A Ghost Arrives: A Novel by Abe Moss

Author:Abe Moss [Moss, Abe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-21T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

UNDER THE SURFACE

Wallace’s heart thudded painfully in his chest as the trunk’s moonlit opening shrank overhead. The ladder itself couldn’t have been more sturdy—as all magical nightmare ladders should be. He descended one rung at a time, each foot placed together before stepping down to the next, and it wasn’t long before his bare toes touched upon the white-tiled floor below.

He stood in someone’s laundry room. A stranger’s laundry room. An open door led to a kitchen he’d never laid eyes on before. For a minute or two he remained in the laundry room, one hand on the ladder should anything funny occur shortly after touchdown. From where he stood, it appeared the kitchen was aglow with natural light. Daylight. Something he didn’t think he’d ever see again. He craned his neck to see the opening above him, a literal square hole in the laundry room’s ceiling, and could vaguely make out the gloomy light of his father’s basement above.

A ladder between worlds. Between time.

Wallace fancied himself the star of a proper fairy tale.

He let go of the ladder.

A laundry basket was stacked on top of the washing machine, full of dirty clothes. Women’s clothes. There wasn’t much else to see in the laundry room besides. He went to the door and peered into the kitchen. Small and tidy and bright to the eyes. The blinds were open above the kitchen sink, letting in precious daylight, and a collection of windows in the small open dining room let in that much more. Wallace stood a while and simply appreciated this vision of a warm midday afternoon. The house was eerily quiet. If there were others home, he wondered if they’d see him or vice versa. He felt no less a phantom on this end of the ladder than on the other.

Don’t forget that, he thought. A fucking ladder brought you here. This isn’t real, and you’re still dead. Being spotted is the least of your problems right now.

He stepped into the kitchen and made a beeline for the window over the kitchen sink. It looked out over a modest, fenced-in backyard. An old, rusting swingset stood on the yellowed lawn, the ground beneath it worn to dirt. The horizon was alien to him. The mountains to which he was accustomed were missing.

Could he escape out there, he wondered?

It’s not real. Don’t forget that.

Knowing this place shared an entrance to the cold void where he’d come from somehow made its sunny exterior a little less alluring. The sense that something else lay hidden under its vision of normalcy crawled over him. He stepped back from the window and lifted his hands from the edge of the countertop, as though even the kitchen fixtures weren’t to be trusted. A sinister intuition. He turned his back to the kitchen sink.

Again, he noted that the house was especially quiet. Not even a ticking clock. He curiously pulled open a kitchen drawer. Silverware rested inside. By all appearances, the home seemed a real one. Lived in.

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