The puddle of urine cooked under the sun from the window. This man could have been there for the week, staring with vacuous eyes at a small spot on the floor. There was no swinging. No creaking sound. And the only thing Margo said she saw was two unnaturally small feet, as if bound from childhood, mysteriously suspended in mid-air.
     Phil came back from the store with a carton of milk and a dozen eggs. He slowly stepped out of his car, and put his bags down. His wife, in her pink robe and dirty white slippers, was staring into their neighbor’s window. Now, Margo had been known to stalk about her front yard, fully clothed, of course, long before this spectacle. But, much to Phil’s chagrin, something had obviously startled her on her usual robed stroll to pick up the morning news.
     And when Phil came out of his car, when he heard Margo’s shrill sobs, loud like a giant bird, he cringed. He knew Margo’s wailing could go on for some 45 minutes if he didn’t do something.
     “Look at him, Phil,” Margo cried.
     “Right,” he said. He walked up to window and looked at the body. No swinging. No creaking sound. Just a little boy’s body attached to an older, manlier face, a tuft of facial hair beneath the chin. This did effect him, but he couldn’t be sure where. Was there anger in his toes, as they shriveled slightly in his shoes? Or maybe there was sadness in his hand, clasped gingerly around the lattice by the window.
     “Is he dead?” Margo asked. She bit her knuckles in wait for his reply.
     Phil wiped the beads of sweat from his brow. “He hung himself, Margo.” He walked away from the window, brushed his hands on his trousers. “Damn right he’s dead.”
     “Oh Lord.” Margo let out a whistling, breezy scream, and collapsed on the ivy. “Oh Lord, God!” Her pink sleeping robe caught grains of black dirt in it as she rolled slowly from side to side.
     “Margo, Margo,” Phil said. He made an ugly face and reached out his hand. “For Christ’s sake, get up.”

     While Margo took her afternoon nap, Phil spoke with Sheriff Meyers. “How’s the family, Billy?”
     “Fine enough,” the Sheriff said.
     “I’m sorry about your Father,” Phil said sheepishly. “Sorry again about missing the service. If you remember, our son-“
     “Died the same day,” Meyers said.
     Phil wasn’t sure if he was still angry. Will Meyers, Billy’s old man, had been dead for five years. Well, sure, Margo had sent flowers. But Phil refused to let her go to the funeral. He sure as hell wasn’t going.
     Meyers looked Phil in the eyes. “So you saw him, correct?” He said.
     Phil looked at Meyers, inflamed. “Hell,” he said, “I was your dad’s partner for ten years, Bill.”
     “No, sorry, Phil. I meant the jockey. You found the jockey in his house?”
     “Jockey?” Phil said.
     “The suicide, Phil.”
     “Oh, right. Yes. He raced horses?”
     “Sometime last week his horse ran off into the mud and collapsed on a hind leg,” Meyers said.
     “Oh, was it okay?”
     Meyers walked a few steps off the porch and looked out on the Byrne’s yard. “No, Phil,” he said. “They put it down. Big black beauty.”
     Phil had quit cigarettes nearly five years ago, around when his partner died. He hadn’t an urge or a craving for some time. But when he got to thinking about this jockey pacing about his little house, tying his noose, or belt buckle, or whatever he used to do it, Phil got the want inside of him for one last smoke. Still he didn’t even think to act on it.

     “I know I’m damaged from that, Phil,” Margo said. “I know I won’t sleep again.”
     “Damn it all, Margo,” Phil said. He furrowed his brow and squeezed the arms of his chair. “Ain’t nothing changing around here.”
     “Changed,” Margo went on. “Twisted on the inside. I should be taking that pill I was given. Do I have any more of those pills?”
     “I’ll look,” he said. It sure was nice to give Margo a valium, this way he could get some sleep, anyways. Phil ruffled his cotton pajamas and walked over to the bathroom. When he had procured a couple of valiums, he dropped them into an empty cup and delivered them to Margo like a nurse would, glass of water and all.

