Dream House (2 page)

A loud knocking on the door brings me back round.

When I open my eyes, everything is dark.

I lie there for a few seconds, trying to come up with a plausible explanation for what just happened.

Maybe I'm sick?

I certainly don't feel too great. I haven't had anything to eat for ages—perhaps I just passed out because of that. I probably ought to have something . . . but why is everything so dark? Am I still alone?

I stop, draw in a deep breath, and then slowly let it back out.

From outside there's the sound of rain pattering on the roof and splashing from the gutters.

Sluggishly, I climb to my feet. And realize, when I hear a renewed burst of loud knocks, that whoever is outside of the house is still trying to get my attention. Summoning all of my strength, I drag myself over to the front door and, to my surprise, manage to open it without difficulty, only to find a petite woman standing on the porch who, by the looks of her, is well into her eighties. In her hand she holds a huge black umbrella, which she has been using to shelter her small body from the rain.

Our eyes meet, she, seemingly, as surprised to see me opening the door as I am to find her on the other side of it, and for a moment this bizarre tableau remains motionless.

The old lady makes the first move: without uttering a word, she points her index finger right at me, between my eyes, and then turns around.

Puzzled, I watch her back as she slowly trots away down the steps and along the path towards the gate, the raindrops splashing off her umbrella, and then I set off after her.

When I'm halfway across the garden I turn to look behind me, wondering if I really should leave the house.

But why should I stay?

Unable to come up with any convincing reason, I turn back around and continue down the path again, ready to go.

It takes me a moment to realise that the old woman isn't there anymore—all about me there's only darkness, and the only thing I can see ahead is the gate, which has been left open.

I walk over to have a better look at it, but as soon as I touch its iron frame a weird sensation—something almost like a shiver of disgust, or of horror—runs through my entire body, and I back away quickly, feeling strangely upset and vaguely nauseous.

I shouldn't leave
, I tell myself, hurriedly pushing the gate closed with my foot and rushing back to the house through the rain. I slam the door shut and flick the switch to the enormous chandelier floating up there near the ceiling, and the room instantly springs to life, giving me a feeling of warmth and welcome almost as strongly as it did the previous day.

Even though I'm starving, there's something more pressing that needs dealing with right away: getting hold of some dry clothes; after being out in the rain, the ones I am wearing—literally my only belongings—are now soaked through.

Dripping all over the floor, I walk through the corridors of the house turning on the lights and eventually find myself back in what is, for the moment at least, my bedroom.

I open the wardrobe: there's a pair of soft pyjamas covered in pictures of bunny rabbits hiding in their burrows. They're not ideal but they're good enough, and when I put them on I find that they fit me perfectly.

There's an ideal spot for drying my wet clothes on the radiator underneath the window, so I borrow a few hangers from the wardrobe and use them to hang my green army jacket and plain white T-shirt as well as I can against the hot metal, dumping my black jeans untidily on top.

Gradually starting to warm up again, I find myself back in the kitchen, which opens onto the living room, and hunt through the cupboards, drawers, and shiny chrome fridge for a snack. Just like with the pyjamas, there isn't much choice—but probably still more than I've really got any right to expect. I opt for the packet of tortilla chips I find, pour some into a bowl, and walk into the parlour.

As I snuggle down to tuck in to my food, I realise that I'm starting to grow fond of this stiff old sofa, and it begins to dawn on me that the thing I'd been secretly hoping for is actually becoming reality: the house of my dreams is all for me.

If it weren't for the strangeness of the whole situation, I would still think that I was dreaming.

After finishing off the tortilla chips, I place the bowl on the coffee table by the sofa and walk over to the French windows.

The rain is still pouring down and night has swallowed up the outside world, but I spot a light on the other side of the hedge which runs around the border of the back garden.

The neighbours.

Perhaps they have the answers to some of my questions. There's a small chance that they might know where the owners have gone, at least.

I look for an umbrella, find one in the wooden cupboard in the entrance hall, slip on my sneakers, and make my way outside. I'm standing at the front of the house now, the side that I'm acquainted with, but I'll need to walk round to the back if I want to get a better view of the neighbours' property and find out how to reach them.

I start making my way across the wet grass, staying close to the thick walls of the house, and make my first left turn, eyeing as I pass it the small window of the room I slept in. Another left turn is all it takes to reach my destination, and so—treading carefully through the darkness—there I am.

There's nothing to light my way out here, but I follow the path and soon enough find myself standing in the middle of the damp back garden, looking at the yellow light that cuts through the blackness.

There's no movement visible through the neighbours' windows, but to the right, a small wooden gate in the hedge seems to connect the two properties. At the other end of the garden, half-hidden by some bushes, I spot a small shed, very similar in appearance to the house itself but much smaller.

I spend a moment deciding what would be the best course of action: should I enter the neighbours' property, or go and take a look at that tiny shed? Neither option is particularly enticing, but at a loss as to what else to do, I start walking over towards the corner of the garden where the little wooden hut sits.

Before I get very far, though, I hear a sound from behind me.

I spin around and freeze in my tracks at the sight of a shadowy form in one of the two big living room windows of Amabel and Marvin's house.

