The Thing in the Bedroom
A young girl is disturbed by her father's strange behavior. He disappears for most of the day, shut up in his room, from which she hears strange, unsettling noises.
As the days grew shorter and the nights cold, Alex saw less and less of her father. He shut himself in the bedroom from dawn to dusk, emerging from his cloistered darkness to fill a mug of coffee or microwave a bowl of oatmeal.
A few days before Halloween, she caught a glimpse of him, shuffling up the stairs like a shadow. He looked haggard and worn-down, his skin sallow, his cheeks like sunken craters, his eyes portals of darkened concentration.
“It’s you,” he said, not stopping.
“Dad,” Alex said. “Are you ok?”
He stopped at the door but did not turn around, his back a slab of onyx. Alex could hear hear him muttering. Low words that she could not make out.
He straightened and spoke clearly. “I’m almost done,” and disappeared into the bedroom.
Alex heard whispering from behind the door, and she wasn’t certain it was her father’s voice. The whispers devolved into a series of low growls punctuated by sharp yelps—a cry of terror mixed with elation.
Then she smelled it.
Like smoke and burning wood. Like her father had somehow fashioned a fireplace in the small master bedroom. Incense and cloves mixed with cinnamon, sage. Then the smells were strange: permanent marker and burning flesh; vomit tinged with lemon; garbage, rotted food, lavender.
Alex retreated to her bedroom, but the smells followed her. The sun was setting into the neighboring houses; beams of orange and purple light cutting the street like swords. Alex heard a deep voice through the wall, the same voice she had heard for many nights, but this time, she knew it was not her father’s. The voice was low and deep, heavy with a malevolent timbre; so heavy it felt like a physical presence pushing against the wall. The neighboring dog began to bark; a desperate, pleading sound. Alex saw him through the window, shivering in the warm air.
She went to the door, to make sure it was locked. But her door did not lock. She held the handle, hoping that she had the strength to hold the door, knowing she did not.
A new smell swept into he room, pungent and incomprehensible. Her eyes watered from the force of it. Then there was a flash of light, and a booming sound that rattled the windows and threw Alex from the door. She heard the dog howling in terror. She heard her father shout, and this word, this one only, she understood: “Obey!” he screamed, and Alex could hear the terror in her father’s voice.
Then the thing responded. It laughed. Slowly at first, and then in great booming bursts. Her father shouted a series of words, and though Alex could hear them plainly through the wall, she could not make sense of them; they were blasphemous words, irrational, incoherent.
The door was thrown open and the terrible sounds scurried through the house. Alex grabbed a bag from her closet and hurriedly packed her things: her stuffed rabbit named Chloe, a yellow blanket and pillow, her mother’s ruby ring, a few books.
She fled down the empty hall and through the winding staircase, all the way to the basement. There in the dark, deep beneath the earth, silence defeated those terrible sounds. Alex found a spot beneath the stairs, settling beneath her blanket, listening. But she heard nothing—only the deafening silence of the crypt—and she knew then, for certain this time, that she was alone in the world.
Deep in the basement, in the small closet beneath he stairs that she transformed into a makeshift room, Alex could no longer hear the strange sounds. She passed the days alone, reading her books—tales of valiant knights in shining armor, fearsome dragons, and princesses of otherworldly beauty.
She slept through the daylight hours, waking only after the sun had slipped beneath the sill of the world, stealing upstairs to grab a quick meal from the kitchen.
Between the basement steps and the kitchen was a long hallway, its walls covered with family pictures. There was Alex and her mom on the beach, wearing floppy hats and silly smiles. There was baby Alex, a flower tucked behind her tiny ear. Her mom and dad on their wedding day, gleaming white. There was her dad smoking a pipe, a book open on his lap, a dreamy smile lighting his face.
How odd, Alex thought, as she snuck her food downstairs, to see those pictures in the dark. They were now photos of strangers, for all the smiling, once-familiar figures, were long gone.
Sometimes Alex wondered about her dad. If he was alright. She hoped—often at first, but less and less as the days passed—that he would appear at the stairs, come down to see her, call her Pumpkin and stroke her hair. But in the dark, the days were the same as the night, and each one blended into the next.
After a week in the basement, she awoke to a loud thumping sound. She thought it was the thing in her father’s bedroom, that terrible, heavy voice thundering in the dark. She held her breath, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Something came around the corner, crouching low to the ground. It looked like a rat. Alex turned on the light, but it did not scurry away in fear like she expected. Instead, the creature turned and spoke to her.
“Please, put that light out,” it said.
Alex obliged, plunging the room back into darkness. “Who are you?” She said.
