Edward leaned back against the front door, keeping deadbolt fingers in place.
He did not move for what was a very, very long time.
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
It wasn't quiet in that pleasant kind of way—the kind you become aware of after turning off a bellowing TV set or the roar of a city street. It was heavy silence. Thick. Dense. Air pressure. As if the house were holding its breath.
He finally moved away from the door and removed his jacket. It was warmer than it ought to have been, heavy with a sweat he hadn't even known he was building up. He let it fall over the sofa arm and stood in the living room in the center of the room, not knowing what to do with himself.
The room was different tonight. The furniture hadn't changed. The same creaky old bookcase still slanted to one side, stacked with paperbacks. His morning coffee mug was still in the sink. But there was something in the air that wasn't the same. Charged. Anticipatory.
He moved over to the front window and peered through the narrow slit in the blinds. The street below was deserted. Lights out on both sides. No kids playing. No TVs yowling behind curtains. Nothing.
And then, quite suddenly overcome by the sense of exposure, Edward's hand went up and slapped the blinds right down.
He moved slowly, checking the window in the dining alcove. That small, square one beside the kitchen table—not often more than half-way open behind its sheer curtain of light filtering into the room. He yanked that curtain shut entirely, hands in unnecessary hurry.
Room by room.
Curtains. Blinds. Windows. Locks.
His fingers struggled at the edges of every frame, testing them to see if they were secure, as if he could shut the world out by sheer strength. One of the bedroom windows had been left open a crack so that the room could breathe—he shut it and clicked the lock into place with a sound that was too harsh.
He tried not to look as he did it, but occasionally saw—enough to unsettle.
His neighbor's automobile sat cocked in his driveway, door open an inch or two.
The porch light of the corner house flashed erratically, a flash every eight seconds like a tense beat.
Another window, this one a bathroom, opened onto the narrow side alley. It provided a thin glimpse of the hedge-lined dividing hedge. Nothing. But his gaze lingered too long.
Click. Lock. Curtain.
By the time he came back into the living room, the house felt closed up. Not secure—just closed up.
He flipped on the corner light and fell onto the couch with a tired sigh, phone held tightly in his hand. The screen came to life with the now ubiquitous emergency banner—state-approved, unavoidable.
EMERGENCY ALERT – LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY
If you or someone close to you is experiencing disorientation, confusion, or cognitive lag, isolate and report via the emergency app. Do not attempt to move those affected.
Symptoms mimicking flu, tiredness, or winter bug. These are being monitored. More to come.
Note: Internet and phone disruptions expected.
He read through Darren's message. The one that had arrived centuries ago.
Hi, still around. Thanks again for supplies. On the mend now. Must have only needed rest. If you call tomorrow, I'll help open up. Any news yet from Sam?
It didn't sound right.
Too neat. Too peaceful. Complete gay slang not employed.
It didn't match the way Darren had sounded through the storeroom door. Or the way he'd avoided Edward's eyes earlier. It read like something you'd send to reassure someone—not because it was true, but because the truth might make things worse.
He set the phone down and crossed to the kitchen.
His stomach growled, but it was a long way to the food. He pulled open the fridge and extracted a half-full bowl of soup. He heated it on the stove, deliberately. The smell filled the space—too thick, too overpowering in the uncomfortable air.
Ate at the kitchen table, spoon tight in his fingers, chewing automatically. The circle of metal against ceramic hung in the air too long.
Daylight was fading outside. Long shadows moved across the yard.
He stood up once more. Went back to double-check the curtains.
One was ajar an inch in the dining room. He closed it harshly, his heart racing more than the situation warranted.
At twilight, the house began to creak to itself softly—waking up, settling down. Old wood in its shifting joints. But each creak made him breathe hard.
He couldn't stop feeling like he was being watched, even though he had shut down every possible view into the home. Yet still he couldn't resist looking over his shoulder.
The silence wasn't paying off.
He turned on the TV—not to listen to the news, anything. Anything at all.
The few that did remain were all displaying government-approved health commercials, over and over: spick-and-span hospitals, masked and smiling faces peaceful, "temporary measures" and "mild flu-like symptoms" alerts. It wasn't what he'd lived. What he'd seen.
He murdered it and listened to it play anyway.
He leaned back on the couch, pulling a blanket up over his knees despite the fact that the house wasn't cold. Habit now, to pull things in. Hold close. Hide.
His phone rang again—but for only a moment.
A flash of garbled text. From Sam's number.
Ed. the lights. not right. something.
Then nothing.
He sat and gazed at it until the screen went dark on its own.
There was a constriction of something in the rear of his chest. He stood up, moving slowly around the room, then up at the thin strip of light that filtered from the top of the living room curtains.
"The lights," he whispered.
She'd called them that.
He walked over the room, switched off the floor lamp, and stood there in indecision. He switched it back on—temporarily—long enough to remove the duct tape from the kitchen drawer.
And then he started taping off every seam.
And then the drapes by the sitting room—he had taped down the edges to the wall, the fabric stretched taut to the plaster. Then the join, in the middle of where the two were brought together. The ripping was coarse and jagged in the silence. He winced each time and glanced across at the windows in case somebody would hear the noise.
And then the kitchen. He ripped the ancient tea towel from the oven handle and used it to blindfold the little side window, pinning it in place with clothespins and scraps of tape. It was something absurd. But it worked. Finally, they could look out at the world unseen.
He made his way around the house again—hallway, bedroom, bathroom—duct-taping every window with heavy books, towels, tape, whatever he could find. Once he'd covered them all, the house was dark and spooky. The TV light was the only real light now, its beam casting a dim glow in the corner like a fire in a cave.
He dropped back into the sofa, exhausted from the effort, his hands sticky with glue from the tape.
But none this time.
And no eyes--whatever they were, wherever they were--had any hope of looking in.
He settled back, hearing the distant, muffled scraaaaape of the wind blowing something metal down the street. A tin can from a dumpster, maybe.
He didn't go get up and check what it was.
He just closed his eyes and heard.