Just like me, the indistinct figure freezes for an instant. The only thing I can see clearly is a hand touching the glass; everything else is too dark and blurry to make out. All I know is that someone—or something—is inside that room, inside the house, and that I can't just stand here—I need to do something, fast.

But by the time I've run over to the window, the shadow has gone. It doesn't mean that whoever is inside has left, though.

Frightened, I dump the umbrella on the ground and run back round to the front door, pushing it open to find myself standing in the self-same room as the shadow which had seemed to be watching me. I switch the lights on, and the chandelier immediately illuminates the parlour, but nothing seems to be out of the ordinary in any way: everything is just as I left it.

I know I saw something.

Or at least, I
think
I did.

But could it just be all the pressure that I'm under? Could it simply be that I
imagined
it?

Gingerly, I cross the room, raise my left hand, and rest it against the windowpane, feeling the cold glass under my palm. My head is still aching from before, reeling from this flood of strange new events.

With my hand still pressed against the window and my eyes closed, I try to decide what I should do next. Leave? Just because the people living here were so nice to me, that doesn't really give me any right to be in their house. But at the same time, I want to at least thank them for their hospitality last night. Maybe they've left a note for me somewhere, and all I need to do is find it. Despite feeling like I'd rather just curl up on the sofa, I force myself to wander through those empty corridors once again in search of any messages that might have been left in the other rooms of the house.

As soon as I take my first step, however, something catches my eye.

The bowl.

The one I'd left on the coffee table. It's no longer there.

It's stacked tidily on a kitchen shelf.

Uncertainly, I give it a good looking over to make sure it's the same one I ate my snack from, and even though it's a perfectly run-of-the-mill glass bowl with no exceptional distinguishing features that might give me the confirmation I seek, the one that was on the table still isn't there.

It's enough to make me feel certain that I'm not imagining it: someone else is in here.

And that person must still be hiding within these walls.

T
HE OLD
grandfather clock's chimes begin to play their melody, telling me that it's midnight, and well past time to begin my search.

I run to the kitchen counter and grab a carving knife from the knife block before cautiously setting off to explore the part of the house that I've not yet set foot in.

Turning left from the front door, a corridor similar to the one that leads to the little room on the right of the house where I slept trails off towards further unknown places. Before me are shut doors, set close to one another.

At first they all look the same, but then I notice that the door to my left doesn't bear a sign identifying its function, unlike the two to my right.

Knife gripped tightly in my left hand, I take hold of the doorknob with my right and give it a quick twist. It's locked.

I try again, this time applying more pressure, but it doesn't make any difference—it's not opening.

Is that . . . ?

I put my ear to the wooden panelling.

A voice.

A whispering voice.

I leap back, startled.

I'm absolutely certain that whoever was in the living room is now on the other side of this door. I kneel down, bending as low as I possibly can until my right eye is squinting through the crack underneath.

There they are—the same feet I saw before I fainted!

At this point, whoever is hiding in there might well be the only person able to tell me what is going on. And I need to know.

Totally at a loss as to what else to do, I climb to my feet and start banging desperately on the door as hard as I can, as though the only thing I care about in the world—the only thing that matters—is getting to the other side.

Until, suddenly, I hear the key turning in the lock.

I twist the handle and slowly push the door open, trying as I do to gather my thoughts into some kind of an intelligible question for the person I'm expecting to find standing there waiting for me.

But when I'm finally ready, the only thing I see before me is a staircase: about ten steps leading down into the darkness beneath the ground floor.

It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom, but I summon up all of my courage and start to descend, the knife held out in front of me in my trembling hand. The old wooden slats creak loudly beneath my feet at each step, almost drowning out the sound of the rain outside.

As I go, I gradually become aware of a vague glow coming from below.

When I've almost reached the bottom of the steps, I see the small cellar I am about to enter to my right. The room is illuminated by candles burning in each corner, as well as by others propped on shelves and brackets all over the walls. I pick one up to light my way and advance towards the centre of the room, where a white circle has been drawn in chalk onto the rough flagstones of the floor.

The cellar is obviously used as a storeroom—the walls are lined with old chairs with threadbare upholstery, decrepit cupboards, and overflowing cardboard boxes.

I'm standing by the chalk line and peering about me in search of the mysterious person when I feel two hands take me by the shoulders and forcefully shove me forward, into the circle.

Things start to happen in quick succession—first, I hear footsteps running up the stairs. Then, somehow, something suddenly blows out all of the candles at once, leaving me in pitch darkness.

And then I hear the basement door slam shut.

Dimly aware of a kind of murmuring noise behind me, I blindly bump my way through the junk and old furniture littering the floor and hurry as quickly as I can to the foot of the stairs. When I finally reach them, I start racing up towards the cellar door.

It's then that something grabs hold of one of my ankles.

Its grip is icy cold, and whatever it is drags me violently back down the stairs, back to the centre of the storeroom.

What had begun as whispers grow louder and more intense until they've turned into full-blown screams, and in this maelstrom of noise, my body spins around the room in complete pitch darkness, an awful nightmare coming to actual, horrible life, until finally I give in and stop fighting.