CL Writing Contest 2018 Top Ten (Fiction): Haunted

Ezra Clarke's oatmeal is missing. He had put the bowl on the kitchen table, and then went out to get the paper. He had always gotten his breakfast ready first — a creature of habit, Ezra Clarke was. He didn't know any other way at this point.

When he returned, paper in hand, his bushy eyebrows creased when he saw the barren kitchen table. His eyes scanned the room for a clue, a sign, a hint for who the thief could be. This was an act of aggression.

Someone was stealing his breakfast, and he didn't know why.

He remembers putting the water in the microwave, setting it for 30 seconds. While he waited, he turned on his radio, pouring the oats into a bowl while he listened to the story of the fires out west and about that crazy woman who had fled the police officers early in the week. He catalogued every step, checking them off on the list attached to his refrigerator that his wife had made up for him. He eyes the list one more time, questioning it, suspicious of its motives, but he sees the concurrent checks next to their respective boxes and nods to himself.

He stands there, perplexed, for some time.

The telephone rings, and Ezra's thoughts spill to the floor. He shuffles his way to the wall and picks up the receiver. "Hello?" The word is a croak, deep and strange. He realizes he hasn't spoken to anyone in three days, not since that boy across the street lit a firecracker on his front lawn.

"Hey…it's Amy," A sweet voice sings from across the miles of cord and wire.

"Amy," He breathes.

There's hesitation on the other side of the line. "Yes…your daughter?"

"I, I know who Amy is!" he growls. He wipes the sweat from his forehead. It's suddenly hot.

"Sorry, I just…"

"No. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have — it's just been a rough morning." He sighs. His fingertips press firmly into the bridge of his nose.

"What do you mean? Are you forgetting things again?" she asks, with that accent he hated, that accent of a nanny watching a toddler, asking him if he needs to go to the potty. He almost hangs up.

"My food keeps getting stolen," he says.

"What?"

"My oatmeal, my cereal, my sandwiches…whenever I get up and walk away, they're gone when I get back."

"Really? You don't say?" she asks, her tone high and saccharine sweet. At this point, she's just playing with him. Nothing he says will be believed. He's just an ancient fool with a foot in the grave, and she's pretending to listen.

"I don't know what's happening," he says, and his mind wanders, and it grabs some used-up memory that's decided to revisit him. "You know, she always used to do that."

"Who? Do what?"

"Your mother. She would take my food. Right off my plate. I would always get up at dinner, to finish some quick task or something stupid. She would eat as much as she could. Something about me appreciating what was in front of me while I had it. It annoyed the crap outta me then…"

He almost is able to hear her rolling her eyes over the phone line.

After a moment of silence, she chirps, "So, have you ever though about, maybe, Dad, going into a facility? Where people could take care of-"

He hangs up. He wanders over to the cupboard to get breakfast. He opens the cabinet door, reaches in, grabs the cheap bowl with the fruit bats on it that his wife always used for her Honey Smacks cereal, and puts it down on the countertop.

Damn it, this was his house. He had made love to his wife here, had fought with his wife here. She WAS here; here was her.

"No way. No way I'm going to a fucking plastic bed and breakfast where they feed me poison and don't change my sheets because they think I'm too old to care," He mumbles. He gets a box of Honey Smacks out, opens it. By the time he's done pouring, he remembers that he's always hated this cereal and he curses.

•

He could smell his wife's perfume. It permeates the house, like a dust storm settling on a Midwestern town. He looks in the bathroom cabinet. He can't remember how much had been in the bottle. Had…had he sprayed some today?

At first he is infuriated, but as time elapses, he's breathing deeper. He stands there, in the bathroom, eyes shut, filling his lungs with her scent.

He cries. Deep sobs empty themselves from his belly. The sound seems to be the only thing moving in the house.

He grabs her perfume bottle and holds it close to his chest. He walks back towards the living room. There's the sound of footsteps, but he's too deaf to hear them.

•

"Hello, Severin's Surveillance Services, how may I help you?" The voice oozes chipperness.

"Hello. Yes, this is Ezra Clarke."

"Edgar Clarke?"

"No, Ezra-"

"Edgar! It's nice to be speaking with you today. How may I assist you?" His voice is a bullhorn of giddiness. Ezra starts to shake. His fist balls up on the receiver. He begins to count to 10, just like his wife had taught him. He speaks through his false teeth.

"Yes, I would like for you to install some cameras inside my home."

"That sounds doable. Wait, you said inside? You don't mean on the outside?"

"No, inside."

"Well, outside is usually how these things work," the man says in a matter of fact, oh you idiot kind of way.