     Sometime when their bedroom went blue from the straddle of the moon, Phil awoke. There was a deep, gay glow jumping at the window pane. He struggled to move his old bones off the bed, and then inched to the window to see what was the matter. By the time he was staring out of the window, hands cupped around his eyes, the glow was gone. But just as Phil was turning around, he saw something moving in the dead jockey’s house. He turned back to the window and stared. Whoever it was, it strolled at some awkward speed through the confines of the kitchen. Then it moved into the dining room, pushing around the flowers on the table. As it passed the window, Phil’s heart skipped.
     The jockey died alone, that Phil knew. Maybe it was a family member, a big fat one who cast a giant shadow in the light of the moon. Maybe that’s what he saw. But that wasn’t what he saw. No, he was sure it wasn’t any man in there. He suddenly had a twinge of something in his pelvis. Phil was an old man, but he remembered how his loins felt when they flamed with excitement.
     Margo sniffled in her sleep. At the sound of it, Phil’s back stiffened. He gasped loudly, and then covered his mouth. Margo couldn’t hear a word of this vision. Phil couldn’t let her know about the thing, the living thing, in the jockey’s house, or his decision to investigate the matter.
     He steeled himself to make a move towards his closet. The boards creaked under his slippers when he took a step. With his shoulder blades pinched together, he slowly opened his closet door, took out his favorite robe, and walked out of the room.
     It was gray outside. The moon was hidden behind some clouds, and the street lamps were out. The grass in the front yard was wet, and Phil’s ankles squirmed in discomfort from the chill. He had found a flashlight under the sink, and now he held it like a gun, always pointed at the front door of the dead jockey’s house. By the time he was at the dead jockey’s door, his feet were wet.
     Intrusion, breaking and entering— Phil had been a cop once, long ago. And people were liable to be shot for less than turning someone else’s doorknob in the middle of the night. The jockey, now dead, had always been odd to Phil. Such a short man he was. Phil had thought him a boy until he saw him getting into the driver’s side of an old Pinto in August. Now Phil was pushing open the late man-boy’s unlocked door.
     In the front room there was a rotted stairway, racing and computer magazines stacked on every stair until the first of two landings. He shined his flashlight at the walls to show a sun-stained daisy pattern for wallpaper. It seemed more like a storage unit for a pack rat, than a pro jockey’s abode. There were no obvious amenities, no jacket closet or umbrella stand. Phil walked into the dining room. He shined the flashlight on the ceiling where the man-boy had hung himself. There was a small, pin-pong paddle-sized spot of bright white paint. Something was missing from the ceiling, recently moved. Had the poor jockey done it from some light fixture up there?
     The rug was dirty with mud, huge footprints and circular globs of it all over. And then it all came back to him: The thing—the other intruder in the house of the deceased. He didn’t hear anything. But there was this mud all over the floor. And something else must have been there.
     “Hello,” he whispered. Nothing. He moved toward the kitchen. There was a small rectangle of linoleum tiling, peeling and warped. The mud was everywhere, and he was tracking it about, ruining his slippers. A cupboard was open. There were cereal boxes with gaping holes in them. Phil picked one of the boxes that seemed intact and a heap of flakes rushed out of the bottom of the box. His heart jumped. “Shit,” he said loudly, as the cereal fell into his robe.
     And then as sure as it was wet on the beach, as sure as that jockey did hang from the center of the neighboring room, Phil heard a deep thud above him. It was loud, but altogether focused. It was a heavy noise. For a moment, Phil just stared up in convalescence. It was as if something had stolen his ability to react. Then another thud came down a bit further from the first, shocking him into movement.
     What in the name of the Lord am I up to in this house, anyway? Phil thought to himself. He muttered a curse and walked towards the door. But as he moved towards the dining room, cereal crunching underfoot, the thuds seemed to want to trace his escape. They followed him to the dining room, where he glimpsed lights turned on in his own house through the window. Was Lizzie awake? The thuds followed him, harder now, as he strode, heart pounding in his chest, toward the foyer. And just as he began to turn the knob, the thuds stopped at the landing of the crowded stairway.
