Under the Rug
A man sat in a wooden chair reading a book by the light of a desk lamp. No one knew he had the desk lamp, mostly owing to the fact that electricity hadn’t been invented yet. Everyone else was reading by candle light. The outside and inside of the man’s house were in different centuries. The man was well loved in the village surrounding him but none of them had ever entered his house. He never opened the curtains and kept a blanket across the door when he went out. After a couple of years of this strange behavior, the village started to talk. At first, it was murmurs which changed to whispers and then to voices behind his back. Five years later, no one bothered to conceal their voices, speaking loud as he passed. Village boys tried to reach the inside but could never touch the house without burning to a crisp. The man was denounced as a witch. He still went out every day for his walk and returned home to sit by his lamp and read.
One night, the man entered his house, sat down and read for two hours before there was a thump at the door. He stood up and peeked through the peephole. No one was there. He walked back and read for another half hour and put the book down to go to bed. Looking down his floor, he saw a lump in the carpet. It wiggled, slightly, sinisterly. The lump expanded, contracted as if breathing. Breathing long slow breaths. The man stepped out of the chair and brought it down once, twice, three times on the lump. The lump did not even flinch. The man went to the wall and pulled up the carpet tacks, drawing the carpet over them. On the bare wooden floor sat a burned piece of wood. It was approximately the size of a loaf of bread and blackened completely on all sides. The man shook the lump and heard a noise, like an orchestra of screeching cats.
He went to the kitchen and pulled his carving knife from the knife block. He split the wood chunk in half and saw a face. The face of a boy who had touched the house and been reduced to dust. The boy was murmuring something unintelligible. The man threw the wood into the woods, as far as his arm could throw it. He sat down on his bed and cried for hours.
For the first time in forever, the man did not go into the village for his walk. He was not at work. The people were concerned that he had died. No one would be able to give him a proper burial and his ghost would haunt the village for eternity. The villagers tried to go into his house repeatedly and all of them perished. That night the man stayed up all night, crying because he had killed so many. Two weeks later, it happened again. The lump of wood was back. It appeared under the lamp’s table and it shattered into a million pieces. The man cut the lump of wood again and took a deep breath before looking at it. The faces of every person who had attempted to reach him in the past two weeks were there, whispering the same cryptic message. The man threw the wood into the woods and lay on his bed, crying. He was there for the next month and he woke to a small boy hovering over his bed. The boy’s mother appeared and they nursed the man back to health. The whole village could walk in since the lamp was gone. The socket and lamp shards had disappeared. The man went back to his normal life. Now he was accepted, loved and trusted by the whole village.