"I know that, you dolt. I want them inside my house!" Ezra charges, and he gets suddenly dizzy from the spike in blood pressure.

"Alright, alright, sir," the young man coos, soothing out the sale. "Let's get some information and see where we go from here."

The young man's name is Jack Severin — he's the owner Benjamin Severin's only son, and now, two hours after the call, Jack's in Ezra's house.

"Your name is Ezra? Why do I have you down as Edgar?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I'm just happy I was able to catch it now. That could've been a problem."

Ezra watches in silence as Jack goes about, installing the security system, Jack talking to him the entire time while Ezra just stands and stares and grunts at the appropriate moments. He watches the kid like Jack is an alien creature…his movements look odd to Ezra. They are unstilted, easy, almost serene — his body still works with an effortless sort of ease, a perfect vehicle in working order. Ezra can't remember the last time someone this age was in his house.

"Sir?" Jack asks, as if he had been saying it a million times.

Ezra pulls himself back. " Yes?"

"Don't you want to know how this works?"

Ezra sighs, playing the scene in his head: the kid would explain it to him and Ezra would pretend to understand because he didn't want to look like an incompetent fossil, and when the kid left he would work at it for hours, crying and swearing and feeling useless all the while, just to prove that he still existed, that he could still learn something new.

But, the kid takes his time, surprising Ezra with his carefulness. Ezra has no trouble working the machine. Jack mentions how this is the system his own grandfather has, and Ezra nods.

The kid leaves, and the night comes like it always does — slower than expected yet always surprising. And Ezra goes to bed, but he does not sleep.

There is someone here. "Isabelle," He croaks. He looks up at the cold ceiling.

He realizes, in that darkness, in that blackness that he understands to be what death resembles, that without her picture in front of him, he can't remember his wife's face.

In a panic, he spills out of bed, bending at the ankle. It's a bad sprain. He cries out, and his shin crashes into the desk — his paper thin skin opens. Warm blood moves like sludge and spirals down onto his calf. His arms swing wildly, and as he goes down, he grabs at the desk blindly.

His hip bears the brunt of the fall, and the wind rushes out from him. The pain settles into his aching joints and he grasps at the picture frame, holding it close enough to his face so that he can see. He lies there, staring at her in that dim-death-darkness. "Isabelle."

•

His own shivering is what wakes him up. He's on the floor. The carpeting hasn't been changed since they had Amy — it's flat and the color is a muted green and it looks like moss.

Next to his head is her picture.

She was young then. She couldn't have been more than 25, 26. It's a picture Ezra had snapped on their first wedding anniversary, when they'd went to Holland. She had been sent on assignment, for her story on the reconstruction after the war. They had been hiking through this lush field to get to a small town, and he had called out to her. She didn't turn around completely, just enough for him to see her face, a playful smile joining her. He had shouted something, some sort of nonsense at her, and she had let out a crisp laugh. SNAP went the picture.

The way her eyes had shone, with her laughing against the sunset; they had looked almost golden.

It's his favorite picture of her.

That had been a long time ago. Ezra doesn't remember Holland anymore. He doesn't remember what they ate or where they went or if he made a fool out of himself because all he knew how to say was thank you in Dutch.

He wrestles to stand up, feeling the caked blood on his leg crack and split. He winces, struggles, almost falls again. He knows that if he falls again, it'll be half a day before he'll have the strength to get back up again — the thought almost paralyzes him with fear but he pushes through, throwing a hand out and propping himself up onto the desk. He waits until his legs are strong again, and he begins to drag his feet towards the kitchen. His robe drags along the ground. He still has the picture.

The icy tile of the kitchen greets his bare feet. With one hand, he prepares his food. The oats go into the bowl. The water goes into the mug. The mug goes into the microwave.

Thirty seconds.

Pour the water into the bowl, and set it onto the table. He readies himself to eat, when the idea of the newspaper flashes across his brain. He grunts, and walks outside, photography still in hand.

He comes back, and his food is gone.

He stands there. He can smell his wife, her perfume filling the air, and behind it, the smell of death…something rotten.

He's shaking as he walks towards the television monitor that had been set up by Jack yesterday. "How…what do I click?" he asks himself, throwing down his newspaper (but never the photograph, never the photograph), and grabbing the mouse. He moves it over the interface, watching the video of himself in the kitchen.

He finds what he's looking for. He clicks rewind. There's a blur of black and then nothing.

"Shit," he says. He hits play, and then fast forward.

He slows it down when he sees himself in the kitchen again. He watches as he prepares his oatmeal. He watches him curse at himself when he forgets about the paper. He watches as he leaves the room.

He watches. He watches as the door underneath the sink opens up. He watches, as something shaped like a human being with stark black hair crawls out and grabs the bowl of oatmeal. He watches as it returns to its hole after returning the bowl of the previous day.

