ALWAYS THERE

                                      ALWAYS THERE
         

            He should have taken his car, that he decided as he- his steps echoing in the darkness-walked the remaining hundred metres to his house. A dog barked in the not so far distance, barked as if to warn its owner of impending danger. It was his dog; he was the only one who owned one in the entire street.
            It was dark, a bit too dark maybe. He hated the darkness, not just then that he trod on this too dark a night but always had for reasons unknown; even to him. As he walked on, his hands inside his black denims’ pockets, he kept glancing sideways, sideways so he could feel he was being watchful, what he expected to see in the thick darkness unknown to himself. Walking under a tree, he imagined something that had been lurking there up dropping upon him with not so good thoughts of his well being. His heart thumped harder. His imagination he hoped would be disappointed.
          Having forgotten his watch at his house, he had completely lost track of time and now with his imagination disappointed he did wonder; whether it was he who had stayed too long at the movies or had the entire neighborhood for some reason just decided to hit the sack early. He hoped it was the latter; he’d hate the thought of being too late in a night so dark on his lonesome.
          Something- a cat he hoped- dropped a lid off a bin meters away its clattering joining his dog’s barking to create a tune nobody especially one not very manly would like to hear on a night so dark. It didn’t calm his skin much, the distant echo of the lid’s dropping didn’t, it made it crawl; tighten actually, as he walked past whence the sound had come. A hand grabbing him from behind as he walked past the bins was what he imagined. His legs like his heart very much wanted to run. He let them.
          Having bounded over picket fences and hedges; tripping not once in his effort to get away from the darkness, he had gotten to his house.  Now with the door shut behind him, he leaned against it panting, his hands on his knees. He had made it safely. He was happy he had. He smiled. The lights in the house gave him much relief. He always left them on whenever he went out. Right now they made him feel brave; like he could face anything. To him this was a rare feeling.
            Locking the door he – still breathing heavily – walked into the kitchen. He’d sit on the high stool for a while; to calm down before he’d have a glass of water it was wise he do; he knew what would happen if he didn’t.
            The dog was still barking but outside he’d venture not. Through the window by the sink he peered, he didn’t feel very safe even then. Beneath the security light out back he saw it, staring up towards the bedroom window as it was, still barking. He had heard somebody say that dogs could see things humans couldn’t, like spirits he had cited claiming also that he could prove it; it had made him shedder. They always barked for a reason and never for none he had also said. It made the man at the window wonder what the reason was then. Wonder he would no more; it wouldn’t help, he let the curtain drop.
            Sitting at the kitchen table on the long legged stool a glass of water in hand, he thought, he was now calm. He thought about life, his life. He thought about the day his wife with their two kids left, the reason they left, where they went ….. He sighed. The reason they left was that he was weird; cowardly weird his wife had said. He had all these amulets and charms -mostly made of bones and beads- hanging all over the house and on his body, their purpose; to protect him from something he knew not what. It had followed him since childhood he had told his wife but she thought him as foolishly naïve. It had crushed him so that she had.
              He also had the habit of checking behind every closed door, beneath every piece of furniture and behind every curtain. This had made his kids cry a lot many a nights for to reduce the time spent, he had made them- as sleepy as they would be – help him. With ugly amulets dangling from their necks and no choice, they had. Before they slept, he’d make them utter some incantations and as if all that wasn’t enough, he wouldn’t let his wife switch off the light in their bedroom whereas he knew she couldn’t sleep with the light on. He had hit her once when she had.
              Alone now as ever as he had been for the past three months, he’d still repeat the search. It would take longer now he knew but when through, he always felt it worth the time spent. Alone in this big house he would search, everywhere he felt something could hide, in hand no weapon to use in case he did find anything. Wonder of what he’d do if ever he found anything threatening filled his heart with worry. It shuttered his soul so.

