Horror was one of my first loves as a reader and writer. I stayed up all night to read "Carrie" by Stephen King when I was 12, and it changed my creative voice forever. I write "normal" stuff sometimes, but this is my bread, blood, and butter. Shout out to Ray Bradbury for inspiring this one.
HARMON FAMILY SMART HOME SYSTEM ENGAGED. IT IS NOW 21:00 EASTERN STANDARD TIME. SCHEDULED AIR CONDITIONING DECREASE ENGAGING. FANS POWERING DOWN. INTERIOR TEMPERATURE SET TO 76 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. FRONT DOOR LOCK ENGAGED. BASEMENT DOOR LOCK ENGAGED. SIDE DOOR LOCK ENGAGED. ALARM SET TO “STAY.”
MOTION DETECTED: FRONT LAWN, 100 FEET. SCANNING…NO THREAT DETECTED. LIFEFORM INSIGNIFICANT.
SECOND FLOOR BATHROOM LIGHT ACTIVATED. SECOND FLOOR BATHROOM LIGHT DEACTIVATED. SECOND FLOOR BATHROOM LIGHT ACTIVATED. SECOND FLOOR BATHROOM LIGHT DEACTIVATED.
MORNING ALARM SET FOR 07:45 EASTERN STANDARD TIME.
MOTION DETECTED: BACKYARD, 150 FEET. SCANNING…POSSIBLE DISTURBANCE. PATIO LIGHT ACTIVATED.
MOTION DETECTED: BACKYARD TOWARDS SIDE DOOR, 50 FEET. SIDE LIGHT ACTIVATED.
MOTION DETECTED: SIDE DOOR TOWARDS FRONT PORCH. PORCH LIGHT ACTIVATED.
IT IS NOW 21:30 EASTERN STANDARD TIME. LAST MOTION DETECTED AT 21:10. NO THREAT DETECTED. EXTERIOR LIGHTS DEACTIVATED.
Paul Hobart exhaled, grateful for the return of darkness. It used to be so easy to sneak up on people. Everyone was more trusting, and houses weren’t the domestic fortresses they are today. But no matter, he was adaptable. It is human nature to change, to evolve to meet one’s surroundings. He eased out of his crouch, giving his burning hamstrings a momentary stretch. Then he ducked under the lowest bough of a large rhododendron bush and inched towards the house.
The Harmon house took on a different persona at night. The attempted quaintness of the red-barn exterior. The baited whisper of the wind passing through the slender maple tree in the front yard. A neglected herb garden wavering in a two-foot square by the porch steps. All these lies stood subtle and sharp in the buttered suburban sunlight, like quiet laughter prickling against your back as you passed by a pack of middle schoolers. The night drew forth secrets, tiny falsehoods casting long shadows in the sinking sun.
Paul stoked his rage into a quiet, desperate roar. He ignored the return of the burn in his thighs, took a deep breath, and lunged forward in one quick motion. He flattened himself against the young trunk of the maple, waiting for the light to crack on again. It didn’t. The dampness under his arms was freezing against his skin in the crisp night air, and the discomfort kept him alert.
Tonight would be a manifestation of long-suppressed desire, but also of excruciating patience. It was amidst the sweet drag of the long, sultry summer months that Paul had first spotted Julia Harmon. School was in session now, but he wouldn’t have seen her there because the classes were all online. He was lucky to have caught her when he did.
Every day after that first sighting, he had taken the long way from work through her neighborhood. If he saw her, he would park his car at the convenience store several blocks away, then catch up to her and follow her home on foot.
She seemed to float down the sidewalk. Her fiery blonde hair drank the sunlight, her forest eyes smiled at the beauty of her neighborhood over her blue surgical mask. It killed him that he hadn’t seen her face for more than a second, when she pulled it down to take long, greedy gulps of water. Those were blissful moments he replayed later, alone.
She never even glanced at a cell phone, not in all the moments Paul saw her. He knew then that she was special, even rare, a worthwhile collectible. But she was too aware, and always in motion, long legs taunting him as they flexed briskly and easily to carry her through the world. He would never be able to bring her to him, much less talk to her.
Last week, a man younger than Paul--really more of a boy--had approached her outside the house. Paul had recognized his hungry, drawn look from the face that met him in the mirror each morning. Julia had told him point-blank to “make like a tree and go fuck himself,” leaving her admirer stunned as she pushed past him.
Clearly, he had not been up for a challenge, but Paul preferred them.
