Snowball Read online

  “Okay, let’s do this,” Erin said as she returned inside and closed the door behind her, two brooms in hand as she shivered. A draft of cold air wafted in behind her, and Brandon wondered if this was the temperature drop he had felt.

  He grabbed a broom and followed her lead as she started to sweep the mess. The cotton clumped into piles, but the broom bristles had no chance of scraping what clung to the fibers of the carpet, leaving a thin layer of what looked like frost on the lawn after a sprinkle of snowfall on a winter morning.

  “I know this is a stressful time of the year,” Erin said. “But try to make the best of it. Laugh things off and don’t take everything so seriously. Remember last year when Riley pulled down the Christmas stockings and ate all the chocolate? You were so close to getting upset, but look at how funny it is now.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, I just like things to go smoothly. This week has been a mess.”

  And there’s a new spirit living in the house, just come out and say what you really think is going on.

  He would never say such a thing to Erin. The idea seemed absurd even to himself, likely an overreaction.

  As they swept the family room, Brandon felt eyes watching him, and it wasn’t from the plastic eyes that had already been swept away. Something was nearby, studying him, waiting for him.

  He tried to shake the feeling from his body, and it worked momentarily. Keeping his mind occupied helped, so he focused on sweeping, then vacuuming, maintaining small talk with his wife as they cleaned their house, their kids still innocent and sleeping upstairs.

  But those invisible eyes held their hidden stare, burning into his conscience where its presence would remain as the countdown dwindled toward Christmas.

  6

  December 12

  Brandon supposed he might be going a little crazy. The lunacy of the holiday season had a tendency to make even the most laidback people snap under pressure. He often wondered why Christmas couldn’t be more like Thanksgiving, gathering with family and friends to enjoy a meal and passing out from food intoxication. Why did Christmas turn the entire month of December into chaos?

  Christmas or not, the week had been turmoil for Brandon. While Erin was right about the incidents being minor, he believed something bigger was at play. The events were too random, and now too consistent, to brush off as coincidences. His mind flooded with a constant paranoia. Even while eating dinner with the family, Brandon kept his attention fixed around the house, waiting for something to move on its own, or perhaps hear a creaky floorboard while they all sat at the dining table.

  In bed, he tossed and turned, entangling the sheets between his legs while his body refused to find a comfortable position. The thermostat was always set in the low 70’s during the winter months, yet a slick layer of sweat formed on his bare back, the sheets clinging to him as he flipped over every five minutes like a steak on a grill. Trying to clear his mind only led to more thoughts, falling down a mental rabbit hole that was only present in the middle of a difficult night.

  Erin snored beside him, oblivious to what might be taking place in their home. And that’s what made it difficult for him to tell her his thoughts on the matter. There was no way to express what he believed without suggesting he might be losing his grip on reality. Besides, Erin handled the brunt of the Christmas preparation and didn’t need to stress about anything further.

  Yet, Brandon felt it when he worked from home, alone in the house, but not feeling alone. It was more a sense of being watched. When he had stayed at skyscraper hotels in big cities for certain work trips, it sometimes felt as if he was being watched through the window where he stayed twenty levels above ground. Surely some dirty old man was across town in his own elevated room, watching through binoculars. With that thought, Brandon always closed the curtains before getting naked to climb into bed.

  He felt this same sensation as the clock approached one in the morning on Thursday. Someone’s eyes were on him, and apparently no one else in the house felt it. His boss had told him to work from home for the rest of the week, but at this point he wanted to get as far away from the house as possible.

  His brain was a pile of dry brush, burning and itching with fatigue, eyelids swollen and heavy, and for a brief moment, the exhaustion won. All of the random fear had scattered away like chickens sighting a fox, and he dozed into a light sleep for the next four hours.

  * * *

  When he woke at five o’clock, Brandon’s mind and body demanded he stay in bed. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, his head heavy as if hungover, but the only thing he had drunk the night before was a tall glass of paranoia. The heater hummed, its white noise steady and soothing, and probably to credit for him falling and staying asleep. He had reached a point where he thought he could hear every single sound in the house, from the structure creaking as a gush of wind hit the exterior, to the distant wheezing from Nemo sleeping downstairs.

  The fact that he could work from home again meant he could sleep an extra hour. So he debated in his bleary, exhausted mind if the extra sleep outweighed another day home alone.

  Just sleep, he told himself. There’s nothing haunting the house – you’re just tired and jumping to irrational conclusions. Sleep will clear your mind.

  As he flipped back onto his side, his brain woke up and started having more thoughts.

  What’s waiting for me today? No point in stopping after three days of fun. What will go wrong once I step out of bed?

  The curiosity swelled; he just knew something was going to go wrong this morning. Brandon believed in trends, and dammit, this ought to be a clean week of morning surprises. Part of him wanted to get out of bed and head downstairs to see what awaited. He would do a lap around the house, check inside the garage for any flat tires or fluid spills, see what Nemo was up to last night, and maybe make a gallon of coffee to get through what was sure to be a day from hell.

