A Block of Broken Houses

The Visit (Part One)

It was the absolute silence that woke him...or perhaps it had been something hidden beneath it. He felt no immediate urgency to wake fully and let his head swim with the blissful and incoherent weight of part-sleep. He attempted to wet his dry lips with a tongue that was equally dry, only somewhat aware he was doing so. Through drawn eyelids he noticed no hint of light (daylight, anyway—it was much too dark for that) and grasped at the smallest string of hope that sleep would once again claim him.

And then he thought of what had caused him to wake in the first place—the utter silence of something attempting to hide behind it—and his heart began to beat a little faster. And that was when all hope of fading to sleep vanished and he forced his eyelids open the smallest crack in the spirit of curiosity.

The shutters on the window closest to him were angled slightly, tattooing thin strips of moonlight across the upper-half of the bed. Within that light and resting on his stomach was a jumbled ball of hands and fingers: his right hand entwined with Amanda's left. He felt the limp and somewhat cool grasp of her hand in his and the dull tickle of her stray hairs on his cheek. The corners of his mouth crinkled to a grin that was not all but primarily happiness. Or perhaps it was only partial happiness, because pulling her into a life that contained more than a few lies had forced him to swallow the balance—fear, guilt, regret. Swallowing, however, did not make it disappear, and it was all still floating around in there somewhere.

But he was happy, that was the point, and moments like this—waking to find her so close to him—reassured him that he had made all the right decisions, that the lies were justified. And then he thought of how they had never woken like this (at least not that he could remember), and a voice within spoke up: it felt off, odd, and smelled just as bad.

He again glanced at their clasped hands and caught the soft shine of the ring she wore on her thumb. He studied her hand and wondered why it was beginning to feel less and less like her hand at all. It felt foreign, more than just cool, and he squeezed it gently, waiting for a reaction.

And then he heard the soft but crisp creek of strained wood.

His gaze shifted to the rocking chair—his reading chair—in the corner of their bedroom. He opened his eyes a little farther in an attempt to put his mind (one that never ran but was currently approaching a slow trot) at ease. The shutters in the window closest to the rocking chair were shut entirely, and that side of the bedroom was enveloped in shadows. He thought there might be a shape but could not say for certain.

He was beginning to convince himself that it had been nothing, that he was in fact closer to sleep than he had originally thought and would soon drift off again. But then he caught the smell of something wet and metallic and his attention shifted back to Amanda. He gently pulled on her hand and it came toward him with ease. He turned his body, began to prop himself up on an elbow to try to piece things together, and that was when the weight of her (much too heavy, he realized, and wondered how he could have missed something so obvious) rolled away from him and dropped to the mattress.

He stumbled something incoherent, his voice groggy, at the realization that it was not her body but rather the body of a dummy. Within the thin beams of light he noticed how its hair was more than too dark to be her hair and again wondered how he had failed to notice a detail so obviously off. He would later tell himself that his exhaustion had confused him, but it was an excuse he would only tolerate, not fully accept.

He suddenly realized he was still holding her hand (if it really was her hand...although he was almost certain it was because it was her ring), gripping it much too tightly for her not to wake up had she been there. She had been taken, and he thought for the first time that she was probably dead. Her hand was lifeless and icy, and it felt like a chunk of partially thawed ground beef. He pulled her hand closer to him, and what he saw stopped and then sank his heart.