Blind

I awake on the floor in the dark. All around me is emptiness, inexplicable emptiness. The thick blackness pushes against my eyeballs, digging its thumbs into my skull. Disoriented, I scrabble against the floor, a thin and matted carpet. How did I get here?

Earlier that evening I had been trick-or-treating, I remember. What happened then? Skipping down the street with my brother Clarence and parents trailing behind. My pumpkin bucket clattering with candies and the tutu of my witch costume bouncing with my steps. We had gotten back to the house late, me with a bit of a stomachache after eating every single Twix in my bucket, and Clarence with all the licorice I got, since I didn’t like those ones. Then I had left my witch costume in a heap on the floor and crawled into bed. 

Bed… I fumble around blindly in the dark, but all I feel is that ugly carpet. No clothes on the floor, no candy wrappers. Feeling along the wall on my hands and knees, I reach the spot where my bed frame is–where it should be. I reach out to grab onto its sturdy wooden form in the darkness, and close my hand around empty air. Unsteady, I wobble forwards and almost smash my face into the grimy tufts of the un-vacuumed carpet. It’s gone. Something really weird must have happened. There is nothing left in my room. Nothing left but me.

Ignoring the flutters of nervousness in my stomach, I wobble to my feet on sleepy legs. A dim, watery light shakes me out of my temporary blindness as I turn towards the door. It is coming from down the stairs, shining weakly across the width of the hall and through my wide-open door. I feel my way to the door in the faint gray glow, my hand on the door frame. I thought my mommy had closed the door when she said goodnight, I think to myself. Even inside my own head, the words tremble with a hint of fear. But it’s okay, I think to myself; no need to be afraid. I’m just nervous because of those mean stories Clarence told me about zombies and vampires. It’s not real.

 I step into the hallway. Darkness gapes at me from either side, where the thin gleam doesn’t illuminate the foot-printed carpet, or the plaster-colored walls, notched in places with little scratches that have been there since we moved in. Down that way is where my parents' bedroom was… or should have been. Something seems strange in the dark. My feet make no sound on the thin carpeted floor, not even over the patches where the boards always creaked under the musty coating of dust.

The cloudy light stretches across the hall from the bottom of the stairs, framed by the sharp-angled shadows of the walls. I must have climbed down the stairs, I realize as I stand at the bottom, but somehow I can’t remember doing it; only the ominous door looming at the bottom, painted an oriental matte black. An elaborate golden doorknob gleams in the center of the door, like the plastic pirate coins I had gotten trick-or-treating and left in the bottom of my pumpkin bucket, useless and inedible. I want to reach out and touch it, but I am too afraid. The door isn’t supposed to look like that, I realize. Hadn’t it been a white door, the same shade of off-white as the walls? And hadn’t the doorknob been a little black plastic one on the right-hand side, after Daddy had replaced the old one when it broke? Yes, that was right. I remembered the gaping hole in the wood when he switched them out. I remember peeping through it and laughing. I’m not laughing now. I turn around and hurry up the stairs, the faint light fading slowly as I walk away. It vanishes so slowly that I don’t even notice it disappearing until it is gone completely. And now it is pitch black in the house again, and everything is quiet.

I want to whimper, and cry, or something, but I don’t utter a sound. Instead, I tiptoe down that hallway with its crusty carpet, my hands held out at odd angles in front of me. The door. Where is the door to my room? It should have been wide-open, the way it was when I had woken up on the ground. I run my palm across the wall of the hallway, my blind fingers searching for the light switch, but all my fingertips meet are the scratches and dents in the drywall. I can feel burning tears coming to my eyes as I remember Clarence’s story of angry ghosts that would trap you in a haunted house until you became one of them. This house isn’t haunted, I want to say. It’s my house. But was it even my house anymore? In the dark, it’s hard to tell.

I turn again in the black-choked hallway. With only my hands to guide me, it feels even wider and longer than I remembered. I have to find a door, any door, to get out of the empty darkness. Down, down down the hallway my shaky footsteps carried me. My heart is buzzing again, the way it had when I had gotten home earlier and eaten every one of my chocolates. I hold my breath, my fingers winding across the walls again. Solid, solid, solid…

The wall ends. Next to me was empty darkness, but inside it, a room. I stifle a cry of relief. It was mine, I think to myself, with the door wide open like I remembered. I feel my way to the bed–it was there this time!– and with excited fingers I pull at the blankets to climb up.

I tug, and something tugs back. I let out a short, quiet cry. There is something in the bed, wrapped in the blankets. The something rolls over with a growl. 

“Mika? What are you doing?” grunts a voice. Clarence’s voice! I feel like I’ve been startled back to life by the sound of it. But how can I explain what is going on?

“I can’t find my bed,” I whisper, not knowing if he will believe me.

“I don’t care, get out of my room,” he grumbles again, half-asleep. 

I am too afraid to leave again, to stumble across the hallway in the dark. Not after the weird things that have been happening. I lie down on the carpet of his room and close my eyes against the dark. I don’t know when I was able to fall asleep again, but when I did, I had no more dreams. And in the morning, after he stepped on me climbing out of bed and yelled at me for coming into his room without permission, Clarence finally reassured me that his stories had been made up after all. “You probably just ate too much candy and had a weird dream,” he said grumpily, locking his door on me. But it wasn’t a dream… I think. I just don’t know what it was.