Colin E. Williams

The Battle Won by Silence


      It was pitch black. I was seventeen. And I was scared I was going to be found out.

      I could hear music playing from upstairs. It was music that you would probably never hear outside your own house. Not at a restaurant. Not in an elevator. And definitely not in your parents’ car. It was the Canadian industrial band Skinny Puppy and I chose it from my teen angst repertoire for its abhorrent noise and fear factor. The two songs that were on repeat were called Choralone and Rain. The former song sounded like a man with a sore throat chanting and the sound echoed through the kitchen and dining rooms. The latter sounded like the screeching of two witches being boiled alive. It set the mood pretty well.

      It was Dallas’s turn to be it. Dallas was a very quiet guy. He was about 20 at the time. He didn’t talk much, so when it was his turn, I didn’t know what kind of seeker he would be. I was feeling very confident, though. I had thought of the best place to hide. In. Plain. Sight. If it hadn’t been pitch dark in the house, I would have been found sitting on top of the dryer.

      I lived in a split-level house with my mom and brother. The entrance through the garage led to the middle level where the dining room and kitchen were. There was a staircase on the other side of the kitchen that went down to the bottom level and into the den. Before you got to the den, my room was on the right. Smallest room in the house, but private. All the other rooms were upstairs. Across from my room, and then left was a half-bathroom. And then 90 degrees to the left of that was the laundry room.

      It was a walk-in room that allowed for about two feet of linoleum in front of the appliances. The dryer was directly in front of the door with a cinder block wall on the right and the washer on the left. Further left was about six feet of empty space for laundry baskets, an ironing board and a shelf for the cleaning agents. My hiding spot was sitting right on top of the dryer, just within arm’s reach of the door.

      So we had the music that would disguise any movement as we took to our respective hiding spots. There were four of us. My friend Shane, my brother’s friend Sean, his friend Dallas and me. Once it was decided that Dallas would be it first, we had him go outside into the garage to wait for three minutes. Then, we turned on the music, flipped all the switches off and without saying a word, we went to find our hiding places.

      I went downstairs while one of the other two went up. I went into the laundry room, closed the door and climbed up on the dryer, sitting Indian-style. I felt the cold metal on my bare feet and ankles and I tried to breathe slow, shallow breaths to reduce my heart rate and flush my body of adrenaline. Time seemed to slow down. I waited in the utter darkness. Nothing was to be heard but the gravelly chanting coming from upstairs. I squeezed my throat gently with my right hand. I could feel my pulse thumping in my neck.

      I thought I heard the door to the garage open. I tried to become even more still to see if I could hear him. Then, one of the floorboards in the kitchen squeaked. He was inside.

      At first, Dallas went upstairs. There were two bedrooms on the right and a bathroom and the master bedroom on the left. Shane would often hide in the showers. The rule was that if the hider scared the seeker, causing him to scream, then the seeker would have to beit again.

      I hated being it. I was a very cautious seeker, but the adrenaline would get the best of me and I’d want to run through the house screaming and running into every room, grabbing and touching, hoping I wouldnt scream when I found someone.

      But I wasn’t it. Dallas was. After hearing the floorboards creak upstairs, I could hear him coming down. The music had transitioned into the second song. That sound of piercing agony raised the hairs on the back of my neck. My heart began to pound with even more ferocity.

      The laundry room door was closed, but between the shrieks, I could hear the echoes of muffled footfalls on the stairs to the den. I’d seen too many horror movies and I knew that Dallas would find me and stab me with his blade over and over while his heavy breathing resonated in my ears. But no, he just opened the laundry room door and stared in. He was looking right at me.

      I held my breath. He stood there for what seemed like ten minutes, but it was more like 90 seconds. He just stood there. Silent. Staring. Waiting. I wanted to scream out to see if I could scare him, but I feared no sound would come out. Utter fear had me in its taloned grip. I was paralyzed.

      He turned and walked away and went back upstairs. The only way I could tell he had gone was that I could see his silhouette remove itself from my line of sight. It was pitch dark in the house, but the house still had windows. The laundry room had been even darker and my eyes had adjusted. I was able to breathe again.

      Dallas went back upstairs. I figured Shane would have been it by now because the seeker usually ended up scaring him first. I couldn’t blame him. Shane was younger than me and was easily frightened.

      Sean and I discovered that it wasn’t scary enough to yell, “Boo!” or just call out in order to scare someone. We found out that if you want to make someone’s heart go cold, you had to make an unearthly sound. The brain is an amazing organ. It can easily process a loud noise or a “boo” and realize “that’s a human sound. I don’t have to worry.” But if you suck in air and let it rattle at the back of your throat, well, unless one has heard that sound often, the brain will say, “I don’t know that sound. It’s fight or flight for you, buddy!” It worked every time. Shane would be screaming like a girl. But Dallas…he was an altogether different animal.

      I lost Dallas in the music. The chanting. The echoing. But it wasn’t long that I heard his footfalls on the stairs, coming down to visit me again. He came over and stood in front of the open laundry room alcove. He stood at a slight angle. His shoulders were hunched and his head cocked slightly to the side. He was listening for the sound of breathing, which I held.

      He didn’t move. I didn’t move. My legs were hurting from sitting on the metal dryer for so long in one position. My ankles ached, being pressed down by my thighs. I couldnt tell who was more scared. Me, afraid of him reaching out and grabbing me, even though I knew he was there. Or him, not knowing what was waiting for him beyond the threshold.

      It was another minute before he left again. I admired him. He was a formidable seeker. He kept his cool under sheer panic. He was the real deal. It was then that I knew that I would never get him to crumble with my unearthly rattle. The battle had been lost without either side ever firing a shot.

      A couple minutes later, I heard Shane scream. He had been in my mom’s shower and Dallas had snuck in and had just been himself. Cool, collected, and outright menacing.

      The game was over.