hear her steps

CHAPTER five

It’s happening again.

Except this time Morgan isn’t in the woods. She’s somewhere else. A building. There’s something familiar about it.

And she hears it. Deep and heavy breathing. Not a human. Some sort of animal.

She starts to run because she knows what happens if she doesn’t. She knows that she needs to run past the giant boulder and turn right at the tree split down by lightning, jump over the rotting oak stump and turn left at the bushes that are shaped in perfect circles. If she stops or stumbles or falls then it’s all over.

But she’s not at the forest. She doesn’t know where to run.

The building is huge. She runs through different doors - doors shaped like pentagons, doors painted black and carved with eyes, doors made of glass and doors made of mirrors and doors made of metal, doors that open to darkness and doors that open to blinding light - and up and down and sideways through stairs and tunnels and windows and hallways.

But then the doors are all locked and the windows are all shut. She doesn’t stop running, trying every knob and handle and screaming as she tries to push and shover her way through the house. But she finally finds one door open at the end of a very long hallway.

The door opens to a silver light and she find herself in a small and empty room no bigger than a closet. It’s a dead end. And that’s when she knows it’s all over.

The breathing is louder. Hungrier. The claws are raking against the wooden floor, dragging slow and heavy.

There’s no escape.

Morgan closes the door behind her and tries to make herself as small as she can in the corner. But the silver light is so bright that it’ll see her immediately.

There’s a banging at the door. The banging gets louder and louder and louder and it gives her a headache. Morgan puts her hands over her eyes. She hates seeing it’s face. She always hates it’s eyes.

The door breaks down.

“…And what do you think about it?”

“What? The…?”

“The death. Your husband’s death.”

“I mean, he drowned. It was an accident. He fell over the edge of the boat and hit his head.”

“I think we both know it wasn’t that. After this break, we’ll take a step into…the supernatural.”

The ominous music cuts off as a jangly commercial about water filters begins to play from the TV and Morgan wakes with a start. She has to pee. She glances at Caspian, who’s fallen asleep with his mouth open. He had changed the channel in an angry fit when his team lost. The downstairs toilet doesn’t work so Morgan has to go upstairs.

Ophelia’s room is closest to the stairs, then Caspian’s, then Morgan’s at the end. Ophelia’s door is closed, but Morgan can hear the tv on.

Morgan can’t remember it well, but when she was younger, probably 4 or 5, Ophelia would always have her door open, which was an unspoken invitation for Morgan come inside when Dad and Tara were fighting. Even Caspian would join in because that’s before he became annoying. They would play board games and watch movies because since Ophelia was the oldest, she got her own TV. At that time, Ophelia had just gotten her driver’s permit and she would help sneak Caspian and Morgan out of her window and down to the garage and she would take them on long drives and Morgan would fall asleep in the car to movie soundtracks.

Ophelia didn’t do anything cool like that anymore.

The other kids called Ophelia a “disaster”. In high school, she was Valedictorian and class president and hosted the school news channel. She went off to a good college up north to study writing and film. But then she dropped out and moved back home and never really did much after that. It was embarrassing because Morgan’s teachers remembered Ophelia and would often ask her about how she was doing and Morgan would lie, saying that Ophelia was off doing an internship now or that she got a new job with some fancy title. But La Estrella was small and soon everyone knew that Ophelia was a loser. All the kids would make fun of Morgan for it until she knocked Sally Little’s tooth out and then they just started making fun behind her back.

She thinks about barging through the door, about berating Ophelia for forgetting to pick her up again, about telling her that all the other kids in school call her a loser and that Mr. Fincher and Mrs. Jennings have stopped asking about her.

But she doesn’t, she just stares at the door before angrily turning to the bathroom.

After she finishes her business, she just happens to glance out the window next to Ophelia’s room. It’s a view of the end of the cul-de-sac.

There’s something there.

It’s undeniably large. And it’s looking directly at Morgan.

She feels a cold sweat and reactively steps away from the window. Her pulse is racing. She’s breathing hard.

Was it just a jogger taking a break? Maybe Scout was taking a smoke break. But it was much bigger than a person. She wonders if it was just her imagination. Was it the beer? Is this what beer does to you?

Her mouth is dry. She takes a step forward and peeks out of the window.

Whatever it was, it’s gone now.

A chill goes down her spine. She looks up and down the hallway, expecting to see something in their house. But all she hears is the hum of the television and the steady pattern of rain.

She thinks about waking Caspian, but knows he’ll just call her a chicken. She decides to forget about it and goes back downstairs.

But that’s when she hears the house phone ringing.

No one calls this late, not even solicitors. The last time someone did it was Ophelia begging for Dad to come pick her up from college.

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