or bones?

#

You hope your dreams are full of sugarplums dancing in your head. You turn off the bedroom light and crawl into bed, relishing the feel of the weighted blanket. Onward move the shadows. A figure looms in the corner of the room. Ignore it. Not real. You tell yourself. You curl your legs up toward you, making certain your feet are safely tucked away this time. You shut your eyes tight, just in case you are wrong. You refuse to know what shape the figure has chosen to take tonight. You don’t wish to know what lurks in the void. What happens if you open your eyes to the darkness beyond?

#

Your dreams are plagued with shadow. An amalgamation of deep space and sea, both as terrifyingly beautiful as a silent breath between each note of an overture. The buzzing, odious gnaw of a bone orchestra bores into your skull. You try to move, but cannot swim in space. Dark and vast, crushing your lungs free of oxygen. With no souls in sight to ever hear you scream your final regrets. You awake in a cold sweat the next morning, Jellybean curled up beside you. Not how you planned to start your day. The coldness of space leaves your bones chilled.

You go through the motions, coffee, work—the hallway on the north end no longer looks the same—home. You hope tonight will be better than the last. You will it to be just a normal Tuesday. Your mind drifts back to your dream throughout the day, or was it a nightmare?

#

Sitting in your house that evening, laughing at a movie, the hint of someone standing just behind you as the screen darkens for a scene. Your heart freezes for a moment, it’s just been a weird couple days, you tell yourself, it’s only a reflection from something normal, it’s just the fern. Your mind doesn’t buy it, the tiniest of breezes moves against the back of your neck, warmer than the air around you. Warm like breath on your skin. You wait for the screen to cut to a darker scene again, perhaps you can catch a glimpse of what lingers. Just act naturally, you tell yourself, before shaking your head at how stupid you feel you’re being. Jellybean jumps up beside you and stares at the corner of the room again.

“Good timing Jellybelly.” You say as you pet her.

Jellybean looks past you, behind you. The corner is all consuming.

You try to ignore the figure you catch the faintest glimpse of each time the screen goes dark. Of your cat staring in the corner behind you. Not real. You tell yourself.

#

A creaking floorboard in the room above pulls your attention away. You pause the movie. Was your roommate home tonight? You call out to them with no response. You could have sworn they said they were going to be going out tonight. You look at Jellybean, unwavering. Another creak has you wondering. That isn’t walking, it’s standing. Loitering. Lying in wait. Creeping up the stairs, you call again in question, with no response from your roommate. Probably should have just texted, you think, deciding to go back for your phone. Jellybean hisses and darts past you up the staircase. You look at her, your head tilted to the side as she sits at the top of the stairs, hackles raised. The shuffle of feet dragging on the floor behind you in the living room nearly stops your heart. You grip the railing of the staircase tighter. Knuckles fading to white. The coldness of space in your bones grows. The hum of the fluorescent lights begins to gnaw on your mind, joining a symphony of fear. Lingering mid-staircase, you freeze, don’t turn around, you tell yourself...