Dark Sounds

Ben looked up sharply from his book and narrowed his eyes in some attempt to listen more closely.
Grace, his wife of forty two years who lay next to him in bed, turned to look at him with a frown.
“What?” she asked plainly. She disliked him interrupting their reading time, it was why she made him visit the bathroom before bed whether he felt he had to go or not.
“I heard a clicking sound, did you hear it?” He arched his head down, again to try and listen better, but he couldn't pick up anything.
Grace tutted and went back to her e-book.
“It's just the wind Ben.” Her tone was stern and she pursed her lips to show her irritation with the interruption.
Ben yielded, it was easier that way, and he forced himself back to his book.

He hadn't quite gotten used to the e-book fad like Gracie had, and he still missed the turning of pages or the folding of corners (although that drove his wife crazy when they were sharing a book), but most of all he missed that sense of accomplishment when placing the finished book up with all the others.
He supposed it was something to do with his ego, or his “competitive streak” which Gracie liked to tell him he had in their younger days.
Some habits just died hard.
He tapped the screen for the next page (another thing he disliked) and ploughed ahead.
He’d never read Hemingway before, something which people in the book society liked to tease him about, or react like he'd just pissed his pants in front of them, so when he'd seen For Whom the Bell Tolls on sale on Amazon, he decided to give it a shot.
Now, only just four chapters in, he wished he hadn't bothered.
Gracie had warned him, “go with The Old man and the Sea, it's easier”, but he had decided to go with his gut, and as an almost octogenarian, it turned out his guts had shit taste.
Gracie shuffled beside him, her legs got pins and needles if she didn't lie out correctly.
Ben was about to tell her to use the ergonomic pillows to keep her legs raised when he heard it again.
There was something odd about that sound, like it was in the room with them,coming just from the corner or maybe right outside the door.
It felt unnatural, like cutlery or glass rattling against itself, he couldn't quite place it.

He glanced over at Gracie, this time from the corner of his eye so as not to disturb her, but she hadn't seemed to notice it.

As he debated or not whether to ask her once more, it came again, and this time it was outside the door, he was certain of it.

He dropped his e-book to his lap and raised himself up on his elbows.

Gracie took a sharp breath, a torrent of complaints lined up to shoot out of her mouth, but Ben raised a finger to his lips and when she saw his eyes, the words weren't there, instead her breath stuck and she felt like something had sucked the air from her lungs.
Ben looked terrified.

“Gracie, have you got your phone?” he asked without looking at her, his eyes were fixed on their bedroom door as if at any moment he expected some horror to tear through and devour them both.

She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but she heard herself say, in a timid and frightened voice, “No Benny, it's downstairs on the kitchen counter.”
She reached a hand out to his and he took it, gave it a squeeze and began to climb out of bed.

Now the panic hit her and she bawled, “Don't you go out there! Oh please Benny don't go out there!”
He leaned back to shush her but she grabbed his arm.
“If it's burglars they might just take the TV and leave! Just let ‘em Benny, please!”
She realised how pathetic she sounded, but she didn't care, she just wanted her Benny to be safe and she felt terrible now for the way she had condescended to him earlier.

“It's no burglar Gracie, I'm sure of it.” He seemed completely calm, but he still maintained his lock on the door, and still he rose from the bed, gently pulling her clutch away from him as he did.

“You stay here, and you lock that door behind me Gracie, you understand?”
He finally peeled his eyes away to look at her and when he met her pleading gaze she saw the deathly seriousness in his and nodded.

“What is it Benny?” She hadn't even heard it properly, but there was definitely something rattling somewhere in the house although she couldn't say for sure where it was coming from.
It hadn't sounded really like anything she could describe, which was probably why she had missed it and had only just caught the tail end of it the last time.

In the darkest crevasses of her mind though, something spoke to her,

You know what it sounded like, Gracie. Yellow eyes, burning through you, long, thick body sliding along the sand and rock as you sit there, seven years old and frozen in the deepest fear you've ever felt, as it inches closer and closer and closer to your leg.
Yes, you know that sound, you remember that bite and how you screamed in pain and terror as it tore through your soft child flesh and pumped it's burning venom into your blood.
You should have died then, but you didn't, and now it's come to finish you off. Now that there's no anti-venom around for hundreds of miles, and even if there were, your tired old heart would have long stopped before it could do anything.
And those yellow eyes Gracie, they will be the last thing you watch as he comes closer and closer to eat you whole!

“Gracie! Come on honey get up, I need you to lock the door behind me.”
Ben stood at the door, he'd managed to get dressed and held that heavy wooden shoe horn that Grace had sworn to throw out a dozen times in his hand like a sword.

She hadn't noticed a damn thing whilst sitting there and remembering that terrible day in Yellowstone, over seventy years before.
The sweat had formed a cool, wet patch on the small of her back which felt icy now, as she pulled the sheets away and climbed out.

“It's a snake Benny, I know it is, oh Christ!” the tears welled up in her eyes as she walked toward him.

Ben, well aware of her deepest fear, walked to meet her and held her in his arms. He hadn't seen her this frightened since they had woken up on the sofa one night twenty years ago to find Anaconda blaring away on the TV.
Gracie had damn nearly leapt out the window to get away then, and she looked fit to actually do it this time.

He didn't need to tell her there were no snakes here, not this far north at least, he could tell from her flustered crying that she already knew that, but it wouldn't do to tell her so.
Still though, it did sound very similar to...

