Alexandra Sokoloff - The Unseen

When Laurel stepped back into the great room she found Brendan and both students were in their chairs in the center of the room again. The pool of water was back, exactly in the same spot, and the three were back seated in a circle around it, each holding a clipboard poised in their lap, just watching the pool.

“It started again fifteen minutes ago,” Brendan said to Laurel, without taking his eyes from the pool. “EMF levels are back up between nine and ten.”

Tyler spoke, also without looking away from the pool. “We’re wondering if it’s going to go through the same cycle again: the pool, the pounding, the rocks.”

“But it’s speeding up,” Brendan added. “The pool is growing at one-third again the rate it was yesterday. If it continues at this rate it should be complete in half an hour instead of forty minutes.”

Laurel looked around at them. They all were entirely mesmerized by the pool. That can’t be a setup, can it? They really believe this—whatever this is—is happening.

But before she could speak, she felt the tingling behind her ears, and a sudden jolt of adrenaline ran through her. The hair on her arms was standing up… and she had no idea why. She looked around the room in confusion. Fog drifted against the windowpanes…

At first Laurel wasn’t sure if she even heard it, it was so on the periphery of her consciousness. She saw Brendan frown slightly, no more reaction than that, as if he had a headache. What is that?

Then Katrina stood, dropping her clipboard to the floor with a clatter that made Laurel jump. “Don’t you hear that?” The girl demanded. And as if saying it made it so, the knocking was suddenly unmistakable, loud slow thumps, coming from the middle of the house, Laurel thought, the crooked corridor above the dining room and great room.

The thumps continued, building in volume, shaking the ceiling. Brendan was frozen in his chair, listening intently. Then he and Tyler both shot to their feet and were out the door, running through the dining room. Katrina was not far behind, but far enough to be delicate about her haste. Laurel could hear their footsteps pounding in the kitchen, up the progressive stairs and rooms and jogs.

Laurel stood in the center of the great room, her mind shouting Go at her… and she didn’t know if that meant after them or out the door or what.

Then inevitably she followed, running.

Upstairs they were all stopped in the hall outside the room, Brendan’s room.

Of course, of course… that room…

The three were very still, hovering in the hall, listening so intently they seemed about to shatter.

The knocking had stopped.

Laurel watched from farther down the hall as they waited, suspended… Someone said, “It’s stopped.” Laurel’s heart was pounding so loudly she had no idea who had spoken.

Brendan grabbed the doorknob and pushed open the door. Laurel cringed back against the wall. The other three crowded around the door to look in. The room was seemingly untouched: the bed unmade, papers strewn on the writing table—but a very human disorder.

“It was in there,” Katrina said, looking through the door at the room.

The knocking started again. This time it was downstairs, muffled… curiously the sound seemed the exact same distance away. Slow, steady thumps.

Listening to it, all of Laurel’s suspicions about a human source fled her. She could feel in her marrow—this was other. It was mind-shattering, soul-shattering. Her whole body was in revolt against the essential wrongness of it, the irrationality, the impossibility. She could feel the same reaction in the other three; they all stood still and poised in disbelief, in outrage, in awe.

Brendan was the first to break the paralysis. He and Tyler strode down the hall, in the direction of the main stairs, Katrina right behind. By the time they reached the doorway to the next hall, they were running.

Laurel stood and looked through the doorway of Brendan’s room at the white walls, the narrow, monastic bed. The knocks continued steadily downstairs. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, and she turned and ran for the hall.

As she reached the bottom of the main stairs, she realized that the knocking had stopped. Voices came from the dining room, a few sharp sentences, then silence. Laurel darted across the entry hall toward the great room.

She passed through the archway and again felt a shock of static electricity that made her gasp aloud. What is that? She halted on the threshold… but the tingling was gone. She forced herself forward, walked across the wide expanse of the great room.

The other three stood around the long central table of the dining room, heads lifted toward the ceiling, not moving… just listening in the stillness.

Katrina started, “I don’t—”

Brendan lifted a warning hand and she fell silent.

The thumping started again—this time in the library, upstairs and on the other side of the house. Again, Laurel noticed that it sounded exactly the same distance away, not any closer or farther than any of the other knocks had been.

No one ran this time. Tyler’s face tightened, and Brendan looked resolute. They all walked back slowly, even deliberately, out the doorway of the dining room, across the floor of the great room toward the stairs. Brendan held the EMF reader up as they walked.

Laurel braced herself as she stepped back through the arch, but there was no sting of static this time. She saw Katrina glance at her speculatively and wondered if Katrina had felt the shock, too—but Laurel was too keyed up to speak. The EMF reader began beeping steadily as they all headed up the main stairs.

Brendan, in the lead, paused on the landing and they all stopped behind him, listening. The knocks continued, the slow, heavy raps. “Is this recording?” Brendan asked Tyler.

Tyler glanced back toward the first floor. “I don’t know. I mean, the cameras are on, but I don’t know if we’re picking up audio.”

“Go back down and check—,” Brendan started.

“No,” said Laurel violently. “No one goes off on their own.” She didn’t know why but it was imperative that they stay together.

After a moment Brendan nodded curtly and they all continued moving upstairs toward the slow, steady knocking, Tyler taking two stairs at a time. “Slow down,” Brendan snapped at him.

Tyler instantly flared up. “What are we doing, sneaking up on it?”

Brendan grabbed Tyler’s arm, halting all of them. “Just slow down. I want to see when it stops—”

At that moment, it did.

All four of them were still, heads raised, holding their breath…

“It heard us,” Katrina whispered, and no one laughed. They followed Brendan up the remaining stairs and across the hall to the library.

The heavy wood door was closed. And that’s weird, Laurel thought. Who would have closed it?

Brendan reached for the knob—then rattled it. He pushed on the door. “Locked,” he muttered.

“Is there a key?” Tyler asked.

“Maybe. There were some extras on the ring.”

On impulse, Laurel reached to the knob and turned it herself. The door swung open. Brendan looked at her and she shook her head, mystified. Then they all moved into the room.

It took a moment to grasp—then Katrina gasped. The framed photographic portraits along the whole back wall were askew, as if someone had brushed by the entire length of the wall, or an earthquake had jarred the house and deranged them.

The electromagnetic frequency reader in Brendan’s hand started beeping louder and faster. “It’s reading twelve,” he said, excitement crackling in his voice. “That’s extremely high.” Tyler had the camcorder up to his shoulder and was shooting footage of the pictures on the wall.