Anthology

Transfer

         Bill Jeffries stared at the boxes in his new home. Kitchen. Dining Room. Bedroom. All of them perfectly labeled with black permanent marker. they seemed overwhelming, the entire house a maze of material things and memories held in fragile boxes.
         Bill plopped down on the sofa that had rolled into the street an hour earlier, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, stuffed one into his mouth and lit it. He took a long drag and blew it out as his wife, Lisa walked into the room from the kitchen.
         "I thought we agreed you wouldn't smoke in the house," she said, lifting the box that said "Kitchen", mentioned earlier.
         "You're right," Bill said," standing up and walking out onto the porch. He took another drag and ashed the cigarette over the white railing into the flowerbed. He looked out at the new neighbor hood and sighed. He was exhausted, this was the Jeffries fourth move in just over two years and he didn't want to do it anymore.
         It wasn't that he had to change jobs, or his wife, or any reason other than Bill didn't like any of the neighborhoods he had lived in. Whether it was the neighbors being assholes, or the kids being too noisy while he was trying to relax. One of the neighborhoods even didn't suit him because he didn't like that the trash pickup was on Tuesday morning and Bill liked to get drunk on Monday nights during the game and pass out on the couch.
         Bill knew Lisa was getting tired of the moving too. He sensed her frustration with things she saw as minor annoyances, making his entire life miserable. He didn't want her to leave him. He had to make this move work. He took the last drag from his smoke and flicked it into the yard.
         The screen door clacked behind him as Bill returned to the house and picked up a box marked "Bathroom", and carried it with him up the stairs. He turned into the second doorway on the right and set the box on the counter. Bill opened the flaps and pulled out the miscellaneous toiletries, placing them, one by one, onto the counter or in the cupboards.
         Lisa came into the bathroom behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "I'm sorry I snapped earlier about the cigarette. I've just been under a lot of stress, what with the move and all."
         "I know. I'm sorry. I'll try to make this one the last. I don't want to move again."
         "I've heard that before."
         Lisa turned away and Bill snatched her up in his arms. He kissed her neck and held her tight, her hair smelled sweet and fruity. "I'm being serious. I know how stressful the moves are on you and I don't want to do it anymore. We'll make it work, right here."
         Lisa turned and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Bill leaned in to kiss her and Lisa turned her head, his lips pressing to her cheek. Lisa moved away from him and walked through the room. Bill turned back to the counter and started putting items in their place again.

         Bill woke up to the sound of a hollow knocking. He looked to his left at the clock. 1:15 a.m. it read, glowing in the darkness of the room. Bill sat up and looked out the window. There was no one around. The sound wasn't annoying or too loud or in any way offensive to the senses. It was very low and very quick, not resonating for more than a second after each sounding, which occurred every four seconds.
         Bill quietly crept down the stairs, leaving Lisa to sleep. He grabbed his pack of cigarettes from the end table and walked to the front door. The hollow knocking could still be heard, and Bill peeked through the peep hole. When he still didn't see anything, he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. He lit the cigarette and leaned over the railing, peering out into the foggy night.
         When his cigarette was half finished, Bill looked out onto the road and saw a little, old man walking down the center of the street. He was slapping a rod against a hollow tube, making the sound that had stirred Bill from his slumber. Bill stepped from the porch and walked to the street. The old man had a very slow gait and Bill easily caught up to him.
         "Excuse me," said Bill, tossing his cigarette into the gutter. "What are you doing?"
         The old man didn't stop. He continued on his path, walking down the center of Jacobs Street towards Adolphia Crossing. "Come to my house tomorrow. I'll explain it all then. It's the one by itself up on the hill."
         Bill stopped and watched as the old man walked to the the center of the intersection of Jacobs Street and Adolphia Crossing, then turned right and continued on. In a few moments the old man was out of sight and the sound had become but a muffled knock in the night. Bill returned to his home and went back to bed. Lisa was still breathing slowly in the bed as he crawled in and rolled over.

