This happened in late October of this year and I have been living in fear since then.
I had been sitting at my desk for what must have been a couple of hours just staring at my computer screen hoping the words would find their way to my fingers but it was looking hopeless by that point.
This happened to me with every book. I would sit down and type the words Chapter One and then blip! Any idea I had planned on writing would disappear.
Usually, it would only plague me for a day or two and then these ideas find their way back to me and I could crank out a solid first draft in a couple of months, but this time those couple of months had already come and gone and still I was stuck on page one.
To say I was frustrated would be an understatement. I had a publisher that was getting stingy with advances, an editor who was getting impatient with my lack of progress and I had myself struggling to remove the invisible dam within my brain so that I could give everyone waiting with their hand out something to shut them up for a while.
Little did I know, as I sipped my third beer of the afternoon, that my frustration would soon turn to torment.
A small nugget of inspiration hit me - a chapter title.
Chapter One: Istanbul in a China Shop. I liked it - well, didn’t hate it.
It was on brand with my usual international espionage tripe and it wasn’t a blank screen, so I put it in the win column.
Then the clank started.
A loud metallic noise had begun hammering at random but constant intervals from somewhere beyond the walls of my house. I tried to drown it out with some music, something I rarely used while writing, but I had to stop this insidious noise before it completely derailed my train of thought.
No use.
This noise just kept coming, echoing across my fragile creative thread.
I rose from my desk and listened for the direction it seemed to be coming from and followed it out of the study, down the hall and out my front door to the porch where a chilly October day caught me off guard.
I folded my arms and rubbed my shoulders as the clank grew louder.
I live on a large parcel of land that backs onto a forest on one side and faces a small lake on the other. The only other building on the land, other than my house, garden shed and pool house is a small two-bedroom bungalow that sits facing mine, just shy of my property line.
That house has stood empty for the fifteen years I have lived here and who knows how many before that, so when a strange noise inexplicably starts clamouring here in the middle of nowhere, I tend to take notice.
But as I stood staring at the tiny bungalow across the shared driveway the clank stopped.
I stood there a moment longer, convinced that it would start again and I would find its origins somewhere around that tiny house. Instead, there was silence - welcomed, calming silence.
I went back inside and sat back down at my computer, that train of thought still, thankfully, at the station.
I etched out a couple of sentences to get things rolling when the clank came back.
I bolted to the front door, determined to solve this mystery and get on with my life but as I threw the door open I was met by a man standing on the steps of my front porch.
Surprised to see someone standing there I stopped dead in my tracks somewhere half in and half out of my front doorway.
It’s at this point that I think I should explain that I suffer from some pretty debilitating social anxieties and it takes a lot for me to even make a phone call to someone I’m close with, so when I opened the door and found a complete stranger standing less than three feet from me, these anxieties took a savage hold of me and was not letting go.
The man was still, his hands folded in front of him, fingers clasped together across his belly. His stature was slight and his clothes hung from his frame as they were slightly too big. His manner was unassuming and unthreatening and at first, I thought he might be from the church. This wouldn’t have been the first time the church had sent someone to save my soul or whatever other bullshit they always justified invading my privacy over.
But then I met his eyes and immediately I was struck by a fear had never felt before, a fear that was primal.
Somewhere I read a statistic that the average person encounters 16 murderers in their lifetime and while I remember at the time thinking that was a bunch of bullshit, I certainly believed it on this day.
Staring up at me from behind a pair of thick-rimmed aviator-framed glasses were a pair of blue eyes so pale they were almost gray. On any other person though, these eyes would be remarkable, intoxicating, beautiful even, but on this man, they were the devil incarnate and they were looking through my very soul.
Goosebumps ran straight up my spine as he stared at me unflinching. His round but gaunt face held a mild demeanour that stood in hard contrast against those God damned eyes.
It took me a moment to compose myself and he seemed content to wait until I did.
I stepped out onto the porch, despite the voices in my head advising me of doing so. Still, I maintained a safe distance from this mysterious visitor, greeting him, albeit awkwardly, I’m sure.
“Uh, hi-hello.” I said, trying to keep my voice from quivering, “Can I, uh - Can I h-help you with something?”
