Michael, forever self-conscious, shunned eating at proper restaurants by himself. The sandwich shop up the street with counter service and small tables was ideal. After ordering his food, he sat in a window seat to study his dark house down the block—still struck by the improbable turn of events that brought him to it. The meal was soon consumed, and with no other excuse to procrastinate the uncle moved outside to drop a few coins in the payphone at the curb.

In truth, the painter was not a family man. No photographs of loved ones hung on his walls. He saw himself as the most solitary member of a solitary family. Apart from his social mother, who cultivated church friends and stayed in touch with her sisters, the family had kept to its own company when they all lived under one roof; and then mostly at meals.

The son seldom interacted with his father, and perhaps because the two men were so much alike they had nothing in common. When his younger sister, Miranda, was born and brought home from the hospital, it was reported that Michael, then four, took one look at his new baby sister and left the room without comment. He did not engage her again until she began to crawl. Still, Miranda and her mother formed the glue that held things loosely together. The family moved from Memphis to Chicago in the early Seventies, and when the father retired in the late Nineties, a Streamline trailer kept the parents constantly on the road. Without them around, Miranda and her brother rarely spoke except on special occasions.

Michael’s outward reserve was misleading. He was a sentimental soul—even passionate. He openly wept at romantic movies, and showed great affection toward dogs and cats. Yet when it came to people, he was emotionally distant. He truly loved his family, though he could only explain his detachment in rarified “artistic” terms; and this filled him with a good deal of guilt. This situation was only further complicated by the birth of his special-needs nephew, Aaron, who required as much forbearance as demonstration of familial regard. The painter expressed no more sentiment as an uncle than he had as either a son or brother, although he made some small show at all three.

Aaron, for his part, was not a cuddly boy. He had a predilection for small-scale thievery, and peppered his disjointed, monotone speech with phrases, dialects, and sounds picked up from television. He was in the habit of chewing on his shirt collar, and given to hiding in strange places from company (as evident by his collection of upholstery staples and nickel slugs punched out from electrical boxes). In many ways he was like the other men in his family, yet differed significantly in one aspect: He insisted on family interaction. Michael regretted he did so little on his end to add qualitatively to his nephew’s life. Still, the duty-bound uncle always called the child on his birthday, even though it was a hard phone call to make.

As he thought about what to say to his nephew, he was remiss to think his forgetfulness meant he had not bought a birthday present. His sister picked up, and even before she spoke, her youngest, Amelia, could be heard raising a ruckus in the background.

Michael dispensed with his habitual act of penitence. “Sorry, Miranda. I forgot to buy Aaron a present.”

It was always hard to tell if Miranda was ever angered by her brother’s lack of family feeling. She was polite. “It’s okay, Michael. Aaron just loves to hear from you.”

“I should have sent him a card, at least.”

“Yes.” She paused to let him feel his negligence. “But you called.”

The brother changed the subject. “Have you found a buyer for the house, yet?”

“The market is very bleak, now. But I am taking in a boarder to make a little extra money.”

“A boarder…?” he grunted. “What kind of a boarder?”

“He’s not a drifter or anything like that. He’s an invalid, in fact. I’m putting him into the guest room off the hall bathroom. I’ve just painted it.”

Michael could hear Aaron pawing for the phone. “Why would you put him in a second floor bedroom if he’s an invalid?”

“He’s not always going to be an invalid,” Miranda answered defensively. “His physical therapist came by and recommended…”

Aaron was jumping at his mother’s elbow. “Uncle Mackul…! Uncle Mackul…!

Miranda threw out a caution before handing the boy the receiver. “He visited a petting zoo today, so he’s rather wound up.”

It was an ongoing challenge to understand the boy, but it was doubly hard when he was excited.

“Uncle Mackul!” Aaron exclaimed. “I saw some biddy goats today! And some emus and monkeys! I bought some sunflower seeds whiff me, but da ducks radder chase me dan eat da sunflower seeds! So I ran! I ran! I ran! I ran! I ran as liddle Jimmy Grimaldi ran da udder day!”

Michael had left many of his old sci-fi videos at the family house when he moved away to college, and Aaron had committed random dialog from them to memory. The uncle tried to push the conversation forward. “Did the ducks bite you?”

“In madders of aggression, we have given dem absolute power over us. Dis power cannot be revoked… Guns, tanks, bombs—dey’re like toys against dem!”