“I am a domovoy,” it said. Alex detected a hint of pride in its voice. It was a small furry thing, about the size of a beaver, but its face was distressingly human-like: two beady black eyes peering at her over a small nose, its pink mouth smiling slightly as it spoke. “I am the spirit of this house.”
“How long have you been here?” Alex stayed in her bed. She didn’t want to get too close.
“I have always been here,” the creature said. “For this house is old and will remain for many centuries to come.”
“How come I’ve never seen you before?”
“Because humans do not notice anything, even when it is right beneath their noses.” The domovoy turned around—as if to punctuate its last point—and disappeared into the shadows.
Alex saw more of the domovoy over the next few days. He was wary of her at first, going about his duties with a cold, aloof air. She liked to watch him when she didn’t think he had noticed her. The house acted strangely in his presence. Dust gathered around him, as if drawn to him like a magnet. Pipes seemed to gurgle more happily when he was there. Cobwebs disappeared at his glance. He went upstairs for most of the night, reappearing in the basement as dawn welcomed the day with shivers. Alex didn’t know where he slept—or if he slept at all.
She tried to coax him into her little bedroom, but he was uninterested at first.
“Do you ever leave the house?” She asked him.
“I cannot,” he said. “I am connected to this house. I am this house. I can no more easily leave it than you could leave your body.”
“What do you do all day?”
“The same as your heart and lungs do for your body. I keep the house alive.”
On Thanksgiving morning, Alex saw the domovoy near the stairs. “Will you come sit with me?” she said.
He did not say anything. Nor did he turn to look at her.
“Today is a holiday,” she said. “I usually spend it with my family, but this year my family is gone. My mom passed away last spring, and my dad—” she thought of that deep, terrible voice and shivered. “My dad is not here.”
“This is a special day for the house,” the domovoy admitted. “But a busy one for me, as well.”
“But what is a home if not for the people who live in it,” Alex said. “Soon this house will be empty.”
“I see,” the domovoy said. “Very well, I can sit with you for a bit,” and he followed her into the little room beneath the stairs and curled up beside her. Alex read to him a story. About a knight sent to slay a dragon.
The domovoy listened to her, and as she read, Alex noticed that something had changed. The little light in the room seemed to burn brighter, and her small assortment of objects began to glow from within. Her mother’s ruby ring glittered like a tiny fire. Alex realized that the domovoy had changed, too. His dark fur was brighter, almost white. It was as if he was emitting an aura of warmth and comfort that filled the room with a soft glow. She felt a sense of calm come over her, peace for the first time since she came to the basement.
Then she heard it: footsteps. Something was coming down the stairs. In a flash, the light faded and the domovoy vanished. Alex was suddenly cold. She gripped the book and held her breath. It was the thing from the bedroom, she was sure of it. She slipped beneath her covers, believing, for a second like all children believe, that if she could not see it, it could not exist. The thing reached the bottom of the stairs, paused at the landing. Alex could hear it breathing, slow, ragged. It dragged its feet against the cold pavement, lumbering around the corner toward her.
It stepped into the light, and Alex saw that it was her dad. He looked worse than she remembered; as if he had aged twenty years over the last few weeks.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.
Alex didn’t say anything.
“I want to make a nice dinner. For the two of us. Like we used to do.” He eyed her makeshift room, his gaze roving over the stack of books, the stuffed animals, the pile of crackers she had pilfered from the pantry. “I am sorry I have not been there for you,” he said. “I have been so wrapped up in my own grief that I have not been there for yours.”
Alex followed him upstairs. He put music on the record player and an apron around his waist. All morning and well into the afternoon, he prepared dinner; chopping vegetables, basting the turkey. He was not a good cook—that had been her mom’s role—and the turkey came out dry. But the mashed potatoes were good, and the gravy decent. But it didn’t matter. Alex would have eaten anything to be at the dining table with her dad. She smiled at him, and he laughed—for the first time in months.
He apologized again and told her that the loss of her mom had driven him into a strange grief. One he was now sure was behind him. “Will you sleep in your bedroom tonight?” he asked her.
Alex agreed, on the condition that he end the bizarre experiments in his room.
“That’s all behind me,” he said. He cleared the dishes, flipped the record, danced. “Are you ready for pie?”
“That depends,” Alex laughed. “Did you make it?”
“It’s store-bought!” he said. “And there’s whipped cream.”
They ate the pie, cleaned the dishes together, music soaring through the house, clearing the shadows and cobwebs that had been allowed to gather in the dark corners. Alex looked at the pictures in the hall and saw, once again, the little girl that she knew. Though her mom was gone and only a ghost smiled at her from the photos, her dad was still there. He could come back. He could return and be as he was.
