Someone was in the house.
Lucy woke up and she knew it in the same way she knew where her arms and legs were, even lying half asleep on her bed with a blanket wedged half over her head and half a glass of something she couldn’t remember halfway done working its way out of her skull. She knew it in the same way she knew the smell of stale pillowcase in her nose, in the same way she could count her toes without looking.
Someone was in the house. And she was the only person with a key.
***
“Listen, I know it’s on short notice-”
“And it’d be such a huge help if-”
“Just this one time, I swear-”
“I’ll write down everything, it’ll be so-”
“Thank you so, so, much, I’ll be back by next Monday morning, swear to-”
It was Saturday at one twenty seven AM.
***
Lucy laid on her back and tried to feel secure because she was buried under blankets, because that had worked the last time she’d felt this way a few decades ago.
It didn’t make her feel secure.
Lucy laid on her back and tried to feel reasonable and adult about everything because there was absolutely no reason for anyone to break into Ann’s overpriced mcmansion when it was sitting next to thirty other identical ones that didn’t clearly have people living in them right this second, unless they were crazy and wanted to kill someone for no reason or Ann owed money to someone scary or had a lunatic ex.
It didn’t make her feel reasonable.
Lucy laid on her back and tried to be paranoid and anxious and listened for the slightest hint of noise – the creak of a floorboard, the dulling of an electronic’s ambient hum as a body absorbed its sound, the snort or sigh or sniff of careless inhalation.
It didn’t make her feel paranoid and anxious, because she didn’t hear a damned thing but she knew more than ever, right down to the marrow, that someone was in the house with her. There was respiration happening; innocent oxygen turning into carbon dioxide in lungs that weren’t her own. There was mobile mass travelling through the rooms. There were active neurons outside her skull, and their intent was wary and cautious because she still hadn’t heard a single noise at all.
Oh.
Oh.
Lucy felt quite foolish suddenly, but in a good way, the god-watches-over-fools sort of way. It was night, she was filled with overwhelming dread and the certainty of a hostile presence, and obviously she couldn’t move a muscle because she hadn’t yet despite having plenty of apparently good reasons to do so.
She was experiencing sleep paralysis. Classic. The origin story of all manner of bedtime horrors and demonic threats. It was a wonder she hadn’t put the pieces together sooner, and she relaxed and laughed out loud.
And she tensed up again and slapped a hand over her mouth. Then sat bolt upright in bed and tried not to hyperventilate.
She didn’t have sleep paralysis. It was very, very, very quiet downstairs. And someone was in the house.
***
The door to the room was ten feet away. Ten long, creaky feet of fancy wooden floorboards that must have been installed by the terminally tone-deaf. It was right there.
Lucy knew she should really close the door. There was no lock, but it would help, right? People didn’t open doors that were shut, and flimsy easily fire-axe-permeable hinge-smashable frail lightweight paneling was clearly an invincible barricade that would let her feel secure and safe for the rest of the night. In comparison to moving herself out of the blankets without making a noise, which was impossible, and then crossing the floor without making a noise, which was more impossible, and then shutting the door without making a noise, which was completely totally impossible. There was no reason for her to not try and do that anyways. Only someone completely unreasonable would sit here in the guest bed of the guest bedroom of her stupid, stupid friend’s ugly house and refuse to move or do anything useful when they were terrified and hope the problem went away. That would be insane to do, because someone was in the house.
Or something. Because after all, if there were no good reasons for a human being to be in the house with her, why wouldn’t there be a bunch of equally bad reasons for something else? An escaped tiger from a zoo, or a bear from a circus (were circuses still a thing?), or a lion from the private menagerie of some rich psychopath three blocks over?
Obviously that meant she should shut the door right away. Obviously lions and tigers and bears didn’t have thumbs, and would clearly never imagine there might be food behind a closed door, or be able to get through it. Obviously the sensible thing to do would be to get up out of bed right this second, shut the door quickly, quietly, and calmly, and phone someone because she was sensible and left her phone charging overnight and didn’t fall asleep with it on eight percent an hour ago while watching a stream.
Obviously, she could always try and climb out the window.
Lucy remained sitting in bed, still bolt upright, still holding her hand over her mouth, and tried not to look too obvious.
Because something was in the house.
***
In the end, what made Lucy move wasn’t the lack of noise – which was screamingly loud by now, to the point that her heartbeat was an unignorable whole-body sensation as much as it was a loud chug. It wasn’t the reasonable part of her brain rallying from the whole sleep paralysis call and persuading her that really she was imagining things and this would all be laughable in five hours, let alone eight. It wasn’t even her hidden reserves of inner strength and courage that her mother and several different teachers had promised her definitely existed in spite of all extant proof.
It was because there was a sound.
Not a frightening sound, or an unusual sound, or a sound out of place. It was the sound of the dehumidifier in the living room turning off. A small gurgle and a thick mechanical clunk, like a frog with a bolt in its throat.
And in that sudden instant before the silence became yet more absolute, Lucy’s body went off like a sprinter at a starting pistol, crossed the bedroom floor while barely touching it, grabbed the door with both hands, and swung it shut so hard it vibrated through her teeth and made her taste fillings.
She stood there frozen for a good six years listening over her own breathing and her own pulse and the odd swishing sensation moving through her digestive system from gut to throat, and when after those six years had passed and she heard nothing, no change at all, she felt her grip unclench, and her jaw relax, and her eyes unwiden, and it was like being a sail that had finally been furled up and stowed away.
So she turned her back to the door, and saw that there was something in the house, and it was under the bed.
***
It was long and low and crouched in a roped coil of muscle, looking at her with the tightly-focused intensity of a predator and the reflective eyeshine of something that could see you long before you see it. Its fur blended seamlessly with the shadows.
And, even with the jolt of adrenaline straight into Lucy’s spine, it was faster than she was.
***
Saturday
6:33 AM
Hey! I’ll be back a little later than I planned, should still be Tuesday but late at night. Sorry about that!! Would you mind staying over for the one more day?
Thanks in advance TTYL!
7:45 AM
hey annie
you shithead
why did yuo never tell me about your CAT