Lyle awoke to the sound of running water. His room was dark, the windows open to the night, and somewhere …
The shower.
“Now what?” he muttered as he pulled the sheet aside and hung his legs over the edge of the bed.
He blinked and brought the display of his clock radio into focus: 1:21. He stared dully at the red LED digits. He felt drugged. He’d been way down in deep, deep sleep and his brain and body were still fumbling back to alertness. As he watched the display, the last digit changed to a zero.
1:20?
But just a few seconds ago it had been … or at least he’d thought it had been …
Never mind. The shower was running. He jumped off the bed and hurried to the adjoining bathroom.
Lyle felt the steam before he saw it. He fumbled along the wall, found the light switch, and flipped it on. Billows of moisture filled the bathroom, so thick he could barely find his way. He made it to the shower and reached out toward the curtain …
And hesitated. Something told him not to pull it open. Maybe one of those premonitions he didn’t believe in, maybe the result of seeing too many horror movies, but he sensed something besides running water behind the curtain.
Feeling suddenly cold despite the enveloping hot mist, Lyle backed away, one step … two …
No. He wasn’t giving in to this. With a strangled cry that anticipated the terror of what he might see, Lyle leaped forward and slashed the curtain aside.
He stood there in the steam, gasping, heart pounding,
staring at a shower running full blast at max heat. But the spray wasn’t running straight into the tub. It was bouncing against something … something that wasn’t there and yet was. And after the spray struck whatever it was, the water turned red and ran down into the tub to swirled away into the drain.
Lyle closed his eyes, shook his head, then looked again.
The shower continued to run and billow up steam, but the spray now flowed uninterrupted into the tub, and remained clear all the way down to the drain.
What’s happening to me? he thought as he reached in and turned the knob.
And then he sensed someone behind him in the steam.
“Wha—?”
He spun and found no one. But movement to his left caught Lyle’s eye. Something on the big mirror over the sink … dripping lines forming on the moisture-laden glass … connecting into letters … then …
Words.
Who are you?
Lyle could only stare, could only think that this wasn’t happening, he was dreaming again, and pretty soon—
Three more question marks, each bigger than the last, added themselves to the end of the question.
Who are you? ? ? ?
“I … I’m Lyle,” he croaked, thinking, It’s a dream, so play along. “Who are you?”
I dont know
“Why are you here?”
The same words were rewritten below.
I dont know. Im scared. I want to go home
“Where’s home?”
I DONT KNOW
Then something slammed against the mirror with wall-rattling force to create a spider-web shatter the size of a basketball. The lights went out and a blast of cold tore through the bathroom, plunging the climate from rain forest
to arctic circle. Lyle leaped for the light switch but his bare foot hit a puddle; he slipped and went down just as he heard another booming impact break more of the mirror. Glass confetti peppered him with the third impact. He crouched on his knees with his forehead against the floor, hands clasped over the back of his head as whatever was in the room with him pounded the mirror again and again in a fit of mindless rage.
And then as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
Slowly, cautiously, Lyle raised his head in the echoing darkness. Somewhere in the house—down the hall—he heard running footsteps, and then his brother’s voice.
“Lyle! Lyle, you all right?” The bedroom light came on. “Dear God, Lyle, where are you?”
“In here.”
He rose to his knees but could find neither the strength nor the will to regain his feet. Not yet.
He heard Charlie’s approach and called out, “Don’t come in. There’s glass on the floor. Just reach in and hit the light.”
Lyle was facing away from the doorway. When the light came on he looked over his shoulder and saw a wide-eyed and slack-jawed Charlie staring at him.
“What the fuck—” Charlie began, then caught himself. “Dear Lord, Lyle, what you done?”
Charlie’s use of a word he had expunged from his vocabulary since he’d been born again told Lyle the true depth of his brother’s shock. Looking around, he couldn’t blame him. Glittering slivers and pebbles of glass littered the floor; the big mirror looked as if Shaq had been bouncing a granite basketball against it.
“Wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
“Don’t know. See if you can find a blanket and throw it on the floor so I can get out of here without making hamburger of my feet.”
While Charlie went looking, Lyle pushed himself to his
feet and turned, careful to stay in the glass-free circle of floor under him.
Charlie reappeared with a blanket. “This one pretty thin but—”
He stopped and stared, a look of abject horror stretching his features.
“What?”
Charlie pointed a wavering finger at Lyle’s chest. “Oh, God, Lyle, you—you cut yourself!”
Lyle looked down and felt his knees soften when he saw his T-shirt front soaked in crimson. He pulled up the shirt and this time his knees wouldn’t hold him. They buckled and he crumbled to the floor when he saw the deep gash in his chest, so deep he could see his convulsively beating heart through the opening.
He looked up at Charlie, met his terrified eyes, tried to mouth a word or two but failed. He looked down again at his chest …
And it was whole. Intact. Clean. No hole, no blood, not a drop on his skin or his shirt.
Just like what had happened to Charlie last night.
He looked up at his brother again. “You saw that, right? Tell me you saw it this time.”
Charlie was nodding like a bobble-head doll. “I saw it, I saw it! I thought you was buggin’ last night, but now … I mean, what—?”
“Throw that blanket down. I want to get out of here.”
Charlie held onto one end and tossed the rest toward Lyle. They spread it out atop the glass-littered tile and Lyle crawled—he didn’t trust his legs to support him so he crawled—to the door.
When he reached the carpet Lyle stayed down, huddling, shaking. He wanted to sob, wanted to vomit. Things he’d always disbelieved were proving true. The pillars of his world were crumbling.
“What just happened in there, Lyle?” Charlie said, kneeling beside him and laying an arm across his shaking shoulders. “What this all about?”
Lyle gathered himself, swallowed the bile at the back of his throat, and straightened his spine.
“You know what you said about this house being haunted? I’m beginning to think you’re right.” He looked up at the clock radio, which now read 1:11. Who knew how long it had been running backwards. It could be three in the morning for all he knew. “Fuckit, I know you’re right.”
“What we do about it, man?”
Something strange and angry had invaded their house. Was that anger directed at him? At Charlie? He hoped not, because he sensed it ran wide and frighteningly deep. Charlie wanted to know what they were going to do. How could he answer that without even knowing what they were facing?
He grabbed Charlie’s arm and got to his feet.
“I don’t know, Charlie. But I know one thing we’re not doing, and that’s leaving. This is our place now and nobody, living or dead, is chasing us out.”