                                  **********************.
            Fully clothed as he had been in his white t-shirt and black denims, he dropped onto the last place he’d need to check beneath.
          Though having a good job, a nice house, lots of friends, he wished he wasn’t so cowardly; it had made him lose something dear to him; his family. His wife had before she left wondered out loud whether a wimp like he was could protect anyone. Over it he had pondered a bit and with a shrug and no shame at all replied in the negative.
          Staring up at the blinding light on the ceiling above the bed he laid on, he sighed. He missed her a lot he did surely, missed his hand ascending her warm thighs, missed her moist lips on his, missed her other lips on him and he past them in deep tender warmth. He really missed her but memories’ all it would be for him since it didn’t seem like she’d ever return. Not to him, never to him. He sighed. Maybe, just maybe if he had been brave enough to sleep in the dark, maybe she’d still be here.  But how could he when in it he’d suffocate like he surely would in water.
          Rolling over to the huge bed’s edge lifting the sheets flows as he did, he wondered like he usually did what he’d do if ever unarmed as he always was he did find something down there. Today, with the red eyes and the ugly face staring back at him in the half light beneath the bed he’d find out, he surely would.
          Slowly, as if the thing beneath his bed was the dumbest thing that ever set foot on the earth he crawled off, his heart seeming to have relocated to his head. There it pounded in rhythm characteristic to the drum beats the ancient savages right before a cannibalistic feast. It made him feel like the sacrifice.
            He thought not clearly, fear wouldn’t let him, instead of heading for the door; he headed for a corner adjacent to the window and there like a fool stood; as still as anything could. Like a cornered antelope he watched as the first clawed hand belonging to the being beneath his bed appeared holding a two foot long metal rod, its sight wasn’t pleasant; neither was the sting in his bladder.
            It was dressed in tatters, the thing that had just crawled from beneath his bed was. It had the features of a human being, a male human who had maybe- for reasons yet to be revealed- been left in the sun for too long to dry. It stank too, it did surely; of something rotten; something that had been robbed of life in the near past. With its straw hat, it looked like it had at a certain point in years passed been used as a scare crow. It had probably graduated since. It sauntered to the bed’s edge and sat facing him.
          “How are you Jonathan?” the thing greeted in a voice that spelled doom to the man at the corner. “My name is fear. I’m the one you’ve been searching for. The reason your wife left. I am your fear. I have always been there and tonight is the night it all ends. I as your fear will make sure of it.” It did add. Strange were the things fear made people do.
         Whether it’d use the rod it was tapping against its left hand as it walked towards him he knew not but one thing he was sure of; it lied not. Its minced words told a lot and as he thought of such a face staring back at him every time he checked behind a curtain, beneath a seat, inside a closet, he shuddered.
              The clawed right hand stretched towards him as the thing got closer, he couldn’t let touch him, and he wouldn’t. He ran, right beneath it towards the door. Reaching it, he decided it would take too long to unlock and so turned, ran over the bed and headed for the window.
         Leaping towards it, he couldn’t help noticing that his fear hadn’t moved from the corner. It was still standing there, watching him. As his hands made contact with the window which was too willing to let him past, he thought he saw its thin dry lips form something that looked like the effort full smile on the face of a dried corpse. He wondered why this effort it did make.

         The windows crashed into the outer wall. He’d soon find out.

         After the curtain from his eyes drifted, he saw it, his fear; squatted on the ground below holding to the ground the two foot metal rod as if he was just about to hammer it into the concrete. He felt stupid. That metal rod would under the watchful eye of the security light amid his dogs barking and under the ugly smile of his fear drive through him. Whichever part it would run through he so sure was that he wouldn’t survive, but what could he do? He couldn’t just fly away, could he?
         The only thing he felt positive about- as he neared the rod that would his life end-was that his wife would finally know he had lied not. She would -he thought- because he hadn’t seen fear; who was smiling at him as he writhed in dying pain place on his bed a note on which in his handwriting were jotted the reasons he had committed suicide; fear’s coming wasn’t one of them; neither would it be in his next victim’s note.
         He rose as the white t-shirt on the dying man at his feet under the bright security light turned red. Turning towards the dog barking outside its kennel, he smiled; these cowards were too easy to find; what with all the amulets and the charms. He already knew where the next was. He disappeared.
         The dog barked on; in its mind it still could see it; it could feel it too; feel it as it started sniffing- in the cool night air- its master’s life as it oozed onto the ground. It couldn’t help feeling it.     
                   
              BY: RICHARD STEVENSON