  Go to sleep, get another hour. And since you’re working from home, you can take a nap on your hour lunch break, maybe even doze off a little early. Then you’ll be all caught up.

  Brandon giggled, slaphappy as he lay next to his sleeping wife. He hadn’t been caught up on sleep since Riley was born, fighting the good fight that all parents do in trying to squeeze in any few minutes of shut-eye they can steal.

  It was a struggle, but he eventually dozed off for a few minutes before waking to the sound of the shower in their master bathroom. The noise was distant as he remained many levels below full consciousness, but he was still alert enough to wonder why Erin was up so early to shower, and why she hadn’t closed the door. Too tired to actually care, Brandon let himself remain under the tight grip of sleep.

  After what may have been ten seconds or twenty minutes—his sense of time a lost cause—he jolted awake when Erin reached over and nudged him. She also remained mostly asleep, not even opening her eyes as she mumbled, “You left the shower on.”

  “No!” Brandon barked as if he had been wrongly accused. He lunged out of bed, balance slightly off, tumbling over a pile of dirty clothes he kept on the floor. “Riley?” he shouted as he raced into the bathroom, flipping on the light switch.

  Not only was the shower on and blasting at the hottest temperature possible, but scorching water blasted from the sink. Steam filled the bathroom, the sound of water droplets exploding on the porcelain shower floor. It had grown so thick that Brandon could barely see beyond three feet, while the humidity filled his lungs with a heavy dampness.

  He slid open the shower door to find no one inside. His first thought had been that Riley turned on the shower for whatever reason—who else would have done it? He flailed at the knobs, first turning them the wrong way before turning them off, and then reached across to turn off the sink, letting the bathroom fall into a steamy silence.

  Brandon grew dizzy after jumping out of bed so abruptly, his vision pulsing in and out of focus, heart pounding like a trapped animal in a cage. He dashed out of their bathroom and down the hallway to R
iley’s room where she snored, limbs spread in every direction. Across the hallway Jordan also remained asleep, though a bit more organized than his sister as he lay flat on his back with only his arms spread out at his sides.

  Who the hell turned on the water?

  Brandon’s head had been ringing, but now started to settle, the sound of running water filling his ears. He remained frozen as he stood in Jordan’s doorway, focusing his mind to figure out if the sound was real or simply an after effect of what had woken him.

  It’s real.

  It came from the kids’ shared bathroom in the main hallway. Brandon took slow steps away from Jordan’s room and tiptoed toward it, the noise growing louder. The bathroom’s light was turned off, and as he stood outside the open door, looking into the black hole, it became clear that the water was running from the sink.

  Legs wobbling with terror, he forced a confident step into the bathroom, flipping on the light switch and turning off the sink in one rushed motion. Just as in his bathroom, no obvious explanation existed as to what happened. The kids’ bathroom had a bathtub behind a hanging curtain, so he pulled the curtain back out of instinct.

  The bathtub’s water was indeed running, although at a slow, dripping pace.

  Drip.

  Brandon stared at it, brows furrowed, arms trembling beyond his realization.

  Drip.

  A small puddle had formed around the tub’s drain where the droplets had fallen. It was hardly enough water to pour into the drain, a stream the width of a needle running from the puddle into the small, black hole.

  Drip.

  Someone turned on the water. Someone is in the house.

  Drip.

  Brandon couldn’t take it anymore and turned the tub’s knob to end the slow, taunting drip. He shuffled out of the bathroom and returned to the bedroom where Erin had somehow managed to stay asleep.

  “Erin, get up,” he whispered.

  “What’s wrong,” she mumbled, rolling onto her back as she stretched her arms over her head, joints cracking.

  “I think someone’s in the house.”

  This got her full attention as she bolted upright, suddenly wide awake as if it had been lunch time and not four in the morning.

  “Shhhhhhh.” Brandon pressed his index finger against his wife’s lips to keep her from shouting. “Grab your bat and wait in the hallway outside the kids’ rooms.”

  They each kept a baseball bat between the bed and their nightstands. Erin kicked the sheets off her legs as she hurled herself toward the bat, snatching it like her life depended on it. Brandon shuffled around the bed to grab his.

  “I’m going downstairs.”

  “Should I call the cops?”

  “Not right now. We don’t even know if the person is still in the house. Let me go look.”

  Brandon was terrified to have to head downstairs alone, but that was the price of being the head of the household. He’d have to sacrifice himself if it meant sparing the three precious lives upstairs.

  Tears ran down Erin’s cheeks. “And get shot if he has a gun? No, I’m calling the cops,” she demanded, flailing in the dark for her cell phone. “I don’t want you going down there.”

  “If someone was trying to hurt us they would have done it while we slept. The kids are fine and so are we—just let me go see what’s going on.”

  Brandon said this through gritted teeth, his nervousness clashing with frustration. Part of him believed there was no one in the house and there had to be a logical explanation for the running water. Why would someone go through the trouble of breaking into a home to turn on the shower and sinks? Perhaps they wanted to create a white noise upstairs while they robbed the main level. Surely turning on the water couldn’t have been the objective of their trip.

