A Block of Broken Houses

Inherited (Part One)

A dream, I thought in that foggy moment before waking, and as I neared reality I expected the dream-sounds to vanish and the dead-of-night calm to settle over me, dissipating my fear. A sound had woken me, and although I told myself not to panic it was difficult not to. The steady whump-whump of my heart was deafening, and sleep's fog was still filling my head and clinging to my limbs like sodden bath towels. I waited, mentally counting the seconds until my heart rate and my breathing began to slow. Eventually the cobwebs parted and the silence—save for my hushed gasps—was total.

And then I heard it again, a sound I thought I had conjured: a sneeze from Spencer's bedroom.

I flung the thin bed sheet aside and swung my feet to the floor, stumbling out of our bedroom and into the hallway. My vision was suddenly enveloped by blinding spots of light, causing me to sway and then latch onto the door frame leading to the bathroom. I attempted to slow my breath and clear my vision, and suddenly realized that had I swayed in the opposite direction I would have spilled down the stairs.

Behind me, down the short hallway, my wife shifted in our bed and mumbled something incoherent.

"Nothing," I replied, my eyes shut tight, my body still swaying. "Go back to sleep." She settled without a fight, and as the last of the fog coating my vision dissolved I caught my dark and unkind half-reflection in the glow of the nightlight perched underneath the large bathroom mirror. In that moment I was as awake as I've ever been, yet there was an instant when my reflection altered, its shifting features and blazing, orange eyes all too familiar. For that instant I thought I must still be sleeping. I gave my head a shake, and when I looked again the reflection of the thing that had haunted my dreams for too many years was gone—gone, at least, from the mirror.

I ran a hand through my hair and tugged, the pain ensuring this was no dream. And I should have known better, because the sounds and smells—even the tastes, thick and heavy on my tongue—were too solid for any dream. It all felt wrong...familiar. It felt like the chill of a distant trauma that never really left and was only waiting...and watching.

Another sneeze from Spencer's room, and that got me moving again. The hall felt too long, too dark. I heard the wails from my son, which sounded as though pain had surpassed his terror, and I moved a little faster.

I envisioned my son standing lost in the middle of his own bedroom, a shell of himself, tears and sweat and fear rolling over him. He'd be unable to speak for some time, and when he eventually could I knew what he would say. Like a road map into the future, I saw it all, because the same had happened to me.

Vanilla is an odour I cannot stand, an odour I fear. I think of my mother when I smell it, and when I think of her, I think of that night—nearly twenty-six years ago; the memory of it still haunts me, even now. I admit that it has been a few years since the figure (the thing, for it was no person) last came to me, mere weeks before my son was born, and I know the thing that had haunted my dreams and the corner of my bedroom for years is now back; my son's sneezes have confirmed it.

(CONTINUED IN PART TWO)