Ashley Bell

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Louder, louder grew the footsteps. Definitely in the living room now. Slowly approaching the door to the kitchen.

Fear found Bibi then. Fear, but not blind fright, not panic. She backed past the table, toward the balcony from which she had entered.

The portentous footsteps of a man unseen stopped at the living-room threshold. The ensuing silence shared the character of certain silences in disturbing dreams: those hushes that settle on the scene as if, after a suitable pause, the curtain will close and the sleeper arise, though in fact it always proves to be instead the quiet just prior to the final shock that wakes the dreamer, gasping.

The faintest scraping-ticking arose as the knuckles of the hinge leafs turned against pivot pins in need of oil, and the door swung ever so slowly into the kitchen, toward Bibi. It blocked her view of whoever stood on the threshold.

Remembering the blood and ghastly eyes of the November corpse, she bolted. She had no awareness of escaping, however, until she found herself crashing down the last steps into the brick courtyard.

She looked up the stairs. No one there. Above, the door to the apartment was closed. She must have thrown it shut as she departed.

For a while, as the spent sky sluggishly refilled its reservoir with laden clouds drawn off the ocean, Bibi watched the apartment’s two kitchen windows. No face appeared at either. No suggestion of movement stirred through the gloom beyond those panes.

Eventually, she retreated to the wicker sofa on the back porch of the bungalow, where she had left a paperback and the notebook in which she composed the stories about Jasper, the lonely dog.

Later, her father appeared, ready to make his weekly inspection of the garage apartment, to check for roof leaks and other problems.

“Dad.” When he looked back at her from the bottom of the porch steps, she said, “Be careful.”

He frowned. “Careful of what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I heard someone up there.”

As larky as ever, he said, “Maybe that raccoon got down through the attic again. He’s damn well gonna pay rent this time.”

When he returned ten minutes later, he had found neither the raccoon nor any other uninvited lodger.

As the sky gathered rain to spend, young Bibi retreated to her room to write a Jasper story. Two weeks passed before she dared to return to the apartment.