ALLAN MARTIN

An iScot Short Story

Haloween . No guisers this year, probably due to the COVID restrictions. About 11 pm Ingrid and I decided to go to bed. As I carried the wine glasses through to the kitchen, the doorbell rang. I put the glasses down beside the sink and came back into the hall.

“Should we answer it?” asked Ingrid.

“I don’t know,” I replied, swithering.

“There’s somebody there,” said Ingrid, “I heard a cry. Maybe they’re in trouble.”

I went into the porch, cautiously opened the door a little, and peered out.

“There’s nothing there,” I said, and opened it wide.

There was indeed nothing there. Just total darkness.

“There’s something odd about it,” I commented.

And then it dawned on me. I couldn’t see the street light that was right across the street. I told Ingrid.

“Maybe it’s fog,” she said, after taking a look herself.

I wasn’t so sure. It seemed, well, too dark. Like a curtain of darkness, very thick darkness, set into the door frame.

“But who rang the bell?” asked Ingrid.

Lucifer, our cat, came to the door too. He emitted what I guessed was the feline equivalent of a growl, a sound I’d not heard from him very often. Then he rushed into the darkness and disappeared. We heard a squawking sound from a few feet away, then nothing more.

“Lucifer!” I called, “Come on back!” But, of course, cats don’t pay any attention to orders from humans. Not even to requests. So it wasn’t surprising that there was no response.

The surface of the darkness wasn’t a solid curtain. Lucifer had proved that to us. But it did seem like there was a tangible edge to it. And there was a sense of movement within it. And sounds. No howls or shrieks, or anything like that. Just little noises: rustlings and scrabblings.