The doorbell rang in the dead of night.

I wasn't sure if it was a dream or real. My ears strained, waiting for it to ring again and hoping it wouldn't. I couldn't think of anyone who would ring my doorbell so late. My wife breathed regularly next to me, yet she was a much lighter sleeper than I. It was silent and dark apart from soft moonlight slicing through the parted curtains. There was no street noise and no noise inside the house. I wondered if it could be a neighbor in trouble or the police, perhaps. Would I need to deal with drama? I really didn't want to get up. I waited a minute more and decided it must have been a dream.

I wondered why my subconscious would want me to wake up, because I wasn't having a nightmare, or any sort of dream I could remember, and I didn't need the bathroom. Maybe there was a loud noise outside, like foxes screaming. They did that sometimes. I decided it was something like that. I turned over in bed, snuggled down, and drifted back into unconsciousness.

The doorbell rang again.

I got my dressing gown and crept down the stairs to not wake the kids. There was nothing visible through the glass panel in the front door. No shape of a person, flashing lights from a police car, and no voices. I put on the hall light, checked and tightened the belt of my dressing gown, and opened the door.

There was nobody there.

Could I have dreamed the doorbell twice?

It was dark and cold and quiet outside. The street lights on our street went off at midnight, and orange tinted clouds obscured the moon and stars. I stepped out for a look around. Maybe someone gave up on me because I was so slow answering the door. They could be in trouble and need my help.

I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A shadow that was not mine slipped into the house behind me.

I felt a violent lurch in my guts, like going over a hump on a roller-coaster makes you weightless for a second, except the weightless feeling did not end. Then a gasping, fatal, cold, like being smashed through ice into freezing water. Everything looked brighter but less distinct, like looking through a silvery mist.

I turned around in slow motion.

The front door was closing. A man was there, inside my house, closing the door.

He smiled at me with my face.

I tried to run to the door, lifting my arms to reach for it, but I could not move my feet and could not see my raised arms.

"My family!"

Silence stole my cry.

The door closed.

I looked down at my body and saw nothing.