The boy’s recitation was loud, but Miranda could still be heard in the distance playing with Amelia. Michael tried another question. “Then you had fun?”

“I did, Uncle Mackul! I rode a pony and godda feed some pigs! Some Vietneeze pigs! And I rode a tractor! And saw some biddy goats. Bahhhhh… ahhhhh… ahhhhhhhhhhh-hhhhhhhhh.”

At first it sounded like Aaron was mimicking an animal, but the uncle quickly realized something was wrong. “Aaron…?”

“hhhhh-- -hhhh—hhh-- --hhhhhhhhhhh- - --   ----hhh-- hhhh---- --- -”

“Are you okay?”

The boy’s voice dropped sharply in register. “hhhh-- -hhhhhhhhh—hhh-- --hh----h --- - -- ---   ----- --   ---    --------- - ---”

Michael yanked his choke-chain-of-a-phone-cord.

The frequency of the boy's voice was now too low for the phone speaker to relay it. “----- - --  ---   ---  - ----      ----        - --      - - - --- ---- --- ----- -”

The uncle could feel the tone tingle in his ear, but Miranda and Amelia’s unaffected banter could still be heard in the background. “Aaron!” he yelped.

Initially the static resembled an AM radio, as though some distant, late night preacher could not be fully tuned in. A faint thumping was slower coming to the forefront. It was not from shoes but from where the receiver on the other end was striking the linoleum floor as it bobbed. Squeaking floorboards were also close at hand, moaning slow and low with shifting weight before the patter of quick tread put someone heading out of the room.

“Aaron…?” came the uncle’s futile call.

He could still hear floorboards, only now somewhere deeper in the dark, dusky house. At a loss, Michael jerked around to glimpse his own house up the street. A light—a candle—was in one of the upstairs windows. It ebbed away from one set of curtains only to reemerged in another. By the time the light appeared in his bedroom window, the footfall in his ear had again grown louder. The shoes stopped short of the phone, though Michael could feel the weight of the ominous presence in the earpiece.

He faded. “Who are you?”

An echo placed the broken, unfamiliar radio voice closer, as if a fourth person had joined his sister and niece at the kitchen table. “--- -- --- -- e --- t--- - it w--- -- -- ac-- ----- ---ou-- - -ve- -- m- - -ant -- - -- - - o-- - -- -- m -- -” Still, nothing in Miranda and Amelia’s voices conveyed alarm. The dangling end of the receiver was then snatched up off the floor.

“Miranda?” the brother whimpered.

There was a mischievous pause, like a killer wielding the lull as a weapon. A gravelly, concentrated voice scurried over the line. “Mmmaaaaaaaccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkuuuuuuuuulllllll!”

The light in his distant bedroom window trailed off with the ghostly moan, and Aaron could again be heard, only now somewhere away from the phone playing with his baby sister. Another rustle arose in his ear.

Miranda’s voice was strong. “He must have dropped the phone, Michael. You know how easily distracted he is…”

The brother interrupted, “Is the boarder there with you, now?”

“I told you I just painted the room… Of course not.”

“Be careful,” he mumbled.

“Why would you say that?”

“Evil spirits can only go where they’re invited.”

“What…?” Miranda was confused. “I told you he’s an invalid, Michael. You watch too many horror movies.”

Rattled, the uncle listened inattentively while his sister completed the rundown of all Aaron’s birthday activities. She then reminded her brother about their parents being in Chicago for Christmas and that he should come home to see them. The conversation was wrapped up before the seizure could be mentioned, and a frazzled Michael limped back up the block.

He reentered the house and peeped from the foyer, “Hello? Is anybody ther…?”

As the last word hung on his tongue, a flashlight appeared in the stairwell and outlined the elongated shadow of a man with a toolbox. It was Mr. Tommen.

The resident was slow settling back into his skin.

The caretaker was ebullient. “Set the traps for you!” He moved toward the backdoor without breaking stride. “Sorry again about the power still being off. It should be on later this evening.”

Michael looked around with warier eyes once the man was gone. Streetlight, wanting to set a different mood in the darkening house, pushed in through the window curtains. Everything not recessed in shadow rose pointedly in the glow to resemble a cocked trigger.

It was only in the disquietude the uncle realized that among Aaron’s movie quotes was one from The Day the Earth Stood Still.