Silent Song

Bonus: You can also hear this story read aloud by beloved horror narrator Otis Jiry on Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.

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The coffee is cold by the time Trevor remembers it. He’s been staring out that damn kitchen window for so long, he’s not even sure when the morning news went to commercial. The eggs on his plate are hard, the yolks congealed into something resembling yellow jelly. Who knows how long he could have sat there, legs numb, shoulders tense, if not for Michelle coming down the stairs.

“I thought you’d be leaving already,” she says, kissing him on the cheek. Sarah, their baby girl in Michelle’s arms, reaches up to feel his face.

“I’m running a little slow today,” Trevor admits, using the chance to pull his eyes away from the window. Like a band-aid, left to right, fast enough to tear skin.

“Must be the cold weather.”

He divides and swallows the rest of his eggs and they go down like cold fish, sludging their way down his throat. Then he rinses the dish and fork and places them in the dishwasher. Eyes down. Away from the window.

He knows he’s being ridiculous, knows this on the surface where it doesn’t help, not deep down like his grandmother’s basement, where he used to turn the light off and run up those steps feeling the vast darkness pinching at his sneakers. He knew if he just kept them moving up those brown, creaking steps, if he ran faster than the shadows could reach, he would make it to the top and burst through the door into her blue-green kitchen.

Trevor slips on his coat, his laptop and lunch bag gathered, preparing himself for a frigid morning. By now Michelle sits on the couch, feeding Sarah in front of the television as the newscasters talk about another missing person. By their count, that makes six this month.

“You shouldn’t be watching this,” he says to Michelle.

“It’s not like that would make it unhappen.”

“No. I know.” He leans over, gives her a kiss, then another to the top of Sarah’s soft, fuzzy head. She smiles and reaches for him again. “I mean more for her. I’m sure she can taste the bad vibes.”

“She has to eventually.”

Trevor zips up his coat and grabs his bags, navigating the door with two full hands. When he opens it, a strong wind pushes through, an aggressive salesman selling watery eyes and goosebump skin. He blocks the wind the best he can, sheltering Michelle and Sarah from its touch as he waddles out the door and shuts it behind him.

The air today is bitter, metallic. Trevor’s sinuses sting as he ducks his head and makes his way down the steps and to his truck. He tells himself that the wind is the reason for keeping his eyes on the ground. That he’s just watching where he’s going, looking for the patches of ice that hide on the blacktop. Even when he loads his bags into the back and hops up behind the wheel, his gaze never wanders up. Never broaches the street or the lawn across the way.

As Trevor backs out of the driveway, he glances at the living room window. Back when she was alive, his mother used to wave to him from the window every time he left for work. It wasn’t this house where they lived, or even this town, and yet the habit of checking for her hasn’t left him. He almost wishes Michelle would take up the job, wave to him with Sarah in her arms, maybe wiggle the baby’s arm until she learned to do it herself, but he’s careful not to turn Michelle into his mother. It wasn’t all pleasant waves from the window.

The blare of a car honk jolts him out of the memory. He jams on the brake pedal, hands losing their grip on the steering wheel. Heart hammering, he looks up at the rearview mirror and finds it filled with the front grill of a delivery truck. Trevor waves for the driver to go around so he can catch his breath and shake the adrenaline out of his fingers.

It’s in this second, as the delivery truck passes on his left, that Trevor makes the mistake that will stay with him all day. He turns his head just the fewest degrees, then raises his eyes to follow.