2
It had started out as a tapping noise at the door and had built up to rapping, gently rapping across the front of the house. Sean ignored it once, calling out the front window of his upstairs bedroom for whoever it was to go away, but whoever… or whatever had annoyed him awake never appeared nor departed his front porch. Claudia thought it was a tree branch scrapping the house, and Sean decided he'd cut all the limbs off the trees that came within three feet of the house. Just as he started to sink back into bed, the sound came back rapping then knocking at the door. If it were his idiot brother, Sean would knock the stuffing out of that cretin. He charged from his bed angry and hostile, ready to take out his hostility upon whatever was doing that noise!
"Oh yeah!" Sean stood in the cold night around his front porch swinging his tennis racket as a defense against crooks. "Come on! Bring it on!" His tensed face and scowling features surveyed his West Brighton neighborhood from the O'Keefes next door over to the Hennessy house next door. The night was dark; there was not a moon out tonight. It was almost sheer darkness beyond his house from the porch onward except for faraway neon lights and the illumination of Manhattan beyond bouncing off the unseen cloud cover above the land. Another grumbling breath and Sean backed into his home again ready to return to bed. His left hand pulled the front door shut behind him as he reentered the front hall of his house. The cold chill of the night had not left his body. In fact, the house seemed even colder than outside as his breath formed in the air inside the house.
"What the…" He reacted a bit more rationally and checked the downstairs thermostat. It read seventy-seven degrees, but it felt like seven below. His finger tapped it once, twice, a third time… Why was the house so cold? He reached to the vent and felt warm air blowing out of it. Noticing his breath forming in the air again, Sean surveyed the house a bit from the TV in the room to the doors to the dining room and back over to the hall to the kitchen. A few steps up the stairs and he was feeling warm again, but his breath was still filling the air.
"Claudia…" He spoke. "Does the house seem a bit cold tonight?" He pressed forward to his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Even as his shadow left the top landing, another shadow had followed him up the staircase. It was as tall as his shadow, but wispier and less defined. It had a thinner basic humanoid outline for a while, but upon reaching the top landing, it melted off the wall and collapsed into a moving cognizant shape on the carpet. A living shadow for an invisible presence, the form tried followed Sean, but instead hesitated before the bedroom door; the tenants inside the master bedroom were still awake and Claudia's voice giggled as Sean indulged her in ardent lovemaking. Regressing into teenage lovers had alienated the form from advancing any further, but there were still others in this house. The shadow undulated without form again, trekking past the open door to the cold porcelain floor of the bathroom. Following the length of the wall, it ambled away from the wall and headed toward the light blue light on the floor from the window breaking the dark blue light of the house. Once covered by the exterior light entering the house, the shadow vanished, becoming a brighter silvery glow in the filtered glow through the window and then emerging on the other side of the hall to follow the other wall. It was encroaching beyond another room, a room with a door that was ajar, easy to push open a bit wider for an invisible astral being of pure thought. The shadow plodded on further unerringly toward the warmth of the teenage girl in the bed.
Her vibrant red hair mussed in a heap around her head, her left arm draped off the bed, Lily slept diagonally over her bed with her head on a corner tip of her pillow and one leg sticking out the bottom of her comforter. She was a deep but active sleeper who tossed and twisted to the tune of her dreams. With the shadow coming closer, she reacted from the cold air around it and suddenly shivered, turned her body around from laying on her chest and stomach and assumed another face down position in the deeper section in the middle of the bed. Her face was serene, her complexion perfect in the subdued darkness, but she lightly gasped as the cold air wafted up from the floor under her covers and caressed her skin. A sensation of vibrant energy entered her soul next, a piercing from one world to another filled her senses and Lily's hand suddenly reacted and gripped a steel rod forming part of her bed's metal headboard. Her voice briefly groaned from the presence entering her body. Her right hand tensed up, but her left hand started gripping tighter. A slight creak came from the metal being distorted; her fingers became augmented instantaneously with incredible strength. This was a powerful force imbuing her life with a new purpose. When Lily gasped, the cold air wafted from her lips and filled the room.
Her eyes opened.
Her eyes had opened to a different personality, a different bearing, a different… person. She rolled over to sit upright in her bed. Her breath formed in the air again and wafted away. Another mist from her lips started forming and was inhaled once more. Lily held her hand aloft to her eyes and she looked it over, extending her fingers once and again and turning it over. She looked at her other hand as well. Palms up, palms down… they were tingling to her. They reached up to her face and cupped her face free of her long red hair before pulling it all backward from her face and taut against her head. Her red locks once suspended around her shoulders now cascaded a bit further down her back. Her hair was a bit longer, a bit more perfect, a bit more… godly. A deep breath filled her lungs and released it. She felt the same yet, different… She wasn't sure what had filled her, but it sure stimulated her body down to the core of her soul. Her left eye intriguingly acknowledged the changes pouring through her essence and she reclined back down to the bed a bit more gracefully than before. Her green-tinted eyes closed upon resting her head on the center of her pillow and she immediately feel asleep once more, this time a bit more immortal than she was before.