The Uninvited

This is a story about the things we fear most when the night falls and the world goes quiet. 

The Uninvited is inspired by a series of weird dreams and a very real moment in my life. One that I will probably never forget. 

I’d just come home from hospital after being taken ill from work and was meant to be taking things easy. It had been a lazy day and I wasn't sleepy, so I was sitting up in bed with only the light from my tablet keeping me company. It was 2am and I was about to settle down to sleep when I heard noises downstairs. At first I thought I was hearing things but it soon became apparent that I had an intruder! 

At this point I have to confess that I had failed to lock my patio doors. I know that an unlocked door does not give anyone the right to come into my home without an invitation but I do feel more than a little foolish. Anyway, believe me when I say that I will now always but always check my doors before going to bed! 

Happy reading!

THE UNINVITED 

The house made noises. It had been that way since she had taken possession of her brand spanking new home with its shiny red front door, pristine painted walls and vertical blinds in the windows. As the months passed, she grew used to the faint clicks and sighs that came with the darkness, they were a company of sorts. The house, wooden framed, clean-lined and well built, shouldn’t have creaked at all, but sometimes, as night fell the walls seemed to breathe around her.

In the early days, every sound had felt like a warning. Each gurgle from the pipes or creak from the attic had her lying still in bed, pulse racing, listening for the next noise - her mind always searching for the logical explanation. New houses do settle, air circulates, water expands. She repeated like a mantra over and over in her mind, until the thumping in her chest finally slowed and sleep finally found her.

Then came the knocking. Just two sharp raps on the bedroom wall. She froze, listening, questioning, Pipes? she thought. Air in the system? The sound came again - measured and deliberate, it was as though someone was asking permission to come in. The hair on the back of her neck stood to attention. She waited, but the house fell silent.

The next night, the knocking returned. And the next. Every night for a week, the same soft tapping noise always polite and always in the same place on the wall. Determined to find a reasonable cause she opened her laptop and began to google. Expansion and contraction, one site suggested. Pipes cooling. Rodents. She read them all carefully, nodding, willing the words to feel true.

Then she came across accounts of Exploding Head Syndrome, a brain bomb, a harmless phenomenon where misfiring of the brain makes a person hear sudden noises while drifting to or from sleep. Also hypnopompic hallucinations, a phenomenon which, the website said, occurs in the time between dreaming and waking, when the mind conjures sounds or shapes. These descriptions were comforting, they felt familiar and she closed her laptop feeling lighter. She was certain now that there was nothing to fear and for a while, the house was quiet again.

Then came the footsteps. At first, they were faint. Half-awake, she’d hear them climbing the stairs, slow and deliberate, too regular to be the house expanding. Sound can travel strangely, she told herself, thinking back to her previous research. Or else I'm hallucinating again!

One night, she listened as the footsteps reached the landing and seemed to stop at her bedroom door. Frightened, she searched for a logical explanation, air pressure, temperature change, brain bomb, she repeated loudly over and over again, but this time, the words failed to convince her.

As she strained her eyes in the darkness, the bedroom door seemed to shift slightly, almost as if nudged by an invisible force. Her breath caught in her throat as, for a heartbeat, she thought she saw a figure there, a faint, human-shape, which seemed to hidden in the darkness. Hallucinations!

Weeks passed by without disturbance. She continually reassured herself that it had all been imagined, probably the product of stress, half-sleep, and her overactive imagination. After all at her age, the body had its quirks, the mind had its own tricks. Perhaps it was biological, perhaps her imagination. Either way, it was harmless, she told herself. 

Until the footsteps returned. This time they didn’t stop outside the room. Lying on her side with her back to the bedroom door, she heard the slow tread of feet on her carpet and felt something cold brush her cheek. It's just the wind, she thought. I'm just dreaming.  But her body didn’t believe her. Her muscles stiffened, her pulse hammered and tiny goosebumps prickled her arms.

Then, unmistakably, the mattress sank, deep, deliberate, heavy, as though someone had sat down beside her. The warmth of another body lingered in the air. She squeezed her eyes shut. Dreaming, she told herself. You’re dreaming.

Only when the weight lifted did she dare to open her eyes and turn her face towards the open door. Of course, there was nothing to see. Nothing that is except for a ruffled duvet pushed up against her thigh.