         The next morning, Bill walked up the hill on Westwood Road and saw the house the old man had spoke of. It was a gigantic house, larger than any in the neighborhood, and sat at least a mile from it's nearest neighbor. A stone wall ran around what Bill guessed was the perimeter of the lawn, and when Bill reached the front of the house, he saw that the iron gate was open.
         Bill entered the gate and followed the path of broken stones to the front door. The boards of the porch creaked as Bill walked across them, and when he reached the large, wooden double doors, he grabbed the shiny silver knocker and slapped it against the door.
         Just like the horror movie this was turning out to be, Bill watched as the door opened a crack. He gave it an odd look and heard the old man shout from inside, "Come in." Bill pushed his head inside, then when he was sure there was no booby trap set at the door, he stepped fully inside, guiding the door closed behind him.
         Bill wandered into the large sitting room around the corner from the front door and saw the old man seated on a low couch. There was a short coffee table in front of the couch and another sofa opposite the first on the other side of the table. There on the table sat the rod and pipe the old man had been using this morning to make that sound.
         The old man extended his hand towards the couch, offering Bill a seat. Bill sat and looked from the old man, to the object of the table and back again. The old man cleared his throat and began.
         "What you heard this morning must be done. This town, specifically this area of town has a long history. The longer a history goes back, the more likely to find things that are not so acceptable in normal human life."
         Bill looked at the old man. He didn't really understand what he was alluding to, and didn't really care. He had already put the noise into the back of his mind. It didn't annoy him as much as noisy kids or neighbors who mowed their lawns once a week. It was just something he would have to live with.
         "A few hundred years ago, a coven of witches lived in this area. They kept to themselves and were entirely self-sufficient. Whose witches did things back in these woods that no one then and few now know. The witches community was largely female, the few males residing with them were used solely as breeding studs and as slave labor. When a man grew too old to work, or too infertile to produce offspring, they witches simply killed him. All male children born into the coven were raised according to what their father's role was. The female children became the next generation of witches.
         "Aside from the inhuman practices, the witches were also devoted to a demon named Naberius. The men killed were offered as sacrifices to Naberius, and they kept him sated, preventing him from coming into our world. This all lasted for two hundred years before about three hundred years ago, the coven of witches was destroyed.
         "On of the men who was saved from the coven told the priest of the town of the demon, of the sacrifices, of what the witches had done. He explained the only way to keep the demon at bay, other than the blood sacrifice was to play a beat upon this instrument." The old man motioned down at the table.
         Bill had zoned out. He had heard something about witches and a demon and a bunch of other medieval nonsense that didn't even make sense based on their geographic location in the American Midwest. He looked down at the table and saw the "instrument" as the old man had called it, and smirked.
         "So you have to play this thing all the time to keep a demon from showing up?"
         "It must be played on the fourth day of every month at one o'clock in the morning for a half an hour. I generally walk because it makes the time seem to go by faster than it would if I was just standing around."
         "And you've been doing this for how long?"
         "I've done it every month since I was twenty-seven years old. Fifty-four years of playing the instrument when it is necessary. Necessary to maintain our safety in this community."
         "Have you ever seen the demon?"
         The old man looked down. He sighed and stood. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Jeffries," said the old man, extending his arm to lead Bill out. "I'm sure I'll see you around town. Welcome to the neighborhood."
         Bill stood with his back to the front door for a moment before walking back down the hill toward his home.

