THUD
Nami followed the silhouette through the peephole as it dragged itself up the dark driveway, toward the house. The storm was in full rage now and snow flew past the window at a ninety degree angle. “Who is it?” hissed Yasmin, who, having armed herself and Mai with knives, was hiding behind the kitchen counter. Nami strained her eyes in an attempt to get an impression of the stranger’s face, but all she could see were his lips, which protruded out from under the hood of his jacket. They were pressed together tightly, and contorted in the shape of what Nami thought was a smile. An intense feeling of dread washed over her. She was about to let out a panicked whisper when a thunderous, wooden Thud boomed through the house. The stranger was on the porch.
Earlier that night, as Nami and Mai had watched the snow storm creep toward their AirBnB, Nami had half-jokingly said “We might as well get stuck in this house and miss tomorrow’s flight. I’m not eager to go back to school anyways.” This had been a blatant lie –– just imagining rebooking her ticket with United Airlines’ customer service sent shivers down her spine –– and she’d actually been looking forward to the new school year. She was to graduate UC Berkeley with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and anticipated easing her way through the final semester. But she also knew that Mai had been academically and romantically struggling at Stanford, and had ill-fatedly made this prophetical statement in an attempt to relate to her friend.
Yasmin, ever the optimist, had brushed off even the slightest suggestion that this could be bad but as the night rolled on and the snow kept falling faster and in increasingly erratic directions, her nervous glances out the window had become more frequent. The three of them had managed to distract themselves from the idea of getting stranded in a wooden cabin somewhere off the path to Lake Tahoe by watching Shark Tank on a TV that could only transmit in the old aspect ratio. The “sharks” had just laughed a goatee-sporting man from South Carolina off the stage for proposing a 3% stake in his home security company in exchange for a $400,000 investment when the power had gone out.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, Yasmin, fuck,” Nami had said with a scornful tone of I-told-you-so.
The gravity of the situation had hit Mai with some delay but once it did she’d entered into a full hysteria.
“Guys. If the power is out does that mean our heater is out? And our wifi too? That means we can't call anyone right? And what the car gets snowed in and—”
That was when Nami, who had made herself comfortable next to the rectangular window facing the porch, had seen a tall shadow out of the corner of her eye. “I think there’s someone outside.”
Thud. Thud. Thud. The stranger was dragging his heavy frame across the porch. A slight hesitation––Thud once more––then nothing. Nami shot a glance in the direction of her friends behind the kitchen counter, but the room was pitch dark, and suddenly she felt like the loneliest person in the world. For a moment, she was a lost four-year-old, aimlessly stumbling through the expansive corridors of the Mall of Dharan near her grandparents house while screaming for her grandma. Shutting one eye close, Nami leaned in towards the peephole again, doorknob digging itself into her side. That’s when she came to the shocking realization that the door was not locked. Adrenaline rushed towards her head, bounced back down her body and tingled her fingers with fear. If she were to turn the lock, the stranger would surely be alerted to their presence in the house. But not locking the door felt like inviting him into the house. So Nami grasped the lock and inched it counterclockwise, all the while keeping a close eye on the stranger, whose face was now close enough for her to see. It was a remarkably flat face, although a knobbly nose sat at an angle which exposed his nostrils.
CLACK.
The lock had sprung into its place. Nami jumped back from the door, lost her balance, and landed on her back with a big Thud.
“Hello? Y’all alright?” a nasally voice said.
Yasmin peaked her head out from behind the counter but Nami, still splayed out on the ground, shook her head vigorously. Don’t say a word.
“My house is up that mountain and I been watching y’all. Saw your drive here don’t have any chains. With a two wheel drive like that when it’s snowed in like this, you ain’t getting anywhere.” Nami detected a terrifying tone of schadenfreude in the voice.
“Guess y’all ain’t in the mood for talking,” the voice chuckled, but the chuckle slowly transformed into a rumbling, disgusting cough. “Anyhow, brought y’all some chains –– I’ll help you put ‘em on if you’d like.”
