The bathroom is small. Just a shower, toilet and sink with brown, linoleum floors and white, stained walls. Hank Williams’s “Lovesick Blues” wafts in from the widely cracked door just in front of the toilet. A man in his mid-sixties grunts softly with his head resting in his palms, propped up on his knees. A gentle click in the background signifies the central air tripping. With the hum of a motor, cold air starts spilling out a vent high up one of the walls. As the current wafts down across the man’s shirtless back, he shivers.
After washing up, he leaves the bathroom, walking over toward a floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass door in the living room wall. It’s dark outside, but not too dark for 3:00 in the morning on an isolated mountainside. In the living room the light is off, but a sliver emanates from the cracked bathroom door where the combination ceiling light/ventilation fan has been left running. Still, the bright fullness of the moon outside spills in powerfully, illuminating the outside world in complete detail with only a shard of light reflecting in the glass from inside. The man has a clear view of the tree line that starts only a dozen or so yards from the short, wooden patio outside the door. Just before the trees, a deer pauses from grazing to eye the direction of the house cautiously. The deer isn’t looking directly at him, only in his general direction, sensing movement somewhere in its peripheral. As the sad, slow yodeling of the song ends, the tape clicks in the cassette player, automatically snapping off. Except for the hum of air through the ducts and the fan in the bathroom, there is silence.
Silence that is broken by the man’s stomach gurgling. Sighing, he walks into the kitchen and snaps open the refrigerator, grabbing the milk and letting the door hang open for the light to spill into the room. He downs about half the glass as soon as he pours it, exhaling in tight discomfort as he slams the glass back down on the counter. The rinds and trimmings of peppers mix in the kitchen trash with the blood-soaked foam tray that, before earlier that night, had been wrapped shut with a half of a pound of cheap steak. The smell that wafts out makes his stomach knot all over again. He tops off his glass before putting the milk back and closing the door. It takes a while for his eyes to adjust back to the darkness. A slightly heavier silence descends as the air from the vents slows to a stop.
Crossing back over to the glass door, the deer has resumed grazing in the yard, unaware, or unconcerned, that he has resumed his study of it. As he takes a sip of milk, a shadow passes, briefly, over the crack of light from the bathroom reflecting off the glass. The deer jerks its head up from the grass and freezes in place, watching the house intently. The man spins around but finds himself alone in the living room. The ventilation fan keeps humming.
Slightly spooked and still too sick to sleep, the man grabs a novel from the coffee table, flicks on a small side lamp, and sits down to read. A chapter or so in, a creaking in the ceiling, from the floor above, barely registers as he begins to nod-off into the book. He jerks fully awake, however, when the creaking climaxes with a dull, heavy thud. Jumping out of the sofa, he walks swiftly over to the stairs.
Peering up the dark stairway, the man frowns as he contemplates going upstairs to look around. He considers the fact that in horror movies, characters always shout greetings into the darkness, as if anything with malicious intentions would ever answer. He remains silent, then, as he walks as softly as he can up the stairs, stepping gently on the edges closest to the wall to keep them from squeaking.
The second floor is small, as is the entire house, built as it was for himself and his late wife, after the kids had all grown and left. Buying property in the mountains had been her idea. She had had enough of city life, and they had the money to retire somewhere secluded. The open wilderness had made him uneasy at first, but had come to remind him of her. So when the cancer finally took her away five years ago, he stayed. It had, after all, been something of a compromise: wide-open wilderness, but tight, modest home.
He tip-toes quickly into the master bedroom first, at the far end of the short hallway. Nothing looks out of place, so he rounds back down the hallway and peers into the small guest bedroom. Nothing wrong there either. He opens up the linen closet, just in case it proves deep enough to hide some intruder. Only towels. His eyes having more fully readjusted to the dark, he turns back to the master bedroom once more. The guest bedroom contains only the bed and nightstand, and he is fairly certain he hasn’t missed anything there. He scans the master bedroom more carefully. The sheets are askew on the bed, but only as he had left them. Books and magazines are scattered on the table on his traditional side of the bed, but nothing out of the ordinary. The closet on the far side of the room hangs wide open, as it always does, leaving no doubt that it isn’t concealing any unseen threats. The man breathes a small sigh of relief.
Only to have it matched by a sharp, audible click that echoes up the stairwell as the dim light from the living room switches off. Startled, the man jogs over to the linen closet that still contains an abandoned cache of his children’s toys. Picking up a light, aluminum bat, he makes his way downstairs once more.
Rounding the corner into the living room, he holds the bat ready above his shoulder, but there is nothing to swing at. Moving quickly, he checks the kitchen and nudges the door to the bathroom open further, releasing a stronger flood of light into the living room. Nothing. Finally, he goes to check the front and glass side doors. Both are still locked, though his deer friend has taken off from the yard.
Cautiously, he inspects the lamp in the living room. Testing the switch, it clicks back to life normally. His book is still on the coffee table, open to the page where he left it. Aside from his fluttering heart, all seems right with the world. After listening for a few moments, the man allows himself to drop back down onto the sofa, resting the baseball bat on the couch next to him. He reaches over to his glass of milk only to find it empty, yet he has no recollection of finishing it. Creeping up from the back of his brain, he is overcome with the sinister feeling of being toyed with. He wonders if, perhaps, he is losing his mind.
The neighbors, what few there were in this area, had been wondering that for some time now. The lonely old man in the cabin up the hill, lost his wife, abandoned by his children. Nothing to do but read and listen to his old country albums. Who wouldn’t go a little stir-crazy, cooped up alone like that? They whispered loudly enough about him, but tried not to point openly when he came down once every month or so to visit the closest grocery store. He had no problem ignoring them; he didn’t interact with others on even a weekly basis. But maybe, after a few years, they might have a point?
His stomach churns again, too hard to be ignored. As he bolts to the bathroom he silently curses himself for insisting that he can still eat such spicy food at his age. Peppers are for the young, he reminds himself as he is overtaken by the sudden urge to eat nothing but oatmeal for the rest of his life. Almost jogging into the open bathroom, he taps the door closed just enough to sit down on the toilet. The effects of his upset intestines on the bowl are immediate and gruesome. As he rests his forehead in his hands once more, he notices he is beginning to sweat. After a few morose minutes, the storm in his stomach has subsided.
A soft snicker, barely audible over the hum of the fan, drifts in from the living room. He jerks up on the toilet, reaching for the bat, only to realize he has left it on the sofa. Sweating once more, he looks around only to realize the true horror of the situation: the toilet paper holder is empty, its cardboard tube mocking him with only a few white scraps. Out in the living room, the light has gone out again. Visible through the crack in the doorway sits a fresh roll of toilet paper, just out of reach, hanging in balance between the edge of the light from the bathroom and the darkness beyond.