         A week later, the house was set up exactly to their specifications. Within the month, it looked lived in. Bill saw how happy Lisa was, making friends with the other women in the neighborhood. She went jogging with them in the morning, shopping with them most afternoons and there always seemed to be a barbecue or party or something to do at night with someone else from the neighborhood. The couple seemed to be settling in nicely and Bill felt he had found a good neighborhood to stay in.
         On the second day of the following month, Bill walked up the hill and back to the house the old man lived in. When he reached the gate he found it closed, unlike the last time he had visited, and when he tried to push it open, he found it frozen solid with rust. The gate seemed like it hadn't been moved in more than a decade. Bill put his hand on the stone wall and jumped over it with ease, making his way back to the path and up to the front door. He knocked on the big wooden door with the silver knocker. It didn't open.
         A few moments later, just when Bill was about to knock again, the door opened, and a tiny old lady peeked out the crack. She eyed Bill for a moment before opening the door just a little wider.
         "Hi, ma'am. My name's Bill Jeffries. I spoke with your husband about a month ago. I was just wondering if he was home."
         The old woman looked at Bill strangely. She turned back and looked into the house for a moment, then slowly back to Bill. "I'm sorry, but my husband died last week. I don't know how you knew him, my husband was a terrible recluse. He never went anywhere. I'm amazed that he met you, what with him being in such bad health and all."
         Bill was confused. The old man didn't seem to be in that bad of health when he had met him a month ago. He walked on his own without aid of a cane or walker, there were no machines nearby feeding him oxygen or monitoring his vital signs. The old man seemed fine other than being old.
         "I'm sorry for your loss, ma'am," said Bill. "I'll leave you to your day then." Bill turned and walked back down the path and hopped the stone wall as he heard the door close behind him. As he walked down the hill towards home, Bill thought about what the old woman had said. He didn't believe the old man cold have been in that bad of health based on what he saw when the two spoke not a month before. He also didn't believe the old man was a recluse. He seemed just fine speaking with Bill in his home the other day. He wasn't startled or mean when Bill met him on the street the night before that.
         As Bill entered his home, Lisa grabbed him and pulled him in close. "I have great news," she said, kissing him. "We're pregnant!"
         Bill smiled and kissed her. He smiled the rest of the day and knew they had finally found a home.

         At two minutes after one, on the morning of the fourth day of the month, the ground began to rumble. Bill sat up in bed and looked around. Lisa had been returning from the bathroom. Pictures fell from the walls, miscellaneous objects dropped from the shelves and dressers in the room.
         Bill shot from the bed and grabbed a coat as he ran through the house towards the front door. He turned the lock and threw the coat around his shoulders, then ran onto the porch and down the stairs to the front walk. He had just reached the street when an explosion rocked the intersection of Jacobs Street and Adolphia Crossing. A car came crashing to the blacktop near Bill and burst into flames.
         Bill watched as a giant, three-headed dog exited the hole, knocking don trees and destroying everything in it's path. It was twenty feet high and at least fifty feet long. It's massive paws smashed the asphalt as it moved around, taking in it's surroundings.
         He turned and ran. Bill ran as fast as he could up the hill on Westwood Road, looking back over his shoulder a few times to see if he was being chased. Every time, he saw more and more chaos, as the monster smashed everything in it's path. Moving at a decent enough speed, Bill jumped the stone wall without even putting his hand on it and ran up the walk to the porch. He grabbed the knocker and the door opened. Around the corner in the sitting room, Bill saw the instrument on a tiny wooden stand, above the fireplace.
         The sound of the instrument resonated so perfectly that it almost instantly quieted all the noise from the unfolding apocalypse. Bill walked all the way down the hill playing the instrument just as he had heard the old man do it a month before. The giant dog growled and slowly backed into the hole as Bill moved closer with the instrument. By the time he reached the intersection, the hole was completely closed and the monster was gone.
         Bill walked around playing the instrument until half past one, and then returned home. He placed the rod and pipe on the coffee table and returned to bed. Lisa was already asleep, the lullaby the instrument played, soothing the entire neighborhood back to its slumber.
         Bill smiled and closed him eyes.

         In the morning, the entire neighborhood was just as it was the day before. All the trees and cars were right where they should be, in perfect condition and there was no evidence to prove anything abnormal happened there earlier that morning.

One Year Later

         Bill held his daughter, Lynn Rachel in his arms. He rocked her back and forth as he stood in her nursery. The baby slowly drifted off to sleep and Bill laid her in the crib, tucking a blanket around her arms and placing a stuffed bear net to her head. He looked at an electronic alarm clock in the corner of the nursery and saw the time. It was two minutes until one in the morning.
         Bill walked down the stairs and grabbed the instrument from it's spot above the television. Lisa was on the couch finishing a movie, and Bill kissed her on the forehead as he passed by. He grabbed his coat from the rack and opened the front door to his home, stepping onto his porch. He looked down at his watch and saw it was time, then struck the pipe with the rod. He smiled as he walked down the street, the sound of the instrument drowning out everything else.