Ezra Clarke looks to his right. Three feet away from him is the sink.

He stares. His mind is blank. The silence in the house engulfs him and he's hollow. He thinks about his bedroom, his bathroom, his den, his living room, his yard, all empty. All disastrously empty.

He wants to run away. Make this room just one more empty place.

He doesn't know what he's doing, but he finds himself moving, pulling at his feet to get them to work. He's heading there, towards the sink, and he doesn't know if he should grab a weapon or not.

He can hear the breathing now, ragged and deep, as if its lungs were full of sandpaper. He puts his face as close to the door as he can, and he can smell it, Isabelle's perfume mixed with decomposition.

He opens the door.

His eyes adjust, and curled up alongside the cockroaches and the crumbs, is a woman. She's caked with grime. She's in the fetal position. She has so much hair, he wonders if she has a face at all. She's wearing a tattered dress that looks like it used to be white, and it's hanging on by a literal thread.

But, then he spots two eyes open from behind the hair. They're frightened. They're manic. They're almost…golden.

He backs away slowly, not breaking eye contact. He's not sure when he had stopped breathing, but he takes a breath now, nice and deep. He goes to the cupboard.

With one hand, he prepares his food. Oats go in. Water goes into the mug. Mug goes into the microwave.

Thirty seconds.

Pour it in.

The two bowels of oatmeal are set on the table. With some difficulty, he bends down and picks up the newspaper he had absently thrown before. Shuffling his pages back together, he sits down. He sets the picture of his wife onto the table, and opens up the Sports section.

He hears movement, like nails on tile. It's slow, and methodological. He feels a warm presence beside him, and listens as her hands go into the oatmeal, a soft squish followed by the gnashing of teeth.

She eats. He pretends to read. He nonchalantly tries to make conversation with her. "What's your name?" he asks. The words are a pillow.

There's no answer. Just more teeth on oats.

He nods to himself for a moment. He flips a page. "I think I'll call you Veronica. That's what Isabelle would've called our next, but it wasn't in the cards. She would've been beautiful, just like her shitty sister. Where are you from, V? Hey! I could call you V for short. So, where are you from?"

Teeth. Oats. He lowers his paper, looks at her. He catches her looking at him, for just a moment. The gold in her eyes shimmers like wheat in a field.

"That's fine. You don't have to talk…." he says, staring. She reminds him of a dog he once saw on the side of the road, tearing through a garbage bag. It was emaciated, sullen, desperate. Isabelle had insisted on going back for it. Then, just like now, he forces himself to look away and he changes the subject.

"I shouldn't be surprised you're here," he says. The font on the paper is so small. He can barely see anything nowadays. "I always forget to lock the door. She, um, Isabelle, I mean…she always yelled at me about that." He tosses the paper onto the table.

"She always told me we would get robbed someday because of me." He shifts in his seat. His fingers go to the scruff on his cheek, his jagged nails burrowing, itching, the skin getting redder and redder.  "And we did, you know. Get robbed." He swallows, and it's a struggle to get it down. "They put a bullet in her. They shot her," he forms his hand into the shape of a gun, "right in the head. The cops told me they didn't think there was a struggle, but they didn't know Isabelle. Those fucks are lucky they had a gun."

He's itching his face again. His vision blurs as his eyes turn glassy.

"They didn't get me though. We'd just gotten into a fight so I'd left the house. Didn't lock the door behind me. I'm a stupid man." He shakes his head. "Stupid man."

The girl was finished with her bowl. He hasn't even started his own, so, he moves the bowl to her, and she begins gobbling it up without hesitation.

"I need to call the cops," he says, standing, wobbling on weak knees. He hobbles over to the phone. He picks up the receiver, and begins to dial. He looks at the slip of paper next to the phone with all his numbers, and tries to find the non-emergency line.

He doesn't have it.

He hears the two bowls clang against one another. He looks back, watches as she effortlessly slips back underneath the sink, closing the cabinet door behind her like she had done dozens of times before without his knowing. He bites his lip, and sets the phone back down. He waddles over to the security system. He traces back the footage of today, of his discovering the girl, of their 'conversation.’

His fingers waver, and he taps at the keyboard.

Delete.

He calls Jack up and asks him to pick up the equipment. Jacks says he can come by tomorrow, no problem, but the deposit is the deposit. Ezra tells him that's more than fine.

When they hang up, Ezra starts writing a shopping list at the kitchen table. He glances over at the picture of his wife, his girl with the golden eyes.

A faint cough echoes from underneath the sink, but Ezra's hearing is too far gone to notice it.  

This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.