“Yes,” He replied, “I wonder - “ He paused pulling his glasses from his face to clean them with a blue and white checkered handkerchief he produced from his trouser pocket.
“Could you tell me when your neighbour will be home?” He finished, sliding his spectacles back on and shifting his gaze directly at me again, not blinking once.
My first instinct was to run. Just get the fuck out of there and pray I never have to look into this man’s eyes ever again but reason got the better of me and I managed an answer.
“I, uh, my neighbours?” I stammered, “Oh I don’t - No, no one lives there.”
I was sweating. It was 43 degrees outside and I was sweating. My chest was tightening. I was praying this would soon be over.
“Ah,” He smiled, those eyes brimming with fire and brimstone, “My mistake.”
With that, he nodded, turned to the house across the lane for a moment and then left.
I about-faced and scrambled through the door, slamming it behind me and bolting it tight. I had never locked my door in the fifteen years I had lived here but you can bet your ass I locked it after that interaction.
I needed a drink.
I moved to the kitchen, peering out each window on the way, paranoid that the Son of Sam or whoever the fuck that was would be peering back at me but it seemed he had indeed left.
I sat down in the sanctity of my living room to calm my nerves and settle the disquiet - the dread that had me in its grip. A couple of Xanax and a few shots of Jameson did the trick.
While I still couldn’t get those awful eyes out of my mind, I was able to reflect on the day’s events and not induce a heart attack.
Where did that sound come from? Better yet, where did he come from? I didn’t see a car in the laneway and it’s a mile out to the main road - surely he didn’t walk it.
Soon my visitor had drifted to the back of my mind and I sat back down at the computer ready to get some solid pages down by the end of the day. Then it returned - the clank.
I hadn’t heard it since before Satan himself showed up at my door but now it was back.
It started quietly at first but quickly ramped up to its strange haphazard rhythm.
I sat there hoping it would stop on its own like it did earlier but no luck this time, it kept going and going and going and going and going - fuck!
The light outside had started to wane as the overcast clouds grew darker and the sun began to sink behind them. I peered out the front window across the driveway to the bungalow.
It sat dark and ominous, staring back at me, that damned clank still… well, clanking!
I realized I was starting to obsess over this noise and I pulled myself away from the window, gaving up on any work progress for the day.
I settled in on the couch, the clank still present, and turned on the TV.
I woke to darkness throughout the house except for the TV. Sports highlights played on the screen and I checked the time.
3:03 am.
I rubbed my eyes and grabbed the remote, clicking the television off.
The house fell into a quiet blackness… a quiet - what? It was gone! The clank had gone!
I shuffled off to bed feeling the effects of the several whiskeys I had downed earlier.
I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow. The day’s events had left me emotionally exhausted but sleep didn’t offer me a reprieve, not in the least.
That night I dreamed of him, the man that visited me.
I wandered the rooms of the house across the lane despite never setting foot inside in the waking world.
An omnipresent malevolence that could have only been the churchman with the devil’s eyes constantly stalked behind me from room to room.
Each doorway I passed I could feel those soul-splitting eyes watching me as I fumbled for a way out of the tiny home, disappearing when I would turn to look directly at them.
Ever present was the clank, now louder than I had heard it before hammering away from somewhere inside that house.
While didn’t see him yet I knew he was there. I could feel his evil gaze burning into my back at every turn, that small, tiny home becoming an endless maze of nicotine-stained walls and stilted floors.
It felt like I would never escape and every second felt like my last until my alarm pulled back into the safety of the real world.
Daylight flooded my room, the alarm blaring from my phone. I turned it off and rubbed my eyes to clear my blurry vision only to be met with the clank reverberating around what seemed to be everywhere.
I couldn’t go through another day of this. I was already horribly behind on all of my deadlines and I couldn’t afford any more delays.
I had to find the cause of this noise and I had to stop it.
After a quick shower, I dressed and headed to the front door.
I opened the door and stepped outside where a blanket of fresh snow had fallen overnight. I halted my gait at the alarming sight of tire tracks leading along the driveway to the bungalow’s garage.
From there I could see footprints all around the area, the snow around the garage door disturbed indicating it had been opened.
My heart was racing as I stepped to the edge of the porch for a better view. There, on the steps of my porch, were more footprints. They lead from the tire tracks at the neighbouring garage and stopped halfway to the front door.
