The Curtain

‘Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.’
-- John Dryden

Part I

The curtain moved. Professor Eberhardt saw it move. How, or why he had even noticed the slight stirring of the tattered cloth from such a distance, he had no idea. But he saw the curtain move, and it disturbed him.

Shaking off his momentary distraction, the professor continued pedaling his red Schwinn Varsity up the gradual incline of the old country road, on his way to Litchmoor University. For more than twenty years, he had ridden his bike to work whenever the weather permitted. He always took the same route along Mast Road, turning left onto Litchmoor Road and up the hill to the old college. Today was no different.

It was a bright and brisk October morning in Madbury – that time of the year when the breeze moves through the branches of the tall hardwoods more playfully than in summertime, rousing and tugging at the weary leaves that stubbornly cling with waning strength to their high perches. Despite their obstinance, though, they cannot avoid the certainty that the supple greenness of their youth must always fade to rusty red, or yearnful yellow, or bitter brown, and all too soon they must fall.

Professor Eberhardt left his bike in the usual spot outside Clayton Hall and climbed the stairs to the office suite he shared with his longtime friend and colleague Professor Spurling.

“Morning, John!” Professor Spurling’s thin, raspy voice called from behind his desk.

“Morning, Frank! How was your weekend?” Professor Eberhardt replied perfunctorily, as he pulled stacks of papers and several books from his overfilled briefcase.

While Professor Spurling described his various weekend activities, Professor Eberhardt was drawn back to the ragged curtain hanging in the small window of that shabby house off the road at the edge of the woods.

“I’d swear I saw it move,” he muttered.

“What? John, are you even listening? I mean, you asked the question for heaven’s sake,” his colleague interrupted himself with feigned indignation.

“Hmm? Oh. Oh, I’m sorry Frank,” Professor Eberhardt answered, “It’s just, I don’t know, I think I saw something this morning, and it’s bothering me a bit. That’s all. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

“Well then, what is it you think you saw?” Professor Spurling asked.

“Oh, nothing. It was nothing, really. Never mind,” Eberhardt replied.

“Suit yourself,” Spurling responded dismissively, returning to the work on his desk. Eberhardt set to reviewing his notes for a lecture on the English Civil War, which he would deliver later that morning to an audience of twenty-three less-than-interested sophomores.

“You know that old run-down house on Mast Road near Knox Brook?” Professor Eberhardt asked after a few minutes, “Sits way back off the road, almost in the woods?”

“Hmm? Yes, I believe so. It’s an eyesore,” responded the other professor without looking up, “What about it?”

“I must have ridden past that house a thousand times and I’ve never taken any notice of it,” Eberhardt continued.

“Not surprising,” said Spurling.

“No. No, it’s not,” acknowledged Eberhardt, “But today for some peculiar reason I noticed that an old curtain in one of the windows moved slightly as I rode by.”

“What’s so peculiar about that?” Spurling asked.

“Oh, nothing, I suppose. Except it was peculiar. The way it moved was weird – not natural. I can’t get it out of my mind, but every time I picture it, I get a chill down my spine. And why on earth should I have been looking at just the right time to see it move that way? And so far from the road, how did I even notice it at all? It’s such a small thing, but it’s weighing on me.”

“You could overthink a doughnut,” Professor Spurling chided his friend, “Forget about it, John.” But he could not.

Part II

Later in the evening, as he left his office for home, Professor Eberhardt’s thoughts returned to the derelict shack near the woods, with the worn-out curtain in its small window. He would of course pass the place again on his ride home. Did that realization suddenly cause a cold emptiness to begin gnawing at the pit of his stomach? Or was he merely peckish after a long day?

Stepping into the chilly autumn half-light, he slowly ambled to where his red bike waited for him against the side of Clayton Hall. After securing his briefcase to the book rack behind the seat, he set off for home. As he turned onto Litchmoor Road, the professor reminded himself that regardless of his current inexplicable apprehensions, he always enjoyed the evening ride far more than the morning commute.

For one thing, while the journey from his home to the university was an increasingly steep uphill climb, the return trip was almost entirely downhill, requiring much less effort on his part. This allowed him to focus less on the pedaling, and more on enjoying the scenery. But it might truthfully be said that the most significant reason for his preference arose from the natural gratification we all experience when returning home from a day’s work.