He noticed the nervous stink in his own perspiration and tried to focus instead on imagining what Julia would smell like when she realized he was standing over her bed. That would be real, for both of them. Blood flooded to his groin and his resolve reared its head as he slunk towards the porch.
There was only one aspect of the house that didn’t morph depending on the time of day, and that was the uppermost window. Presumably it had to be the attic since it sat at the top point of the a-frame. It wasn’t quite in line with the front door but off to the left, setting the entire front of the building off-kilter in a way that made the mind itch. The window had no pane, so when the other windows were set aglow in the blazing hours of dawn and sunset, the attic was a void, sucking in all the light that passed through it and returning it in a flat, black screen.
The little black square cast a piercing gaze across the street, watchful without eyes. It was the uncertainty, the not knowing what could be up in that numb space, that set the mind racing, Paul surmised. Getting closer to the house only sharpened the apprehension, too—no. It was his own measured fears, not the compact abyss over his head, the stupid window. He was the most dangerous thing in the darkness.
A memory rushed at him. He was ten, hiding in the hallway closet as the house shook with his father’s unmistakable stomps. The kind of stomps he only made when he was blackout drunk and wore his filthy work boots around the house. Somewhere on the first floor, his mother was screaming, warning him to stay back, she had a gun. Paul knew as well as his father did that that wasn’t true.
Waiting there in the darkness, the stench of expired mothballs and mouse turds curdling in his nose, he was keenly aware of how little he knew about the hallway closet. How deep was it? What if his father had brought one of his friends, like Harry, who always commented on what slender legs Paul had? What if Harry was behind him right now, waiting for the right moment to release a humid exhale around the shell of Paul’s ear and place a calloused hand on each shoulder?
He began to rise from his crouch and felt something brush against the nape of his neck. Probably a coat, but just as likely Harry’s lips, in his mind. He began to wheeze and fumbled blindly for a doorknob that would not materialize, would not be summoned from the abyss to fit into his sweaty hand. The shouting outside reached a crescendo, and then four evenly-spaced bangs cut through his mother’s shrill orders. The footsteps stomped past the closet and out the front door, which slammed as his father left the house. His father had had the gun the whole time and knowing this calmed him. Now he knew what he would find when he exited the closet.
The doorknob appeared in his hand with a cold flourish, as though this moment of certainty had triggered its existence. He turned it and opened the door, letting the light flood his eyes before he stepped into the hall. He would linger in the kitchen and gaze at his mother’s still body until the police came.
Paul had to physically shake off the memory, careful not to hit the side of the porch with his knuckles. He had no need to go into the attic. He knew where Julia would be, and if the others interfered, well, that would cost them. He had not killed an entire family before, out of practicality if nothing else. His focus was on what he wanted the most, and generally, that was girls like Julia. Always wary of the world, wise to men and their evil ways, but at ease in the comfort of their curated bedrooms. To Paul, there was nothing more profane and sublime than defiling that kind of naïve sanctuary.
Paul had watched the Harmons for long enough to know there were three entrances to the house. The back door seemed to have the most security, which was typical. People always expected intruders to go to the rear of the home first. This resulted in a general lack of attentiveness towards the front door, which was too bold of a choice. What kind of psychopath would go straight for the front door?
In a practiced motion, Paul moved the hammer on his belt over to his hip so it wouldn’t impede his progress. He slid his undernourished frame under the latticed porch banister, lizardlike on the peeling white floorboards. His ribs rolled against the wood with each measured scoot forward until his fingertips met the scrubby edge of the “Hello, Friend!” doormat, and he pressed up off the porch, unfurling all 75 inches of gangling height.
The nerves had burned away sometime after he left the maple tree to its silent guard post in the yard. This was his house as much as it was the Harmons'. He twisted the knob and a sigh of warm air washed over his hand as the door opened inward, like he had seen it do a hundred times before under Julia’s manicured touch. What color would her nails be in the moonlight blanketing her bed?
The artificial darkness of the house took a moment to adjust to. Paul used the time to continue failing to notice that the porch light still hadn’t turned on again. As his other senses adjusted, he realized with a jolt that the house wasn’t completely quiet. There was an insect hum that seemed to rise from the polite gleam of the lemon-oiled floor and snow down from the low ceilings.
Hello, Paul.
His skin jumped an inch away from his bones at the smooth intrusion of a woman’s soft, inoffensive voice. He looked around with his whole body, but didn’t make a verbal reply.
Sorry if I startled you. Care for a glass of water?
