Were You Looking For Me?

The Witching Hour. That’s what they call the time between 3:00 and 4:00 AM. It’s considered the peak time for supernatural activity; a time when witches, demons and ghosts are supposed to appear and be at their most powerful. Some call it the Devil’s Hour, claiming it to be an inversion of the time when Jesus supposedly died, which was at 3:00 PM

For me, the Witching Hour was just another sixty-minute period where my mind snapped awake, and my body followed. It had been happening for months now, like clockwork, pardon the pun. At first, I had been frustrated, and later, down-right angered by the continuous break in my sleep cycle. But then I began to see it as an opportunity, a chance to let my creativity run free without the constraints of a daily routine and the resultant structuring of my thoughts. Over the past few weeks, I had taken advantage of the blank canvas that filled my head and began to colour it in with new thoughts and new ideas that never would have come to me in the middle of a normal hectic day.

This morning was no different. I had gone to bed at my usual time — usually somewhere around 11:00 PM. My eyes had rolled shut and my brain had switched off about thirty seconds after my head hit my pillow. My collie-dog, Layton, had curled up on the empty side of the double bed and tucked his long and pointy snoot into the floof of his tail, breathed a single heavy sigh, then closed his eyes and drifted off into his own world filled with his own dreams. Like me, Layton never had a problem falling asleep.

My eyes snapped open to find the room around me filled with shadows. I had drawn the blind over the window, blocking out the light from the streetlamp across the way. A faint orange glow seeped around its edges, offering just enough light for me to navigate the room without stubbing my toes as I made my way to the bathroom. Layton followed, as sure of foot in the middle of the night as he was during the middle of the day.

The grandfather’s clock in the lower hallway chimed thrice the moment I exited the bathroom once more. Layton, who had taken his customary position outside the bathroom door, raised his head and perked his ears at those tones, then lowered his chin back down to his paws the instant the last note had faded to oblivion. His eyes watched me for a second or two, judging my intention. If I stayed put, he would likely go back to sleep. But I was wide awake now. New thoughts and new ideas were beginning to creep around the corners of the empty white screen inside my head. Very soon there would be a tidal wave of suggestions screaming to be considered and set free.

Breathing a heavy sigh, I stepped over Layton and started down the short hallway that led to my office. I could hear the collie’s nails tip-tapping on the hardwood floor as he followed. Inside the office I had laid a good-sized area rug upon the floor, as much for Layton’s comfort as for any esthetic appearance. True to form, the collie-dog turned once, then twice, then three times in an anti-clockwise circle before settling down with a grunt and resuming his sleep-ready position.

I settled into the high-backed chair in front of my rolltop desk and touched the power button on the laptop computer I kept docked there. The screen came to life almost immediately, flooding the room with unnatural light. I blinked my eyes once, then once more before I was able to focus in on the word processing document that stood open upon that screen. There was a jumble of text written there, leftovers from last evening’s effort to continue the story I had been working on: my first attempt at a Gothic-themed horror tale set in a small town in Wales. I was about sixty pages into the telling of that tale, but I seem to have hit a brick wall regarding the narrative. Perhaps this morning’s empty-headedness might be the fixative to that mental roadblock.

A soft chime sounded from the far end of the house, interrupting a newly forming idea. That sound was the front doorbell ringing to announce a visitor’s arrival on my porch step.

At this hour? the still functioning rational part of my brain argued softly.

More out of reflex than conscious thought, I pushed back my chair and rose to my feet. Layton raised his head and watched while I exited the office. When he rose and accompanied me, my heavy footfalls were echoed by his softer padding while we approached the front entranceway.

The door there was a heavy barrier of solid oak. It had been painted a rich, deep black and polished to an impressive mirror finish. Two brass numbers mounted on the outside identified the address of this house as Number 10, though the location was Brighton Avenue, not Downing Street. Two narrow windows of frosted glass flanked either side of the door frame. That Polarizing effect did not allow a clear view of the porch outside the door, nor of the street beyond. A vague silhouette would be the only indication that there was someone standing outside that doorway.

At that moment, however, no such silhouette was visible on the far side of that glass. There was only the small, squarish outline of a box-like package left perched against the bottom of the window on the right side of the doorway.

