Out Beyond the Light

I lost my job just before I could quit it.

For two years I’d worked in a building with windows that belonged in a catalogue for doomsday preppers. The only way to tell that time had passed was by a small rectangle of light crawling over the carpet squares.

When the word redundant made its way into an email, I was relieved: it was the first time a decision had been made for me. The relief was short-lived. I couldn’t afford my city, nor my independence anymore.

The first week home, I slept until ten. The sun, not an alarm, dragged me from sleep, spilling onto the wall and the headboard. On day five I began to revert to a child. I stopped going to the supermarket, left clothes on the floor, and found myself asking my father where things were in a house I’d lived in before I knew what a spoon was.

It was embarrassing to me how quickly a person could slide backwards. You could spend years constructing this new identity, but the people who knew you before it existed had no reason to take it seriously. I’d always looked at the place I’d grown up as somewhere to leave. The same collection of boots framed the back door, arranged in no particular order and spanning several generations of feet.

The same, except for one thing: security lights.

A temporary measure Dad had said. A step up from our possum-hunting spotlight he kept in the kitchen drawer he’d been using to patrol the property. Mum always joked whatever out there would be more scared of his dressing gown.

He’d just taken up extra night shifts and installed the cameras paired with motion-activated lights on both the front door and the shed. It made sense. Ours was the only house for some distance along a stretch of road known for drag racing. There was a single streetlight, council-owned. After that, the road went black in both directions.

“Mostly to protect my bike,” Dad had said.

The prodigal project motorbike, that is. Still in such a run down state that were a thief to be able to turn it on I’d have given them the keys and a clap on the back. My time in the city had given me my fair share of reasons to not hide the fact that I slept with a nightlight on, Guatemalan worry dolls and a healthy dose of lexapro. Mum rejected this new development, swearing that I was born wide-eyed and paranoid.

The house at night did not feel small. It groaned at night under its own age. As a kid, I’d found out which floorboards would give me away as I crept back from the kitchen with chocolate. Its first owners believed that as many windows and mirrors as possible per square inch of wall made a country house a home. At night, every turn gave you a flash of movement right behind your eyes.

My old roommates returned, gnawing with the industriousness of tiny chainsaws when the darkness crept in. The rats. Our senior cat, Daria, had long given up her rat catching glory days and they knew it. Come morning, Mum had opened all the windows and lit up frankincense to get the rat stench out of the floorboards.

“It’s another nest. I can smell it,” Mum said, adamant.

They had to rip our only bathtub. Mum had been getting nightly migraines from the smell. Turns out it had rotted, and underneath rats had gotten in and chewed through the floorboards directly into the wood. Dad boarded it up, but the smell never left.

All of the recent rat activity eventually lured in another cat. We didn’t see it so much as hear it. Yowling, only at night, from under the house.

Daria changed in an instant.

She began sleeping during the day, waking only to glue herself to the bay window at night. At first, it was endearing. She’d catch me coming home, only to return to her post. Soon, she wouldn’t greet me. Then she wouldn’t even turn her head. Her body reduced to a shadow against the glass.

Dad gave me the password to the cameras before I ever asked. Perhaps I had asked with my eyes, darting behind him as we watched television, searching out onto the dark expanse of lawn. I had asked Mum to close the curtains. She told me I was being paranoid, that Daria liked to guard the house.

As we were arguing, the shed light clicked on.

It activated on full beam, like a curtain drawn back, exposing the gravel driveway, the washing line and the dark swaying trees. Nothing moved.

Then, the light flicked off and the shed disappeared.

A couple nights later, with everyone home, a sound tore through the house. An enormous bang. Claws striking against the glass. And then the yowling began. Slow. Drawn out, rising to a crescendo. It was Daria. 

She was outside my room, hurling herself at the cat flap. My dad had got up to investigate. By the time he reached her, she had backed away, fur standing on end, body pressed low to the floor. She never took her eyes off of the glass. Dad struggled with the drawer before lighting up the door with a spotlight. For a moment something reflected back.

Two points of light, low to the ground.

“Bloody cats!” he swore.

Dad opened the back door. The light spilled out, the spotlight beam swept across the porch, disappearing into a hedge.

Then locked the door, scooped Daria up, and walked back to his room without a second glance. Daria’s claws tangled in the fabric of his robe, hard and at full extension, her limbs stiff like some taxidermied creature. He set her down, where she looked back to the glass then jumped back up onto the bay window.

In the morning, Daria was asleep at the window in the sun. She hadn’t touched any of her food. By all accounts it didn’t look like she’d moved at all. Dad reckoned this was normal. Explainable. The other cat was stressing her out. Until, she made eye contact with him and pissed on all his clothes. 

“The other cat is stressing her out,” I repeated. 

Checking the cameras before bed became a nightly ritual. One I did not log for my therapist. I had stared down the barrel of being sectioned before. I was not going to stare down it again. The dark looked less scary in eight pixels.

Dad was rushing out the door, but stopped by long enough to say goodbye for the night. I tried to ask, without asking, what triggered it to record.

