Depths by C.S. Burkhart Page A

and I had to admire the place — hardwood floors, flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, an
overstuffed couch that looked like it ’ d be
amazing to sit on. Tasteful art in simple but elegant frames
decorated the walls and a lovely china cabinet in the living room
that complemented the floor.
    She had rented the place out when she went to school
but asides from some of the upgraded furniture and knick knacks, it
was exactly the same as I remembered.
    “ Hello? ”
    Just be yourself!
    No response. I started towards the staircase and
climbed up the hardwood steps. My shoes made a clunking sound that
I rather enjoyed, echoing off the walls pleasantly.
    When I got to the landing just before the second set
of stairs is when I noticed that her lamp was knocked over. It was
a simple brass lamp that had belonged to her grandmother. It
normally sat on the little table to the right of the sofa which was
immediately to the left when you hit the second floor, but now it
was knocked over at the top of the staircase along with the table
it sat on. The shade was knocked off and the bulb was broken,
littering the top few steps with glass.
    I stood there on the landing and I felt my stomach
knotting up. Something had happened.

Chapter
11
    Movement.
    Twitching.
    Shadows darting in and out of
sight. Circling and taunting me. I was becoming increasingly jumpy
from the movement. Everything seemed like it was moving in this
fucking house. My house. It was like ants crawling on my skin. When I wasn't
seeing things, I felt like I was. I knew they were there even if I didn't
know where and I
was growing weary of their games. I just wanted to wake up from
this and snap back to reality. It seemed like months had passed and
yet there was no snap. No jolting awake, no reprieve.
    The clock read 1:16 P.M. And yet
there was no sun in the sky outside. I peeked through the blinds in
my living room and there wasn ’ t a single
trace of light. It wasn't even dark, there was just nothing there.
Nothing at all. The sky, the neighborhood, even the walls on the
outside of my house were just gone. Nothing existed outside of the
walls in which I was confined.
    A rattling sound caught my
attention, I could feel my ears straining towards the direction of
the noise from behind my left shoulder. There it was! I grinned in
delight, finally catching the unseen thing that was constantly
running about my house. Always moving just barely within my
peripherals, making its damn rattling sound — like chain link fence being hit with a
shovel — and never allowing me any rest. I
finally had you, you son of a bitch!
    My pulse quickened and I turned around on my heels,
dashing off after it down the halls. The hallways had multiplied
since I took up residency here, this had to have been the third one
I had discovered inside my house in such a short period of time.
And to think I had never noticed them before... How peculiar.
    But no matter. I would finally be
able to catch it .
The dimly lit hallway wound and snaked its way throughout my house
and I could never keep the thing in my sight for too long. It ran
like a human would — for the most part at
least — although it used its hands to run
every now and then.
    The damn light … I had been trying to find the source of the light
in this hallway for hours but I was never able to get to it. It
pulsated, waxing and waning in short intervals and I longed to see
its source. I imagined feeling the warmth upon my skin. God how I
missed warmth... The damn thermometer was completely unresponsive.
Just give it a little tap, one more tap.
    Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap!!!!!!!!
    Fucking thing just wouldn't work! Tap tap tap!
Hello?! Ripping it off the wall didn't help either. Not when a few
minutes later a new one had replaced it. 75 degrees it said. It
always said 75 degrees. If it was 75 fucking degrees I wouldn't be
seeing my own breath!
    So of course I ripped that one
from the wall as