It’s instinctive, the way the blood coagulates inside me. It becomes thick and gooey so that I can’t move.
Someone was here.
My gut feeling is to hide. There’s a closet nearby, a catchall for coats and shoes. My eyes go to it. I could hide. I could bury myself in a dark nothingness and cower on the floor in fear. Because whoever opened the blinds might still be here. Inside the old home.
I listen for strange noises. For calculated footfalls coming for me. For the sound of restrained breaths, slow, repressed and controlled unlike mine. I listen for the groan of floorboards, but the only sound I hear is that of my own heartbeat.
I don’t hide.
I’ve never been a particularly courageous person. Mom always said to face my fears, to take matters into my own hands, to fight for what was mine. And so I make my way slowly through the home, searching for signs of life.
Much of the carriage house is easy to see from where I stand. But then there are those places I can’t see. An upstairs closet, the bathroom, under the eaves of the pitched roof where shadows make it hard to see. All of that is up another set of stairs, on the third floor of the home.
I ascend those steps on tiptoes, the arches of my feet beginning to burn. Convinced that if I walk on tiptoes, the intruder won’t hear me, that he or she won’t know that I am here.
Upstairs, I see a figure hunkered down beneath the sloped ceiling and my breath leaves me. It’s hidden to the side of the mattress, trying to hold still and yet moving in a gentle rhythm.
What I see is a man on bent knee, crouched down, waiting to lunge at me as I reach the top of the staircase.
I gasp aloud, attempting to brace for impact. But instead I lose balance, slipping backward on the top step and sliding downward the eight-or nine-inch rise to the step below. I catch myself there, gripping tightly to the stairwell banister before I plunge down an entire flight of stairs, head over heels over head. Breaking my neck.
My heart pounds hard.
I cling to the banister and realize that no one has lunged at me.
And this time, when I look again, there’s no one there.
It’s just the shadow of a tree streaming in through an open window. The leaves are hair, the branches arms and legs. The gentle rhythm, the movement of wind. No one is there.
I turn to make my way to the bathroom. It’s a small room, but as I come to it, I take note: the door isn’t pressed flush against the wall as it should be. Behind the open door, there is enough space for a body to hide.
I have to muster every ounce of courage I have to go on. It isn’t easy. My feet don’t want to move, but they do. It’s slow, deliberate.
When I reach the bathroom door, I don’t step inside. I don’t look behind the door.
Rather my movements are sudden and abrupt, an impulse. I kick the door as hard as I can, where it ricochets off the wall, the rubber stopper running headfirst into the baseboard, not bumping into a person first. Because there’s nobody there to slow it down. There’s nobody there at all.
As I make my way inside the bathroom, I find the shower curtain pulled tight, stretched from wall to wall. It billows slightly. Heat spews from a nearby vent, though that’s not the reason for the movement. Instead what I envision is a figure standing on the other side of the curtain, the breath from his or her lungs making the curtain move.
Someone is there, hiding behind the shower curtain.
I tread delicately. On tiptoes. Two steps, and then three.
I reach out a hand, aware that the blood throughout my entire body has stopped flowing. That I’m holding my breath. That my heart has ceased beating.
I feel the cotton of the shower curtain in my shaking hand, the plastic of its liner. I grab a fistful of it and pull hard, finding myself face-to-face with the white tiles of the shower wall.
There’s no one there. It’s only me.
The carriage home is empty. Whoever was here has gone for now.
I do only one thing then, and that’s check the fire safe box where I keep my money, to be sure someone hasn’t swiped every last penny from me. Because why else would someone break into the carriage home except to steal from me? I keep the box in the closet these days, hidden in the corner beneath the hem of a long winter coat where, God willing, no one will ever find it. I open the closet door, drop to my knees and gather the box in my hands. The box is locked. When I slip the key inside, I find every dollar accounted for. Whoever was here didn’t steal money from me.
I try not to let my imagination get the best of me, but to force logic to prevail. I tell myself that I never closed the shades in the first place. That I only thought about doing it, but never did. I think long and hard, trying to remember the smooth, woven feel of the white roller shade in my hand as I drew it southward and let go, watching it hold.
Did that happen, or did I only imagine it did?
Or maybe whatever springlike mechanism that makes the shades open failed to keep them closed. The ratchet and pin that hold them in place didn’t work. Simple human error or mechanical failure.
