AN UNINVITED VISITOR

A strange little tale...

A door creaked, a slow and almost silent barrage of clicks and squeals, but not this door, not this door because this door was the bedroom door and it wasn’t that one. He could see it from his bed. It was firmly shut and he wanted it to stay that way.

Jack Smith sat up in bed and stared towards his bedroom door, wondering what in Earth he was listening to. A door was most definitely creaking, and he wasn’t asleep and dreaming. He pinched himself to make sure, and it hurt. He was, surely, awake.

Thank goodness, silence.

And another door creaked. Another door that wasn’t his bedroom door and wasn’t that other door either.

And it was louder. Just a tiny bit louder, but definitely louder. And its creak was harsher as though the place on the other side of it was wrapped in winter’s freezing coat.

Jack Smith shivered at the thought and pulled his duvet over his head.

And his bedroom door opened.

He sensed that it opened rather than saw it, but his sensing was accurate enough. The door opened right enough. It opened wide, it opened with barely a creak, and someone came in.

He didn’t see someone come in but knew that someone had.

He smelt it. He felt it in the air under his duvet. And he was suddenly aware that a shadow fell across it as if shadows had a weight.

Jack Smith was shaking. It wasn’t with fear but it was with something worse than that. Maybe you’d call it terror. Sheer unadulterated terror.

After all, his senses told him there was an uninvited visit in his room.

He wanted to look, but daren’t. He just lay there shaking, praying that he might be saved from whatever unwanted malevolence was standing by his bed, praying desperately to a universe of nameless deities just in case amongst them one was real and might volunteer to help.

“Ho Ho Ho,” said a voice not so far from his still hidden head.

Who spoke like that? Who had a monosyllabic vocabulary that consisted entirely of the word “Ho” repeated like that?

Was it the red Christmas elf? The fat man dressed in red? The absurdity he had once believed in cosily, like children do. The one with reindeer that had the absurd ability to fly without wings? The whole idea made him snort.

“Harrumph!” he almost exploded under his duvet.

“Ho Ho Ho!” repeated the voice, and it wasn’t so much scary and threatening as peculiar, with what amounted to an amused smile somehow managing to attach itself to the sound.

By the sonnd of it, if the voice was peculiar it was probably uttered by a completely non-threatening individual. Could it be the Christmas elf? The one he’d stopped believing in, oh, decades ago?

Was the old story true after all?

Could there possibly be a fat jolly man full of ho ho hos with gravity-defying reindeer and a gigantic sack of of goodies?

An elf with a stomach fat with mince pies and a mind blurred by port and sherry in considerable excess?

And somewhere a door creaked.

A different door. Not his bedroom door but one closer to him than that. One that couldn’t possibly be there, but the evidence of his ears suggested it was.

“Come, come, come,” said the voice.

Should he?

Should he come out of his rather pathetic hiding, his ostrich head in a bed of sand, and greet his unexpected visitor? Should he banish his nervous fear to where it properly belonged and look boldly at the ho ho ho-ing apparition?

He struggled, fear battling with curiosity while he was sure he could hear someone tut-tutting and gently stamping his feet in frustration like a frustrated parent waiting for a naughty child.

Then, on an impulse because he couldn’t see himself doing anything else, he pulled his head out from under the duvet.

“About time too,” said the grim reaper gently, a humorous glint in his eyes. “We’ve a long way to go today my lad, loads of doors to open and close and pass through, and it’s getting late.”

“But you’re not...” gasped Jack.

“Ho ho ho,” teased Death, “Ho ho ho ho!”

And the shock was too much for Jack’s old heart. He didn’t hear the next door creak, but he did walk slowly through it.

© Peter Rogerson 22.12.17

Reviews

[barleygirl]

I love this story! Nicely macabre, mixed with Christmas themes, & told in a poetic way with tons of imagery that sings. I was totally unexpecting of the ending twist, well-crafted. Even tho many of your sequences are familiar to the macabre genre, you've taken the time to state things in an original & artful way, making your story fresh. Even tho you say he's experiencing "sheer unadulterated terror" . . . I have to be honest, your story sounds a bit more playful than that. I even felt the grim reaper to be a pleasant surprise, all in all! (Maybe I'm reading in my own latent wishes!) Here's wishing you & your loved ones a lovely Christmas (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie