The Balance Keeper

I often ask myself if I should be where I am. If the responsibilities that I have accepted should be my own or the peoples whose life I affect. As Mark drove under the leaves of orange and brown autumn change, he slowly begins to remember my failure the night before. He remembers that he was lying in bed. He’d woken up for no detectable reason not even the feeling of pressure one feels when they need to pee in the night. It was pitch black, his alarm clock normally giving a sense of placement in the room but that was out too. Power must be out, he thought. He realized he was alone in his bed; he sensed an abundance of space next to him where his wife normally slept. He felt a strange shiver of cold, that ran from his toes to the top of his head. Maybe she woke me up going to the bath-

      A single creak comes from the floorboards. On any other night, it wouldn’t be anything more than the house settling, but this isn’t the house. Suddenly all his focus and the hairs on his neck point backward into the dark room. Silence…nothing but the hum one’s ears make in the lack of sound. Creak. He hears it again; someone is in the bedroom and he doesn’t know who. I know it’s not his wife. He senses eyes on him then, his back suddenly feels like a fleet of centipedes is crawling up to the base of his neck. Don’t move, I tell him. It’ll think you're asleep if you don’t move. The creak slowly comes again, then turns into a pounding run coming from the dark corner of his bedroom. As it gets closer his whole-body tenses the only movement, he dares is gripping the edge of the mattress hard. The running stops just at the edge of the bed. Silence…then he hears breathing. His mind starts the scramble, he realizes slowly that he keeps the gun on his side of the bed. But it won’t help him here, only I can.

      There’s pressure on his wife’s side of the bed. He feels his hip draw toward it and his knees draw the opposite.  If you don’t move…it’ll think you’re asleep and leave.

      “Hello?” it whispers. “Is anyone alive?”

      The second question was eerie feeling like it wasn’t asked to him. He felt the shifts of pressure grow harder, the pull of gravity stronger and he suddenly thought that if he went further and touched whatever was behind him it would know he was here. Don’t. Move, I told him.

      He heard a sniffle then, just over his shoulder. It came again before slowly turning into a sobbing. Then the scream came, it was blood-curdling and bone-shaking as it was no more than a foot away from his ear.

      “Hello!? Hello!? Hello!?”

      It was a cry of fear mixed with tears of anguish, and pleas like whatever was behind him thought it was going to die if it didn’t find another person. But he didn’t move still, even as he felt his whole body tighten even more, I told him he shouldn’t call back. It doesn’t want help, I said. It doesn’t want anything you can or should give it, don’t! move!

       There was a trembling voice for a moment, where the beginning of undistinguishable words fell from its mouth with a terrified plea wrapped around them. Then suddenly he felt it lean down, and under his eyelids, he saw a white glow come creeping into the dark. And he felt its face and breath almost kissing his upturned cheek.

      “Why aren’t you helping me?” it whispered. Its words scratched his eardrum.

      “Are you dead too??”

      It doesn’t want help, I said. It doesn’t want anything you can give it, just don’t move.

      Silence swallowed the room, and he stayed there feeling its breath in a rhythmic dance on his cheek. He could feel the tingling of long black hair that dragged across his face like small snakes.

      “Why won’t you look at me!!!!” it screeched.

      “Hello?” someone else said, it was the voice of a woman. Damn them!

      The weight shifted so that he could tell whatever was behind him looked to the door.

      “Whose there?” it asked suddenly very interested.

      “Mark? Mark is everything ok? Mark who’s in there?”

      Suddenly Mark started to panic, his eyes opened and he felt his grip tighten on the sheets as he realized that was his wife’s voice.

      There were a couple of taps on the door, and he heard the door latch turning.

      “Is that someone alive!? Someone new!?”

      “Mark? Mark, honey open the door.”

      The weight on the bed was suddenly gone, and a hard and room-shaking thud came from all around him and he heard the running footsteps carrying away from him toward the door.

      He heard the door open, amid the running footsteps.

      “Mark?”-

      - “Are you alive!?” it roared in a guttural and bone-shaking tone.

      His wife screamed a blood-curdling yell that made Mark spin in his bed just in time to see the door to his room slamming shut. The screaming of his wife and the roaring of whatever was chasing her around the house was still muffled. He leaped up from the bed, looked for the pistol but didn’t find it.

      Get after it! You can stop it now go! I roared.

