All Are Welcome

For some reason, they always knew she would let them in. And for some reason, she always did.

They would turn up with the face of someone who looked familiar, but not, like a memory distorted. They smelled of fresh leaves and musty fungus. They had glittering obsidian eyes, and ragged, patchy hair.

They always wore red.

They would come to Eve’s home, and once they were installed she almost never saw them. Merely upon waking she would notice a lamp had disappeared or a rug replaced by woven winter moss. Dozens of smaller changes she only wondered about. (Had the aloe been turned, just so?)

One night she returned home to find the fridge unplugged and in the direct center of the kitchen. The next day, her sink was filled to the brim with ice, which she chose to take as an apology. 

Certainly, everything was as she chose to take it. These silent creatures, often unseen but felt, never speaking a word. How to take it when her mirrors were all covered with thin, rough sheets? What was meant when her books were all turned spine in, or when her apartment had smelled like apples for four days?

Then abruptly one day she would wake and again the birds would be singing, and the air would be light and free. She knew when she opened the door to the spare room, a mound of sticks and twigs in the bed would be all that remained of her elusive guest. And she would tidy it and then close the door again, to await the next visit.

Today, she heard the knock on her front door once again, a soft little pat-pat-pat against the door. She opened it and there stood someone new looking like someone else, in a berry-red cloak like Little Red Riding Hood. Its eyes shined a deep black, peeking through brown straw hair. Eve stood aside and the creature crossed the threshold. A quiet stretched from it to engulf the whole of the house.

She led the way to the guest room and stood at the doorway as it advanced past her. The click of the door was inaudible.

Eve looked up. She was sitting on her couch, but the light had changed. It was almost evening. She remembered letting in her neighbour… no. But it had looked so much like her. Then, what next? She remembered the scent of old, rotting logs and petrichor.

She needed to clear her head.

She left her apartment, and immediately the noise of the world resumed. The hum of the lights, the distant clanking of the elevator. It was easy to forget how loud even a quiet hallway was in modern life. It was like stepping from the inside of a book out into a busy, bustling existence she couldn’t have guessed was out there. Not just any book, but a thick old tome that closed with a SLAP. That had always been the weight of the silence in her home while her guests remained, and if anything, this time she felt it all the more intensely.

Eve wandered over to the market and bought a container of prepared soup. She trailed through the streets near her home like a tourist, admiring the small park and its fountain, the little stores closed, but with colourful window displays. She idled, drinking her soup and staring at the moonless, starry sky.

Eventually she had to go home. She unlocked her door and stepped back into the pressure of the quiet. The old woman, for she was old, older than she had initially appeared, sat on the couch. She was still, so still and unmoving, like a shadow frozen and flat. The details of her hair and clothes were hard to discern, and after a moment Eve turned and went into her own room. She slept peacefully, deep and without dreams.

The days rolled past, similar but strange. The rest of the world knew to leave her alone during these times. Her phone ceased to ring, and her friends declined to visit. The world knew when her house was occupied, and knew better than to disturb her.

Eve left her home less and less, cocooning in her room, in part because time slipped away so quickly. She woke with the sun, but blinked and it seemed to be setting. She didn’t remember eating, but she never felt hungry. The only thing she missed was the sky, and sometimes this yearning drove her out from her den, to wander the dark streets as she stared at the stars.

One such night she came home to find another creature in her house, this one a tiny writhing infant set carefully upon her coffee table. The hush pressed against her ears, the force of it made her head hurt. The table itself seemed different, darker, a slab of rough grey stone. Eve’s vision blurred, and the infant doubled, tripled, then melded back into one. It had ceased its movement and stared back at her, black eyes wide and unblinking.

Eve backed away, the ground soft and giving beneath her feet. She returned to her room, the silence pulsing, the scent of rain and rot pervasive even in her bed. As she lay there, the covers themselves seemed to tighten around her, pulling her down, down through her bed and into a cavern of darkness she’d always known.

She closed her eyes, willing time to pass, waiting for that bright sunny morning, to hear the birds once more. This time when she slept, her dreams were full of shadows and the creaking of ancient trees, their deep roots fed by sacrifice. She was in the centre of the world, and the eternal tree stretched its limbs far past the limits of the sky, reaching to the heavens and beyond.

She was the centre, the roots speared her body and fed, fed, fed with an unquenched hunger. She heard a cry, the wail of an infant, and then she fell.

Eve opened her eyes. A robin twittered from her windowsill, and Eve could hear the faint, forgotten sound of traffic. She pushed back her rumpled covers, moving slowly, feeling an ache deep in her bones. She shuffled down the hallway, and rested her hand on the cool doorknob of the guest room. But, for the first time, she was afraid of what she would find there.