The Stranger

The man couldn’t feel his feet. He was wearing flimsy thongs, the rubber cold and hard and frozen between his toes as he waded through the snow. His knuckles were white and bloodless, his skin covered in tiny peaks and ridges, goosebumps. A shiver crawled up his spine, like an icy finger tracing the curve of his back. As he stepped onto the porch, ice crystals drifted from his thin beard.

He heard the doorbell reverberating inside, a resounding ding dong. He slammed his fist into the hard wood, over and over, hoping the occupants of the house were still awake. He needed to get in. He shouldn’t have left.

‘Coming! Jesus,’ someone muttered from inside. A woman cracked the door open, her hair mussed as if she had been in bed, but she was still wearing blue jeans and a fuzzy fleece –she hadn’t been sleeping. ‘Can I help you?’ She asked warily.

‘Can you help me?’ The man repeated. He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso, his flimsy t-shirt, but it did little to conserve his warmth. If anything, it just made him colder. His arms were blocks of ice. ‘I’m so cold. Please.’

The house was secluded. It sat on a massive plot of land that was sparsely used for farming in the warmer months, but in winter the owners rented it out to holiday-makers, or parents with lots of children. There was nowhere else for him to go.

The woman’s eyes raked over him, taking in his button-up faded t-shirt, drooping, hole-ridden shorts and thongs. His hair was dishevelled, his eyes sunken on his gaunt face. There was a ring around his neck, a scar, like someone had tried to choke him. Beneath years of built-up dirt that had so finely ingrained itself in his skin that no amount of scrubbing could clean it off, a light dusting of coppery freckles speckled his cheeks and nose.

‘Right, then,’ the woman muttered. ‘Come in.’ She ushered him inside, but the man suspected it was only to stop the house from losing all its heat out the door.

‘Thank you,’ he said gratefully.

The woman grunted. ‘What’s your name?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Aaron,’ he said eventually.

‘Melanie,’ the woman responded, even though Aaron hadn’t asked. ‘My kids are asleep upstairs. Well, pretending to. As much as they can knowing it’s Christmas in –’ Melanie’s gaze flitted to an analogue clock on the wall –twelve minutes.’

Aaron laughed wryly. His lips felt like rubber.

‘Let me make you a cup of tea. We don’t have a fire but I can grab you a blanket. What were you doing out there, in the cold?’ Her eyes were creased with concern at his blue fingers and inability to stop his teeth from chattering. Aaron caught a glimpse of Melanie’s mothering nature –her guard had lowered, now she was taking him into her care. He felt a surge of anger, but he didn’t know why.

‘Got lost,’ he mumbled. He didn’t meet her gaze.

‘Not a lot of places nearby. Do you have a phone?’

‘No. I was just walking.’

‘Not great weather to be outside,’ Melanie remarked. Was she accusing him of something? Aaron didn’t know. ‘Wait here. I’ll be right back with your blankets.’ She padded quietly out of the room, her footfalls muted by her sheepskin boots.

Suddenly, Aaron stood to attention. Melanie had vanished into another room, and all Aaron could hear was the faint ticking of the clock and the whispering of the snow falling outside. His gaze darted around the room, and he gingerly stepped forward, his joints clicking into place, his frozen muscles thawing.

Aaron navigated with practiced ease towards the living room, where a stunningly tall Christmas tree draped with blinking multicoloured lights stood above a sea of neatly wrapped presents, all assorted sizes and shapes. Four stockings were dangling nearby, on hooks, but there was no fireplace. For a moment, his muscles refused to obey him and he stood, paralysed in place. It was a simple, cosy pleasure, one he wanted to bottle up and drink when his thirst for moments like these raged like a sandstorm on his tongue.

Then he snapped out of it. He made his way to a set of stairs in the corner, and descended into the basement of the house.

Aaron didn’t hear Melanie returning –courtesy of her fuzzy boots and the soft carpet –or the faint thump as she irritably dropped the blankets on the sofa, furious at the stranger intruding her home. He didn’t hear her start to follow him.

The inside of the basement had an oiled hardwood floor covered by a fuzzy rug and several small beanbags. Fairy lights were strung along the walls. There was a T.V. mounted in one corner. Aaron walked to the opposite wall, which was naked wood. He felt along the wall until his fingers slid along a divot, and pressed his palms into it.

Half a metre on his left, the wall opened before him.

Melanie’s jaw unhinged. She’d rented this holiday home for three years now, and she never knew about the secret door in the basement. What’s more, a complete stranger dressed in shorts and a t-shirt looking minutes away from freezing to death knew about it when she didn’t.

Aaron slipped inside. Just before the door slid shut, Melanie caught it. She followed.

It was a pathway, a short walk, the walks a grainy grey brick. Ugly, unlike the rest of the house. The warmth that had been blasting upstairs had vanished, and Melanie shivered.

On the other side of the passageway, Aaron opened another equally-hidden door. It was another basement, identical in dimensions but vastly different in appearance to the room they’d just been in. There was no rug, no string lights, only a severe bulb overhead that radiated yellow light. The wooden floor was strewn with rubble –chipped flakes of concrete, pieces of porcelain and plastic, beans from the beanbags that were nowhere to be seen. The T.V. was smashed and hanging limply from a singular cord on the wall. A small table had been dragged into the centre of the room. There were a few scattered items –jars of food, bottled water, a book with most of its pages torn out.

Melanie gasped at the scene.