On this particular evening, though, troubling images of a foreboding curtained window intruded upon Professor Eberhardt’s thoughts as he coasted down to the foot of College Hill. A tightness gripped his chest, and he felt his heart racing as he turned onto Mast Road and approached the old house. He resolved to ignore it. He would simply ride by the place without a glance and be done with it.

But as the weathered walls of the former farmstead came into view, a curious compulsion took hold of him. He couldn’t simply pedal past the old house. That momentary morning glimpse of the shifting curtain had taunted him all day with a strange mix of anxiety and fear. What caused him to dwell upon it so? Despite his perplexing aversion, the professor could not go on without another look at that curtain.

Yielding to his mind’s fixation, he slowed his bicycle to a stop and looked intently across the road at the cause of his discomfort. The ancient shack scowled back at him from the lengthening shadows of the gray twilight. There was the window. And there was the tattered curtain, barely visible in the gathering gloom.

It moved again. The curtain moved so quickly that it startled the professor, causing him to gasp out loud. It had not been drawn aside as one would ordinarily expect, but instead simply vanished. He saw the tattered curtain, and then he did not. There it was and then not, as if for that precise moment of motion, the entire world had disappeared and reappeared in an instant, the movement completed. And in the place where the curtain had been, he saw the darkness for the first time, a Stygian lightlessness so vast and deep that it could not possibly be contained within the room behind that window.

Professor Eberhardt was frozen. His heart pounded in his chest as the utter blackness behind the curtain filled him with dread. Never had he seen such a deep absence of light, as though the room behind the curtain was saturated with the very essence of nothingness. And though he perceived the enormity of that emptiness, he could not comprehend it.

As the frightened professor peered through the weather-beaten frame of the dark portal, his consciousness was drawn into it, his visual perception strangely penetrating ever deeper into the fathomless void beyond, seemingly able to probe to the very edges of the universe within the four walls of that tiny cabin. Yet, nevertheless, he could see nothing, only the overwhelming dark emptiness that instilled in him a fear like he had never before experienced.

And then, as his strangely heightened faculties of sight explored the empty black shadows of that inky darkness, he sensed a presence that his inflamed mind could not deny, but all the same struggled to put a name to. Someone, or something, was in there. Vaguely discernible, disembodied, unclearly formed in his imagination, he felt its presence as if it were creeping under his skin. What it was, the professor had no inkling. But he knew in the marrow of his bones that something in that house was watching him. He could feel its gaze upon him. It saw him.

“Jesus!” the professor shouted as he sped away from the terrifying place toward his home. He could not grasp what he had just experienced. Waves of fear and panic poured over him as he struggled to comprehend it, while racing to get as far away from there as he could, only slowing down when he reached his house.

Nearly stumbling as he leapt from his bicycle, Professor Eberhardt ran up the steps, across the porch, and through the front door, locking it behind him. He immediately went into his study and poured himself a glass of sherry, finishing it in a single swallow before pouring another one and sinking into the easy chair in the corner. He sipped his second sherry more slowly, struggling to make sense of what he had only moments ago encountered, less than a mile up the road from his home.

Part III

Professor Eberhardt pulled a cigarette from the pack of Chesterfields sitting on the side table and lit it with the silver Zippo his wife had given him for their 25th wedding anniversary. As he smoked the cigarette and sipped the sherry, his breathing calmed, and the pounding in his head subsided. He glanced across the room at the framed portrait on his desk. He missed her terribly.

Drawing slowly on his cigarette, Professor Eberhardt wondered what Christina would think if she could see him in this moment, cowering behind locked doors, literally afraid of the dark. The thought embarrassed him and fortified him all at once. What had come over him? He had let his imagination run wild, and for what? A tiny gust of wind?

The old professor chuckled as he extinguished the cigarette. Rising from his armchair, he went to the kitchen to prepare his dinner. As he ate, he thought again of his wife. Her passing had been a difficult one, and her suffering had caused him great anguish. And although wise men extol the gradual healing powers of time, the still-grieving professor had yet to experience those powers for himself, even after seven long and lonely years. So, he waited.