Panic took over and I searched for the closest thing to a weapon that I could find. A tiki torch I had forgotten to take in at summer’s end would have to do.
A circled my house twice, searching for any evidence that this intruder had tried to gain entry to my home but found none. The footprints only lead to my porch. That was enough though.
I grabbed my car keys and headed into town where I bought cameras to cover every angle of the outside of the house.
I spent the rest of the day installing them, my paranoia increasing with each passing moment.
I was sweating again but not from anxiety. The temperatures of the day was rising and soon that thin veil of snow had melted away.
That night as I checked the cameras obsessively, I realized I had forgotten about the clank. I hadn’t heard it since that morning. I couldn’t hear it at all anymore.
Strangely, this brought a sense of comfort to me, so much so that I even got a few pages done on the book.
Things were starting to feel normal again but as I made myself a late dinner, a notification chimed on my phone.
A camera I had placed at the side of the house facing the bungalow captured some movement.
I opened the camera app and clicked on the camera in question to review the footage but I hadn’t enabled it to record.
Shit.
I clicked around to all of the other cameras and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary which meant only one thing. I had to go and check it out myself.
It was at that moment that the clank decided returned.
This brought with it my anxiety and all of its sketchy friends and I spent the better part of an hour hyping myself up just to step outside the door.
Once out there, the cool October air filled my lungs giving me a bolt of freshness that helped me take that first step away from the safety of the front door.
The clank continued, louder now.
I clung to a golf club I had brought for safety just in case whoever was here last night came back and as I approached the corner of the house I paused, steadying my breath.
Once I felt a little more in control of my faculties I rounded the corner, phone light leading the way and nine iron cocked back over my shoulder.
Nothing was there.
I searched the windows for signs of tampering or attempted entry but thankfully they were untouched.
I was beginning to think this was all in my head, that maybe I was overreacting but as I looked down to the ground I realized my fears were very founded.
Footprints ran along the side of the house on the mud-soaked ground. They approached from the bungalow across the lane, ran the length of my house and lead back to where they started.
My chest tightened as my heart raced. A chill ran up my spine as I suddenly found myself walking toward the neighbouring house, the steady noise from the clank getting louder with each step.
I was beyond any apprehension now, at my wit’s end. I had to make this stop and make it stop that instant, but halfway to the shack I stopped, my legs unwilling to move any further.
Call the police, the voice in my head demanded and I ultimately obliged.
Right then and there I dialled the police explaining the circumstances of my call and within about half an hour, there were three cruisers in my driveway and six cops going over the property.
I waited on the front porch, praying they would find something to calm my very rattled nerves and when one of the officers approached me informing me their search turned up nothing I thanked them and slinked back into the house to lick my emotional wounds.
The clank echoed through my brain as I wondered how the police could have turned up nothing suspicious. If only they had heard the - wait - the clank. It had stopped when the police arrived. Then right on cue, as the last car left, it started again.
I ran to the front door and looked out the window toward the bungalow, the clank persisting - scratch that - insisting I go over and investigate.
I took hold of the doorknob, ready to walk into what could only be my impending doom when my phone rang scaring the ever-living shit out of me.
I looked at the display. My sister, Rachael.
The worst timing. She always had the worst timing. I answered anyway knowing that she would hound me all night if I didn’t answer.
“Hey,” I answered curtly, “I’m a little busy, what’s up?”
“Nice to hear from you, too, asshole.” She snarked back.
“I said I was busy,” I replied, still too curt for her liking.
“Never mind.” She said, obviously hurt by my tone.
“Rachael,” I sighed, my tone changing, “I didn’t mean anything by it, I’m just - I’m busy.”
“I’ll keep it short then.” She bargained. “Are you still on for helping your niece with her history homework tomorrow like you promised?”
“I’m - yeah,” I stammered having completely forgotten about that promise, “Yeah, of course, I will. I’ll send you a Zoom link later tonight.”
“You’re not going to flake on her like last time?” Rachael jabbed, hitting me right in the feels.
“That was one time,” I argued, trying to clear my conscience.
“You keep telling yourself that,” she jabbed again, “Asking Kit Paul to keep a promise is like fucking for virginity.”
