Footfalls

Fiction

Harry woke up with a tremor that shook his entire body.  Somebody was walking outside.  Every footfall was as clearly audible as the tick of the old clock in his living room.  The yard all around his house was paved with gravel.  Footfalls and gravel have a unique affinity with each other. 

Harry got out of the bed after listening to the footfalls for a while.  They had approached his bedroom and receded eventually without ever pausing.  Someone had just walked through his yard in the middle of the night.  What’s the time?  He asked himself.  His mobile phone showed 1.24.  It was pitch dark outside.  The silence of the darkness weighed on Harry ominously. 

The footfalls had stopped.  A dog in the neighbouring house, beyond Harry’s rubber trees, began to bark furiously.  Another dog joined the exercise.  Harry’s neighbour had two dogs.  Both of them were barking as if to outsmart each other.

The dogs gave up eventually.  Silence returned.  Absolute silence.  The ominous silence of eternal darkness. 

The same thing happened the next night two.  But this time Harry flashed his torch through the open window as the footfalls beat a ghostly rhythm on his eardrums. He couldn’t see anything.  He realised that he had got out of bed only as the footfalls had begun to recede.  Too late. His mobile phone showed the time 1.24.  His neighbour’s dogs barked furiously.

It was on a full moon night that Harry decided to look out through his window without using his torch.  The footfalls had just receded.  Why didn’t we get out of bed before the footfalls receded?  He asked himself but did not get an answer.  A huge black dog was walking through his rubber trees.  He thought it was a huge black dog.  But he was really not sure whether it was an illusion created by his distressed mind.  

“Sophie, don’t you ever hear any sound in the night?” He asked his wife the next morning.

“Yeah,” she said, “I hear you snoring like mad.”

“Not that,” he hesitated.  Then he explained his queer experience.

“Why don’t you wake me up tonight when the sound is heard?” Sophie asked.

“But I’m totally paralysed until the sound begins to recede,” he explained.

“Okay, set the alarm for 1.15 tonight.”

The alarm went on at 1.15.  Sophie’s heavy breathing was interrupted instantly.  Then there was only the eternal silence of the impenetrable darkness beyond the moonlight.  No footfalls.  The clock on the mobile phone showed 1.34. 

“You must have been dreaming,” Sophie said as she turned to the other side and pulled the light blanket over her.  “You don’t pray before going to bed, that’s why,” she mumbled. Her breathing became heavy soon. 

It’s then that a realisation fell on Harry.  He missed the footfalls.  It’s not because they betrayed him before his wife.  It’s that they had become an integral part of his nights.  An integral part of his DNA, he chuckled.  His chuckle didn’t alter Sophie’s heavy breathing.

Another realisation followed soon.  His neighbour’s dogs had ceased to bark over time though the footfalls had continued.  Dogs too get used to regular footfalls, perhaps.

He was consoled the next night.  The footfalls came as Sophie lay breathing heavily.  The soft yet firm chuck-chuck sound on the gravel.  Chuck chuck chuck, it went.  Harry lay blissfully paralysed in his bed.  He knew he would get up and check the time on his mobile phone.  He knew what it would show.  He loved that certainty.  At least one thing was certain in his life.