Professor Eberhardt was a man of deep faith, to which he often turned in times of adversity or misfortune. He was certain that Christina’s soul rested peacefully in Heaven among the angels and the saints, and that one day, God willing, he would join her there. Yet, despite the certainty of his faith, and the yearning of his heart to be reunited with his beloved Christina, the contemplation of his own eternity remained for him a frightful exercise.

The weary professor washed his dinner dishes, while the rumble of distant thunder in the west signaled an imminent autumn storm, and grey clouds hurried to obscure the moon. As the rain began to fall, he remembered he had left his briefcase outside on the book rack of his bike. He laughed at himself as he ran out the door to retrieve his briefcase and put his bike in the garage. By the time he returned to the house, his clothes were nearly soaked through.

He spent the rest of the evening contemplating a well-worn volume of Cicero, after immersing his chilled old bones in the soothing waters of a hot bath. Just as the heat of the bath had warmed his body, the philosopher’s Consolation warmed his soul and eased his mind, filling with comforting logic any tiny space which may have remained between his faith in an afterlife and his actual belief in its existence.

Out of habit, when he had completed his prayers, Professor Eberhardt hung his Rosary on the bedpost and wound his alarm clock before turning off the light on his nightstand. Only the radium-green hands of the clock violated the darkness of his room as the autumn rain clattered against the slate-shingled roof, and the wind howled outside his window.

While he slept, Professor Eberhardt found himself in the center of a large, dark room. A small, tattered curtain hung in the only window. It was nighttime outside. The room he stood in was dark, darker than the night sky. He could not make out its edges, but the place felt very large to him. As he looked around, though he saw nothing, he could sense that the room was getting larger, expanding in all directions until it was so immense that he feared he might be destroyed by its awesome vastness. He was alone.

Petrified, he wondered how he had come to this place, and why. He had been there a long time. How long, he could not tell. In the far distance, he heard the sound of something slowly beating, like a drum. Almost imperceptibly, the rhythmic pounding became stronger, and it seemed to come closer. Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly the unrelenting assault upon his senses grew louder, and sharper, like an insistent knocking upon a door. Closer and closer it came to him, but he could not determine its source.

It seemed to emanate from all around him, from a great distance and from right beside him at the same time. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. The incessant threatening sound concussed his mind. He wanted to cover his ears, but he could not move. The pounding went on and on, louder and louder, for what seemed like ages until he finally awoke with a scream, sitting bolt upright in his bed and dripping with cold sweat.

He turned on the bedside light. It was three in the morning. The rain and thunder continued. The pounding noise also continued. It came from outside the house, just beyond the draperies of his bedroom window. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Someone was trying to get in! The professor paused, glancing around the dimly illuminated room. He got out of his bed and put on his robe. Slowly, he stepped toward the window.

The steady, measured rapping continued ominously. Who, or what, could be so relentlessly banging on his bedroom window at this ungodly hour? Fearing what he might discover, Professor Eberhardt moved closer to the source of the frightening sound. He hesitated, then reluctantly reached out to grasp the drapes. Mustering all that remained of his courage, he flung them open, and released a blood chilling shriek of terror.

There, floating in the rainy darkness just beyond the glass, mere inches from him, Professor Eberhardt saw the fearsome apparition of a monstrous demon, arms outstretched as if to grab for him, its eyes insanely wide and its mouth agape, twisted into a horrible menacing grin. The thing was terrifying, with ghastly shadows obscuring its gruesome face. Just then, an enormous bolt of lightning ripped through the night sky with a thunderous crash.

In that very instant, Professor Eberhardt recognized the marauding specter that hovered before him. It was the monster that had watched him from the farmhouse! It had followed him! It had come for him! With another uncontrollable shriek, he stumbled backward onto his bed and fell into a delirious stupor, before fading off to sleep.

Part IV

When he awoke to the ringing of his alarm, Professor Eberhardt saw the early morning dawn peeking through half of his bedroom window. The other half was obscured by the shutter, blown closed during the storm the night before. He sat up and silenced the clock, struggling to piece together a deluge of vague, swirling impressions. Slowly, the rough contours of his dream emerged from the fog of his memory, along with his puzzling overreaction to the banging of a loose shutter and a reflection in his window. What was happening to him?