     Phil knew that whoever was upstairs, whoever had been tearing through this dead jockey’s house and eating the cereals like a dirty pig and muddying up the piss-stained carpet, was staring down at him from the landing atop the stairs, probably smiling. And he knew it was a straight shot from those stairs to the front door. He was a sitting duck. So Phil shrugged down his shoulders, voided his lungs, and turned on his heels to face his pursuer.
     It was the horse. It’s massive black form, muscles quivering under its fur, shined in the moonlight as if some unnatural gel had covered it from head to toe. The contours of the thing, the largeness of its split hooves and the oil slick of it’s gorgeous limbs wanted only to further the dread that shed off the equestrian beast like the hocks off of a ham. This thing, tail stationary behind it, merely stared at Phil.
     Its bridle was a deep green, with blue blinkers and a martingale over it’s back. It did not stir under its saddle. Rather, it appeared to be longing for someone to grab up its lead. And then it huffed, once.
     When Phil finally registered the way that circumstance had erred on the side of impossibility, he turned to run. He let out a shallow anguished scream as he did so, but he heard it overwhelmed by the sound of the mare galloping in his direction. The stairs sounded as if they were collapsing under the weight of the horse’s charge. Phil fingered at the lock of the door, swearing to himself that he’d intended to leave it open, and in splits of second had swung the slab open. As he exited the house, legs flaring up in high step, still gurgling out screams, he glanced behind him. Just as he crooked his neck, the mare brushed past him at some ungodly speed, it’s hooves kicking up ghastly mud and turf in its wake. The pocked skin of Phil’s cheek felt the smooth, cloudy quality of the tail as it swept against him, and what came upon him was a rush of heretofore unknown exhaustion. It tickled his spine. The whole ordeal sent Phil’s eyes reeling into the back of his head. He watched the massive thing dart across the road and collapsed.

     “It was a horse, officer. Sure as ever, that horse came running down those stairs right at me. Sure as ever.” Phil’s eyes bulged and his hands shook as he related the incident to Meyers.
     Meyers’ face drooped in a sorrowful disbelief. “Well, Phil, it wasn’t a horse that was in that house. There was the mud, and there was the cereal, but there weren’t no horse.”
     “I told you, Billy,” Phil said in exasperation, “how do you think I got into all that mud? It was a horse. It was that damned jockey’s horse,” he stammered, “all heated up and angry.”
     Meyers looked down ruefully. “The jockey’s horse is dead Phil.”
     “Dead?” Phil said, his eyebrows alighting.
     “Please, Phil,” Margo squirmed next to him in fret as she spoke, “Oh please just have a bit of this tea and tell Officer Meyers what really happened.”
     “It was a horse, damnit,” he said. He looked at Meyers. “Billy, have you ever known me to be a teller of tales?”
     “Of course not, Phil,” Meyers said. He took a swig of his convenience store coffee and straightened his hat. “But,” he said, “it was late, Phil. And a man getting on in his years, he can see things.”
Phil sucked his teeth. “It wasn’t a damned hallucination, Bill.” When Phil heard the sound of desperation in his voice, he knew it was useless.
     “Either way, Phil,” Meyers said, “from here on, if you hear or see something going on in there, or anywhere else for that matter, you call me. Don’t go off breaking into a dead man’s house.”
     Phil wrung his hands as if to squeeze out the memory of that depraved beast. The look in its torn eyes as it glowered at him from atop the stairs, the emerald glow of it as it strode past him. He hated to have lived it. Margo, a quivering mess of disarray, continued brandishing a mug of some foul-smelling tea she’d bought at the new store on Second Street. Surely that horse had ruined what would have been a relatively dull night. And surely the only shred of consistency left clothing Phil’s psyche was Margo and her gallingly doting ways.