  Thinking about it made Brandon feel violated. Someone had entered their home and walked up the steps while everyone slept, slipping into the bathrooms to turn on the water, and disappearing without a trace. He tightened his grip on the bat, growing determined to bash in the skull of whoever might be downstairs.

  His quivering legs stepped out of the bedroom and down to the top step. Erin trailed behind, bat gripped tightly and held high in front of her as she scurried down the hallway to plant herself as sentry outside of the kids’ rooms.

  The staircase led down to an open landing beside the front door. To the left was the family room, to the right the hallway that had seen shattered pictures a couple days earlier, and beyond that, the living and dining rooms. Twelve steps separated the upstairs from the main level, and by the fourth step down Brandon had a clear view of the front door, closed and the lock bolted.

  Okay, so they didn’t come in through the front.

  His mind raced, trying to figure out both how the intruder entered, and where they might currently be, his walloping heart the only audible sound. If they were trying to rob the house, then the back door made no sense. It would be too difficult to lug things outside and have to either hop the fence or run all the way around the house to the gate. The garage would be much easier for entry and exit.

  When he reached the third step from the bottom, the staircase’s walls opened up, exposing Brandon like a sitting duck. Only he didn’t fear being attacked, as he once again heard running water. His grip on the bat loosened, shoulders slumped, and he hurried the final steps until his bare feet met the coolness of the hardwood floor on the main level. All the lights were off, but he still managed to see the backdoor was closed, the blinds shut over the sliding glass door. And so was the door to the garage, closed and the lock bolted, just as they had left it before going up to bed. Nemo snoozed in the corner, undisturbed.

  The running water was clearly coming from the kitchen sink. Brandon flipped on the light switch in the family room to reveal an undisturbed space.

  Sweat slicked his palms and made for a slippery grip on the baseball bat Brandon supposed he no longer needed. It appeared no one had broken into the house, a fact both relieving and terrifying at the same time. His senses remained on high alert as his feet shuffled along the soft carpet of the family room toward the kitchen. He craned his neck for a view and saw the sink’s faucet lever sticking straight up as steaming hot water spouted out. He lowered the bat and darted to the sink, turning it off.

  They had a bathroom in the hallway and he checked there as well. As expected, the sink was turned on, hot water only, splashing and making a mess on the counter top. He turned the knob off and racked his brains for any reason all the water in the house would turn on without anyone causing it to do so. He knew of power surges that caused the breakers to switch off, but was there such thing as a water surge? Perhaps a pipe burst somewhere in the city and sent an overflow of water to their house, forcing its way past the closed valves to create an early morning of chaos. It didn’t sound possible, but he’d plan to look it up when his heart rate returned to normal and his mind could think clearly.

  With all of the water turned off, Brandon returned to the kitchen, swiveling around in search of anything that may have caused all of this. He found nothing. Nothing but the creepy elf sitting in the wreath that hung on the inside garage door. It was surely his overactive and flustered mind, but Brandon swore the elf was looking at him. Grinning at him in a way that no longer looked childish, but slightly evil.

  He brushed it off. It may as well have been a shadow he was jumping away from. “Erin!” he shouted as he started back towards the stairs. “Everything is fine down here.”

  He rumbled up the steps, legs no longer shaking, the baseball bat a piece of wood again and not a deadly weapon. He reached the top landing to find Erin taking short steps away from the kids’ rooms, her baseball bat still mounted in an attack position.

  “There’s nothing down there,” Brandon said in the most confident voice he could muster. “Not a thing. Nemo was sleeping, nothing was touched, all the doors are locked.”

  Erin lowered the bat. “I don’t understand. Who turned on the water?”

&
nbsp; Brandon shrugged. “I think this was some sort of freak plumbing incident. I’m not sure what else it could be. Nothing else happened besides the running water… I’ll call a plumber later today and see what they think.”

  Erin still had shock on her face, her eyes bulging but starting to settle back in to their sockets. “If you say so. And you’re sure everything is okay downstairs?” Her eyes glanced to the stairs as if hell itself waited at the bottom.

  “I promise. Let’s try to have a normal day and not worry about this.”

  Brandon embraced his wife and kissed her on the forehead, the eyes and grin from the elf still burned into the forefront of his thoughts.

  7

  December 13

  They made it through the prior day running on mental fumes, and after putting the kids to bed later that night, immediately went to sleep a few minutes before eight o’clock. He and Erin had shared a brief conversation before dozing off, Brandon explaining that it was perfectly plausible for water faucets to turn themselves on. There were actual cases of this happening due to water pressure adjusting during the cold winter months. Checking back, last night had fallen a few ticks below twenty degrees, cold enough for the strange phenomenon to occur.

  This explanation satisfied Erin, although Brandon had stretched the truth. These occurrences were only possible when the outside temperature dropped below five degrees and subsequently rose above thirty the following day. Neither of these had happened, and Brandon still believed someone had to have done it.

  When Brandon woke on Friday morning, he found, much to his delight, that nothing had gone wrong in the house overnight.