“Look, I'm gonna go take a look and see if I can grab that phone. If anyone's down there I'll come back up and knock, twice, OK Gracie?”

She felt like slapping him for sounding so calm, but she nodded instead as she dried her eyes. “OK” she whimpered, “but you be careful and you get back up here to me, you hear me? You let them take whatever they like Ben Sullivan, so long as you make it back up here to me!”

She felt the panic subside, she supposed Benny's calmness had helped her to get there, and so the panic rose again as she imagined if something did indeed happen to him.

“Do you need to go? Can't we just wait it out up here?” she pleaded, but he was already opening the door and peering out into the blackness outside.

He turned, he had never looked so brave to her as he did then, and said, “remember, two knocks and let me in. Now close this door Gracie.”
The dark swallowed him as she shut the door.

Those next minutes were torture for Grace as she pressed her head to the wooden door and listened.
She cursed every creak as Ben descended the stairs, and imagined every other faint impression of a sound as the footsteps of their intruders.
Her heart beat so loudly that she could hear little else, only wait for what seemed an age.
A dog barked in the distance and she willed it to keep quiet, to quit it's furore until she could hear Ben give an OK, or tell her it was nothing at all, just an open window or an old pipe, but there was nothing, not a sound.

He should be back by now, I counted the steps, I walked the way to the kitchen and made it back to the stairs already, he should be coming back up!

The rattle was so loud, and so close outside the door that it must have only been a foot away from Grace at most.

She jerked backwards, stumbled to keep her feet and landed just on top of the mattress. Another foot and she would have landed badly on the wooden floor, probably never to have gotten back up.
But her eyes, like Ben's just moments before, were fixed now to the bedroom door and to the source of that awful sound.

It was like crushing paper and rain falling on a tin roof, all within a deeply exhaled breath. There was nothing natural about it at all, and Grace found herself shuddering uncontrollably.
It wasn't a snake no, but something else, something worse, and it was stood right outside the door.

She screamed for Ben as the handle turned.



Ben had scanned the kitchen three, maybe four times for that fucking phone but he couldn't see it anywhere.
He could have cursed Gracie out loud for moving it, like she moved everything else, for no reason at all, but he still wasn't sure yet that there was nobody in the house.

He had checked the back door and, to his relief, found it locked up tight. The front door too, but he was checking the windows now after he had given up on finding wherever the hell Gracie had put that god damned phone.

He felt more sure now, his confidence rising as he checked the last of the windows in the kitchen, but the laundry room was still to go.

As he gently and noiselessly opened the laundry room door, he knew the window inside was opened, and he had almost shut the door again to turn and run upstairs, all his confidence drained away and nothing but raw survival as he scampered best he could up those wooden steps to Gracie and their bedroom and the only safe haven he could think of, but instead he forced himself on and pushed the door.

The door creaked loudly and somewhere in the distance he heard a dog bark, but he peered inside to see.
Nothing, the window was open yes, but only a fraction, and the small room appeared gratefully empty but for their old Hyundai washer-dryer and a collection of old and mostly empty detergent boxes.

He let out a sigh as he shut the window, locked it and turned to head back through the house and upstairs.

It was quiet as he walked back, scanning every corner as he did, now that his eyes had adjusted to the low light.

He stepped confidently upstairs without making a peep and was about to call Gracie when the rattle boomed right before him, someplace on the landing between him and their bedroom.

It must have only been a few feet away and Ben, out of pure instinct alone, swung blindly with the old shoe horn as he reeled backwards and away, stepping perilously close to the edge of the stairwell as he did so.

As he swung the rattling came at him, louder, furious and sounding like it was in all directions all at once, even above him.

Something brushed off his face and he panicked and clawed the invisible assailant away, but it had already left him, toying with Ben's fear and poor vision.

It was upon him now, this invisible creature. It's next attack would rip his soft belly open, or lash out and send Ben hurtling down the stairs to die in a crumpled mess.
Its hate-filled, chittering noise filled his ears, taunting him as he lashed out again and again, whipping through air that occupied nothing.

He stumbled atop the stairwell, his foot swaying over the edge just enough to keep him barely upright, as he swung once more, one last desperate effort as the sweat stung his eyes and blinded him further, and he struck something.

Ben lurched forward, exhausted, his eyes wild as he gasped for air and tried to find the attacker quickly, before it could recuperate and strike out again, this time with even more rage.

He reached for the light and was blinded by its suddenness.

He scolded himself for his stupidity as he fought the regain his vision and there, finally, he saw the source of their terror and his heart dropped, defeated by what he finally saw.


Gracie screamed again as the door handle twisted once more, but suddenly Ben was calling to her and telling her it was OK and to just open up and let him in.

He sounds strange, she heard herself think, but she was already walking to the door and reaching for the key.

“Why didn't you knock like we agreed? You scared the life outta m…” She couldn't finish the sentence as she swung the door open and took in the sight before her.
The realisation of what she was seeing had muted her, so she stood with her mouth agape and waited.

What looked like Ben stood before her, layered in sweat, T-shirt sopping wet and pyjamas just barely hanging on, smiling strangely, as if unsure she would believe him.

In his outstretched hand he held a dead cicada, it's legs crossed over in its death pose and it's battered wings outstretched to either side.

Grace sagged and shook her head.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”