The Night Visitor

With no Brian, I can sleep in fuzzy stretchpants, eat toast in bed, watch soaps on the iPad. I throw the extra pillows away and enjoy the spacious mattress. I touch myself without shame.

Then the front door clicks in the silence downstairs. 

Was that imagined?

No, it was nothing. I roll over with noisy sighs. The selfish moment is spoiled. Stare at the ceiling’s soothing blackness and count down to sleep again: three, two…

A stair creaks.

The stair that always creaks its distinctive complaint under a footstep.

Eyes open now. I reach out and – ‘click’ – the lamp sheds its inattentive light on clock and hairbrush, the bedroom door becomes an oblong of shadow.

It’s stupid to call out because of course there’s no one there.

Courage. My bare feet touch the floor. Three steps to the door. My fingers find the plastic square, the ready switch, and light jumps into the landing and halfway into the staircase. My shadow zig-zags down the steps into the darkness.

I resist the urge to say, “Who’s there?” like a fool.

Because, of course, there’s no one there. 

Darkness again, but now the bed is cold and unfamiliar, my breaths loud and laboured. Then slowing. Then softening.

The landing creaks outside my door.

These are the sounds of an old house. Go to sleep.

At the foot of the bed, there is a weighty presence. I am looked upon.

This is the moment: to sit up and shout out, to scream and send an intruder running, defeated by my terror, his footsteps banging down the stairs, pursued by my shouts. The screams that will bring the neighbours and the police.

But my throat is dry and the moment to scream passes.

Tears prick my eyelashes. The one scream left is gone. I listen to the shifting darkness.

The duvet slips from my shoulder. 

I demand a scream but my mouth offers nothing. I press my fists to my eyes, draw my knees to my chest, and darkness falls upon me with a dreadful weight.

Suddenly, I’m awake. The friendly clock announces midnight in bars of glowing red.

Jesus, I miss Brian so bad.

Then the front door clicks in the silence downstairs.

---

Ghost stories are at their best when they are ambiguous. Is she dreaming or fantasing? The original draft was longer and featured more on the death (not just the absence) of Brian and her sexual loneliness. This is one of the stories that perhaps lost too much in editing it to this format?

One reader interpreted the story in another way: 'Brian' is a controlling lover and the narrator is emotionally dominated by him even when he is not present - or after his death.