He placed the leftover helping of salmon in the refrigerator and stretched. His back ached from unpacking box after box throughout the house, and the wine made his eyelids feel heavy beyond their weight.
He snapped off the light, making a silent promise to do the dirty dishes on the counter in the morning. His feet shuffled across the wood floor with harsh rasping sounds. For a moment Lance had an overwhelming sense of dread settle over him, and he struggled to put his finger on the source. His left foot slid over the floor and the sound registered in his ears. Scraping footsteps. He picked his feet up so his socks didn’t whisper against the floor as he neared the stairway and the door at its base.
Lance stopped and stared at the door set into the wall. His eyes had flickered to it many times during the day as he moved about the house, the memory of looking through the keyhole fresh in his mind. He took a step toward it, his hand reaching out to the iron doorknob—he could already feel the coolness of it in his hand—but stopped. He let his arm fall to his side.
“Not on the first night. That’s just rude,” he said, the wine mustering levity he didn’t know he had. He turned and jogged up the stairs to the second level and got ready for bed in the small bathroom off the walkway.
He had settled into the smaller of the two guest rooms on the second floor. For some reason the master had felt too large and empty with its huge bay windows overlooking the lake. For lack of a better description, it seemed lonely. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he regarded where he was in comparison with the city he’d left.
A simple bed frame with a new mattress and fresh sheets welcomed him. His eyes wandered the dark room, trying to pick out familiar shapes—his two suitcases near the doorway, a small dresser that had yet to be filled, and the table he’d placed near the head of the bed. He lay down and listened intently for any sounds he might hear, as sleep began to pull at his mind, making his thoughts elongate and re-form like putty in the sun. Only the occasional snap of settling wood below him and the solitary drip of water in the kitchen sink met his ears.
The last thing he heard as his eyes finally shut with exhaustion was a loon—he was sure it was the same one he had heard earlier—wailing its call across the bay one last time as the moon floated, heavy and sodden with its silvery light, over the lake.
Lance awoke as if he had been shaken. His eyes blinked open and he stared at the ceiling of the bedroom. For an instant he struggled to remember where he was, his mind racing back to where he had fallen asleep, and then the realization that something had actually woken him became a certainty. His eyes shifted to the doorway.
A figure stood there, a deeper shade of darkness.
Lance sucked a breath in and blinked as he sat up in the bed. The doorway was empty, the rectangle showing him nothing more than the bare landing and the banister beyond. He listened, trying to hear over the sudden bass pounding of his heart on his eardrums. His muscles felt alive with the adrenaline that ran through them. He was about to climb out of bed when he heard what he had been listening for: the soft tread of someone stepping off the stairway and into the living room beneath him. Lance leapt off the mattress and crept to the banister overlooking the house below, crouching as he peered through the wooden railings.