James Wicket shrank into the darkest corner of the garden shed as he focused every muscle in his body, his every ounce of being, into stifling his heaving breaths. A centimetre’s width of flimsy wood, weak under the weight of its own inevitable decay, stood between him and the world outside. It was quiet- perhaps the noise he created just prior had not been so loud, so jarringly offensive to the midnight silence as he had perceived it to be.
Minutes passed before he pondered his next move. Something strange had spooked him inside the house and caused him to flee. At least he hadn’t woken anyone. After he’d stumbled and broken the ceramic vase, heard it shatter, someone would have stirred. A light would have been turned on, a voice would have shouted from the darkness. Something. But there had been nothing. He checked the time on his phone: 1:07 AM.
“Pull it together,” he muttered to himself.
He exited the shed into the summer heat. Around him, the garden walls towered high. There was no way he’d be able to scale them, especially in this darkness. An unfortunate realization crept up on him that he’d have no choice but to go back through the house. He wasn’t done with this place yet, anyway. He’d come too far to quit now.
He willed himself back through the garden door and towards the marble foyer at the front of the house. An air of coldness and anonymity hung around him in the bleak moderness of the home’s interior. It would be easy to make it up these stairs undetected- no creaky floorboards or loose bannisters- only stone slabs beneath his feet.
At the landing, three doors stood ajar. The second was the bedroom. Peering in, a canopy bed crowded the room, housing two sleeping bodies. James crouched in the hallway, slinging his bag to his front and retrieving the necessary supplies. In his right and dominant hand, he gripped a cricket bat, ready to wield in harmless jest. It was perhaps a tad excessive, but the cricket bat was his trademark- his namesake, and something that his followers had come to love. In his left hand, he gripped his night vision camera. He re-emerged into the bedroom, eyeing the still lifeless bodies, save for the soft and rhythmic flow of breaths. It was showtime.
James crept across the room to a dresser and lay the camera there, positioned squarely at the bed and ready to take several timed shots. As he slid back toward the bed and got into position, bat in hands and ready to strike, he had a fleeting sense of guilt. This was the age of informed consent, he reminded himself. These people did not agree to his voyeuristic madness, nor did they sanction his crime of breaking and entering. At any point, someone could recognize his face from his posts. A sensation of dread slid down his spine. The fear of prosecution? Or something else? He felt that same wince of fear earlier when he was sent fleeing for the back door. He willed himself to shrug it off and resumed. He waited in silence and counted down as the bat hovered above their heads. The camera was set to snap 30 pictures in 30 sections. “Action” shots. Harmless fun. Done.
With that, he swept up his camera and vanished back out the front of the house and into the night.
At 3:57AM, after creating a new post and uploading the best picture of the set, he got into bed. Immediately he heard his phone come to life, buzzing with his followers’ excitement. He did his best to will himself to sleep and save the accolades to be savoured in the morning, but the peak of his thrill had not yet ended and he needed the rush of the climax.
“Something new,” read the first comment. “@Silent_Cricket have you been working as a pair all along or did you just bring a mate along now?” “Creepy new addition. Love it.”
James was confused. What were they talking about?
He scrolled up to the photo and winced. Behind him, in the background of the photo, a shadow lurched. It was tall, lean, ancient looking. His head spun as he tried to make sense of the figure. Panic. He pinched his fingers to zoom in. There it was, cloaked in black. Its exposed skin had an almost leathery texture to it. Its eyes, sunken back and scornful, peered directly at him as he posed proudly with the bat above the couple’s heads. He swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes closed to let the static of blind oblivion clear his mind.
“What the fuck?” he asked aloud.
The figure was gone. He zoomed in and back out again, confused.
“What the FUCK,” he said again.
In front of him, it emerged from the shadows of his room. James squinted and shrunk back into his bed, stunned. He gaped as it slunk unnaturally, sickly around the darkness towards him. It moved with precision and malice. James’s mind screamed with terror and he reached for the bat. His hand grasped in delirious panic around the floor near his bed. Only for the most insignificant of moments, the tiniest crack in time, did he glance down to ascertain its position. But that was all it took. He did not see the bat.
An explosion of stars sent James reeling. Then numbness. He felt wet warmth around his head. He winced and his stomach turned as he reached up and felt exposed bone. And then, another, final blow. Static.
The camera sat on James’s table, facing him. It snapped rhythmically for 30 seconds.
James’s last post was uploaded at 4:14AM. A photo of him, soaked in blood, an almost unrecognizable mess of gore where his face had once been. The cricket bat lodged into his skull and protruded into the night air.
“Lights out for Cricket,” read the caption.