Dark Journeys #9: The Gentle Sound of Tapping

Walter Winthrop does not believe in anything he can’t see with his own two eyes. He thrives on logic and fact, and takes comfort in the certainty of mathematics and science. While working on a special government contract, he becomes careless after an argument with a coworker, and doesn’t notice a bottle of correction fluid that bounces off his keyboard before rolling to the floor. That one mistake in numbers is powerful enough to open up the portal between worlds, allowing something dark and sinister to cross over and follow Walter home from work…For the first time in his life he prays… for the gentle sound of tapping to go away.

The ninth story in the Dark Journeys short story collection is now on sale for just $.99 on Amazon and Smashwords.

I haven’t gotten any response to the last two promotions, so this time I’m asking you what you would you like me to do for you as a thank you for your continued support? For example, maybe I could accept an idea from everyone who buys the story or promotes it on their blog, and in the end I’ll drop all the story ideas into a hat and pick one out. The winner will get a short story written just for them? It may even appear in the Dark Journeys collection, wind up podcasted, the sky is the limit… So please drop your ideas in the comment section. I would love to hear them.

Let me know what you think. I’m deeply appreciative to everyone who has bought the stories in the past, or helped spread the word about them. I am also blessed to still be journeying across the net on the Dark Journeys Blog Tour, visiting with some fantastic people. Continue to follow my journey, and be sure to let the bloggers know you’ve stopped by to read or listen to the interview.

And now… for an excerpt from The Gentle Sound of Tapping…

There came the gentle sound of tapping, tap-tap-tap-tap, while Walter Winthrop lay restless in his bed, and he believed if he rolled over in a huff and formed the pillow around his head, the soft cushion would muffle out the noise. Inside the padded safety of his pillow Walter sought peace, but then the tapping sounded even louder. It reminded him of his mother on Sunday mornings.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

“Walter, time for church. God waits for no man, and least of all the idle man!”

He hated that remark, as though his getting a decent night’s sleep on the weekend made him some kind of tool of the devil.

His mother had been dead twenty years, and he had always believed the lofty dead did not suffer the company of the living. Of course, others believed differently. Some even claimed the veil between worlds was thin as spider web one night every year, All Hallows Eve. Lost souls wandered through the darkness in search of what had once been familiar in life. Some wailed and moaned over the loss of their bodies, while others pranked the living. The malicious spirits called for attention and sacrifice from the living, and many set extra plates at the dinner for their dearly departed. In memory of the deceased children dressed as ghouls and begged candy from strangers.

Walter never celebrated the foolish, fabled holiday known as Halloween. His mother had called it Devil’s Night and refused to let her son participate in any activity that might expose his soul to the devil. Once he was old enough to forget his mother’s disillusionment, Walter developed his own reasons for boycotting Halloween. Back then he considered himself a practical young man, driven solely by reason. The dead coming back for one night each year went against logic. The very idea of a devil didn’t even make sense.

For fifty-seven of his sixty-three years, Walter studied the calculation and reckoning of numbers and formulae. Mathematics was a safe and reasonable activity. There was nothing magical or unpredictable about numbers. They either added up, or they did not, and in situations that called for drastic measure, the uncooperative could be easily fixed with a simple adjustment or the inclusion of an imaginary number. Now before the thought of imaginary numbers could disrupt the weary and predictable self image of a man like Walter Winthrop, he learned rather quickly there was nothing magical or exciting about imaginary numbers either. They were not the same kind of imaginary that described an invisible friend or exciting adventure in one’s own mind. They were simply necessary in the computation of formulas and nothing more.

Walter never had the kind of head wrapped easily around inexplicable things. The fact that he had no father never made much sense to him, and because the other children made fun of him in the cruelest way imaginable, he kept quiet and to himself. The simple recitation of numbers became a game in his mind as he walked to and from school. Over time he discovered the importance of formulae in everything from building a tree-fort to planning a trip into outer space.

Science relied on numbers, which meant the entire fabric of the universe came down to numbers in the end. There was no clandestine purpose for geometry, no enchantment in calculus, and there was certainly nothing miraculous about algebra or physics. No matter how the numbers came together, they either worked, or they did not, and Walter wouldn’t have it any other way.

So when the sound of gentle tapping bothered just outside his window, Walter told himself it was nothing. Just a tree branch, not brittle bone-tipped fingers, only bending boughs in the howling wind. Yes, the wind did howl that night, in such a way Walter never heard before. Low moans, like those of a dying man, constant in his agony, but Walter would not be afraid.

It was only wind.

“All Hallows Eve,” he humphed and flopped around in his bed again, so the blanket coated lump of his backside faced the window indifferently. “Tip-tap on someone else’s window, bunch of superstitious fools!”