999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [176]
It was the sound of someone knocking …
… knocking on the front door.
Martin’s heart pulsed heavily in his chest as he thumbed the hammer back on the shotgun and took a few cautious steps forward. He was breathing rapidly, trailing his frosty breath like a tangled scarf over his shoulders.
Before he made it to the now-doorless doorway of his bedroom, the knocking came again, louder this time. It echoed through the cold, dark house, which resonated like the insides of a huge kettledrum.
Martin was shivering terribly when he stepped out into the hallway and paused to look over the railing. His eyes seemed to be taking too long to adjust to the darkness as he stared at the front door, positive that he could see it push inward with each heavy blow as the knocking sounded again.
Tightening his grip on the shotgun, he started down the stairs, his gaze focused on the narrow windows on either side of the door. He wanted to catch some indication of who was out there on the doorstep, but all he could see was the deep, black stain of the night, pressing against the glass like a stray cat, wanting to be let in.
Martin took a deep breath, preparing to call out a challenge or warning, but his voice failed him, caught like a fish hook in his throat.
He didn’t like this.
Not one bit.
But in spite of his rising tension, he kept moving forward. Every step creaked beneath his weight, setting his teeth on edge until he made it down to the foyer.
The only light in the house came from the single candle burning upstairs in his bedroom. Hardly enough light to see by. The darkness within the house pressed close, squeezing against him like soft, crushed velvet. When he realized that he was holding his breath, he let it out in a long, slow whistle. His hands were shaking as he raised the shotgun and aimed it at the front door.
Even though he was expecting it and was convinced that he was ready for it, his heart skipped a beat when the knocking came again.
One … two … three times, the heavy blows pounded against the door.
And then they stopped.
The sudden silence hummed in Martin’s ears as he stood in the foyer, too frightened to say or do anything.
His anticipation spiked as he waited for the sound to come again. He looked furtively from side to side as though expecting to see something creeping up behind him in the darkness even though he told himself that there was nothing there. His gaze returned to the door when the unseen person on the other side began knocking again, even harder.
Was it a friend? Martin wondered. Someone who’d stopped by to check if he was all right?
That didn’t seem likely.
Martin didn’t have any real friends. He pretty much kept to himself, having gotten used to being alone after so many years tending to his invalid mother before she died.
Thinking of his mother sent a tickling electric current racing up his back.
What if that’s her out there? he wondered, unable to repress the deep shudder that shook his insides. He couldn’t help but remember how during those last horrible years, when she was ill and bedridden, she would bang on the wall to get his attention, pulling him away from his time alone with his trains.
He tried not to think it, but the sounds were practically identical.
“No!” he told himself. “Mother is dead!”
He tried not to imagine what she would look like, her wizened form hunched on the crumbling cement stairs, wrapped against the cold in her yellowing burial shroud as she banged on the door to be let in. Her skin, gray with the rot of the grave, would be falling off in large, ragged chunks as each knock rang out like a hammer on an ancient Chinese gong.
But no!
That couldn’t be her.
He had seen her coffin lowered into the ground.
She was dead!
Even if he hadn’t smothered her with her pillow, like the detective who had come by several times had suggested, she was dead and buried! And even if he had done something like that, he would have done it only out