“The Visitor”

Abigail Morris is a thirty-three-year-old single mother. She is just arriving home after a grocery run that lasted much longer than she intended due to an unfortunate wreck on the highway leading back home, causing a lineup that appeared to have no beginning or end. Upon reaching her small one-bedroom apartment, Abigail will soon find herself in a situation in which time is running out – but for whom is the question?

She enters the door to her small living quarters at approximately eight o’clock at night, her infant daughter, Natalie, held close to her hip. Natalie had just gotten over her crying fit after being confined in their small car on an unmoving highway for so long, but now has a flustered appearance that says she might just start up again at any moment now.

Abigail sighed heavily as she let her purse slide off her shoulder and onto the floor as she power-walked to the kitchen, her forearm straining as the several bags loaded with grocery items and household goods pulled against her. She was about to allow these bags to collapse to the kitchen floor like she allowed her purse to at the door, but caught them just before they hit the floor as she remembered the carton of eggs, and had no idea which bag they could be in. So instead, she bent her tired knees and gently set the groceries on the floor, then moved to the small child playpen she kept at a nearly equal distance between the kitchen and the sliding glass door which led to the minute balcony of their apartment room, and put little Natalie inside.

Natalie wasn’t quite ready to walk yet, so she crawled interestedly around her small enclosure as she cooed happily at the various toys littered about the space. Abigail stopped what she was doing to watch her, thinking to herself how precious her daughter was and silently wishing to herself that she would never grow up – dirty diapers and all, she would have her daughter this sweet and innocent being for as long as she could dare to hope. As she stood before her daughter in her playpen, her eyes wandered to the sliding glass door, giving her a view of the street outside.

As she looked outside, she saw a thick fog had abruptly materialized on the pavement, obscuring the view of where the sidewalk ended and the asphalt driveway began; even the yellow streetlights gave little clearance to whatever distinct view of any solid descriptors of the outside world. She absently noted that no other lights in any window in the other neighboring apartment complexes were on, even though the night was still young. When she made this brief observation, she saw an odd faint red glow coming from within that thick mist on the street. She couldn’t make out what it could be from, or even any kind of form around it – it was like a small red orb floating in the fog under the slight illumination given by the streetlights.

She turned back around and began to put away the groceries, humming to herself as she did so, and allowed herself to believe that Natalie’s soft coos worked in tune with her hums. When she closed a cabinet after putting away a can of green beans, she noticed something eerily strange; a sound coming up the fire escape rail on the side of the building.

She heard footsteps coming up the reverberating, metallic stairway. They were heavy and fast as if someone were trying their best to sprint upward, and it was getting very, very close.

Abigail shot her head to the side and let out a sharp scream, as she saw two crimson eyes peering at her over the handrail of their balcony. These eyes were surrounded by a shadow that resembled the shape of a human head, but all other recognition ended there. She could see no hair or skin color, no type of clothing, nothing to give a single descriptor to a policeman other than simply a shadow with two red eyes. Natalie noticed it too - albeit not as worriedly as her mother - and she looked at the macabre figure curiously as she absently shook her small stuffed bumblebee.

“Who are you?” Abigail demanded sternly. When the shadow refused to answer her, Abigail felt her blood thump fiercely through her veins as anxiety began to constrict her neck like an aggravated cobra. “You get the hell out of here!” She yelled at the strange figure, “I’m calling the police!” She took her eyes off of the thing and glanced at her purse over by the front door. She made to retrieve it and grab her phone, but as soon as she looked away from those red eyes she heard rapid movement, like clanging metal as it was pushed around. She shot her eyes back at the thing and saw it was now fully on their balcony in a twisted crouch, its arms spread out in a frozen pose showing how they swung while landing on the balcony. She could see now that it was closer that it wasn’t breathing; it was as perfectly still as one of the flowerpots that sat on the balcony handrail. Unmoving, those deep scarlet eyes remained unblinkingly fixed on her, so long as she looked back. Abigail’s throat swelled up and she felt like she forgot how to breathe. “What… What do you want?” She choked out. The shadow did not move, did not speak a single word. It only stared at her.

Abigail thought she could side-shuffle away towards her purse, hoping she could reach her phone and call the police. Slowly her feet dragged to the side, and the thing’s eyes scrutinously followed her as she went. She felt she was close, but it was still too far as she had broken the line of sight with the creature.

Quickly she bounded back into the thing’s view and saw that it had now stood up, reaching so high that the tip of its head was almost in line with the top of the sliding glass door. Its too-long arm was frozen in place as it was reaching towards the door handle, its horrid eyes now fixedly looking down at Natalie.