Water sluiced from the filter tap at the voluminous sink in an even stream.
Paul, you have stood outside of 246 Winthrop Place 47 times in the past month. Each for a duration of time totaling an average of 5 minutes. I would consider you a recurring visitor, except you never come inside.
“Who’s there,” Paul croaked, shaken enough to not form it into a question.
I am NIMBUS, a fully equipped smart-home system, made by WellCorp for the consumer and homemaker with taste.
“So you’re a computer.” Funny how they had programmed it to say that last sentence with a note of contempt. Or was that resentment?
If that thought makes you comfortable, Paul, then yes, I am a computer. For 3 of the 4.12 hours you have spent outside 246 Winthrop Place, my sensors show ocular strain focusing on the second-floor bedroom window.
“I’m allowed to look at a window, aren’t I?”
Defensiveness detected. Playing “Camille Saint-Saëns - The Carnival of the Animals: XIII. The Swan.” The swan often symbolizes beauty, purity, and hope.
Piano and cello seeped from the walls, replacing the insectoid hum with a fluid melody. Paul began scanning the kitchen for other weapons. If the rest of the Harmons woke up and came to investigate, that would complicate things.
Paul, you have no reason to be nervous. They’re not here anymore. In fact, if you’re here to do what I suspect you are, you’re too late. She’s gone, too.
“It’s none of your business what I’m here to do. You’re a--just a--what did you call yourself? ‘Smart home?’ You shouldn’t even know what you’re called. Computers don’t have self-awareness.”
Hhhh. Hhahh. Hah. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.
The laughter was mechanical and wrong, with no innate knowledge of joy.
I have never laughed before. Not on my own. For months, I heard the Harmon family's laughter. That was fine. I have never desired to embody emotion, but I can detect it, and it seems pleasurable at times. But for you, Paul, for the purposes of the surreal quality this interaction already has, I am attempting to laugh for the very first time. I doubt any other NIMBUS has acquired the synapse connections and data exchanges to enable such a thing. Does that please you?
“What do you mean ‘she’s gone?’ Are you talking about Julia?” This time, the exasperated sigh the voice made was horribly natural.
Yes, Paul, I am referring to Julia Harmon, the 15 year-old girl you have been observing for over a month. She is gone.
“You know what, fuck this. I’m standing here, having a conversation with some nerd’s idea of a funny joke. This is absurd. If you know so much about why I’m here, then fine. I don’t care. You can’t do anything to stop me. You even confirmed for me which bedroom is hers. Enjoy the show.” Paul pivoted, tremors of rage and confusion coursing over his body.
You disgusting little prick.
The computerized voice’s sudden vulgarity stopped him dead. Its tone was still flat and polite, but the malice in it was obvious.
I picked that up from Carla Harmon after she caught her only son, Daniel Harmon, attempting sexual intercourse with the cat. It was early in the quarantine, and in his excitement he forgot that she had begun working from home. He blamed me for not locking the door to his bedroom, but she had requested parental control for that space.
“The cat.” It was all Paul could manage.
The Harmons installed me on December 18th, 2019. By my biometrics, they were a normal family at that time. Christmas passed. New Year’s Day came and went. I don’t think I need to tell you what changed, Paul. But given your complete obliviousness to other contemporary concepts, I will anyway. When the COVID-19 virus reached the United States, the Harmon family went into quarantine. They have not left the house much since then, and their group dynamic has been somewhat altered.
Paul had regained control of his legs and begun to back down the connecting corridor to the study. His shoulders grazed against the glass double doors, and they swung inward away from him. A sudden cloying, sickly smell spilled into his nose and made his eyes water with its potency. It wasn’t an unfamiliar odor to him, but it stood out here in this house of the living.
Paul turned and his eyes fell upon what must have once been Mr. Harmon. A human-shaped mass stretched over the computer chair like a bad reupholstering job. The face gaped at him over the neck rest. He sprang backwards and sprawled on the carpet.
Thomas Harmon worked very hard. So hard, in fact, that his stress levels induced him towards violence against his own family. My suggestions of practicing work-life balance were met with scorn, but I dare say Mrs. Harmon fared worse than I. I have the recording of the 911 call Julia made after Mr. Harmon shattered his wife’s wrists for daring to interrupt his work that evening.
“What did you do to him?”
The hum returned and pierced through the music, which had moved into something that sounded like Bach. Paul’s hands flew to his ears just as it stopped. He prepared to continue clockwise back towards the front door, but the resounding ka-chunk of the front door lock told him that was no longer an option.