“That’s good,” I replied, genuinely impressed with the analogy, “Mind if I steal it?”
“She’s free after 7:00 tomorrow night.” Rachael chuckled, “Don’t let her down, Kit.”
That last line stung as I’m sure it was meant to.
“I’ll see you both tomorrow,” I affirmed.
With that, the call ended.
I stared at my phone for a moment, reflecting on all of the mistakes I had made with her, her kids, my family. I probably would have stayed there wallowing in it the rest of the night if it wasn’t for the clank chipping away at what was left of my increasingly delicate sanity.
I grabbed my golf club and headed for the bungalow.
Opening the door, the night seems stranger now knowing that someone had intruded on the sanctity of my home, the venerableness of my world, the privacy of my thoughts.
Without hesitation, I made my way toward the house, its dark windows staring back at me lifelessly.
The clank continued and grew louder with each stride forward.
I approached the garage and could immediately tell that this is where that infernal noise was coming from.
I tried the door but found it padlocked, something I never knew to be the whole time I lived here. This wasn’t an old weathered lock either, this was a brand new shiny heavy duty Yale lock that definitely wasn’t there before.
The clank continued, now with more ferocity to its tempo.
I looked around for something to smash the lock open with and realized the golf club I was holding would likely do the trick.
I wound up, the clank hammering away at a fever pitch and promptly felt something strike the back of my head.
Everything went black and when I awoke, it was the next evening. I was in my bed. I was in my pyjamas and in my bed but I had no idea how I got there.
My head was killing me as I lifted it from the pillows to see the clothes I was wearing folded neatly and placed on the bench that lives at the foot of my bed.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice shakey.
On my bedside table, a bottle of Advil sat with a glass of water beside it.
What the fuck?
“Hello!?” I hollered once more.
Silence. Not even the clank was clattering.
My phone rang.
Startled, I grabbed for it, knocking the pills to the floor. I got ahold of the phone and pulled it into view.
My sister.
I checked the time. 7:30? How?
Wait - homework - shit!
I answered.
“Hey, I’m just signing in,” I stalled, “Give me five.”
“You forgot again, didn’t you?” She said sounding hurt.
“Not at all,” I lied, “Just give me five minutes.”
She hung up.
I got my shit together and logged into the Zoom call I promised my niece I would be available for.
After a few moments of grovelling to my sister, I began helping my niece with her homework.
She was learning about morse code, something I had researched thoroughly having written spy novels my whole career, so I felt I could be a pretty big help and maybe bit of a hero in the process.
We had gotten to some of the emergency patterns used in Morse Code when it hit me as she sounded out the S.O.S. pattern.
The clank was not some random tapping, it was a cry for help - an S.O.S.
I made up some bogus excuse to end the call early and bolted out of the house.
Fresh tire tracks ran the length of the driveway straight to the bungalow’s garage which now had its door standing halfway open.
I ran over to the garage, finding the padlock on the ground among more footprints and some drag marks.
I crouched down and ducked into the garage, hoisting the door open some more to let my porch lights shine into the gloomy concrete box.
There on the floor lay an old metal pipe, one end covered in dried blood and chunks of what looked to be scalp judging from the hair pressed into the blood.
The floor of the garage had chunks chipped out of it from where the pipe had been striking.
On the inside of the garage door streaks of bloodied hand prints and scratch marks smattered the aluminum.
I called the police were called again and this time I found a forensics team and over a dozen of county sheriffs all over my house, the bungalow and the property surrounding it.
A few hundred feet from my back door where the yard meets the woods they found a girl.
I learned from the news a couple of days later that she was naked, bound by an old phone cord, her nails and hands chewed up from trying to claw her way out of that garage. She was blindfolded, her tongue had been cut out so she couldn’t scream and she was gagged. A pair of industrial ear protectors had also been duct tapped to her head so she has no idea where she was.
I gave a description of the mysterious visitor I had encountered a couple of days prior and I knew that as I described him to the forensic artist, I knew that that monster knew. He knew I would give his description, that I would rat on him.
It is now the last day of the year and still, no one has been arrested in the kidnap and murder of that poor girl.
I have lived in fear ever since that day. I fear for the day that monster I met on my front porch returns. I fear for the day he comes back and I fear for the I hear a clank coming from the empty house across the lane.