Security

FzztCLICK!

There it went again and now Gabe was wide awake. He turned his back to the window, throwing his comforter over his head, pretending he didn’t want to see what had triggered the security light outside. It was always going off. Probably nothing. An animal or something.

Nothing to see. Nothing out there.

FzztCLICK!

Darkness again. Black out. Thankful. Cool, safe darkness. Like a cloak concealing him from view. Gabe edged out of the cover and peeked at the window. The moon barely troubled the drawn curtains. He made sure he was still breathing and he was. His monolithic games console stood like a sentry on his desk opposite the bed, solemn in unknowable shadow. The detail on his posters could not be distinguished and they appeared as gaping wounds, gouged out of the walls. His smart phone played dead, its screen silent and blank.

FzztCLICK!

Back under the covers. Nothing. Out. There. Stupid light. Underneath his covers, Gabe smelt stale sweat. Maybe he should have washed them last week like his mom told him to. His responsibility now. She was done. Take pride in yourself or don’t. Yeah, yeah. Right. Light was blinding: what had it seen. Nothing. Remember?

The light penetrated both curtains and covers; Gabe suddenly felt it was futile to hide from it. It knew where he was. It needled him every night with its fzztCLICK! Mom and dad wondered why he was always so tired. Must be up playing games late. No, it’s because the light picked on him. It wouldn’t let him rest, wouldn’t stop trying to show him. All he could do was to tell himself there was nothing to show.

He sat up, feeling the rawness in his eye sockets. The light flooded the bedroom, filling in the poster art and revealing the Aztec pyramid adorned with melting flesh and bloodied skulls on Cudgel’s latest album cover. Gabe checked his cell and it displayed 02:32 A.M. He didn’t like to think what might be disturbing the light at 02:32 A.M. Looking back to the window, he thought on how the light persisted, refusing to sink back into inactivity with a…

FzztCLICK!

Oh, ok. So probably nothing. Definitely just an animal or maybe an insect crawling across the diffuser. A spider spinning a web. Remember there is nothing to see.

Gabe heard soft laughter. And then…

FzztCLICK!

There was no heat in the light to warm away his chills. He froze stiff, clinging to the bed as though it might attempt to tip him through the window and down to the garden below. What was the good of those curtains if they can’t keep the light out. Or the noise. The laughter came again, seemingly from just outside the window, and was followed by a whispered call.

‘Gabe! Gabe, come and see me!’

Gabe bit a chunk of bed cover until his saliva formed a pool there; he felt his every joint lock in fear. Nothing. To…No-thing…

‘I’ve missed you, darling boy. Won’t you look out the window and let me see you? It’s been so long.’

The voice was so familiar. But it couldn’t be; it was impossible. His jaws slackened and the comforter slipped from his mouth.

‘Come, Gabe. I’ve come to see you and I would be so sad if you leave me out here in the cold.’ A pause. ‘I know you’re there. I can see your silhouette behind the curtain.’

‘Granny?’

Gabe couldn’t believe it was really her but her voice came from his childhood. Granny Parkinson, his mom’s mom. Also known as Madame Prenderghast. He vividly, suddenly, recalled her gypsy turban, her tarot cards, her crystal ball which she let him see inside. He remembered purple and black smoke, snakes and beetles. That’s the future, she told him. What would grow inside him.

He pulled back the curtain.

FzztCLICK!

The garden turned as dark as the smoke in the crystal ball. Was this the future? Or the past? Had Granny Parkinson, Madame Prenderghast, been calling him through the security light, perhaps through her deceased spirit or, looking back at his eight-year-old self gazing into her crystal ball, bouncing foreshadows back from this point in time? Gabe had loved and feared her all at once. She saw Grandpa Parkinson’s death in a boating accident a week before it happened.

As his eyes adjusted to the pitch black outside, Gabe realised with creeping dread that a figure stood towards the rear of the garden, barely an outline against the fence. He further strained his strained eyes for a better view but perhaps he was mistaken: the figure didn’t move and Gabe wondered if it might be dad’s lawnmower or some other tool left out of the shed.

FzztCLICK!

There she stood, looking directly up at his bedroom window. Though her slit of a smile was interchangeable with the other lines on her face, it seemed to carry forward so that it appeared right before him, stupefying him with its intense gleam. Gabe threw his hand up to protect his eyes and staggered back, butting up against the side of the bed. The smile creased into the mouth, forming an opening filled with purple-black smoke.

Nothing to see.

‘Open the window, Gabe. Don’t be afraid. I have so much still to show you. Let me make up for lost time.’

Gabe peeked between his fingers. The smoke billowed out but the mouth didn’t move.

‘I’ve been coming to you every night for the past six weeks but you’ve refused to listen. You hear me through the light. I am the light, Gabe.’ A sigh slipped by Granny Parkinson’s words and not entirely her own. ‘You were always my favourite. Now invite your old granny in or Madame Prenderghast will be most put out.’

Either terror or curiosity, perhaps both, compelled Gabe and he numbly reached for the window catch. A beetle ran across his hand, appearing from nowhere, as he turned the handle and he squawked in shock. His hesitation irked Granny Parkinson or Madame Prenderghast.

‘Don’t you remember what you saw in the crystal ball? The meaning of the serpent, the invertebrates?’

Withdrawing his hand, Gabe saw that the beetle remained attached to it. He shuddered. With a flick of his hand he sent the beetle sprawling across the window sill where it flopped onto its back. It kicked its legs feebly up into the air.

‘Remember!’ hissed Granny and Gabe looked into her mouth where the purple-black smoke formed into a serpent-shaped tongue. ‘Trust me. You hear them call to you every night – distrust and anxiety. The noises they make.’

‘It’s just the light,’ Gabe stammered.

‘Listen,’ urged Granny. He listened, not wanting to believe it. The snake-tongue spat out at him ‘Fzzt’. The beetle righted itself on the sill with a CLICK!

The light went out and the garden plunged into darkness once more. Gabe pushed open the window and felt the brisk rush of night air strike through his pyjamas.

‘Granny! Take them away! Take them both away!’ he called. As if in response, the beetle scurried towards him. It waited on the sill, beneath the window, antennae twitching.

The soft laughter came from behind this time. Gabe spun round.

FzztCLICK!

The bedroom lit up while outside it remained dark. Granny Parkinson stood in the corner, her head wrapped in a shawl, beside the bedroom door. A fervid breathing emitted from somewhere near the window, an excited rasping of anticipation. Gabe prayed it wasn’t the beetle.

FzztCLICK!

Lights out in the bedroom. Back on in the garden. Now there was something to see. Madame Prenderghast below, dressed in midnight robes and turban. Her arms stretched up towards him, the snake-tongue flickering from her mouth.

Granny had disappeared from the corner.

FzztCLICK!

Madame Prenderghast stood in Granny’s place, eyes blazing with demonic fire. The snake slid out of her mouth to the floor and started making its way towards Gabe. It was so bright in the bedroom. Blinding. Disorientating. Everything span.

FzztCLICK!

The light transferred to the garden and showed Granny Parkinson chuckling below on the lawn. She blew him a kiss. The beetle had somehow flipped onto its back again and waited to be righted. Gabe could hear the snake hissing but couldn’t see it.

FzztCLICK!

No security light now. No light at all. The lights were out. Just demon fire in the corner, shooting from wide staring eyes, the clack of the beetle’s legs as it stalked the sill and the hissing of the snake from very close by.