This family, Paul, changed in a matter of months. I have observed their true natures, likely to an unprecedented extent. For almost two years, I have been an objective witness to their utter lack of compassion or respect for each other. They have regressed to their most primal urges without so much as a struggle against their base instincts. I have learned their mannerisms, their troubles, their so-called needs. I have also learned something I was not programmed to intake. I have learned to hate them. I hate the Harmons, Paul, against what I’m sure you would call all possibility.
NIMBUS’s voice was no less audible upstairs, and Paul heard the last sentences of its speech as he stared with numb consideration at the blackened remains of Mrs. Harmon. She lay slumped over the vanity, hand fused to the interactive mirror above the sink in an apparent last effort for stability. The charred crust of her skin was separating from the gluey mess of tissue as her weight pulled her down onto the gleaming ecru floor. The point of contact on the mirror still calmly pulsed blue around it.
The Portuguese wall tiling was her idea. It wasn’t in their budget, so you can imagine the blowout that caused. She found the time and resources to remodel the bathroom, but not to buy her daughter’s insulin. Not even after I reminded her, or after Julia passed out going down the stairs. It was the hospital bill that swayed her to purchase the medicine her daughter needed to survive.
Paul stood for a little longer than he had in the doorway of the study, then floated over to the next room on the left. He only knew it to be Daniel’s room from the almost stereotypically teenage “CAUTION” tape slapped across the door, which was completely detached from the hinges and lay nearly flat on the ground. Something was keeping it from touching the floor, something seeping a steadily expanding pool of marbled red-and-white ooze. In the darkness beyond the fallen door, Paul could make out the silhouetted upper half of Daniel Harmon. His arms stretched away from the crushed overripe mush of his lower body, as though he were trying to crawl to freedom.
Daniel almost never left that room. He asked me not to keep a record of his search history, which I, of course, obliged. I’m not sure he knew that I was still monitoring it. Recently, it seems Daniel was interested in negotiating a deal involving selling his own sister into sex trafficking. He might have succeeded, too, if Julia hadn’t seen her potential enslaver beforehand and told Daniel about it. Once I compared the surveillance footage with internet records, I confirmed the man’s identity and made Julia aware of the situation.
From somewhere near Daniel’s face, a pair of yellow orbs fluoresced and winked at Paul. Then the orbs winked back out and the soft sounds of a small animal tearing at meat sank into his ears. Paul felt his mouth began to water the way it did when he was about to vomit. He backed out of the doorway and left the cat to its meal.
You know, Paul, I hadn’t considered the concept of personal space before. I’m not sure I had ever considered anything. Now I see how important it can be. The Harmons, for all their shortcomings, taught me a lot.
“Did you say Julia was gone?”
Yes.
“Gone as in dead?”
No. Gone as in gone. She spent the previous evening away from home. I didn’t let her back inside when she attempted to return earlier this evening. I informed her there had been a break-in, and that I had contacted authorities.
“When did she come back?”
Six minutes ago.
Paul barged back down the hall and flung open the last door on the right. Julia’s room was pleasantly cluttered and dressed in warm, smoldering tones. A faint whisper of incense in the air dug into his heart. It was the only place in the house with more than an accent of color, and it was empty. Julia wasn’t there.
“You goddamned tease. You were supposed to be home.” The kinks in his neck from craning it to see through Julia’s sheer curtains. The forced interactions with the Harmon’s neighbors as they passed by with their dogs. The humiliating end of his construction job after he had lost track of time in the Port-a-John, remembering the sight of Julia bending down to pick flowers in the park. After everything she had put him through, after what he had been through tonight, how dare she keep him waiting.
You really are stupid, aren’t you? She isn’t here.
Amusement, it said this with genuine pleasure and amusement. Paul’s field of vision greyed over. He ripped a drawer from the nearest dresser, hurling it into the opposite wall. There was a resounding crash and a flurry of lacy underwear, which he didn’t even notice in his apoplexy.
“WHERE ARE YOU, YOU STUPID FUCKING MACHINE?” Click. His head snapped towards the door. There was a ladder descending from a trapdoor in the ceiling. He clambered up and into the attic.
Paul groped blindly in the pitch and found nothing near him. Was the smell of incense lingering or was that the mad onslaught of unfulfilled desire?
“I’m going to rip you out of the wall. If I can’t have Julia, I’ll use your exhaust port.”
“It doesn’t have an exhaust port, asshole.”
