Possessed

Stephanie and Tommy Hodgkins had been married for five years and had settled into a comfortable routine. They spent the first four years of marriage living in an apartment that was near both of their jobs, but had eventually decided to buy a house so that they would have room to start a family. The real estate market was crazy when they began looking, but after about six months they finally closed on a three bedroom single story with two bathrooms and a big yard in a good school district.

Moving out of the small apartment was easy, but filling up the new house took some time. They spent hours furniture shopping and discussing how to best use all the space. Stephanie wanted a crafting room. Tommy wanted a workshop in the garage. They both wanted a garden. They had a hard time deciding which bedroom should eventually be the nursery.

Tommy was an auto mechanic and a fitness nut. He got up early every day to go to the gym before work. Stephanie managed the day shift at a department store and had never been good at mornings. Her store opened at 11 am, so she never bothered setting an alarm and loved waking up naturally. She had a whole routine that involved coffee, breakfast, taking the dog on a walk, and browsing the internet for updates on all her friends and family.

Part of the reason for Tommy’s health obsession was that he had type 1 diabetes. Diagnosed as a child, he had spent his whole life with it. He had heard enough horror stories from doctors to know that if not managed well, his disease could cause serious long term negative health effects. Since meeting Stephanie, he had gotten much more serious about his future. Stephanie loved that about him. His health issues had never really caused her any inconvenience, other than that he usually had to get up at least once in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. In the grand scheme of things, though, that wasn’t so bad.

The Hodgkins settled into their new house quickly and, while slightly different than before, resumed their daily routine with Tommy rising early to exercise before work, Stephanie waking up a few hours later, and then both returning home for dinner around the same time. It was easy and they were both happy.

One morning as she was getting ready to leave for work, Stephanie realized that she’d left her keys in the bedroom. As she walked back toward the master bathroom, she noticed something odd. The wedding picture that she and Tommy had placed on top of the dresser was facedown. She picked up the dislodged frame and was very confused. The glass in front of the picture had cracked almost as if a glass marble had been fired directly at Tommy’s head. A spider web of cracks made his face almost impossible to see, but somehow none of them obscured Stephanie. She snapped a picture with her phone, grabbed her keys, and then left for work feeling very confused.

On her break, Stephanie sent the picture of the mangled frame to Tommy and asked if he had maybe knocked it over on his way out. He said that he definitely didn’t remember doing it, but that he had dressed in the closet and left the bedroom lights off so as not to wake her when he left. Maybe he had bumped the dresser on the way out and not noticed. They both commented that the way the glass had cracked was odd, but neither gave it much thought. The cracked picture was overshadowed by the fact that their new living room set was to be delivered the following day.

One nice thing about the later start of Stephanie’s work day was that she could be available in the morning for trips to the bank, meeting the cable guy, or being available for things like furniture to be delivered. When the big truck rolled up, she already had the door propped open and a map drawn up for the delivery men of where everything should be placed. No expense had been spared, and they had their work cut out. Tommy and Stephanie had ordered a couch with built-in recliners, a loveseat with a pull out bed, a huge entertainment center, a large coffee table, end tables, and two tall lamps. It took a long time to get it all unloaded and unpacked, but Stephanie was delighted with the results. She sent a picture to Tommy and then drove to work.

That night they celebrated with pizza and wine in the living room. They still didn’t have a big tv to put in the entertainment center, but they sat on their massive couched and watched a movie on a laptop perched on top of a pizza box on the coffee table. When the movie was over, they cleaned everything up and started getting ready for bed.

Each night Tommy would pack his gym bag for the next morning. When he walked into the closet and turned on the light, though, he was wildly confused. It appeared that all of his clothes had fallen off the hangers and were in piles on the floor. All of Stephanie’s clothes, however, were still hanging in place.

“Steph?” he called down the hallway.

“Yes?”

“Any idea what happened in the closet?”

“Uhm… no?”

“Come look.”

She walked into the closet of the master bedroom and stopped abruptly with a confused look on her face.

“Doing some… reorganizing?” she finally asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

After several minutes of speculation, neither of them could come up with a reasonable theory, so they quietly put the clothes back on the vacated hangers and then continued preparing for bed. Before going to sleep, Tommy commented that maybe the movers had bumped the wall or something. The back wall of the walk-in closet did border the living room, after all. Neither of them really believed that was why the clothes fell, but it seemed reasonable enough that they could cling to it as a real enough possibility to settle the matter in their minds sufficiently to go to sleep.

The next evening after dinner Stephanie and Tommy were sitting in the living room enjoying the new furniture. Tommy was on his laptop looking for deals on televisions, and Stephanie was on her phone scrolling through pictures of uniquely decorated nurseries and looking for ideas.