He took off running toward the sound of his wife’s screams, he leaped from the top step down to the bottom one with an easiness that felt like the moon’s gravity resided here. He ran through the kitchen and rounded a corner into the living room where he saw a grey blur vanish behind the door to the basement. He thought he could still hear the screaming and roaring from underneath him, and without any thought for his safety, he wrenched it open.

Suddenly it was silence again, the world had gone numb with the feeling of being suspended in water as he looked down into the basement. It was old wooden steps, leading down into a black void of nothing. A trap!

      “Honey?!” he called down, and immediately after he sensed that was a mistake. And I too realized what I’d done. It tricked me and I told him to shut that door, I told him! But he didn’t.

      It was quiet and then came the running again, its path coming from the other end of the house in the basement, he could hear what sounded like bare feet running on concrete. He wanted to move, he wanted to run, but the feeling of being stuck in place took hold and when he heard the concrete smacks change to the wooden steps, he became too afraid to move.

      “Why won’t anyone let me in!?” A voice screeched.

      I woke him up, but it was too late.

      When he awoke, he jumped, and his eyes opened to the ceiling of his bedroom above him. He didn’t dare move still; he didn’t realize it but he was holding his breath as he looked side to side without moving his head. He heard a creak then, he jumped again and slowly slid his hand down the edge of the bed under the blankets. He felt the gun but before he could pull it the door to the bathroom opened and the light bathed his face, his wife came walking out. The toilet still flushing as she closed the door. She’d climbed back into bed not even noticing him awake. He closed his eyes and just breathed, feeling his chest heave up and down reminding himself it was just a dream. While I was raging, if I had fists to slam I would of.

      He’d awake a few hours later feeling more like himself, he’d still remember the dream but he’d roll over and hold his wife in the early morning hours and tell her about it.

      The dream would be put out of his head until he drives home later that evening. He started to have trouble remembering just how much of the being he saw as well. He thought he remembered something creeping out of the dark passage. Two glowing white orbs almost looking like they were getting brighter the longer he looked at them were at the bottom. And a good thing I woke him up too, sometimes that’s all the opening they need. I needed to fix this.

      He found himself wishing that he’d seen whatever the thing was, things weren’t always as scary as they were when you could see them for the forms they were, it made them seem far more tangible. If only he’d known how close of a call he’d had.

He missed his turn on the way home. God damn me, it had him again. He threw on his blinker turning onto the next cut-over road on his left. It was as he drove now that he felt a strange sensation run through his body. That cold but not uncomfortable shiver started in his toes and traveled to the tip of his head. He chalked it up to a change in temperature, ignoring its similarity to the one from the dream. The woods had gotten darker and the forest around him thicker. On the right side, he saw something out in the woods by the river, a tall and old water wheel with a fallen heap of a shake next to it. He suddenly had a surge of adventure go through him, this new and unexplored place felt too ripe to pass up. I was on guard now, feeling for it, waiting for it, it was coming again.

      He got out into the chill autumn air and started to walk for the water wheel his feet crunching across the drying forest floor. He found himself wondering how he’d never known about this place before. He’d lived in the town for the better part of a decade now, and never once had he been up this road.

He circled the side of the wheel looking at the shack that was once connected to it. It was nothing more than a fallen shack at this point, almost not even recognizable as nothing more than a random pile of boards. Oh, Helen would love this, he thought. His wife had a fondness for abandoned places, something that he shared but didn’t always quite understand. He wondered what the story was to this place as he rounded to the last side of it, noticing then that he was stepping on an old boardwalk under the years of fallen tree limbs and leaves. He figured it looked like the 1800’s maybe even later. Harold one of his deputies would know about it perhaps, he’d lived in the town longer than-

      When he saw the cellar doors he stopped. His mind suddenly went blank as without any intention of it he found himself staring down a few wooden steps that reminded him of the ones from the dream. A rotted and greyed wood door sat closed at the bottom. He stared at it a moment, lost in a kind of trance, as he flashed back to the dream from before. It was close, I could feel it now. Looking at the door brought an unsettling feeling; I steered his thoughts immediately to not go down there. You see I’d already lost the night before, played it too close for comfort, and gotten burned. I’d pulled him out, but this time I needed to be careful. Not tread too close.