Aaron suddenly sensed the presence behind him, the sharp intake of breath. He turned, and saw Melanie, still in her fleece and Ugg boots, cheeks rapidly pooling with colour due to the newfound heat.

‘What –’ Aaron stammered. His gaze flitted over her shoulder, back at the door. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have followed me.’

‘Where are we?’ Melanie spluttered.

Aaron said nothing. He hurried back to the door, frantically wedging his fingers, feeling around for the crack.

There was nothing. The wall was smooth, as if the door had never been there at all.

‘It’s past midnight,’ he announced dryly. ‘No going back now.’

‘Going back,’ Melanie repeated. ‘Going back where?’ She carefully stepped through the basement, navigating up the stairs. The heat was suddenly stifling, she realised, and pulled off her fleece, revealing a Santa’s sleigh pyjama t-shirt underneath.

‘Wait!’ Aaron called. But Melanie ignored him, and ascended up the stairs.

The rest of the house was no better. There was no Christmas tree, no presents. The sofa had been torn apart, vicious claw-like marks gouged into the soft fabric. Dirt was so thickly embedded into the fibres of the carpet that it was now black, rather than the blue it had been before. The chandelier overhead had only a single functioning bulb –the others had been smashed. There was a dark circle on the wall –the absence of the clock, Melanie realised. A ring of dust.

‘What is this place?’ Melanie asked, dread securing the knot in her stomach. It was an anxiousness, an unease at the dystopian home, a complete replica of her holiday house, as if it had been ransacked. It was nighttime –outside, the sky was eerily black. There were no clouds, no blinking lights of planes, no snow, no faint glow of the city’s lights. Melanie reached to turn on a light –if it would work –but Aaron stopped her.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘They might see us.’

Melanie’s brows drew together in confusion, her forehead creasing like it did when she was working. She was a hard worker, she prided herself on being one. She supported four kids with her husband –Frieda, Ron, Jess and Dylan, the oldest being seventeen, Dylan, the only one with a brain for computers and technology like her. The only one who understood the magnitude of her work, as each new day she pawed blindly at the brink of human and artificial intelligence.

‘Who?’ Melanie was sweating profusely now. Perspiration dotted her forehead, moistened her armpits. ‘Where are we? Why is it so hot?’ She began fanning herself with her hand.

‘We’re in the future.’ Aaron said flatly. ‘Ten years. I found a way back, through the door in the basement. And I’ve been trying to stop you from ruining the world, Melanie.’

A choked laugh escaped Melanie’s lips. ‘What?’

Aaron’s eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t leave the house anymore, not during the day, anyway. Not since you created an AI so intelligent it was smarter than us. Now it’s trying to eliminate the human race.’

Melanie’s mouth opened, then closed again. Words refused to pass her lips, but her mind was spinning. The stranger was lying. He had to be.

‘No, that can’t be –that can’t be true. We’re not in the future. Who are you?’ Melanie stammered.

‘You know, I always wondered what happened to you.’ Aaron spat venomously. ‘Why you suddenly vanished right before it all started. I thought you abandoned us. I guess now I know.’

Melanie’s eyes crinkled in confusion.

‘The door in the basement –’

‘Opens on Christmas Eve, at midnight. Closes on Christmas Day. Midnight. You just missed it.’ Aaron said.

There was something familiar about the way he spoke. The way he looked. The gap between his two front teeth, the slight curl of his hair, the freckles that dotted his face. Melanie couldn’t place it.

‘I haven’t –’ Melanie stammered, ‘—I haven’t done anything. I haven’t made anything. I was on my way to creating something great. But now I’m here.’ Her eyes were wide and glassy. Uncomprehending.

‘So it wasn’t you, then. You vanished a few months before it happened. I assumed you’d come back to finish your project, not that you’d ever come back for any of us.’ Aaron hung his head. ‘I can’t stop it.’

‘Stop what?’ Melanie shrieked, her words injected with her electrified nerves. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Dylan,’ Aaron said bitterly. ‘It was him. He must’ve picked up where you left off.’

Melanie’s eyes were swimming. ‘Dylan?’ She squeaked. ‘You know my son? Where is he?’

‘Dead.’ Aaron said impassively. ‘Didn’t last two months. Serves him right, with all the trouble he caused.’

Melanie swallowed shakily. There was a tennis ball in her throat, bobbing up and down. ‘I want to go back.’ She navigated back down to the basement, Aaron trailing loosely behind.

‘I told you. We can’t go back. Not until this time next year.’ He lingered on the stairs.

Melanie felt along the wall, as Aaron had, her vision blurry. ‘Let me go back.’

‘You can’t.’ Aaron growled. ‘Give it up, Melanie.’

‘No!’ She screamed. Her cheeks were red now, the colour of fire. She pressed her fingers harder into the wall, as if she could draw the secret door outwards just by pure willpower. ‘Who even are you, anyway? What do you mean I abandoned you? What happened to my kids?’

‘I’m Aaron, Melanie. Ron. Remember me? It’s been ten years, Mum.’

Melanie froze. She turned to face him, and yes, she saw it. The wiry red-haired kid she knew had grown up into this dishevelled man with sunken eyes and skin marred by scars. His eyes were hard and his gaze unwavering. He wasn’t the boy she knew.

It dawned on her, then: she was in the future. She could not go back. She had vanished from her world, by making the mistake of trailing a stranger as he entered the secret door in the basement. And her son –Dylan –her grieving son, would find her work and continue it, for the sake of achieving her goals after she mysteriously vanished one Christmas morning.

And the world would never be the same again.