Pulse

“Can you be a dear and check the pantry?”

It was a regular request, innocent and naive to what she was sending him too. The kitchen was small, square thing. It’s counter top curved along the bottom of a dusty window that faced the front yard, it’s dirty glass producing only a few wayward strands of sunlight that, nevertheless, lit up the room and the little swirls of dust floating freely in the air. Facing that window, you would have the oven on your right side and the kitchen pantry on the left side. The sink was right below the window itself, and was filled with dirty dishes smeared with raw, nearly liquid cookie dough from earlier attempts at baking. This was attempt number four.

I had the misfortune that day of helping grandma, where, between her near blindness and my then seven years of experience, we were producing undercooked sludge that would probably kill someone if they tried eating it. I loved her though, so I did as I was told and went to the pantry. I pulled open both of the cabinet doors and searched for what she asked for. I can’t even remember what it was because of what I saw.

There was the usual seasonings, spices, multicoloured condiments that didn’t need to go in the fridge to keep, but there was something on the bottom shelf, right in the centre of it all. It was dark red, like one of those old rubber balls. It was lumpy and uneven and made squelching sounds that I can’t unhear. Noises like something being jammed into a pile of wet meat, and it stunk too. I could recognize that anywhere. That flat, relentless stink of skunk that provokes apprehension and the need to flee. That’s not what sticks with me though. The sounds don’t stick with me half as much as the way the thing moved.

It was pulsing, beating like a heart. It thumped and it’s colouration brightened like a sparking flame as it inflated itself. The squelching was timed with its beats. I just stared at it for a moment, then I grabbed what my grandma asked for an closed the cabinet door.

“Grandma.” I said, and I remember it was mumbled. “What’s that red thing in the pantry?”

“Red thing?”

“Yeah, it’s like a red meat thing.”

I know she heard me. She heard me well enough that her cataract grey eyes widened and her mouth squashed itself into a flat line, lips sucked in. It was an expression that lasted a second, just one, before she responded. “There is no red thing dear. Don’t worry about that.” So I didn’t. We kept at our baking, and she never asked me to go through the pantry again. She did it herself. She never made a single comment about that red thing, like it wasn’t even there.

I knew it was though. I watched her open those double doors and look right at the thing. I saw its awful, beating mass sit there, squelching and malevolent and appearing in my now grown mind as like a tumour. I chocked it up to her bad eyesight, that was the reasonable excuse, the rational one as well.

I saw the way her face changed though. That’s how I know that she knew.

There were no further incidents until that night. Grandma would let me sleep in her water bed whenever I stayed over while she took the guest bedroom. It’s where I was when I awoke to the sound of the pantry being opened.

I sat up right the moment I heard those hinges squeak. I distinctly remember thinking, initially, that the red thing had grown a pair of white arms topped with sharp claws and was now going to crawl itself right to me, but no. That’s not what happened. I heard the shuffling feet of my grandma on the wood laminate. She was never a quiet woman, even as she was whispering and groaning under her breath. “Oh Jesus,” she said. “Out of my house.” The shuffling and the whispering and the sound of something squelching in her hands disappeared as she entered her room. I was still upright, on my feet now, which gave me a good view of her throwing something out into the backyard. I leaned my head against the window as I watched that little stone shaped thing hurl through the air and bounce off the ground. The moment it hit the wet grass outside was the moment I heard the echoing bellow of something outside.

The night was thick, so I couldn’t see anything properly, but I could see enough. Something long and billowy cascaded into my grandmas backyard, hopping the neighbours fence without the use of hands and with great ease. It’s features were blurred and fuzzy, with the only features I could attach to it being the length of its limbs and how tall it was. God was it tall. Too tall to move so smooth, so quiet. I was transfixed as it wavered to where the red thing had landed.

Suddenly, one of its limbs jumped from its current position to midair, clutching the red thing in a set of pale white claws, and that’s when I stopped watching and ducked below the window.

I heard no noise. No more bellowing. I stayed like that for five minutes before I slowly, foolishly, inched my way up the wall until I was eye level with the window. It was still there. It was right outside of the window and it had no eyes. It had no mouth. It was a blob of chalk white flesh and it was pressed up against the glass.

I passed right out and didn’t wake up until morning.

When morning came, the sun hit my eyes through the window. It was unbroken. I looked around and saw I was still in my grandmas room, her waterbed was beside me, and I was still in the spot where I had passed out.

Grandma was in the doorway, and she wore a grim look.

“No one is going to believe you.” She told me. “They never believed me.” She shuffled back out of the room without explanation. She was right though. I told my parents what happened and they said it was a strange nightmare. I told my friends and they took it the same way any group of seven year olds would; believed it the same way they believed in Santa. It faded as they got older.

I know what I saw and so did my grandma. I can never grow out of that, though I really would like too. The image of it was too striking, too memorable. Sometimes, I think I see it out of the corner of my eyes. That tall, billowing things.

It’s face always blank, pale white.