      Suddenly through the peaceful trickling of the river to his left, and every so often creaks of the water wheel he heard another noise. His eyes had been turned away, but mine were dead on the door. It was coming again, and if was capable of a hold-your-ground stance I’d have been in it.

      *click*

      It was followed by a long-drawn-out creak and whine, the soundtrack to old hinges being used once more. His eyes came back down from the water wheel, that cold feeling running up him once more as he saw the door below slowly giving way to a dark void. An opening that was slowly becoming identical to the one from his nightmare. He froze up then, eye’s glued to the door as it opened completely exposing the void below. He saw the beginnings of a concrete floor but that was it.

      Mark's heart then started to pound all of a sudden, he found he couldn’t take his eyes off the opening even if he tried that same instinct to not move setting in on himself. Don’t move, don’t give it a reason to charge, I advised making his thoughts my words. Give what a reason to charge? He thought counter suit. When he heard the wet smack below, he didn’t even think it was real. He thought now that he was for sure having some vivid hallucination the senses from the dream that bothered him were pouring into reality so fast it wasn’t possible to be anything else-

      But then came another step on the concrete, the sound echoing up from the darkness below. It turned fast, and Mark took a step back as it sounded like something was about to charge the stairs, his mind snapping him back to reality. His hand rested on his pistol; I’d steered these thoughts earlier that morning toward needing to stay safe today. Here it represented something, here it represented defiance. There wasn’t a sound for a moment, and the trickling of the river was now just making him nervous.

      “Are you alive?” a voice called up to him. It was a voice that he couldn’t possibly forget, it was the voice from his dream. He didn’t know how but it was. And it was after the words that he started to see them, at first thinking them to be just a trick of the light but then the spheres became clearer. The whites grew whiter and the pupils became pronounced. His heart was pounding now, and that feeling of coldness was running up and down him like some kind of electric current. He didn’t speak, he didn’t call back, but he needed to see it. If I had breath to hold, I’d have been holding it.

      “Is that someone alive? Someone NEW!!” the voice went from quiet to a roar in a blink. The eyes were clear as day, and I was forced to break the rules, I spoke to him in my voice.

“Shoot it.”

 Suddenly Mark found himself without thinking drawing his pistol. He fired, the shots drowning out all other sounds the kick and flash blurred his vision as he pulled the trigger in terror while at the same time backing away to where he couldn’t see the void anymore. He’d stayed frozen a second longer, realizing he was pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun now. But his heart still thumped like a pounding fist on the inside of his chest. But it was done. It had gone.

 Slowly he approached the edge of the stairs again, his mind racing a thousand miles an hour, his hands still clutching the revolver for some kind of mental comfort. But when he reached the edge of the stairs, he saw something that baffled him, it washed away his terror and replaced it with a feeling like something was twisting his brain like a wet rag.

      The steps still went down into a cellar, but they didn’t lead to a rotten and grayed door like before. There was no dark void, or sense of evil, just more collapsed boards below blocking the entrance. The same light that bathed the world around him shined down below too, he could see that it was just the floor that had fallen on itself ages ago. He even walked around to confirm and indeed he could see the wood steps leading out from the other side, the entire structure lay out clearly to him, with no unknowns at all.

      Mark stood there, his face taking on a puzzled expression as he opened the cylinder of his revolver and let the bullets fall to his palm. All were unfired, and he looked back up to the water wheel with a growing sense that he’d lost his mind. Suddenly he started looking around bewildered, his eyes scanning the road, the water wheel, and the river, in a way it seemed like he might be looking for me. He’d heard my voice, a few had in their lives but I tried to avoid that. It's not something wish to happen, but in that instance it was necessary. And the truth is he’ll move past it, most do. They chalk it up to hearing voices, auditory hallucinations…or they start a religion. It’s a bit of a mixed response.

      You see most people, most of all Mark want an explanation for what happened that day. Even you may want one and that’s very understandable, curiosity for the unknown is something that every being in the universe has. It’s quite natural. But here is another truth of the universe that isn’t so easy to understand, and that’s that you don’t always have to know everything. You don’t need to understand what’s occurred to know that it was for the benefit of a good cause. A correcting of the ways you live every single day, a balancing of a fine line that reality walks on to keep everything…calm and orderly. Yes, that’s it calm and orderly. Mark will never understand what happened to him that day he won’t even tell anyone. And soon one day he’ll move past it. And all you need to know, is that on that day he toed that line. And I made sure he fell the right way.