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The exhaustion from the excitement of spending time with Connor again washed over him. He moved to the front room, turned on the mica-shaded lamp on the end table, and plopped onto the couch. The room was warm, with a fieldstone fireplace bracketed by built-in bookshelves filled mostly with a lot of Restoration Hardware knickknacks in favor of being crammed with books. As soon as he saw these beautiful shelves contained almost no books, save for crap likeChicken Soup for the Gay Male Souland the equally awfulVelvet Rage, he should have known Rory was no man for him. He could be, and was, charming, but there was nothing of substance under that charismatic veneer.
Rory was a smile in search of a soul.
The stained glass windows above the bookshelves were dark now, their colors muted.
It really was a nice house, but like Rory, it had little character. It was all perfectly coordinated surfaces, matched furniture, dust-free…and dull. The home’s historical details Rory had erased in a frenzy of postmodern minimalism. It was a crime.
Rory’s taste revealed nothing of who he was.
And it revealed everything. He was a trend chaser.
Steve pondered heading out to the kitchen, with its white cabinets and travertine marble countertops, and pulling the bottle of sauvignon blanc out of the fridge, pouring a glass.
But his tired mental voice intruded, telling him to get his ass in bed where it belonged. He imagined his sleep would be dream filled, maybe not all of them pleasant, after tonight. The quiet meal he’d shared with Connor was a life changer.
He stood, grateful that the master bedroom was just across from the living room.
Since Rory was gone, the bed was unmade for once, a tangle of striped sheets and quilted gray comforter. Steve was too tired to do anything other than to strip down and hop in, letting the comfort of flannel sheets surround him, his head sinking into a couple of eiderdown pillows.
He was asleep in seconds.
When he woke, he thought it was to the sound of a branch tapping at the window. But then, waking more, he realized that was impossible. Yes, the bedroom had a big picture window, but it looked out onto the front porch. No branches could sneak under the porch’s overhang and tap on his window.
So whathadhe heard?
Or had he heard anything at all? Was the noise merely a fragment from a dream?
He turned in bed feeling uneasy, despite his rational mind telling him his most obvious assumption was simply a mostly forgotten dream particle. There had to be a better reason that his senses were on high alert, as though nerve endings were exposed.
And then there was a creak, the unmistakable alert of a floorboard pressed and released.
He struggled to see into the darkness. One quirk about Steve was that he loved an absolutely pitch-black bedroom for sleeping. No ambient light and certainly no little night lights. The blind was drawn, blanketing the room in what was now a creepy, velvet darkness.
Gradually, even the darkness couldn’t prevent his dark-adapted eyes from making adjustments.
He gasped when something darker than the dark itself separated from the shadows and moved toward the bed. Listening closely, Steve could hear the soft intake and exhalation of breath. Another presence in the room made his skin tingle.
Steve swallowed but found no spit as he faced the terrifying reality that someone stood unmoving at the foot of his bed.
“Who are you? How did you get in?” he managed to rasp.
It would have been less terrifying if the figure had answered or even laughed demonically.
But whoever, or whatever, was in the house with him kept its own counsel. He tried to recall a fantasy book or graphic novel he’d read a long time ago, one in which the villains were shadow people who spun themselves out of darkness. They were barely discernible, but they had enough mass and shape to be just slightly different from the darkness surrounding them. Black on black.
Steve was paralyzed. He could barely breathe, let alone move. He knew he was beyond vulnerable, lying here like this in only a pair of boxer shorts, nothing to protect him save the thinness of a sheet and quilt. And yet, even though his rational mind told him these things, urging him to leap from the bed and get moving, he was unable to move from the bed. If he couldn’t fight, he could at least flee for Christ’s sake. Even though his head was screaming these things, his heart was too terrified to do anything; he might as well have been bound and gagged. He wanted to pull the covers up over his head and curl into a ball.
The thing standing there watching him, breathing, saying nothing, was a monster.
No.
Monsters weren’t real. Or at least the ones that existed arrived mostly in human form. As evil as human beings could be, one could still deal with them—there was always a fighting chance because even the most vile and villainous person had limits to their endurance.
The darkness shifted and Steve sucked in a breath. The figure moved to the side of the bed, and Steve wanted to scream, but it was like being in a nightmare. He had no voice, and although the shriek scorched his throat, aching for release, he couldn’t summon breath or voice.
He watched in helpless horror as the man—he could now see it was a man and not simply a faceless shadow—reached near him and grabbed a pillow off the bed.
And then he raised the pillow and centered it above Steve’s face. With one swift motion, he brought it down, holding it tight.
