Tim Meyer - The Switch House

God, what does she want from me?

“Mrs. Shepard?” the woman called. Her voice matched the accent used on the show, and hearing the inflection live and in person sent a chill streaking down Angela’s spine. “Mrs. Shepard, I know you’re home. I understand we don’t know each other, but I feel we need to talk.”

Remaining silent, Angela sat down on the top step, clenched her eyes shut, and listened. She thought about replying, having an actual conversation with the woman, intending to keep her there long enough until the police arrived, but, in the end, she decided she didn’t want any communication with her. Not with the woman who’d hexed her home.

That witch.

“I know my time is limited,” the woman said. “You’ve probably already phoned the police, but, if you think you need help, please seek me out. I think you understand my meaning.” The woman paused, giving Angela one last opportunity to respond. “Good day, Mrs. Shepard.”

With that, the shadow abated. She heard footsteps as the woman walked down the stoop. Outside noise became distant as she shuffled across the yard, opened her car door, closed it, started the Oldsmobile, and drove off.

I think you understand my meaning, the old woman had said, and those words calloused Angela’s arms and legs in gooseflesh.

Ten minutes later, the police arrived. Two officers, younger than she, took her statement. She told them where the woman lived and about the show. They said they were familiar with Switch! ; their wives were big fans of previous seasons and they had watched this season’s premiere. They told her they’d be real heroes if they Snapchatted a picture to their significant others. She reluctantly obliged, hoping the gracious act would motivate them to take her matter more seriously than they had initially appeared to.

When asked, “Why do you feel threatened, Mrs. Shepard?” Angela simply shrugged and said, “I don’t know. That’s just how I feel.”

She neglected to mention how she felt hexed.

Night fell on Trenton Road and shadows sauntered across the Shepard’s bedroom. There was no sex that night. Terry was exhausted from cranking a wrench all day and fell asleep about ten seconds after his cheek landed on the pillow. Angela stirred awake, thinking, revisiting the woman’s words, everything she had said. We need to talk. What did she want to talk about? The curse she laid upon their house? God, as if she wasn’t dealing with enough problems, now Angela had to deal with a witch and her unjustified vendetta against her and her husband. We need to talk.

In your dreams, she thought, and then wondered if dreams were safe from witches and dark magic. Could dreams be a place of refuge? A safe haven? A reprieve from evil? Angela didn’t think so. Thinking back to her “hallucinations”, which were much like dreams, she thought the witch could get to her from any state of mind—asleep, awake, sober, or intoxicated. The woman’s touch knew no boundaries.

Angela threw off her covers and headed downstairs for a glass of water. For the next half hour, she drank fluids and stared out the back window, across the muddy expanse that made up the backyard. She wondered when Terry would level the dirt and plant seed. She was tired of seeing their once Irish-green lawn dead and impoverished. Even though she hadn’t stepped foot out there since [we do not speak his name] was alive, the plot was still an eyesore and, in all likelihood, degraded the selling value of the property. Maybe that was what held them back. Not the tragedy, but the unruly condition of the sizable backyard. She thought she’d make the chore a priority this weekend, to motivate Terry and get it done. If they could afford to pay someone, she would have taken care of it the second the cops were finished rooting around back there, concluding their lengthy investigation. She was sure Terry would start it now, especially if she asked in a certain, flirty way; after all, he was in love with her again.

Angela made her way past the table with the flowers, up the stairs, and toward the bedroom. From the end of the hall, she spotted a blue light glowing underneath the door. She hadn’t remembered falling asleep with the television on. It was rare Terry awoke in the middle of the night—he slept like a drunken bear, as well as often waking like one—and she couldn’t recall a time in their twelve years of marriage when he had woken up and turned on the tube.

Strange, she thought; although, considering what she’d witnessed over the past week, a television turning itself on could hardly be considered peculiar.

She approached the bedroom door and gripped the brass knob. Her hand immediately bounced off the hardware as if some magical spell were placed to repel her touch. All at once, a rush of pain filled her palm, and she looked down to see several layers of her skin had melted away like excessively microwaved cheese. The burning sensation crawled throughout her entire hand and climbed up her arm. Shaking her palm wildly, she screamed out as the white-hot pain cranked up the intensity.

“Fuck! Goddammit, fuck!”

She blew on her disfigured palm, but the wind did little to temper the burn.

“Terry?” she shouted at the door.

The house responded, pushing open the bedroom door. She recoiled, shrinking back into the shadows of the hall. Blue light escaped the room and spilled across the carpet. Quick pulses of white flickered from inside the bedroom like lightning streaking behind clusters of midnight-gray clouds. An awful burning stench carried its way from the room to her nose. The malodor was enough to trigger her gag reflex. She almost lost her dinner on her way back to the door.

“Terry…” she said, approaching the bedroom slowly, as if the floorboards might give out beneath her. “Terry, talk to me.”

Her husband didn’t respond. The night kept quiet save for the distant chirp of chatty crickets. As she got closer to the doorway, she heard a noise sounding a lot like displaced air, whispers of an invisible something moving across the room. Her brain immediately likened the sound to a baseball bat swinging through a fastball, the sound of lumber making contact with nothing but the still atmosphere. The noise grew louder as she crept closer.

“Terry?” she asked the blazing blue light again, this time in a voice barely above a whisper. She touched the door with her fingertips and forced it inward, being careful not to linger; her ruined palm reminded her to be quick.

The door gave way to a confusing scene. The room was hardly the same one she’d left to go fetch a glass of water. It was drenched in neon blue light and nothing else. Her bed, her dresser, the nightstand, and the small forty-inch television were all gone, replaced by a soft, tumbling mist that filled the room. Dreamily, Angela drifted into the room, letting the coils of fog roll over her. The roiling clouds curled and twisted around her body like an anaconda.

Then, as if coming from another room in the house, someone screamed. Angela’s heart momentarily stopped, her breath catching in her throat. She tried calling out for her husband but she was voiceless. The realization that this was not a dream stole her words away. Terry cried out again, this one louder than the last. Angela felt tears trickling down her cheeks. Her veins were rivers of ice. Bumps broke out across her flesh as a haunting tickle danced on her nape. She turned to the door but it was shut now, the handle glowing molten red, the button in the center pushed to indicate someone had locked her in.

Someone. Something.

Some unseen thing.