“Well… they’re kind of the cheap-o’s. They’re supposed to only detect humans. But I’ve noticed they get the branches, the wind… the rain…” Dad sounded less sure with each word. “Yeah, I turned off the alerts for it.”

Eventually, I suppose, a normal person stopped looking.

I would check the cameras in the same order. The shed, the front door, then the driveway. Then, always, the shed again. Its camera was the worst. It only caught part of the door, then focused into a patch of lawn and a stack of wooden pallets. When the light timed out, I was left staring at the shapes burned into my eyes.

I could now tell the cats apart.

Daria moved slow. Her head darted around side to side as she ran in stretches. She looked more rat-like. The other cat would mostly appear under things; under the pallets, by the washing basket.

That night, the shed light burst on. I waited for a cat to cross the lawn. Nothing moved. I almost flicked channels when the light stayed on past its timeout. It was eerily still out there, it was not going to be the wind this time. I thought maybe it was a moth. One had flown right at my phone screen another night.

But, the light did not turn off.

I tried to zoom in on the camera but nothing happened. Chalked it up to a cheap camera. Then the boom arm holding the camera started to turn. Almost imperceptively, it inched in one direction, training on a stretch between the lawn and gravel.

It stopped.

Two small points of light almost level with the ground, close.

I waited for a tail to swish or ears to come into frame but the image was too pixelated. I flicked to the other feeds. Empty. Back, the eyeshine was gone.

My phone screen reflected back at me. All I could see was my own shadow in the glass. I put it down but when I closed my eyes the feed was still playing.

The same looming shapes, the gravel, the lights.

The next morning, I woke to the kitchen door jimmying.

It was Dad. I emerged, rolling a skateboard I’d propped against the door back quietly. He saw the dark rings under my eyes. There was no point hiding it.

“I can’t sleep.”

Dad looked at me over his glasses.

“You’re watching the cameras again?”

“I just… I think… the shed light was on a lot last night.”

“Lucy, if we had it on in the day the power bill would be insane. It goes off every two seconds.”

I looked through the window out into the sun bleached day. Outside, the shed looked smaller, more innocent. The gravel was just a road.

Dad opened the fridge, then stood for a while, as though he’d forgotten what he was doing.

“Well can you change the settings, like adjust the sensitivity?” I said.

“Probably.”

“Can you check?”

He shut the fridge and left empty handed.

“Sure, Lucy,” was all he said, before heading to bed.

That night, the shed light didn’t flicker, neither did the door or the driveway. I sat peering into the screen, then closed the app.

At 2:50am, the rain started. Then the light surged and cut.

I opened the app. Only the infrared was operating.

The shed was clear, the driveway clear, the house clear. The shed clear, the driveway—

— on the driveway, a pair of bright eyes appeared low to the ground. They were facing the camera. They stayed completely focused on the lens.

Then I noticed the eyes were too far apart.

A trick of the light maybe, a cat with its head turned to the infrared beams.

The eyes moved. Not around, not like Daria turning her head, it moved. Upwards.

Something was crouching in the grass. It drew nearer, the pixels catching the outline of a shoulder, an arm, a dark circle behind the bright lights. 

It stopped again. One hand reached forwards towards the red light. Followed by another. Both hands flattened against the ground. It stood. Unfolded itself from the long grass, spine straightening, head rising above the washing line. The eyes climbed up with it, never breaking from the lens.

Then the camera went off.

Static.

I rewound the footage.

2:55am.

Then the light outside my room flashed on.

The curtains were cracked a quarter open. For a moment, just the lawn bleached white in the light, then a yowl. Long, low, drawn out.

I didn’t go to the window. I didn’t move a thing except my fingers, furiously typing to my father. There’s someone outside my window. Not cat. Call police.

The message was delivered. I heard a faint chime

I silenced my phone, listening to the house groan. The light hummed outside. A moth hurled itself with a bang against the window. I flinched so hard I almost kneed myself in the chin. It clung to the glass, its wings flapping open and shut uselessly. Then dropped lower, as though something had moved behind it.

My phone lit up.

Stay there.

Dad.

Outside, both the shed and the driveway lights came on at once; white and glaring, sweeping across the lawn. The curtains brightened. A small rectangle of light moved over the ceiling, across the wardrobe, then disappeared.

I tried to type out another message, my fingers trembling too hard to even hold the phone.

Something rattled down the hallway.

The front door. No. Dad’s door creaked open. Footsteps moving towards the kitchen. Slow, unhurried. I nearly cried with relief.

I could hear the kitchen drawer open, and batteries clink against something. The spotlight.

Then my phone buzzed.

Hey, the shed door is open. Gonna look.

The drawer was still open. I could hear someone moving things around inside it.

Outside, somewhere on the driveway, a car door slammed.

A floorboard creaked in the kitchen. The last one before my room. 

The bedroom door opened an inch.

The skateboard held.

Through the gap, I could see the kitchen.

Two eyes, low to the ground. Too far apart.