Trembling With Fear 6-1-25

A Walk Out of Doors, by Talha Ahmad

The banging of a fist on metal cuts through the night. It’s the third time Irfan hears the sound, the third time he does nothing. Afshan stirs on the bed beside him. She pulls the meager blankets tightly around her thinning frame.

“What is that?” she asks, her voice thick with sleep.

Irfan doesn’t answer. Afshan has never heard the knocking before tonight. Moonlight forces its way into the room via shattered windows and coin-sized holes in the plaster. 

He checks his phone—3am. The sun will rise soon, and with it the sounds of the city. Men will clear the rubble that blocks the roads. Women will head to the market square with their glassy-eyed children, clutching whichever limbs still remain. Irfan will clear the debris from the garden, praying while he checks which of his tomatoes and cucumbers survived the bombardment.

The banging comes again, louder. When the sound fades, the silence feels like an admonition. 

“Irfan?”

Afshan’s voice is hard, more awake. Irfan knows that tone, and the fear of her rising voice makes him sit up. 

He grabs his phone and turns on the flashlight, directing the beam toward the door. The floor is littered with the rubble of a life interrupted: dirty clothes, muddy shoe prints, toppled picture frames. Irfan navigates through the maze, closing the bedroom door to the sound of Afhsan’s renewed snoring. That sound, so irritating the year before, has now become the sound of life in the roiling sea of death outside. 

The light from his phone bounces down the dark hallway, past closed doors that used to be bedrooms. Now each is an apartment of its own, shelter for whoever needs it.

Months into the bombardment, the number of stable structures decreases with each passing day. At least they don’t live in a tent. The occasional cough or shuffle from behind a door makes him tense, but it seems the banging hasn’t stirred anyone else. 

Irfan relaxes as he descends the stairs. He passes the curtained-off dining room, now serving a family of six. When the Farads arrived, they had already been bisected by a hypersonic missile on their way south. The eldest in their number, Haroon, succumbed to a bacterial infection four days after their arrival. He would have lived if there was still a functioning pharmacy nearby. 

“Uncle?”

The voice is quiet, small, but Irfan spins around, his heart bouncing against his ribcage.

A little girl in wrinkled pajamas rubs her eyes. Her dark curly hair sticks out on one side. Irfan glances at the dining room. The curtain is pulled a few inches, exposing dark shapes sleeping on the floor in neat rows.

Her name pushes forward in his mind.

“Halwa,” he says, crouching with a wince. “You should go back to sleep.”

The youngest of the Farads doesn’t move. Her eyes are small, barely open, but her tense shoulders tell a different story.

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asks.

Halwa shakes her head. Irfan knows the gesture for a lie. All of the children have nightmares, only they aren’t full of ghosts and ghouls. 

“I hear knocking,” she says.

Irfan clenches his phone. The beam of light quivers on the wall behind Halwa like a specter frightened of the place it haunts.

“There is no one knocking,” he says.

His bluff is called as the sound of knocking returns. It’s more insistent. 

“Is it a soldier?” Halwa asks.

Irfan tries to think of something a tired child will believe. He’d tried rationalizing the war to his own children, using any excuse he could to explain why their city was burning. It was easier when it was only the militia strongholds going up in smoke.

“They just hate our way of life,” he’d say.

“They want our land. They think it’s theirs, but they’re wrong.”

“We will prevail over our enemies.”

It was harder to repeat those mantras when the airports were bombed, followed by the main highway. The schools were next. Then the hospitals. When it became clear that nowhere was safe, Irfan and Afshan had run out of things to say.

They were spared from saying more when their sons were speared with shrapnel from a cluster bomb. They were so full of holes that it was hard for the rescue squad to keep them together. They were buried as one, wrapped in a white sheet. Coffins had run out months ago.

Irfan has been quiet for too long. It isn’t a solider outside; it’s something worse. He decides on a half-truth, the best lie of them all.

“It’s a friend of mine,” he says. “He went out, but now he’s come back.”

Halwa peers over Irfan’s shoulder. Her skeptical look is familiar. Lying to children has become impossible in the face of cruel reality.

“You see,” he continues, “there’s nothing to worry about.”

A moan seeps into the house from outside, feeble yet angry.

“Go back to bed, Halwa.” He grabs the child’s shoulder and pushes her toward the dining room. 

She goes to the opening, gripping the curtain in her small fist. “My nana said he heard something in the shed.”

Irfan doesn’t say anything. Her nana couldn’t have known about the shed. No one does.

“He didn’t want to stay here, but Mama said it was the only safe place left. Nana was already sick. He said the only reason this house was still standing was because there was a shaytan protecting it. He said we’d die if we stayed in this house. Mama told him it was either this house or we could die in the street.”

“Go back to sleep,” Irfan says. He stands up, wincing once more.

“I feel safe,” she says. “I don’t think we’re going to die here.”

Irfan can’t look at her. He turns and walks away. His phone vibrates in his hand. Ten percent battery remaining. He hopes it’s enough.

The front door is in remarkable shape given its proximity to the violence outside. He pulls it open on creaking hinges.

There is no one outside. 

The moaning is louder out here. It sounds like a man in the middle of the desert begging for water. It vibrates in Irfan’s teeth. The knocking is a constant drill into his temples. He doesn’t understand how no one else hears it.

Except Afshan heard it for the first time. Halwa heard it too.

But she’s a child. She can’t know anything of what dwells in the night.

He steps into the garden, counting the tomatoes and cucumbers he can make out in the moonlight. He finishes counting too soon, but the sight of the food gives him strength. There is life yet to live.

The shed is a cube of darkness at the edge of his fence. The knocking stops when he presses his hand to the door. He reaches for the handle and steps inside.

The moaning isn’t any louder, but it takes on the beginnings of speech. 

“Closer,” the hoarse voice says from the darkness.

Irfan steps closer. The light from his phone shines on a figure crouched in the far corner. It has the shape of a man, but the arms and legs are longer and out of proportion with its small torso. Its skin is black and oily, and the smell is worse than the street where the backed-up sewer line exploded. The head is the size of a man’s but there are far too many teeth in its mouth, razor sharp and thin as pins. 

“Are they ready for me?” the creature asks.

“Yes,” Irfan says. “But there’s only five.”

The creature growls. It sounds like a deep chasm in the earth. 

“You said you had seven,” it says.

“I did, but one of them died soon after they arrived. There’s also a little girl. I’d like to spare her.”

The creature sighs. It’s only a hair different than its growl.

“That’s no good. I thought you understood our arrangement.”

“I do,” Irfan says. His phone vibrates. Five percent battery. “I’ve given you so many people. Please let me save one.”

“You can’t save everyone. Not forever.”

He thinks of Halwa’s bright green eyes, her dark curly hair. She said she feels safe here.

But nowhere is safe.

“Six, then,” Irfan says. “Please protect the house.”

The creature moans. “Good.” It shows its teeth, wet and glistening. “You will soon have some vacancies to fill.”

Irfan’s phone dies, plunging him into darkness. He backs out of the shack, closing the door to the sound of the creature’s laughter.