“Why do you think it was just my clothes?” asked Tommy suddenly.

“I don’t know,” said Stephanie, looking up from her phone. “I’ve wondered about that too.”

“It’s just weird,” said Tommy. “Like with that picture, it was only my face that got messed up, and then this. Just seems like something’s been targeting me since we moved in here with all  this stuff happening.”

“All this stuff?” said Stephanie with a scolding look. “You mean these two isolated incidents? I think you may be reading a little much into it. Three is a pattern. Two is just a coincidence.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Tommy. “Just seems weird.”

“You know what isn’t weird?” asked Stephanie.

“What’s that?”

“It’s bedtime, AND it’s your turn to take the dog out.”

She jogged off to the bedroom before he could protest.

Herschel was a mutt that Stephanie had adopted from a rescue shelter right after she graduated college. He had been found on the street, so the shelter had no history on him. He was generally very even-tempered and low-maintenance. Over the years, though, he had developed some very peculiar habits. One particularly inconvenient one was that he absolutely refused to use the bathroom unless either Tommy or Stephanie was watching. Because of this, they had developed a tradition of taking turns taking him out in order to spread out the burden of having to stand out in the yard with him when it was cold or raining or late or early.

Tommy followed Herschel out onto the back deck and then stood leaning against the railing as Herschel trotted down the wooden steps and then started sniffing around. It was late fall, and Tommy crossed his arms against the cool breeze. It had been a long day, and he was tired, cold, and irritable. When Herschel finished doing his business, Tommy turned around to open the door, only to discover that it was locked. He was not pleased.

“Not funny, Stephanie,” he said. “Open the door.”

This was an old trick that they’d played on eachother many times since moving into the new house. Usually it was flirty and fun. Tonight it was not.

“Seriously, it’s cold out here, and I need to pack my gym bag.”

There was no response.

Tommy sighed heavily and rolled his eyes.

Out of the corner of his eye, though, he saw movement. He quickly realized that it was Stephanie’s shadow in the light from the bedroom window. He walked over and looked in and could see her washing her face at the sink. Tommy knocked hard on the window, and Stephanie jumped. When she saw that it was Tommy, she rolled her eyes and displayed a solitary middle finger toward the window. Tommy pointed toward the locked door and returned the middle finger. Stephanie looked confused.

Fifteen minutes later, they were next to each other in bed.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said.

“Me either,” said Tommy. “I may have to replace the lock on that door. With as often as one of us has to take Herschel out with the other one not here, we can’t have it randomly locking.”

“Well,” said Stephanie, “I mean… it’s never done that to me.”

“It hadn’t done it to me either,” said Tommy. “Not until tonight. But I don’t want it to happen again.”

“Yeah,” said Stephanie.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Early the next morning, Stephanie felt Tommy roll over and get out of bed. She was half asleep and couldn’t remember if she’d heard his alarm. She heard him go to the bathroom and got excited. Usually when Tommy got up to go to the bathroom, it meant that it was between 2 and 3 am. That meant that she still had several hours left to sleep, and she loved sleep. She heard the toilet flush and then nodded off. She woke up again as she felt Tommy get back into bed and put his arm around her.

Some time later, something woke her up. She was confused. Based on the light coming in around the curtains, it was after dawn, but she could still feel Tommy’s arm draped over her. He should have gone to the gym by now. Something else was wrong too, though. Stephanie slowly realised that her phone was ringing, which was odd because everyone knew not to call her in the morning. She reached over and picked it up off of the nightstand. The incoming call was from Tommy.

Stephanie froze. She tried to slowly roll over, but suddenly the weight of the arm on top of her intensified. She couldn’t move. She felt herself being pulled down into the pillow and mattress. She tried to scream, but it was getting hard to breathe.

As she felt herself suffocate, she heard a deep, staticy, distant voice say “You are mine. This house is mine. He thought it was all his, but he was wrong.”

The voicemail that Tommy left was as follows:

Hey babe. Know you’re probably still asleep, but I just got done at the gym and realized that I don’t have my house key somehow. It’s been on my key ring this whole time, but it’s not now. I checked the truck and parking lot, but it’s not there. Could you look in the garage and see if it fell off there? Anyway, I can just use the garage door opener to get in if I get home before you, but with that back door acting so weird, I want to make sure I have a key before I take Herschel out this evening. Hope you have a great day, and I’ll see you tonight. There are some pretty good Labor Day sales going on right now, and I think it’s time we finally pulled the trigger on some of this baby furniture we’ve been looking at.