Exhausted, the professor made his way with heavy steps to the bathroom sink and splashed cold water on his face. As he cleared his eyes, he was frightened by the haggard image that looked back at him from the mirror, which further agitated his already excited mind. What was so different today that he should be so easily startled? Nothing. There in the mirror was John Eberhardt – the same John Eberhardt who had been there the day before and the day before that. But this morning the face in the mirror was frightening, and the man looking at it was frightened. “What do you want?” he asked the unnerving image in an urgent whisper. It did not answer.

Although tired and out of sorts after his fitful night, the dutiful professor realized he had a full Tuesday schedule of lectures and seminars ahead of him, so he had best make the most of it. After reciting his morning prayers, he prepared his usual breakfast, but only managed to choke down a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. His heart just wasn’t in it. Breaking with his regular routine, he left for work ten minutes earlier than usual; there was a stop he had to make on the way.

As he approached Knox Brook, the now familiar nausea gripped his gut once again. Crossing over the rocky stream, he knew the old, abandoned farmhouse would soon come into view. This morning, he would not try to avoid it. He would confront the source of his recent troubles. He would stop at the empty house and prove to himself once and for all that there was nothing extraordinary about the place, or the curtain, or the room behind it.

It was only a few moments before he saw the stark outline of his destination, crouching back in the shadows, still waiting to be touched by the first rays of the morning sun. Unlike the evening before, no inner voice compelled him to stop. It took a significant exercise of will, to park his bike at the overgrown dirt path that led to the entrance and walk toward the curtained window that had seized control of his mind since he first noticed it the previous morning.

He fixed his eyes upon the small square of tattered cloth – all that stood between him and the dreadful darkness that had disturbed his dreams. Irrational fear grew in him with each step, increasing exponentially as the distance between him and the curtain decreased. He knew the curtain would move. It was only a question of when.

The professor could smell the musty dampness of the soil, as the last night’s rain evaporated into the warming morning air that blew gently against his face. With each footfall he could hear the scraping of the gravel beneath the leather soles of his brown oxfords. His fingers trembled slightly as he strode steadily up the pathway, never taking his eyes off of the closed curtain.

Breathing rapidly in anxious anticipation, Professor Eberhardt was about to step onto the porch, when suddenly the curtain moved yet again. Just as on the previous evening, and right before his eyes, the curtain disappeared in an instant. Then, in another instant, it reappeared, and then disappeared again, over and over in swift succession. Nothing else moved – not the air, not the trees, not the terrified professor – only the tattered curtain, blinking in and out of existence with the rapid repetition of a skipping phonograph needle on a worn 78 rpm record.

After a moment that seemed like an eternity to him, the strange shifting of the curtain stopped, and Professor Eberhardt felt the scrutiny of the phantom presence upon him once again. He watched as the black nothingness behind the curtain slowly poured out of the window, spilling down the wall and onto the porch. It grew and spread as it flooded through the small aperture, blotting out everything with which it came into contact. With apparent intention, the darkness flowed toward the professor. He could no longer see the window, and then the house was gone, and then the woods behind it.

Professor Eberhardt turned and ran as fast as his legs would carry him down the gravel path to his bicycle and tore off toward Litchmoor and the safety of his office. But the expanding nothingness chased hard after him, billowing, growing and consuming everything in its path as it resolutely advanced, guided by the unbroken watch of the terrifying presence within its depths.

Faster and faster the frightened professor pedaled, as the expanding blackness kept pace. When he turned onto Litchmoor Road, the inky cloud turned with him, now enormous and obliterating everything it encountered. He stood on the pedals as he struggled to go faster up College Hill. But still the dreadful growing emptiness followed. He could feel the awful gaze from within it burning upon his skin like a lamp.

Professor Eberhardt’s heart pounded wildly in his chest. Sweat dripped from every pore of his body as he pedaled with all of his might in a final effort to escape. The road became steeper, and despite his exertions he could not maintain his speed. Consumed by terror, he felt the darkness approaching, yet he continued to struggle up the hill, propelled by his intense fear of the fiend that had him in its sights.

Curling fingers of jet black nothingness slowly moved around him, pulling at his shoulders and his waist, and tugging at his legs. He was exhausted. His lungs were on fire and a stabbing pain ripped through his chest. He screamed in fear and agony as he realized he could go no further. The timeless blackness engulfed and consumed him. The searing pain in his chest subsided. He fell into Christina’s arms. He was no longer alone. He was no longer afraid.