Delerium Clave

               The slam that rang through Ian’s front door caused him sudden alarm to jolt through him. The intensity of the sound was deafening. It rippled like an intense chord stabbed by a guitarist playing with a reverberation effect. The audible fade proceeded moment by moment until the noise finally vanished from existence.

Ian rushed to the entrance into his house to stare through the viewer. There was no one visible. Wondering if someone was attempting to hide in plain sight, he unlocked the door and pushed it open as far as he could. No one stood on his front porch in any direction he could see.

He opened the screen door and stepped outside, turning his head as quickly as possible in either direction. He could see that no one was out anywhere in the neighborhood. A silver sedan turned onto the one-way street in front of him and began crawling by him, but even it did not move with the volume level he had just experienced.

Ian tried to calm himself from his panic. He wondered if he had just experienced some kind of medical disorder. He had never had any specific problem with insomnia, so he felt certain it was not an unexpected moment of Exploding Head Syndrome. It made him feel somewhat more self-assured to think he should check in with his doctor soon.

He slipped back inside his house. Before entering, Ian felt compelled to pull the wooden front door as fully shut as he could. He locked the full door lock as well as the door handle lock, then backed away from the door while continuing to stare at it. The front entryway had a wall only one and a half feet away that he accidentally backed into.

Ian breathed deeply for a few moments, forcing himself to steady his nerves. Nothing else happened. It struck him as somewhat ironic that he would feel so rattled with no proof that the event had occurred. He wasn’t sure why the idea struck him, but he felt forced to give a satirical whistle with a high and low whew. Then, he giggled.

He could not tell if the laughter somehow caused it, but he heard another slam come from the back door. It stood between his outdoor deck and the interior. He did not hear the shattering of glass, but a sound coming from within his fenced back yard created a worry so intense that he ran through his living room and kitchen into his mud room.

Panting from the effort, Ian glared out of the glass door. The blinds that hung on it were partially opened and didn’t prevent him from seeing right out into the late afternoon sunshine. No one moved anywhere on the deck or in his backyard. The fence had a front door and a back door attached to opposite sides. Ian knew they were locked.

He felt unsure of what to do. The occurrence created several concerns in him, but they all of them felt nonsensical to him.  He could not conclude how noisy strikes would occur at the front and back of his property in relatively quick succession without him being able to locate any reason.

Ian began to wonder if he was hallucinating. It made think about any kind of medical or recreational drug he had used, but nothing came to his mind except recently used aspirin. He wondered if he had drunk too much at a timepoint where it might still be affecting him, but he did not feel hungover or ready to vomit in any way.

The thought made him really want a beer. Ian walked back out of the mud room and into his kitchen. He opened the refrigerator took look around. Just as he did so, the rhythmic striking began from multiple directions. He immediately shut his fridge door and began rotating to try and see anything in any direction that he could.

It sounded as though there were as many individuals playing as there were percussive surfaces in his house. It was a drum circle everywhere that he could hear, from the window in his kitchen to the two in the guest room next door. The bathroom window, the living room windows, even the front and back doors were all parts of the kit.

He could see straight out the kitchen window and the glass door in the mud room. Even as he tried to see what was happening back and forth, Ian came up with nothing. He could only hear simultaneously differing patterns emerging from different locations. Right by him was a two-step. A three-step came from the mud room behind him. The beats did not match and sounded like they were being played at two totally different speeds.

Ian backed out of the kitchen into his living room. From the large windows on his front wall to the side of his front door, he heard a rapped rat-tat-tat in a sixteenth note pattern. At what seemed like a totally different beats per minute rate, a loud thumping sound came from outside the door. It did not match any timing of the more rapid sound being struck right next to it.

It felt to Ian like an entire orchestra had decided to play as many songs as they could all at the same time. The inconsistent rhythms he heard all at once made him dizzy. As best he could, he dashed up the stairs behind his kitchen to see if he could avoid some of the audible chaos.

               As soon as he got upstairs, Ian realized there was no hope to his escape attempt. It made even less sense, but of the three windows in both bedrooms and the bathroom on the second floor, the same types of abstract beats occurred. Ian could not grasp what was happening, so the thought of there being levitating participants in the cadence felt like pure dementia.

               Ian screamed. He ran into his master bedroom, lay down on the carpet, and shoved his hands tightly over his ears to block as much noise as possible. While he could still hear components of the rhythm from every direction, it struck him as odd that while the bedroom window was closest to him, it did not sound louder than any other beat structure.

               The noise ceased entirely. Ian still lay on the floor with his hands clutched over his ears but realized he could not hear anything further. Cautiously, he released his hand pressure. The sound did not recur. He raised himself up with his elbows and his knees, then stood and walked over to the bedroom window.

               As he looked through it, Ian could not locate anything responsible for the cacophony he had just experienced. He walked back down the stairs to inspect the house as much as possible. He felt intense nervous tension that the noise would resume, but it did not. He saw no damage on any visible surface, and despite the dimming of the light because of evening, he saw no individuals of whom to be afraid.

               He looked out through his front and back doors to make sure there was no reason to call the police. The early night appeared calm and peaceful. Ian went into his main floor bathroom and looked through the drawers. He felt thankful when he found a full bag of earplugs. He felt certain that every night, he would sleep with them blocking his hearing.