50%, and you plug it in. 100% gives that feeling of comfort. That phone, that tablet, that laptop, the toaster, your microwave. Why keep the last one plugged in? Because you like the little digital clock on it, the kind found on a five dollar watch that uses way less power and takes up like twenty times less space.
I used to be an environmentalist. I don’t know anymore. I certainly don’t act like it. Everything in my house is plugged in. I have three microwaves in the kitchen.
Because I know the real reason for electricity.
It’s the same as fire, and not what you’re thinking.
I know because of what happened in 1999.
We were students at the Joseph Avery College in Bridal Veil Lake, living in the student slum off-campus. Our landlord was pissed off with us because we’d refused to stop throwing parties that were, admittedly, kind of wrecking the house. He wanted us out after Christmas, but we refused. So he stopped paying the hydro bill and we were soon in the dark.
Calling the utilities company would have been the best decision. There are rules against a landlord taking away services considered vital. What we ended up doing, however, was reveling in being closer to a state of nature. Another party to celebrate the dark was held, and we all got very drunk. The house suffered, and we thought it was funny.
Maybe we deserved what happened.
After the party, the darkness and the cold weren’t as much fun. We had candles and discussed building a firepit right in the house since there was no fireplace, but Alek pointed out, wisely, that we’d suffocate without a chimney or exhaust of some kind. Using matches and scented candles became tedious and dangerous. Alek also warned us against falling asleep with a lit fire nearby. I guess he was the smartest one.
We began living with the dark, stumbling around in the mess we never cleaned up and staying on campus as much as possible. A few of the guys had girlfriends and convinced them to let them move into their places temporarily.
That left four of us, single losers, to freeze in the dark: Alek, myself, Dan, and Arthur. All of us, except maybe Alek, were best described as side-kicks to one of the guys who’d moved in with their girlfriends.
Alek was the exception; he wasn’t a leader either, more a lone wolf who kept to himself except when a house matter concerning him came up or the party was already rolling. The man enjoyed drinking.
With everyone gone, he became our leader by default, a role he did not desire in the slightest.
“We just have to make it till Spring, “ he said. “Remember to shower.” He went to his room.
Months went by. Batteries for flashlights ran out, and so too our stash of lifted matchbooks from the hotels around Tour Hill. By then, we had changed, not for the better, but neither worse, I would say. Just different. We’d gotten used to traversing the dark and made sure to do certain chores like cleaning and homework during the day.
At night, it became customary for us to gather in the living room and talk. We couldn’t see each other, but it was comforting to hear their news of the day and joke around. If we had some money we’d order in pizza and try to guess what kind we were eating by taste alone.
Before the last night in that house, this story would have been a funny anecdote in a different forum, a fond memory spoken of in a few sentences, instead of what it is, what I’m writing now, after all these years of trying to forget.
We sat on the couches, huddled beneath threadbare blankets and wearing all of our clothes. A winter storm actively pounded the house and city outside, the only really significant storm we’d had, and it came in late March. As we discussed upcoming exams and whether or not the snow could be used to insulate the house, we heard a noise, a knocking, in the basement.
It was arrhythmic, intentional, like a morse code hitting the ceiling below. I could feel it in my shivering feet.
“What the hell is that?” Alek asked us all. No one knew, so no one answered. The basement wasn’t finished. Just a dusty concrete floor and framing had been done for the owner to update or not at their convenience. Our landlord had mentioned adding rooms, but without a fire exit, kitchen, or bathroom, it’d be illegal.
The knocking continued.
“Think it’s an intruder?” Dan asked, the question directed to Alek, our leader. There was a window into the basement.
Alek sighed. He’d been drinking. We all had. “Why don’t you find out?” It was a joke, but nobody laughed. In the dark, senses are heightened. No matter how familiar or inebriated, you’re always on edge.
I heard Dan stand up. “Fine,” he snapped. He stomped his feet from the living room, and we heard him on the creaky basement stairs after feeling the sudden draft from the door we rarely opened. Fresh air wafted in. Maybe that window had been busted open. Maybe the basement was just cold.
For a long time, we sat in silence, listening to the knock and hearing nothing from Dan.
“I call his beer if he’s dead,” Arthur said, failing to cover the fear with his lameass joke.
“What the hell is he doing down there?” I asked.
“Shut up, listen.” Alek stood up and stepped lightly to the adjoining hallway, just outside the threshold of the living room. I knew because of a familiar pop in the hardwood, the one that said the stairs to the second floor were within reach, and the basement was ahead before the kitchen.
I’m sure I heard something, faint whispers or a soft clicking of a tongue coming from the hallway.
“Dan?” Alek asked.
All hell broke loose.
Somebody roared with every fiber of their body, the noise prolonged amidst a collision of bodies culminating in a steady thud against flesh. Bones popped, and Alek groaned.
“What the f-fuck?” I asked.
The noise of the attack continued, subtle wet squishing into tendered meat.
I stood up. “Arthur? Arthur?” He wouldn’t answer. The attack stopped, and I either felt hostile eyes upon me or reacted as if they were. The unconscious mind will always err on the side of caution. If danger is possible, best to run. Even if you’re wrong, you’re still alive.
The other option is to fight. I should have fought. Nobody helped Alek.
The first creak on the floor made me drop, and crawl, squeeze, under the couch by the window. It was a poor hiding spot. Only the darkness made it viable. Hopefully, whoever had come didn’t bring a flashlight. My guess is they hadn’t been so prepared.
