Tag: horror

This is the first fiction I’m posting to my website. I don’t know if I’d call it a story; it’s more a vignette or a slice of life served fantasy-style.  This was inspired by my fear of going out to the mailbox after dark. I don’t know why, but it always feel like something is following me. Anyway, enjoy. 

Alex shivered as she stepped out onto her porch. The only light came from the bulb dangling above her, causing her shadow to slink into a small circle around her feet. The air was thin and dry, silent except for the mile-away hum of cars out on the main road. The brick mailbox at the curb seemed farther than mere yards, a boxy shadow out in the gloam. She loathed walking down to the street after dark, but with night falling early this time of year, Alex didn’t have much choice. Pulling her thick cardigan tight around her shoulders, she took the handful of steps down to the path, her heels clopping on the stone.

No sooner had she moved out of the glow of the porch light and into the dark of the yard than a noise shook free in the shadows around her, an echo of soft steps.

“Hello?” Alex turned and peered into the dark between her house and the neighbors. The frame of the brick ranch and the shapes of shrubbery stood outlined in shades of gray. Nothing moved or breathed or shifted. It’s too quiet, her mind whispered. Nothing is that quiet.

Alex started walking again, her boots clapping the cement. A sound echoed behind her, just out of rhythm with her own steps.

She spun around again. Nothing. Putting a hand to her forehead, she peered at the darkness, as if blocking out what little light there was would somehow make the shadows sharper. Alex glanced up at the sky, coated in a blue-black shroud of wooly clouds.

She folded her body inward, against the icy air, and whatever was creeping after her. It was probably nothing, but her mind whispered about all the things that came out at night. Werewolves in the bushes. Alex glanced at the neighbor’s boxwoods, as still as everything else. Witches up the street. Her eyes flicked up the cul-de-sac, to the darkened windows of a single house. Ghosts don’t have to haunt houses, you know. She shuddered and ran.

Alex darted across the lawn, her footsteps soggy sounding on the damp, mossy grass. More wet steps bounced around her, first to the left, then to the right. This time she didn’t bother to turn but kept her eyes on the stone box at the curb, and counted in her mind how far she had to go. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Witches. Now, ten. Werewolves. Just five to go. The sounds moved behind her, and Alex prayed it was just a trick of the air, so thin and cold, that maybe it had nothing better to do than mimic her every sound.

At the mailbox, she stopped with one hand on the metal door and all her breath held inside her. Nothing on the lawn, nothing in the street, but the blurred and overlapping shadows of bushes and cars and trees and shrubs. Alex listened. Only her heartbeat and the low hum of the suburbs came back to her ears, the faint buzz of streetlights and far-off cars and electricity that were only ever noticed when it was taken away by power outages. She let her breath gush out, a white ghost drifting up into the dark.

There was no one. Just your fear. And witches. And werewolves. Ghosts, too, probably. In this silence, she would have heard something. Alex opened the mailbox, and took out a slim pile of white envelopes, their paper a bright spot in the gloom.

Then, she sprinted back across the lawn, the terrified voice in her head, and her panting breath drowning out her own footsteps and anything else that might be padding along behind her.

Only as she scrambled back up the stairs and into the glow of the porch light did she let herself slow down. Her shadow resolved itself behind her as she moved out of the darkness.

Alex noticed it then, solidifying below her on the patterned brick of the porch, as it formed itself back into the simple shape of her and reattached itself to her feet. She opened the front door, the warm foyer light throwing the shadow into stark relief. It flinched at the brightness. Looking down at it, she sighed.

“You promised me you would stay inside while I got the mail.”

The shadow shrugged, innocently.

“You know you scared me half to death following me across the lawn like that.”

It nodded, too enthusiastically for Alex’s liking.

“Do it again,” she scolded. “And I’ll get the witch five houses down to sew you on so you can’t escape.” The shadow shrunk down, head-shape hung sheepishly.

“Okay. Promise me you won’t do it again?” A curt nod. “Alright, let’s go in and watch TV with the lights low so you can wander around. I know you’ve barely stretched yourself today.” The shadow fell in stride with Alex as she stepped into the bright light of the foyer and shut the door.

END