The Cane

On my way out the door, Portia called me. She shouted, “Papa! I know why the door wouldn’t open! He was holding it!” Susan silently mouthed, “He who?” I shrugged my shoulders and went to the living-room to see what she was talking about. ”Back it up Poppy,” Portia said, “I’ll show him to you.” ”You’ll show me who darling?” I said. ”The man holding the door when Grandma couldn’t open it,” she said. ”But there was no one in the house honey, remember? All of us were outside at your party,” Susan said. ”But I just saw him right there, you were pulling on the outside, and he was pulling on the inside, it looked like you were having a tug of war,” insisted Portia. In the meantime, I was rewinding the tape back to the scene of the stuck door. As I scanned past the scene, I did see something that should not have been there. I pressed play, and watched the scene unfold. There was Susan pulling on the door, at first her hand slipped off the handle, a result of the unexpected resistance, and then she tried it again with a better grip with the same results. And standing there on the other side of the door was a person, or thing straight out of your worst nightmare. Though the image was slightly out of focus, the oversized head and thick lips, pulled back in a snarl, showing a mouth full of exceptionally large teeth, pretty much grabbed your attention. I pressed the still button on the remote to get a good look at the creature standing in my kitchen. Once you got over the large head, you also noticed that the shoulders, at least the one I could see, were very wide. The arm we could see was well muscled, as a matter of fact; the arm could have easily been mistaken for the leg of an average size man. The thing’s chest would have made Lou Ferrigno’s look like a throw pillow for your sofa. From the look of the thing, I know it didn’t take a lot of effort to hold the door shut against Susan’s pulling, but the look on its face was a look of total hostility and anger. If you were to look in the dictionary for the definition of evil, this thing’s picture would have been right there next to the word. I have never seen, or to my knowledge dreamed, of anything that could even come close to the horrific appearance and evil presence that thing projected from the picture tube of my television.