Probably, a thief had seen a darkened house in a storm and assumed no one was home. They broke in the basement, killed Dan, and now killed Alek. Arthur had split already. I might survive if I didn’t cross the thief.
But why kill someone you definitely couldn’t see? How did they know where Alek had been in the hall? Sweat soaked through my clothes and turned cold. I started to shiver and clenched my teeth so they wouldn’t chatter.
For a long time, a very soft smacking was all that could be heard, followed by what may have been someone swallowing.
A footstep on the floor by the coffee table triggered the duct sound below, a flex in a weakened point in the metal. The knocking had stopped. Had that been the thief too? In that case, they wanted to confront the residents before robbing the place. Knocking had been a lure.
Only a psychopath would do that. I felt worse and worse. The invader was searching for targets. That’s why they killed Alek. Was Alek dead? Was Dan? Too many stupid questions. Fight or flight? Run or stay like a coward beneath the couch, hoping to survive?
It was so quiet. I allowed small, controlled breaths only. Another footstep followed, padding softly until a tap at the end like the killer went barefoot and had long toenails.
The stench that hit me supported the idea of the invader neglecting his foot hygiene. It was worse than shit, though shit figured greatly in the odor’s composition. There was rot and death, a hint of soil, and wet fur.
I drank too much. My gut revolted and I started gagging as vomit filled my mouth. Not enough space under the couch to roll over. I turned my head, and the bile spilled onto my cheek and neck. I started choking.
I pressed the couch and pushed it off my torso so I could twist and clear my throat. The springs or wires or whatever the hell holds a couch together whined with a new weight, pinning my shins. The invader had stepped onto the couch. They made a sound like licking. They were licking their lips?
The slightest gust crossed my nose. A hand swatted the darkness, searching for the next kill. Foul, hot breath filled the narrow space between the back of the couch and the wall.
They were close, mere inches away, somehow poised above, savoring the moment of intense fear gradually withering to acceptance. There was nothing I could do.
“I know you’re there,” said a quiet voice.
I shut my eyes tight and thought I died when I heard a loud beep from the kitchen. The pressure on the couch relented, and the invader departed leisurely. I heard it going back downstairs.
The hydro had come back on. We’d left so many switches in the on position.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Arthur under the couch opposite. His eyes were wide open, and he had voided his bowels during the ordeal. I thought he might be dead, but saw his chest rise and fall.
What followed felt like the worst kind of awakening. Illuminated, heated, the house seemed noisy and alien. We didn’t live there anymore. It’d been too long in the dark.
Streaks of blood led to the open front door, turning to heavy, red droplets on the snowed-in porch, filling the plunging footsteps Alek had left behind. The trail went across the street to a covered pile about the size of his body.
“Arthur,” I remember saying a lot. Then we called the police and I sat back down. Firefighters extracted us from the house and brought us to the hospital. I slept a lot there, which surprised me. I thought I’d never sleep again. Each time I awoke, however, it was in panic and terror.
I told my story about a million times to different people, including my parents whose arrival seemed magical. I don’t remember when they got to the hospital.
“A cougar broke into the house, son,” my dad, in the presence of a constable, said. The story, according to some detective, I suppose, was that the starving cougar had entered through the basement window. Dan had been found at the bottom of the stairs, dead from a fall.
His death had almost nothing to do with the animal. He’d slipped in the dark and hit his head. The cougar, for some reason, had missed his body and came upstairs, where it attacked Alek, pulling his arm off. Since the limb wasn’t found, like the cougar itself, it was assumed to be eaten, bone and all.
Alek had been found under the snow, where I thought. He was trying to get help from the neighbors but died of blood loss on their lawn, buried by the storm.
When the hydro came on, the cougar fled back through the window it’d come through. The landlord had apparently paid the bill prior to the storm, worried he’d be liable if we died. Everything had turned on when it did by chance.
There are a number of problems with this convenient explanation, which I’m sure anyone reading this can notice. I’ll list a few of the major inconsistencies:
No tracks or prints from the cougar were found in or outside the house. Snow, apparently, filled the exterior ones. A shrug is the explanation for the lack inside; it just didn’t leave a single one on the hardwood. Seems, at best, unlikely.
Second, cougars this far south in Ontario are unheard of. While there have been sightings, few have ever been confirmed. I could only find one news story about a cougar entering a home, and that wasn’t in this province.
Moreover, the cougar that supposedly attacked us hasn’t been seen or tracked since. The obvious place to look would be the western gorge in Bridal Veil Lake. To my knowledge, nobody has bothered to search.
The biggest, but by no means the last problem with the cougar explanation, is what I know I heard the invader say:
I know you’re there
It hadn’t been Arthur. He can’t remember much. Like me, he never really recovered, but he’s adamant he never said a word, though he didn’t hear anyone either.
“Why would I say something like that?” he quite reasonably asked the one time we were interviewed together.
It wasn’t his voice.
I know.
It was a voice, however, and cougars don’t talk. A hungry predator wouldn’t bypass an easy meal - Dan - and wouldn’t flee because some lights came on.
I know better. Arthur does too. We gave each other generators for Christmas and piles of batteries on our birthdays.
It’s not the light it fears. It’s the order, it’s the warmth of civilization granted by electricity and fire. The way we’re attracted to a lit hearth and turn on music to disturb the silence repels it.
You turn off your lights and make your house quiet for a night. Nothing wrong with that.
But there’s a reason you have trouble sleeping with all the power out.
You just might not realize what it is yet.