hannah hector woke one morning to the sounds of her usual sunday morning. her mother in the kitchen, her father mowing the front lawn and her brother's music playing loud enough through his headphones to still be overheard through the household wall. she turned over in her bed, and squinted happily at the sunlight streaming through the curtained window. the dust motes hung in the air about her stuffed animals. she put her hands to her eyes and rubbed them fully awake, before she threw the covers off, and made her way downstairs. halfway down the stairs, she sat on the landing and smiled to her self as she hummed a rhyme that started off as an ode to the man who was not there, and finished animatedly in tribute to the nowhere man. she stopped and took the time to smell the bacon, when she felt the vibration. it came up through her feet and her back pockets. when she put her hand on the banister to lift herself up, she could feel it reverb through her, like an electrical connection. she smiled nervously to herself and walked unsuredly to the floor, where she could still feel it, making her knees wobbly. once she made it to the cool tiled kitchen she was surprised that the sensation seemed to flow out of her like water, and walking back into the corridor did nothing to bring it back. she said to her mother, "did you feel that?" her mother looked at her kindly, like parents do when they're distracted by their day to day things as she replied, "feel what?" hannah knew well enough when she was being humoured, and turned one her smile, before blurting out, "how wonderful today is." her mother smiled broadly as she shimmied the eggs to there toast and agreed that, indeed, she had felt that too. she walked the plate to the table and put it in hannah's place. with an almost obedient sense about her she sat down to the table and thoroughly enjoyed her food, letting the yellow of the egg run down over the bacon, the hash browns, the toast, the beans but not the sausage. that she kept to one side and cut into six sections. she then forked and dunked each bit into the egg yolk, gushing the warm gooeyness of it out over everything else. hannah moved to the patio to watch her father in the garden. he had stopped mowing, and was now using the pruning blades on the willow branches that hung too low. sitting in the patio swing, she felt the vibration return. it lasted about a minute and she noticed that her father had not stopped to sense it better, so she casually assumed that he had not felt it. she sat there, hugging her knees to her chest and enjoying the sounds and smells of the morning. upon entering the house, she made up her minds to switch her brain off for awhile and indulge in sunday morning television. cells filled her brain, with high pitched badly dubbed voices, mixed in with computer graphics. she laughed, grew bored, surfed and smiled. her brother joined her for awhile even, and failed to react the third shuddering she felt rise up from the depths of the house. the foundations had to be stable as she hadn't even noticed the slightest shake in the expensive glassware in the cabinet that her father collected. the light fixtures were not swinging. the goldfish bowl didn't even show the slightest trace of brownian motion. she felt it nine more times during the course of the day. night fell harshly on the hector household, thanks to the addition of the storm clouds that moved in over the lazy sunday afternoon. as the stuttering jab of the lightening wrenched the air apart, she lay in her bed, waiting, trying to feel something. anything. the storm lingered the next day. trapped in the house, it was well into the afternoon when she built up the courage to walk down into the cellar, itself. it was warm, cosy and the lack of spider webs helped her feel more at ease with each step. it wasn't until she was three quarters of the way to the back wall when she noticed the large area where the bricks had been removed. she paused, mid-step, awestruck. the bricks had been re-stacked, onto and into themselves, forming three tesseracts, each sitting atop of the other. inside the mouth of the hole in the wall suddenly exploded with a snuffling fury of old, grey, mottled, flesh. the death shroud hung from the limbs, yellowed from age to the point of brown. a gangly arm lifted heather from off the floor with remarkable ease, as its eyes regarded her. heather could not feel the toes of her shoes touching the concrete. instinctively, she put her own hand around the wrist of the arm that held her up. it felt like a cold ham had been stretched out and wrapped around inside itself. its face moved in close to her own and it snuffled louder. with some measure of curiosity it moved its head back, before the gaze glazed and it spoke. "thing." the voice, cracked and dry, gave rise to the identity of the strange feral being as male. "thing less than." it released its grip and she fell to her feet. it turned from her and looked around the cellar. "where is, thing?" it asked. "pardon?" heather replied, before she could think of anything else, the rest of her brain busy on dealing with the important functions, like how quickly she could get up the stairs and to the phone before she was torn apart and wound up as a strange obit. it turned to her. "thing is, is not? where is, thing?" "i.. don't really follow..." "thing is here. thing, here. where here?" "well to start, my name is not thing, it's... " "ssshhhhh. name is power. tell no name thing. keep safe." "but i..." "hate to kill thing," he said with no malice, "less than drop in ocean. not even evaporated air cloud filling. waste. no name. where?" heather told him the suburb and he looked blank. she told him the city. he looked blank. she told him the state. he looked blank. she told him the country. he blinked. or rather, she thought he had, but his eyes stayed closed a little longer than someone would think a blink would take. "look, what's going on here? who are you?" "no names. said that. listen, thing. live longer that way." "what are you doing in my father’s cellar?" "time." absent mindedly, heather looked at her wrist and read the digital reading out loud. he looked at her oddly. "... i mean, why are you down here." "up. up now." a sideways glance at the hole in the wall gave heather all the reasons she needed to rethink her question. "why did you dig your way up here?" "had to, thing. time has come. own kin tried to kill me at one stage. avoided. just barely." "kill you?" "yes. all do in their own way. even you would, thing, if you could." "how long have you been down there?" "long." "how far have you dug?" "long." "what about..." "quiet, thing," it showed annoyance on its visage, "too much. no answers. not that thing will like. sit. wait." heather found herself sitting in an old settee, as the ancient thing sat on a foot stool, reading old comics. "score," it muttered. "why are you here?" she asked, for the first time. "philosophy? fate? choice? choose to let fate lead. see to that. fate gives me choice. i see to that. who read the word-eater, thing? who loves you baby? who am i to say no?" heather heard glass break upstairs, and turned her head, unsure of turning herself from the clearly insane person in the room with her. "hush, thing." knocking and crashing noises came from above. she could hear her father demanding to know, and her mothers yells and her brothers yelps. then nothing. the door to the cellar opened. heather went to look at it, but found herself looking out a small window instead. when it was over, she turned to watch him dumping a body down the hole. he looked.... stronger. harder. more real, more... fleshed out. his grey mottling had become pinker so that he just looked old, instead of ancient. he caught her looking at him and paused, a guilty smile breaking out from his lips. "ah. shame really. if i'd been another night then i would have had a reason to think you were worth something. as it is, you'll have to live, instead." he kicked the brick pile and they fell back into their accepted places and he proceeded to fill in the wall behind him. "i'll be leaving now," he started, indicating over his shoulder as he walked towards the stairs, "they were operating alone. thought you'd be good in the blood. can't say i'd disagree, but... well... timing and all. we'll see. i'll see. i'll know. i... already know... but i have to see, you see?" he stood at the top of the stairs. he looked back down at her. "i'll see you later, heather." ------------------------------------------------------------- when she made her way upstairs she found her family in the sitting room, watching tv silently. she used the remote to un-mute the set and they broke out of their fugue state. she had to come up with explanations for things, slowly, from the door being smashed in to the broken crockery. heathers parents felt uneasy for a long while after, but she managed to talk them out of booking themselves into the clinic they had sent her to, last year. they seemed apologetic for it, in fact. heather didn't mind. at this point, she was just happy to be there. for now. as one thing, or another. the fiend for what is a malk, what have they got? if not the blood, then they have naught