He was home alone, on a cold and windy night, the sky was dark on account of the clouds and the house was far from the others in the dark suburbia. He rested on the couch, eyes and mind absent as he stared blankly to the television. That was until the power ceased. All at once the lights, the screens, the appliances, everything shut off.

He was startled awake and rose slowly, the sudden quiet and darkness played at his confused mind. He then felt the strange sensation of falling, alike a weight was placed on his shoulders. He stepped carefully around the dark house, eyes not yet adjusted. Then it occurred to him that all light was absent, not even the outdoors or the blanketed and defused moon light bled into the old wooden house.

He stepped about feeling his way, eventually he found the phone he’d been looking for on the table before the TV. Yet it would seem the battery was dead. He treaded about lightly as he stepped through the corridors of the cold house, his fare feet feeling the floorboards like upon ice. The outside windows of the kitchen showed no further sign of light either, he knew they were there, just before him, yet he could not see them.

That was when his eyes seemed to adjust, or rather something regarded the house with illumination. Outside, beyond the deck a pale light blanketed the house. To his confusion and horror, it would seem that a silent black wind had surrounded the place, spinning and rising as though the house was falling within a torrent of a dusky whirlwind. A midnight black gale, spiralling in a funnelled storm.

In all his shock and horror, he had not noticed that a shape stood off to the left of the windows, where the locked door opened to. He slowly took a step back before the eerie silence was taken by the sudden knock. One single knock.

The young man slowly stepped towards the door, the metal handle slightly illuminated and shining. Then there was another lone knock… And then there was silence again. Silence as he stood frozen, shivering and twitching, attempting to remain as quiet as he could as his throat choked up.

Then in all of a sudden, it all stopped. The power returned. The spiralling silent black wind had left. He stood quietly, pondering for a time in all that had occurred. Then the sound of the television returning took the air from him, he turned in a shock before he stepped slowly to the living room. Upon the screen held the image of a house, a familiar one, the very one he was in for the night.

He was slowly transfixed as he stepped to and rested on the couch, the air warming, and his eyes undiverting. He became aware the program was a news broadcast, the screen depicting a man speaking on how a house believed to have been lost in a great storm ten years prior had mysteriously reappeared unscathed.

He slowly rose and stepped to the nearest window. The outside world was quiet, a light fog crept from the nearby tree line and the moon was bright, the earlier cloud coverage seeming to have dispersed.

He slowly stepped back to the television, looking to now see an old B-movie playing, from some time in the 70s as it seemed. The footage was grainy and jittery, and the sound was muffled, but it showed a slow scene of a killer creeping up to a lone car overlooking a snowy city. The young man then watched in disgust as the film turned to the most vivid, grossest and most detailed slasher film he had ever seen. Blood splatter the interior of the car and flesh, bones and blood were torn and eaten alike by the killer. The shots lingered long, and the detail centred in each frame. He questioned how this would have made it passed any censers of the time. He was disgusted yet could not look away as the killer snapped the bones of the two victims before sucking the marrow. He could not look away.

Then the power was lost once more. The pitch black returned. He sat pondering, shaken and frozen. There was another knock as he realised the windows bared no light yet again. He sat cold and shivering with dread. He thought he must have been asleep, dreaming, a nightmare, it had to be. A great white light passed the house, beaming through every window.

The knock came again, then another, faster and faster. Then everything ceased to be.