Shadowy Threats

Deborah Oakdale woke in her bed in a panic, her vivid dream burnt into her waking memory. A dream of being caught in a grave as mangled, dirtied and bloodied arms reached out to her; a dream she’d been having often lately. She peeled her sweat soaked nightgown from her chest, swung her legs to the side of the bed, and sat there as she rested her head in her damp, trembling hands.

Deborah ‘s parents owned Oakdale Cemetery and it was here Debbie had grown up. But, even through all the funerals in the fields, wakes in the chapel,  and corpses in the preparation room, never once had she been scared of the bodies. Sure, she hated them for what they’d done to her life. They’d made her a social pariah at times and at others kept her away from fun to deal with the family business of death, but she had never been scared before. But when that grave opened up and she fell in, she felt like she was being pulled in, like the old dead in the east field knew she hated them, and they hated her in return. Like, they wanted her to feel the way they felt, nothing and to be nothing. Years she had helped her mother and father transport the bodies, passed bodies while they played in the old parsonage, but now, the thought of seeing one again felt like it would be the end. She felt like she was running and to put herself within their grasp again would give up the game. Give up her ghost, to theirs.

On the first morning of Mr. Sleuth’s stay in the Buntings’ house, while Mrs. Bunting was out buying things for him, the new lodger had turned most of the pictures and photographs hanging in his sitting-room with their faces to the wall!

But this queer action on Mr. Sleuth’s part had not surprised Mrs. Bunting as much as it might have done; it recalled an incident of her long-past youth—something that had happened a matter of twenty years ago, at a time when Mrs. Bunting, then the still youthful Ellen Cottrell, had been maid to an old lady.

The old lady had a favorite nephew, a bright, jolly young gentleman who had been learning to paint animals in Paris; and it was he who had had the impudence, early one summer morning, to turn to the wall six beautiful engravings of paintings done by the famous Mr. Landseer!

The old lady thought the world of those pictures, but her nephew, as only excuse for the extraordinary thing he had done, had observed that “they put his eye out.”

Johnny’s vision was like the contrast-gray of a television as the power shuts down. He stumbled back landing on his ass and hands, the stinging pain giving him a burst of adrenaline. As the world returned to his mind’s broadcast he quickly remembered his situation. Scared shitless on the floor of the library bathroom. His eyes darted to the shadow behind the door. There was nothing there.

The flickering lights created long shadows along the hall. Johnny’s fear caused a stark vignette, zeroing in his sight to the corner where he had seen the reflective eyes.

He slowly scooted back, back the way he came, back toward the exit sign.

The hall was silenced under a heavy weight. The only sounds were the buzz of the fluorescent lights and the white noise of the room. But in it, in the silent din he could hear scratching. He looked to another corner and quickly found his focus pulled back to where he saw the eyes. But the scratching, the scratching was closer now. He looked to the now closed bathroom door. He saw nothing as his focus darted between shadow pockets and the black shadow where the initial sighting occurred.

Would he make it if he ran?