There is a house. It is big and old and lived in. Once. But now no one is there with you. Just you and the worn wooden floors, scratched and the finish worked off. The dark crimson curtains hanging over the too large windows, threadbare. You can tell that they are so thin they are transparent, but only from the outside in or when the lights are off. Spiders have woven their way along silky threads from room to another on evanescent highways. Shriveled hollow husks of things long since dead form gloomy constellations in their webs. When the lights are off, you won’t let the lights go off. You shiver.

 

John hates spiders. He hates their legs and their webs and the way they make him scream in front of all the other boys. But all John has to do is stay in the house for an hour.

    The ceiling is high and looming. You have to look for the reason you are in this house. It isn’t your house, or so you think. Maybe you can’t remember. You walk towards the front of the house, for some reason you are sure you started in the back. The next room must have been the dining room. The large table surrounded by six beaten chairs. One chair is less used than the others. The guest chair. The table is empty. The chairs are empty. 

    You see a little old woman outside of the window through the curtains, fidgeting with something. When did the lights go off? Your hand runs along the stained wallpaper, an elaborate fleur de lis pattern in diamonds, also maroon, but you don’t feel a switch. The woman looked in once, a vacant stare, and you are fairly certain she is a nosy neighbor in an elaborate game.

    This must be a very involved game. you don’t remember the outside world, or when this technology came out but that it is a game, you are very certain.

    Keep her out. That is an objective. Now there is a young man, 26 you think, coming in from the living room and heading to the kitchen behind you. His hands are full, a brown jacket and a carrier bag. Hi, he says with a smile that reaches his dark eyes. Don’t mind me. And then he is already into the kitchen. Family, you think. Keep him safe.

    To the right is a hallway with a picture hanging up. Dust covers the surface so you don’t see what is underneath. When you walk down the hallway, something brushes your leg and you jump. You feel wired. It was just a cat, looking out the window from between your legs. Looking at the spot the woman had been. 

    You step over the cat carefully, to the right again. A partially shut door leads to a bedroom and you enter. The ceiling is so much lower, and the walls are damp cement, no more wallpaper. The window is high in the wall and small, too small to climb through. Cobwebs cover it, the spiders just more dead carcasses hanging in the web. 

    Wrong. You turn to go back out but when you cross the threshold you see that the rest of the house has been like this all along. You just didn’t know how to see it. In the corner of your eyes, something shining catches your attention. Looking down you see it is some sort of tablet left sitting on the dresser of the room. You pick it up. It is thin and with sharp edges and a big blank screen. But then it feels you and the screen jumps to life. A circle unwraps itself. One. Two. Three, and it is whirring with life. 

    Now there is an image. There is an objective, you can feel it, every second you just stand there is another second lost. What must you do, you think. This is not fair, there were no instructions. There was no warning.  The image flashes once more and changes. You lost that round. 

    Guess. As more seconds pass you know you have to guess. You cannot lose anymore, there was something terrible, definite about losing to the game. A phrase, you say a phrase to the game. Maybe if you can name the image, you win. Maybe if you win it will stop. Another and another, you keep naming until the image flashes again and you know you lost the second time. 

    A new image. You guess, more phrases, your voice becoming shrill, desperate. Can it even hear you, you wonder. Is this how you play? Why doesn’t that young man come and help you, can’t he hear how frantic you are? Tears are falling down your face, your chin shaking up and down. You didn’t mean to come here, you didn’t mean to start the game. You run out of time even though you have still been guessing, the entire time, saying whatever you could think of. Saying whatever you thought would help.

    Please, stop, you think. Your eyes are closed. Please just let it stop.

    You look down at the device in your hands. The screen is empty and dark reflecting back at you your wet face. You feel relief. It was so easy to stop after all.

    When you leave the room the house is back as it was when you first found it. Your eyes are still adjusting to the brightness now that the lights are on again. The cat is laying in the hallway. You tilt your head, the cat is wrong. It is too limp and its tongue shouldn’t be hanging like that. Eyes open. 

    One, two, three.

    You run out to the dining room and press up against the window, cupping your hands over your head to block out the light. The woman, where is she. The glass is cold to your touch, even through the curtain you didn’t part first. Down, in the dirt between the two lilac bushes the woman is also laying. Too still. Too pale.

    You pull back from the window and back up into the table. What is wrong, what is happening. Thank god the lights are still on. You hold your own fists up to your chest, under your chin, feeling the calming heat. The rhythmic pulse of your frightened blood. 

    The kitchen. You step through and are relieved to find the young man, sitting in a chair by the door. His back is to you, and he is hunched over, his hands down by his feet. He is just tying his shoes, you whisper to yourself. The door behind him is open, but no one has come in or out. 

    You reach out to his shoulder, to ask him where he is going and whether he has his umbrella. You crouch down and you see his face. His eyes are still smiling, but they are darker now. His mouth is slack. His hands sit unmoving next to his feet, his shoes put on but not yet tied. 

    He isn’t going anywhere.