In daylight it all seemed ridiculous. She tested the bed, pushing the mattress down, checking beneath it. Everything was ordinary. You're losing it girl. Its just tiredness and your wild imagination, she told herself. 

Still, she couldn’t quite shake the memory of the cold caress on her cheek or the way that the duvet was scrunched up against her leg.

Weeks went by peacefully and, once again, she slept without fear. Then one night, she woke again. This time there were no footsteps, no creak, just the unmistakable sense that somebody was near.

And there it was. Clear as day, she saw a figure standing at the end of the bed. As her eyes focused she could see it was a man! Middle-aged perhaps, with sandy, shoulder-length curls and kind eyes. He looked at her silently. There was no threat, no words, just presence. Her initial fear response fell away as, wide-eyed, she stared at him and for a moment, she thought that she knew him - that they had met before.  Then she blinked, and he was gone.

The room was empty, but she didn’t feel alone. The house was utterly quiet, no creaking of floorboards or rattling pipes just a lingering warmth, inexplicable, perhaps imagined but, in that moment it felt so real. Without really knowing why, she whispered, “Goodbye”.

Months passed. The peace remained. She moved through the house with a calm she hadn’t known for a long time. The silence no longer felt oppressive, it felt protective. Sometimes, as she stood looking out of the window, she was sure she could feel that same gentleness beside her, kind and watchful. 

Then, in the early hours of a cold sleepless September morning, she heard a noise again. Not on the staircase or outside the bedroom. This time the sound was coming from the kitchen. She heard ... a faint clatter? The gentle tap of footsteps across the vinyl flooring and the squeak of a cupboard door being opened. She froze. Her heart leapt and pounded hard against her ribcage. Her stomach flipped and tightened. She felt real terror. This wasn't the house settling. It was not air in the pipes or the skittering of vermin in the cavity wall. It was something else!

For a long moment she sat up in her bed, her senses on high alert, listening, grasping for an explanation for the new noises she was hearing. She was wide awake, this was not an hallucination, it was real! She called out "Hello?" There was no reply - just silence. 

Her hand hovered over her mobile phone. Should she call the police?

Another sound made her pulse skip. She snatched the phone up from the duvet next to her and was poised to dial.

Then she froze.

Don’t be so ridiculous woman, she told herself. It’s probably nothing. Just your imagination again.

Her heart was pounding. What if she called for no reason? What if they showed up and found nothing? Was she actually losing her mind?

She swallowed, listening. The silence seemed thicker now.  She was sure that she was alone. With phone in hand, she crept slowly down the stairs. At the bottom she stopped. Her handbag lay half open on the floor its contents strewn all around. For a heartbeat, she couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Then she knew for sure - someone HAD been here.

Her legs turned to jelly. A shudder ran down her spine, then another and another, until she was trembling uncontrollably. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t catch her breath. When she tried to move her body refused. She could only stand there, terrified, immobile. Trapped inside her own skin.

The rich woody scent of cigar smoke lingered in the air. It shouldn’t have been there. It shouldn’t still be there. Her mind reached for an explanation, but nothing made sense. Through the half open door, light spilled across the kitchen floor from the garden. The patio door stood wide open. Cupboards gaped. Items lay scattered across the room.

Then something moved. A shape? No two shapes, slid across the wall. One seemed to lunge towards the other. A cry, sharp and human, shattered the silence. She flinched as a man burst across the room, out through the open door and vanished into the night.

The second shadow remained for a moment longer and then it too was gone. She stood alone, her heartbeat roaring in her ears, trying to process what she had witnessed. In shock and shaking uncontrollably she dialled 999.

In the days that followed, she tried to make sense of it all. The police assured her the intruder must have fled when she had called out or had heard her on the stairs. That part she could accept. It was the other shadow that lingered in her thoughts - the one that had reached out. Sometimes she told herself it had been her own silhouette distorted by the glare of the light shining from the garden. But sometimes, when the house was still, she wondered if something or someone had stood between her and harm. Perhaps fear had conjured it? Or perhaps, just for a moment, the darkness had shown her a kindness she would never understand.

Special thanks to my family and friends for your support and also for your suggestions and contributions to this story. You know who you are.