Bloodeye by Craig Saunders

much.
    It was early still, and Sunday morning. Not many people in the street would be up and about.
    It wasn’t like he was breaking in, either. He still had a key…if they hadn’t changed the locks, it would just be… going back for something . Like going out in the morning, forgetting your wallet and going back to get it. Nothing more.
    He watched the house long enough to smoke a cigarette in the car, though. The window down, he listened to the sounds of his old street, too. Didn’t hear any music. A dog barked for a short time, down the road a little way, until someone whistled and it went quiet again. There was no through traffic on the street. No walkers.
    He dropped his cigarette on the road and wound up his window. Took a deep breath and took the short walk from the curb up to the house.
    The front garden needed attention, but otherwise it looked pretty much the same as it had when he’d locked up and left. Maybe the porch step needed another coat of red paint, maybe the windows needed cleaning…but not much was out of place.
    He had to push the door to shift the pile of bills, demands and kebab shop flyers. With his toe, he pushed them to one side before closing the door behind him.
    No one saw me come in , he thought. Sure of it.
    Take your time, honey.
    “I will,” he said.
    The stair lift was still in place. But the house was different. It felt empty and abandoned. A whole winter without heat, without people to shift the dust around. It was cold inside, even though it was springtime and Keane wore only a T-shirt and pullover. A faint sheen of dust on the furniture. No doubt the same in the carpets, too, though he couldn’t see that.
    He flicked a light switch up and down a couple times. Nothing. Of course. The power company had shut off the electric even before he’d left his house.
    He’d figured there would be no electric, no heat, no water. He hadn’t figured on the house actually being uncomfortably cold, though. Felt a little like he was rooting around in a corpse.
    At that thought, a remembered feeling of lying in his wife’s cold and congealing blood surfaced and threatened his resolve. He fought the memory away, same as always, with her voice in his head.
    You there, Teresa?
    I like it when you call my name , she said, and like that the memories were gone and it was just he and Teresa in the house, like back then.
    Where’d I put it, baby? Do you know? he spoke, this time, in his head. He didn’t try to think through it, or think about it at all. She was in his head, and that was all there was. His companion, even now. Guiding him, holding his hand. Caring for him, like he’d cared for her.
    I never saw it, she reminded him.
    No help there, he thought, but not at Teresa, and not in a mean way. He’d never be mean to her, not even in his head. She’d feel it and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her.
    The couch in the front room was covered in a thin layer of white-gray dust. It wasn’t where he wanted to be, so he let himself wander through the house, not thinking much of anything, but touching things sometimes, or just standing for minutes at a time looking around at all the things he’d left behind when he’d left.
    Fled?
    Maybe. He shrugged, alone in the bedroom, unaware that he’d made any kind of gesture.
    Probably. Running from his shadow. But what else was he going to do?
    The bastard wasn’t around anymore. He knew that. Knew the shadow was gone, or, more accurately, the thing that lived in his shadow. Nothing, now, for a long time. It’d be a year in the summer. Not yet, but Keane thought that might be hard on him and Teresa’s memory within his mind.
    But the picture wasn’t around. Funny that he thought he needed to see it. He knew well enough what was in the picture, and the shadow’s message on the back was burned into his head.
    Yet that feeling that he was back in this place for some reason persisted, and if anything grew stronger. It went from a tickle to a