Nami didn’t remember the stranger carrying anything resembling snow chains. Crawling on all fours, she made her way behind the counter and fell into Mai and Yasmin’s arms. The three of them breathed shallow breaths so as not to make a sound. Nami felt as if she was being suffocated. She closed her eyes and waited for the man to speak again.
“Well. Don’t need my help, I see. I’ll be on my way then.” Nami heard the shuffle of his shoes on the wet wood of the porch. Then, a pause, and one last remark, this one sung with an eerie glee that set off all alarm bells in Nami’s head that had not already been rung: “Stay…safe… out… here.”
As the man’s heavy footsteps rescinded away, Nami disentangled herself from her friends and gasped for air. The three of them sat paralyzed, each expecting to hear those dreadful footsteps, that disconcertingly cheerful voice again, until Mai and Yasmin simultaneously blurted out, “We have to get out of here.”
Nami and Yasmin sprinted to the bedrooms to grab their belongings while Mai traced her hands along the kitchen counter until she found the keys to her 2004 Prius. Slipping into their shoes, they regrouped behind the front door. Nami looked through the peephole one last time, but all she could see was the black of the night, interspersed with specks of snow that were shooting by. She looked back at Yasmin and Nami, counted down from three on her fingers, yanked the lock clockwise, and opened the door. “Go, go, go!” Yasmin whispered and the three of them waded through the snow to the car. Nami felt cold snow sneak into the sides of her Sambas. In high school, Mai had been the only one to have a car, and so the friends had come to a solid seating arrangement: Mai sat in the driver’s seat, Nami sat shotgun taking care of navigation, and Yasmin, who couldn’t read a map for her life but was a walking podcast, sat in the back. Slamming the car’s doors, they assumed these positions and Mai turned on the Prius. As if awoken from a slumber, it spooled up with a tired yawn but Mai promptly pressed on the gas and jerked the wheel towards the main road. Nami felt the rear wheels spin in their place, but after a few rotations the car somehow found its grip in the snow and jolted out of the driveway. Breathing a sigh of relief, she glanced at the rear view mirror. The house, with its two second-story windows and the door left open, looked strangely human. Having blasted the heater the entire evening, steam was bellowing out of the open door. She directed her attention back forwards, and had to seize the ceiling bar as Mai swung the car onto the main road.
Just then, a figure emerged from the side of the road, a few feet ahead of the car. For an instant, the headlights illuminated the figure’s face, white lips still pressed into a smile, which Nami immediately recognized as belonging to the stranger from earlier. Mai had barely enough time to scream before an ugly Thud rang through the Prius. The impact lasted only a millisecond but for Nami it felt as if the sound of shattering bones and screeching metal continued on for an eternity. The car came to a halt and total silence filled the air. Nami, Mai and Yasmin froze with their gaze straight ahead, no one daring to look back.
“Keep driving,” Nami said quietly, still facing forward.
“What?”
“Keep driving,” Nami said again.
“But––”
“Drive Mai!” Yasmin cried out, and the Prius was set in motion again, first hesitantly, then with the full growl of its hybrid motor. The car sped down the hill and Nami allowed herself a fleeting look back. The house was still breathing steam but there was no sight of the stranger. Then darkness consumed the house and the driveway and the place where it happened.
The three of them drove until reaching Seattle in the early morning, but no one mentioned what had transpired. In fact, the events of that night were never to be revisited by any of them again. As the Prius carried along the I-90, first hints of light emanated from behind the mountains, transforming the night sky into a dramatic blue. Nami traced the snow-covered mountaintops and took a deep breath. A peculiar lightness filled her body. She looked back at Yasmin, who was gazing out the window. Mai requested for Lana Del Rey’s Let The Light In to be played, and soon all three of them were belting in unison. The Prius carried on along the road as voices echoed through the valley.
“Ooh, let the light in,
At your back door yelling ‘cause I wanna come in.”
