You arrive home from a hard, troubled night at the hospital ward. Tried, fingers numb, you misjudge getting your key into the front door. You wrestle with it, trying to slot the small key into the Yale lock. You get it on the third try and unlock the door.
Going in, the house is silent. You live alone, but that’s how you like it now. Once you had a family – a lazy husband or wife and five demanding children. You were happy and have so many memories to look back upon. The children are grown, have their own lives and families. Your husband or wife is dead and you have long accepted that.
Had you really had that life?
You can’t remember. You are too tried.
Closing and locking the door, you put your rucksack on the floor. Kick off your shoes and tug off your jacket. You drop that on top of your bag and reach for the light switch. As your fingers reach up, you feel a blast of cold air. Your fingers touch the switch panel and something else.
You stop and look in the direction of the switch. It’s too dark to see anything and not enough light from the street can filter through the frosted glass door windows. Shrugging it off, you slide your fingers up to the switch.
There!
The touch of something!
What is it?
You frown, pull a confused face and try for a few seconds to figure out what that is.
It is cold like a drift from the fridge. It felt soft, but strangely not fully solid. That fact further puzzles you and leads to your fingers feeling more.
A hand!
Oh my God!
You go to recoil, think better and hit the switch. Light blinds you and the hallway. You feel your breath and heart racing. You look at the wall. There’s nothing there. You inspect the wallpaper, feeling it carefully. Touching the switch again, you sense nothing.
Just your mind playing with you because of the tiredness.
Grabbing your stuff, you go up to bed. Laying there you try to laugh it off and blame it on your bad day. A nurse or a doctor’s life is tough.
Dawn starts to break and you began to doze.
Maybe it was a ghost?
What? Haha. Why would you think that?
No. It was nothing. Just shadows and imagination. Maybe there’d been an insect on the wall? Perhaps you had something stuck to your hand and didn’t know about it? It could have been anything, but what if…?
You listen, suddenly more awake then before. You can’t hear anything inside. Outside comes the quiet calling of birds and car engines just getting through the double glazed windows.
It was nothing, you say then repeat it a loud and get back to resting. Clearing you mind of the whole thing. Whatever it was or is can’t get you now.
You feel whatever it is right before you fall asleep. The dancing black patterns before your closed eyelids. That notion of floating or falling. Everything becoming lighter then heavier. The loss of everything.
Your last thought as in distance you hear a familiar click noise; perhaps, it is…
The Story Files 