The Shadow at My Door

It came in the blizzard.

A dark, twisted thing, shambling in the freezing cold and right to our door. All the lights had been out—not just ours mind you, but ALL the lights—for a time I had long lost track of but that did not stop it from clawing its way right up the driveway to rest at the foot of the stairs and stare right inside—like it knew we were there. But it could not. No, it could not possibly have known.

At first, it just stared. Its head cocked to the side like it was searching for something—a glimmer, a rattle, some trace sign of life—while the snow piled onto its shadowy frame. What was this thing? What did it want? For hours, I skulked around in the shadows, eyes locked on the cyclopean horror which stood not twenty feet from me and just on the other side of the thin pane of glass separating us from a hell that had frozen over. Had it not been for the unnatural darkness that had befallen us it surely would have seen me trembling in my perch just at the end of the foyer.

Had it always been there? Right there? Right outside the door, staring in at me as if to say it saw me? That it could feel my presence and smell the very fear that I fought so hard to contain? Impossible, it must have crept up when my eyes had closed. But when had they? Could it have possibly moved so fast I had not seen? Or did it move only when I blinked?

I resolved not to blink. To never shut my eyes until I had witnessed it move and then—and ONLY then—could I look away for the briefest fraction of a second. What did it want? What could have possibly brought it to my doorstep on such a miserable night? What kept it standing there with its head cocked in such an odd manner, its long spindly fingers stretching down in the most inhuman way from its twisted, black arm. Why? Why did it haunt me so? Was it just a hallucination brought on by the darkness of night and my own imagination? Was I just going insane?

No, it must have been there. It HAD to be real! How could it not when I knew it stood before me? Staring in at me with eyes darker than night. No, it was real—IS real—and I saw it and it saw me. It saw me!

A cold chill crept down my spine and my eyes began to water. It was staring right at me with its cold, black eyes—eyes as black as the shadows that had birthed the foul creature! But how? How could it possibly know I was here, hidden behind the entryway table at the far end of the foyer? But it had! I had felt its gaze land upon me.

With a trembling hand, I reached for the flashlight at my side. I had to see it for what it was! Would it be some hideous creature birthed from beyond the stars which now sat hidden behind the tufts of falling snow? The phantom of some long since dead god forgotten by time itself and older still? Or would it be some knowable horror? Some man-made monstrosity crafted by the mad storytellers of my forbearers?

Shaking, I drew my only weapon forward—ready to strike with the light of truth—when it moved. It moved! So subtly I could hardly sense it, but it had! Its fingers curled up into the beast itself. Where once they stretched to the porch beneath them now they hid inside the darkness of its hands. What if it were preparing to strike? To lash out at the door and come flying through to me—at me—and take the last breath I held? Surely, it had the most impure of intentions.

The flashlight rattled with the tremors of my hand, calling attention to the refuge of knowledge it offered. I lashed out at the beast, a bright shining beacon blasting through the darkness before it could think to break the glass it so desperately pounded on. The light burned through the night and into the shadow of that creature, but it was not a creature. No, it was my father and he looked cold.