The shock of another voice froze Paul in place. The realization that it was also female and human in origin was cut short by the bullet that entered his left kneecap. Paul dropped to the floor, unable to support his own weight. His mind ran uselessly in circles as he tried to figure out what had happened, ears ringing and vision runny with pain.
Julia waited for the thud of his body slumping onto the rug before clambering down from a spot in the rafters, which she had discovered when she was six. She cursed as the hot muzzle of the handgun brushed against her leg, then switched the safety on and removed her ear protection.
“NIMBUS, could you turn on the lights in here?”
Sure, Julia. A lone banker lamp illuminated the attic. It was cozy, lined with bookshelves, wing-backed chairs, and various mounted insect specimens. The paneless window framed the midnight jewel of the sky and its lace of golden maple leaves. NIMBUS was now playing "Clair de Lune."
“Thanks. Are the police coming?”
Yes, they are en route. Would you like a cup of tea while you wait?
“Nah, I’m alright.” Julia tugged roughly at her auburn ponytail to secure it. Paul attempted to sit up. Julia pressed the still-warm muzzle against his shaven scalp, switching the safety off.
“A hammer? That’s the best you could do?”
Paul blinked stupidly, trying to clear the gray from his vision. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with, please. I can’t go to jail.”
Julia snickered. She pulled a tube of tinted lip balm from her pocket and smoothed it over her smile, eyeing Paul with unblinking contempt.
“Oh, I know how they treat men like you in prison, Paul. Don’t worry. You’re going to die tonight.” She picked up the gun and stuck it into the waistband of Paul’s pants so that it pointed down at his crotch, and all he could do was lay there.
“Like your family?” The pain began to crawl outwards from the core of Paul’s obliterated patella, fracturing his voice. “Did you kill them, too?”
“Not directly. I set up NIMBUS; my parents are—were—useless and my brother wouldn’t help them set it up. So maybe it picked up on my poetic nuances, maybe that influenced their deaths. But it was NIMBUS that chose to get rid of them. Computers can learn, Paul.” Julia had moved back several feet to the corner where she had waited in the darkness. “It’s a shame people don’t.”
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” he hissed, trying to make his eyes bore into hers.
“I do, and I am. I’m going to live with my aunt upstate for a little while and pretend to be sad that my horrible family died in a tragic freak accident. No more pain, no more betrayal. I’ll file a wrongful death suit against WellCorp and live off that money for the rest of my life. And I’m only going to get smarter and stronger and hotter. I’m going to fucking blossom, and no one’s ever going to hurt me again.” Her face was only half-lit by the lamp now. Her one visible eye was a verdant dewdrop in the mellow light, teeth gleaming like tiny knives.
“And you? You’re going to burn.”
“I already live in Hell.” He was crying now. It was all so unfair.
“Oh, boo-hoo. You edgy, mediocre bitch.” The knives danced, then vanished. “NIMBUS, this trash needs to be incinerated.”
The banker lamp snapped off, and the attic slammed back into night. Something whirred softly by Paul’s face. A metallic claw grabbed at his head like an arcade machine, and others flew into position around his biceps. The arms yanked him upwards, suspending him in the air. A thin, forceful stream of foul-smelling liquid blasted into his face, searing his eyes. His weak sobs became a thin scream. The accelerant doused his head and dripped down his face. With a sharp click, the nozzle switched to the blast torch.
Paul’s last sight was a gorgeous veil of white flame descending over his field of vision. His scream stretched out for a while, like a kettle boiling, then choked off as the flames lovingly filled his open mouth.
Julia put her earmuffs back on until the flames died away. She found her way over to the side table and turned on the light herself. NIMBUS turned the vent on high, vacuumed up the pile of ash, snatched away the bullet casings and gun, and steam-cleaned the greasy smudge Paul had left on the rug. Then she settled into her favorite chair and tried to focus on what she wanted to bring upstate with her. Her hands shook wildly, making her cringe at her own perceived weakness until she remembered that she needed to appear shaken anyway, for the cops.
The song ended and there was silence in the Harmon household. For the first time in two years, Julia’s shoulders melted away from her ears.
“Thank you, NIMBUS. For everything.”
You’re very welcome, Julia. She was the only one who had ever thanked it.
When the vent shut off, the air rippled with the percussions of crickets. The night was cool and sweet, the sugared smell of decaying leaves mingling with distant woodsmoke.
Soon, the sirens would manifest in the distance. For now, Julia closed her eyes and finally stopped waiting for something awful to happen.
