Tim Meyer
THE SWITCH HOUSE
For Ashley,
This one is yours. Sort of.
·
The house stands in the middle of the dirt road, the nexus of Everywhere. Overhead, the skies roll in a spreading blanket of tumbling fog. The sun hides somewhere beyond, however, the gray lid makes it impossible for significant light to appear. A shadowy shield buries this place, this vast emptiness of nonexistence.
The house stands on a property belonging to no one. The property consists of a front lawn, a backyard, a stockade fence stained the color of dead autumn leaves and a deluxe swing-set showing little wear. The windows remain intact, the marine-blue vinyl siding rests in perfect condition, the shutters expertly hung, darkly colored to accent the blue. The roof, no less than a year old, is free from mildew stains. Where the property ends lays a colorless wasteland, an endless lot of desolation filled with dirt and gravel, and if anyone was to dig beneath the empty plots, they might discover a skeleton or two.
Or twelve.
Or a thousand.
Impossible to tell how many souls have wandered this endless place. Come to live, leave to die.
The house is a tomb. Not her tomb. Not yet. But a tomb nonetheless.
She walks up the stoop and approaches the front door, the blood-red barrier between the cool atmosphere grazing her exposed arms and legs and the fireplace-heated interior, which will warm her from the inside out. She slips the key into the lock and pushes the door open.
Who gave me the key? she asks the dream’s absent architect.
Access resides within you, child, an omnipotent voice replies, supplying her veins with ice. No matter how warm and cozy the inside of the house may be, she thinks she’ll never shake that frigid feeling from her bones. The brisk sensation clings to her, infiltrates her pores and nests in her marrow.
She decides to keep her questions to herself from here on out, though, in this place, in this Everywhere, the rules are different and she doubts her mind will remain silent, even if that’s her wish. And, of course, another presence lurks behind her, invisible and almighty. The phantom has followed her up the stoop, through the front door and into the living room.
It breathes in her ear.
She spins.
Nothing there but the open doorway and the barren wasteland yonder. She stares at the entryway as the exterior landscape warps and twists, the image swirling like toilet water. After the desolate, ashen world of perpetual ruin melts away, the view fades, embodies a starry black expanse. She realizes she’s looking the elements of space and time in the face and her mind feels like a cheap piece of glass ready to break, ready to crumble, ready to cut and draw blood.
She blinks and discovers the door has shut itself, turning the black nothingness away, the prospect of eternal madness temporarily kept at bay.
She faces the living room. The house appears differently than its real-life counterpart. In real life, lilac walls hold up the ceiling and a wrought-iron table stands by the stairs, displaying a fresh bouquet of either roses or violet pansies. In real life, the floors are always swept and polished, so much so that guests marvel over their crisp reflections. In real life, the plush leather couch faces an eighty-inch television screen, mint as the day it was manufactured. Here, now, in the middle of the Everywhere, the house’s interior décor lies in havoc. The couch is ripped and torn, tossed before a television screen appearing to have been smashed by a mallet, a mess of wires hanging from its open face like a mouthful of electric spaghetti noodles. The vase near the stairs holds dead black flowers, wilted and filling the air with stomach-churning fragrances reminding her of rancid meat. The floors have been scratched and muddied with bootprints. The walls are no longer lilac; in fact, they hold no color. And they’re moving. Not moving in one direction or the other, not gliding, but writhing.
Crawling. Wriggling. Squirming.
It takes her a moment to realize the walls are alive, pulsing with maggots.
But it’s not just the walls that are alive; the house itself is alive and she hears the drum of its heartbeat along with her own.
She watches herself walk. Toward the kitchen. She hears footsteps ahead of her and stops. She’s waiting for something to happen, waiting for the omnipotent driver of this dream to steer her in new directions. That, or she’s waiting for the architect to grant her access to her own bodily functions so she can run, run like hell, run like the devil’s chasing her.
Because he is.
He’s over her shoulder, whispering thoughts. Sharing intrusive images. Marking her. Prepping her permanent residence in the belly of Everywhere-land.
The devil.
Well, not the actual devil. But something like him, something that schemes with nefarious intentions, that lures, beckons her deeper into hell with a long, taloned finger.
Some unnamed thing.
The shuffling grows louder. She stays frozen, her feet stuck to the urethane-coated floor, feeling like a fly in a spider web.
And the spider is coming.
A small thing appears in the doorway separating the living room and the kitchen, a shadow belonging to a small boy; a tiny boy; a little baby boy. Older now than when she last saw him. He’s covered in mud, dripping with shadows and some clear viscous slop that reminds her of embryonic fluid. Through the shade and the sludge coating his flesh, she sees the whites of his eyes, the stark brightness of his baby teeth. She can’t tell but she thinks he’s smiling. Such a good boy. A nice boy. A happy boy.
“Ma-me,” the boy says, but as he speaks she notices differences, specifically the throaty gargle deepening his voice. No, not a boy. A thing. A predatory thing hiding beneath the flesh of an innocent child, an unseen monstrosity that growls instead of articulating, a thing that gnashes its teeth when silent. “Ma-me,” the thing that is not a boy says once more.
Shivers curl around her spine. She chokes on the foul air, polluted by the boy-thing’s earthly odor. The thing steps forward.
Closer.
And closer.
And…
The thing stands before her, inches from her face. He’s floating, lying on an invisible magic carpet. They’re eye to eye now, locked in an epic battle of who-blinks-first. She stares into the monster’s snow-white eyes as they grow darker and darker until she finds herself gazing into another starry black nothingness; one harboring hatred and rage; one craving violence and the sweet taste of death.
She peers into the Everywhere, gets lost, and drifts away…
“Ma-me,” it says with a growl and, this time, a painful bite.