Trembling With Fear 11-24-24

Incursion, by Philip T. Bond

One weekday morning, as on every weekday morning in the summer when Bethany Gunn was six years old, her mom dropped her off at her grandma’s house. And on this morning, as on every drop-off morning, Bethany’s mom didn’t wait around. While backing down the driveway, she waived and sped off to her teller job at a bank downtown.

Bethany loved going to her grandma’s house. There was a TV in the living room, but Grandma didn’t turn it on much. And if she did, then after about an hour she’d say, “Well, that’s enough of the idiot box,” and she’d get up and turn it off. Bethany was just fine with this. Her grandma read to her and taught her how to cook and sew, among lots of other things Bethany never got to do at home. The TV was always on at home.

That morning, Bethany let herself in through the always-unlocked front door and called, “Grandma, I’m here.” But her grandma didn’t appear from the kitchen as she always did, smiling, still wiping her hands on a towel or the bunched-up hem of her apron. As Bethany discovered on going upstairs, her grandma was still lying on her back in bed. Her eyes were half-open, slightly misaligned, and they didn’t move. Her teeth were still on the nightstand.

Bethany knew her grandma would not wake up, but that didn’t make her afraid. She didn’t know her mom’s work number, but 911 was a number she knew. She went back downstairs and stared at the phone on the wall in the kitchen then pushed a chair from the table over so she could reach the receiver. But instead of using the phone, she went to the living room and sat on the couch with one of her coloring books. She colored all afternoon until her mom came to get her. She never got up to eat or even to use the bathroom. Turning the TV on was far from her mind.

This sad, childhood memory had been in Bethany’s thoughts on and off since breakfast. And when she got home from work, bone tired and ready to crack a beer, the old memory came up again, as clear and insistent as it had been all day. It came up just as she put the key in the door to the duplex she shared with her husband, Hank, and their big tabby cat, Melvin. The memory came up then vaporized when Melvin shrieked from inside the duplex. As Bethany entered the tiny foyer, the cat’s screaming made her drop her purse and hurry up the staircase to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs, Hank’s phone lay facedown on the ugly, brown carpet, right outside the kitchen. Bethany crouched and saw that the screen was smashed, but smashed outward, as if something had punched it through from the inside. Surrounding the phone, on the carpet fibers, was a jagged halo of bluish glass dust. Bethany had just touched the edge of the phone’s protective plastic casing with her fingers when another cat shriek cut the air. She rose out of her crouch and looked past the short hallway into the living room, where the cat sound had come from. She could see the wall-mounted TV, parallel to her on the left, and the screen was dark. If Hank was here, why was the TV off? Bethany couldn’t see the couch, where Hank always lounged smoking pot after work, because it was on the recessed side of the room, opposite the TV. Bethany felt the urge to move but something stopped her. She tried to move several times but couldn’t do it.

“Hank? Babe, is everything okay? Did you know your phone was out here with the screen busted? Hank, what happened to your phone? Did you throw it?”

There was no answer from Hank, just a screech out of Melvin like guitar feedback. Concern for the cat finally forced Bethany to walk into the living room.  When she reached the TV, she turned and saw Hank on the couch. He had his eyes covered with his hands, and his mouth gaped wide open as if he were shouting, but no sound left his throat. The cat came out from under the couch just then, turned and hissed twice at Hank, then ran at Bethany and clawed up her bare leg, catching its front claws on the hem of her skirt. Bethany hiccupped in pain and grabbed the cat by his scruff, tore him loose, and held him against her chest.

Then she looked back at Hank. 

“Hank, what the hell’s going on? Why are you covering your eyes?”

Hank’s mouth didn’t move but stayed frozen wide open like his jaw had come unhinged.

“Why is the cat so – why are you covering your eyes, Hank?” Bethany could hear herself becoming upset, but nothing seemed immediately real yet, as if she were watching a video of the event from a place in the future.

Hands over his eyes, Hank appeared to scoot forward on the couch as if to get up. From where Bethany stood, it looked like Hank raised his butt off the couch while staying bent forward in a sitting position. It looked like the tips of Hank’s bare toes were the only thing supporting his entire, folded-over body. Bethany stared, expecting her head to catch up any second and resolve the illusion, but Hank kept floating forward. His toes left the floor and he kept floating forward like he was glued to an invisible chair bent almost parallel to the floor. Then Hank raised his face to her, bent his neck back beyond what seemed physically possible, and let his hands drop, his arms limp as shirtsleeves on a clothesline.

Bethany saw through Hank’s eye sockets.  She could see the little vase on top of the short, black bookcase she’d put in the corner of the room.

Bethany clutched Melvin to her chest and ran toward the front of the duplex. But when she reached the staircase to the foyer, she shrieked again, because Hank was somehow now floating just above her purse on the foyer floor. She didn’t stop but pivoted hard right, almost lost balance, then ripped up the long, straight staircase to the second floor, the cat screaming and tearing into her with all of its claws as she ran.

Upstairs, Bethany slammed the bedroom door shut and turned the little button on the knob. The cat clawed down her forearm, gouged her with its hind claws as it sprung to the floor, and dissolved under the bed. With her bloody forearm, Bethany cleared everything off the top of the chest of drawers in the corner and shoved the fat hunk of furniture across the room to blockade the door. 

She heard a scrape outside the door. She knew it must be Hank. She shuddered and started to cry, picturing Hank hanging in the air, right outside the door, his mouth like an open mailbox, the hallway behind him visible through his eye sockets.

She pulled her hair with both hands and shrieked, “Wake up! Wake up!” There was a rustle and scrape behind her, and a surge of sunlight as the window curtains, their shadows cast on the wall in front of her, billowed out, brightening the room for an instant. She brought her hand up to her mouth and bit into the meat below her thumb. Then she turned, expecting to see Hank, or what had been Hank, hovering behind her.

But her grandma stood there, right in front of the window, where the chest of drawers had been. She looked every bit like an actual living person.

“Sweetie, come here to me,” she said. “Do it now.”

Bethany stared in utter astonishment and could not bring herself to move.

“Please, there isn’t time,” her grandma pleaded, gesturing emphatically.

Bethany had just raised her hand into the air to touch her grandma’s extended fingers when she went blind. Her mouth dropped open like her jaw had come unhinged, and her feet rose several inches off the floor.

Bethany’s grandma dropped her gaze and her hands, fell back into the curtains, and as they parted, was absorbed into the sunlight.