My alarm clock went off at 5AM when someone began to ring the doorbell. They rang it several times, enough that I panicked with sudden urgency. Who rings a doorbell at 5AM? I jumped up, threw on my bathrobe and peaked through my bedroom’s front window curtains. The window overlooked the driveway, and not a single car was in sight. All the neighbourhood vehicles, except mine, seemed to have disappeared, and all the houses were dark. The doorbell rang again.
I looked out the back window of my room, facing the beachfront, and I was momentarily blinded by the rising sun. Waves crashed onto the beach, indicating an incoming storm. I saw fresh footsteps in the sand coming up to the backdoor’s veranda. The doorbell rang again.
I exited my bedroom and crept down the stairs. I wasn’t sure if I should answer the door. Who rings a doorbell at 5AM? And while this thought continued to cross my mind, I realized the house was quiet. Everything was quiet. I could not hear my grandfather clock ticking – in fact, I hadn’t heard it clang at 5AM when my alarm went off, or seconds later when the doorbell started ringing. And I didn’t hear the usual chorus of birds rising with the morning sun. I couldn’t even hear the refrigerator or air conditioner running, and most startling I couldn’t hear the waves crashing onto the beach. Everything was unnaturally silent. The doorbell rang again. Could I not hear anything because I’m terrified of the person at the door? My senses failing?
I entered the foyer and saw a shadow at the door. I was thankful for the glazed glass. There was no way someone could look in. But whoever it was, they started whistling a familiar tune I couldn’t quite place. And then they rang the doorbell again, just as I felt a draft. I turned around and looked down the long hallway into the kitchen, where the back door is. My heart skipped and I felt faint when I saw that the backdoor was ajar, but the screen door was closed. Had I forgotten to close the door last night? I moved quickly to the back of the house and saw that the screen door was locked. At least I had locked the screen door. The doorbell rang again.
I picked up one of the cordless phones in the kitchen in a split decision to call the police, but the line was dead. I decided to return to my room to grab my cell phone, and as I crept through the hallway and began to ascend the stairs, the person at the door began to speak.
“Ms. Evans? Do you own a gun?” It was a man with an accent I couldn’t identify. I didn’t know him. He knows who I am? “Ms. Evans?” A drilling noise, and the doorknob began to vibrate. He was breaking in. “Ms. Evans? What is a young widow like yourself going to do without a gun in a situation like this?” He sighed. “Or a working phone?”
I bolted up the stairs and into my room as the man rang the doorbell yet again, just as he began to whistle again that all too familiar tune. I grabbed my phone, but for some reason it wasn’t connected to WiFi or a cellular network. It was useless.
“Ms. Evans! Please come back downstairs!” The man called for me, and I went into the hallway and began to pace. What do I do? Who is at my door?
He spoke again, with concern in his voice. “Are you going to open the door? I can open the door for you, but I will need you to invite me in.” What? He rang the doorbell again, and I built up the courage to stand at least halfway down the stairs to talk.
“What do you want? Who are you? Why are you breaking into my house? How do you know who I am? What is this?” Dozens of questions raced through my head. “And why aren’t my phones working? What are you doing?”
“Ms. Evans. Please. Just open the bloody door.” There was irritation in his voice. “I need you to open the door because I need to kill the person who’s come to kill you. There is much at stake.”
“What?”
“Someone entered your unlocked backdoor last night. A person who lazily did not lock the solid door. A person so incompetent that they only managed to lock the screen door behind them. A person who has come to kill you and desecrate your corpse.”
“What?”
“Someone is in your house, Ms. Evans. I don’t know where. But they’re in there. Your phones don’t work because they’ve cut the lines and they’re holding a scrambler to divert your signals. Now please. Open the door and invite me in.”
How could someone know this? How could someone be in my house? Wouldn’t they have killed me while sleeping? Desecrate me? None of it made sense. “How do you know this?”
“Because Mr. Daniel Evans, your husband, told me.”
“My husband has been dead for years.” I began to grow dizzy from confusion, and nauseous at the notion of my husband having spoken to whoever this man is.
“Just open the door so I can do my job. I have another target after this, so, really, you’re cutting into valuable time.” He rang the doorbell again. “You know, I’m only ringing the doorbell so your killer will know there’s another person here, which botches their plans. They’re only here to collect you.”
And then a thought occurred to me. “Why didn’t you just slice through the screen door? Or just break in with your drill?”
“I have to enter through front doors. And fine.” He began drilling again and I gripped the railing in anticipation.
“Collect me?”
“Collect. Kill. Disperse. Eat. It’s all the same in our line of work.” The doorknob cracked as the door swung open. The man appeared young. He was blond with a neatly groomed beard, with a brimmed hat. He wore thick black shades. But something was uncanny about him, something off. I felt immediate discomfort just looking at him. And then I noticed his flesh-colored hat was made from actual skin. Perhaps human skin? He held a shotgun in his left hand, and pointed it down the hallway. He reached into his coat as intense fear washed over me, and he pulled out a revolver. And then he pointed it at me.
And suddenly sound returned to me. I heard slow, methodical footsteps coming up the basement stairs. And whistling. Someone was whistling that strange tune, but it wasn’t the man at the door. “Ms. Evans. Can you please invite me in? I’m not going to shoot you, it’s just that I have no way of knowing whether you’re Ms. Evans or the person who’s come to kill her. But invite me in and we’ll figure things out.”
Do I invite him in?
Submitted October 24, 2017 at 01:04AM by jc2_1990 http://ift.tt/2zwlU4c nosleep
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