But in the dead quiet of that Thanksgiving night, a snowstorm rolled into town and delivered to their house, glittering in the moonlight, a kingdom of pure, silent white. The trees were covered with snow, and everything was still, like the world before the first sound broke the silence of eternity. In the pre-dawn darkness, an enormous blue moon bathed the snow in a watery light. The frosted houses looked like they were underwater.
As he poured his morning coffee, Alex saw a strange look in his father’s eyes. “The first snowfall of the season is a potent thing,” he said. “With a full moon in Pisces, and on Black Friday. That day, of all days.” She saw in his look a frightening mixture of delight and determination. And she knew, in that look, that not even twenty-four hours since he made his promise that he would break it. He disappeared into the bedroom, and they came again, swooping over the house—those terrifying sounds, the perverse smells. They came with a renewed fury, a fury that drove Alex back down into the basement. She searched for the domovoy, hoping that she could hold him close, feel his warmth, feel that aura of light.
The noises increased to a tumult. A small storm gathered over their house, thunder booming over the snowy roof. Even in the darkest corners of the basement, Alex could hear her father’s terrible voice. She closed her eyes and whispered to herself, singing a lullaby that her mom used to sing to her, waiting for the sounds to abate, for the smells to disperse, for the storm to flee. She couldn’t find the domovoy. It was as if her father’s spells had driven him into the foundations of the house.
He came for her later that night. Crept into the basement, his eyes wet with tears, a gleam of wearied happiness struggling to escape his haggard countenance.
“I’ve done it,” he said. “At last, I’ve done it. Alex, I’ve done it! She’s back. She’s here! Alex, your mom is upstairs.”
She followed her father through the dark and silent house. None of the lights were on in the house, and Alex wondered if the fuse had blown. She could smell the lingering scent of smoke and burning flesh. They passed through the living room, the furniture leering in the blue moonlight.
They approached the upper landing, and the silence was so complete, the air so still that Alex felt like she was ascending into outer space. The door to her parent’s bedroom was half-open, but the room was plunged in total darkness. Her father went in first, and she followed after him.
Alex heard it before she saw it.
A soft sound, like meat hitting a hard counter, or a hose jammed with dirt, the water trying desperately to push through.
Her father turned on the light, and then she saw the thing with her mother’s face.
“We can be a family again,” he whispered.
The thing that was not her mother moved from the bed. Alex heard the sound of shifting flesh, of bone and sinew sliding away. It wore her mother’s nightgown, but the shape was all wrong. It twisted what should not be called a face into a mockery of a smile. It looked at Alex with eyes as black and distant as Saturn’s moons. The thing opened a hole in the general vicinity of a mouth, trying to speak; only a rasping void escaped, the sound of a black hole warbling in distant space. It shuddered in its aborted attempt to walk toward her.
Alex turned and fled downstairs. She could hear her father shouting after her, but she ran all the way to the basement. She tore through her room, tossing everything into her bag. She left her mother’s ring, the gleaming stone drinking the red light.
She called for the domovoy and found him curled up in a crawlspace near the foundation. He was so weak he couldn’t stand on his own. Alex picked him up. “If I take you from the house, will you die?”
The domovoy spoke in a tiny voice, as though every syllable was a great effort. “He is stealing the energy from the house to keep that thing alive. I will die either way.”
Alex carried the domovoy upstairs, worried that she would see her father—and that thing—coming down the stairs. She tried not to imagine it lumbering down the hall, dragging its limp, too-long limbs along the floor. The face staring at her, its skin falling off the worm-eaten bone. She ran through the back door and into the snowy backyard.
Beyond their house was a copse of trees, and past that, a creek that wound its way toward a large river. Alex ran in that direction, struggling through the deep snow, the cold wind biting her arms. She did not turn to look, terrified that she would see the thing coming after her, a shambling mass of flesh pushing through the snow, eyes burning with false life.
The moon watched over them, full and bursting with light. Alex could feel the domovoy’s soul—the house’s soul—flickering weakly in her arms. She needed to find him another home, another body. “Hold on,” she said, knowing that her words meant nothing, knowing that the small creature she carried in her arms could no longer hear her.
If I can make it to the trees, she thought, I can build a fort of sticks, a home. He just needs a home, she said to herself until it became a mantra. He just needs a home, he just needs a home.
We just need a home.
Alex held the still and silent creature close to her heart as she pushed through the thick snow, the trees hovering in the distance, a black daub of shadow on a field of white and blue.