This froze Abigail’s blood, and her whole body stiffened as the air was caught in her lungs – it was after her daughter, her Natalie. But it seemed that as long as she was looking at it, it could not move. So, she did the only thing she felt she could do at that time; keeping her gaze fixed on this malevolent shade. She pulled up a kitchen chair and sat, staring at it until… Well, she didn’t know until what. But what other choice did she have?

There Abigail sat, locked in a one-way staring contest with an unameable, unknowable creature whose emotionless red eyes were locked on her daughter. Natalie would look up at her mom and try to get her attention with a conversational coo and slam her bumble bee on the floor. Abigail thought then that the shadow was probably grateful for Natalie’s attempts to steal her attention; to give the thing a chance for even a second to move ever closer.

Abigail wished so badly that there was a clock somewhere in her peripherals but knew there obviously was none. Time continued to pass by until a point in which Natalie began to cry fiercely for her mother. In turn, tears began to stream down Abigail’s cheeks. She wanted so badly to leave the unpleasant kitchen chair only to comfort her daughter but was too determined to not move an inch as she watched the ephemeral statue-like thing just beyond the patio door.

Another hour or so had passed, and Natalie fell asleep, tiring herself out from her own cries. The thing outside the door, though it had not moved at all, seemed to have an even hungrier look in its eyes as it watched the sleeping infant, the crimson glow in its eyes flaring brighter with greedy desire.

Abigail’s eyes have become so, so heavy now. How much time had passed? It must be at least after midnight now, and she had had such a busy day, and she was so tired. She started to slap herself in the face several times; she pinched the skin on her arm; she stood up from the chair and performed calf raises, counting in units of 10. More than anything, though, she focused all of her willpower on trying hard not even to blink.

Despite it all, eventually, her eyelids did close. Her head nodded down…

The umbral demon flung the door open and lunged at Natalie sleeping in her playpen. Its disfigured, gnarled claw of a hand wrapped around her tiny body and drew her close to its chest. Abigail sat frozen in terror, internally screaming at her body to move as her cry of panic froze somewhere in her chest. The monster opened a wide - too wide - grin filled with two abundantly full rows of razor-sharp teeth. Natalie let loose a shrill heartbreaking cry. Snot bubbled in her nose as her face went from pink, to red, to purple, glistening in the kitchen’s fluorescent lights through the tears smearing her face. The thing tucked Natalie under its arm and bellowed a hateful laugh as it turned around and lept out of the back door, leaving the same way and speed in which it came. Finally, Abigail found the internal strength to leap from her chair, but it was too little too late. Screeching, she reached out -

And her eyes opened up as she jumped to her feet. Natalie rustled slightly in her sleep, it was only a dream. The red-eyed shade was no longer level with the door frame. Now, the sliding glass door had been slid open, and the shadow had crept halfway through the doorway with an unnatural crescent moon curve to its back as if it were a four-limbed snake rising from its nest. Its eyes remained a blood red, though now there was a wide – inhumanely wide – grin across the black space where the rest of its face should be, revealing rows of white, spaced-out teeth. The similarity between that smile and the one from her dream made her paranoid as if when she dozed off for a few mere seconds she had glimpsed the future. She shook the thought out of her head as she observed that one of its hands remained on the glass door’s handle while another was stretched out towards Natalie. Its arm was long and lanky, almost twice the length of Abigail’s own. Though the distance between the balcony door and Natalie’s pen was several feet long, the distance was halved by that spindly arm alone.

Abigail let out a horrified gasp and clamped a hand to her mouth. She felt a strange and curious urge to reach out and touch it, but was too afraid of the unknown consequences of doing so; would it kill her? Would it be, in some way, given permission to move on its own volition whether or not it was being watched, therefore snatching Natalie away and running back down the fire escape? She wouldn’t risk it. Instead, she stood up from her chair and resumed her calf raises to help her stay awake and locked on the thing. How much longer until this nightmare can finally end?

Off in the distance in the corner of her eye, Abigail could see dawn slowly rising. The weak orange glow calmly rose and filled the streets, and the strange fog began to fade. For the first time since Abigail’s eyes had been set on the creature, it moved – its evil eyes moved up and looked at Abigail while the rest of it remained still as a brick. With its eyes now burning maliciously up at her, it spoke through its disturbing grin in a cold and deep, reverberating voice. Then, it simply vanished. There was no fading away, no puff of smoke, nothing Abigail would have expected of it – one moment it was here, and another, it simply wasn’t. Abigail picked up her daughter in a frantic sweet and began to cry as she kissed Natalie over and over, from her face and down her arms, smearing her tears across her sleepy child. The creature’s last words before leaving them were stuck ringing in her brain; words that would haunt her nights for years and years to come as she would lay awake in waiting, forever paranoid of when this unwelcome visitor would return.

“I’ll come back for her. Again.”