Turning the latch that released the deadbolt lock securing the front door, I worked the lever-style handle and pushed that panel open. A rush of cool air from the mid-autumn evening rushed over me at once. The sounds of cricket music could be heard from the yard beyond the railing that edged the front porch. Somewhere, far off, tires hissed on rain-dampened asphalt. Beyond that, though, the night was still and the streets and sidewalk visible from the threshold of my house were all empty. Whomever had dropped that package on my doorstep had somehow managed to disappear entirely before I exited my office and reached the front door.

My attention turned to the package that had been left there. It was a small box, not much larger in dimensions than a piece of regular paper, though perhaps an inch or two thick. It had been wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with a length of rough twine that bisected its shape into quarters. A tiny card had been fixed to that twine, but in the dim light from the street, I was not able to make out the writing that had been inked there.

After casting my gaze up and down the street in front of my house for any sign of the person who had dropped that package at my door, I resigned myself to the knowledge that whomever it was had made good their escape. With a mental shrug of my shoulders, I stepped over the threshold and bent down to collect that unknown package, wrapped in its plain brown paper, then retreated inside once more.

I reset the lock on the front door before heading back to my office. Layton shadowed me down the hallway and resumed his previous position after turning three more lazy circles upon the area rug behind my chair. This time I had swatted the switch that ignited the overhead light. With my workspace now awash in brightness, I settled upon my chair to consider the package which had been left for me.

The first step was to read the note attached to the binding twine. After cutting that string with the knife I kept at my desk, I held the small card in my hand and turned its cover aside. Within, inked in a strange and scrawling hand were five simple words:

Were you looking for me?

“Was I looking for you?” I said out loud after reading the message twice, then twice again. “Who are you? Why would I be looking for you?”

Placing the card aside, I pulled the last of the twine from the box and cast it into the waste basket next to my desk. Turning the edge of my knife against the small squares of tape which held the paper wrapping in place, I quickly uncovered the box beneath. As with the paper, there were no markings upon the box itself. It had been fashioned from plain brown cardboard, the kind of box one could purchase just about anywhere, in any size required.

The knife’s edge made short work of the ribbon of tape securing the long seam down the front of the box. When the top flaps were turned aside, within I found a book-sized bundle encased in bubble wrap, the kind that pops quite merrily when each blister is squeezed. I was in no mood to pop those bubbles at that moment. Instead, I cut the tape holding the wrapping and unfolded its edges to reveal the item held inside.

At the heart of that package was a single black and white photograph contained within a dark metal frame. A square of cream-white bordering filled the space within the frame. When I looked upon the image in that picture, I found myself strangely familiar with the place it depicted, though I knew I had never been there. It took several minutes before a realization dawned upon me. To be certain of my suspicion, I turned my attention to my computer and tapped the mouse to bring up the document I had been working last evening. When those pages of text became visible, I scrolled through the paragraphs until I found the words I was seeking. Those words depicted an ancient village set along the banks of a twisting and winding river. The village was comprised of old stone houses set amongst narrow streets bordered by high stone walls. Its streets led toward a grand open yard dominated by the empty shell of a great abbey which had once been almost cathedral-like in its splendor. Now, though, all that remained were standing walls and empty windows staring out upon the yard without a roof above to shelter them.

The photograph within the box was an exact representation of the image I had created with those words. But there was something different there, something more. In the background, beyond the ruins of the once great church, a wall of rugged stone rose above the river. At the base of that cliff, and again at its summit, stood forests of green trees that contrasted the cold, grey rock.

But it was the sharp promontory that jutted out from the top of that cliff which captured my attention. Narrowing my eyes, I peered more closely at that landing. After several seconds I began to realize that I was seeing a figure upon that balcony, a dark image wrapped in black robes that seemed to flow and flutter in the wind. Leaning closer still until my nose nearly touched the glass covering that photograph, I strained to make out features beneath the heavy hood.

Without warning, the figure in that image shifted its head and looked up at me. A pair glowing red eyes pierced my soul while a voice whispered darkly inside my head.

The framed photograph fell from my hands and crashed upon the floor at my feet. The glass inside that frame cracked in a spiderweb fashion. I ignored the sound that caused Layton to jump to his feet and bolt from the room.

My fingers found their way to my computer keyboard. They began typing of their own accord.

The dark figure looked down from its pulpit and laid claim to all that it could see….