In This House II

 

 

She needn’t search for a bump on her head this time. The aching pain let it be known.

In the coolness of the room, she could feel a trickle of warm blood run from the base of her skull, along her neck, and onwards down her back. 

With her ears still ringing from the impact, she shuffled into a crouching position. She was afraid to stand up. Her right eardrum whistled a horrible, high-pitched trill. The world rotated on its axis momentarily, and she dug her nails against the floorboards in a bid to regain balance. 

Clenching her eyes tightly, she rose to her feet. Although her elbow was already lined with blood from planting it against the window, she was more than willing to throw it one last time. But upon opening her eyes, the window was no longer there.

The door had returned.

And it was opened.

 

*

A radio droned from somewhere deeper in the house. Or a television. A man’s voice choked through a hum of static and was ineligible. He spoke with the established rhythm of a news anchor or a show host. His obscured words rose and fell unnaturally at the end and beginning of each sentence. The voice felt close and far.

But one phrase kept piercing through the static: “In this house…”

And off he went again, talking on some unknown topic or announcing the local news of some faraway place. There was a crowd’s muffled laugh, then, before the droning hum resided and those words came through clear again: “In this house…”

 

It was her first instinct to offer a timid "hello?"

But as she approached the door, again the words snagged in her throat.

On the other side of the door was a hallway running adjacent to the room. Its wallpaper was old and blistered with a yellowed pattern, but quite an upgrade from her own room.

 

(It’s not my room it’s not my room)

 

She inched further from the darkness and into the hallway. It shocked her to feel the comfort of a careworn carpet underfoot. It was a welcome change from the wayward splinters and wooden needles that had slid into her soles in the previous room.

To her left, the hallway ran straight and featureless for ten meters, before halting at a dead end. To her right, the

 

“In this house…”

 

Hallway ran along similarly, before branching off left and right. 

To carpet made it easier to be quiet. She pressed her feet down lightly, gritting her teeth upon each step as she awaited for a deafening creak, but it never came. 

The horrible ringing in her ears was now drowned out by her heartbeat which thundered throughout her entire body. 

She reached the end of the hallway and leaned her head wearily around the corner. 

To the right was darkness. Blinding, coal-black darkness. She glanced around the walls for a switch, but there was none.

She turned her head to the left. A lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The fading wallpaper and matted carpet ran along towards a door at the end of a narrow corridor.

With a little more confidence now, she placed her foot forward and started towards it. 

 

“In this house…”

 

Then the muffled laughter, again. It was the kind of pre-recorded laugh-tracks that she used to hear across her favourite sit-coms. 

It was hard to gauge where it was coming from, and for a brief moment, she had the strange sensation that it was coming from all around her. From the attic, from the kitchen, from the living room.

Her heart began to hammer against her ribcage again, and she quickened her pace. With her hand brushing against the flaking wallpaper, she accelerated along the carpet, all the while trying to stay as fleet-footed as humanly possible.

The door approached slowly, and her hands were outstretched for its knob long before it was within reach. It was a crazy thought, considering the circumstances, but she shuffled towards the door like some cartoon character,

 

(The roadrunner you look like the damn roadrunner, beep beep!)

 

Her body arched forward and fingers prying for the handle. It almost scared her to feel a giggle rise from her belly, but she clenched her mouth shut because if she was to be heard, sneaking around the bowels of this stranger's house, then she’d be in the shit. 

She came up on the door, her fingers reaching and clawing.

She got too excited.

Her foot fell hard with creak.

It seemed to echo around the walls of hallway, and linger in the air like a thundercloud. 

 

“In this…”

The television, or radio, shut off.

 She froze, with her hands clenched around the doorknob. It was wet and slippy with sweat under her palms. Wide-eyed, she swung her head around, and glanced back the way she came, past her bedroom

 

(Not my bedroom!)

 

And beyond where the carpet ran into a wall of blackness. 

There was a rustling sound, at first, and it turned to a rattling, pounding. It was coming from the heart of the darkness. Thud, thud, thud.

She whirled around and grasped for the handle again.

But it was gone.

The door was gone. 

In its place, there was a mirror. It was small and circular and hung against the wall on a rusted nail. It was fogged over, and dripping with condensation as if someone had just taken a piping-hot shower next to it.

The pounding intensified behind her, thunderous booms that approached in the darkness, surging towards the light like some spectral rainstorm.

She turned again

 

(Maybe the door is back maybe it just needed to go for a fucking piss maybe it)

 

And looked at the mirror. With her arm, which she was fairly certain she had broken, she wiped the haze from the glass. 

Her own face stared back. Her hair was a mess, falling around her shoulders in lumps and twists, and her eyes and cheeks had sunken into her face and her mouth

 

(my mouth)

 

Was gone. She tried to scream, her voice hurtling along her throat. Her cheeks swole up and her eyes bulged in horror and no sound came.

 

“I had to take away your mouth”.

 

The voice came from behind her shoulder, and she swung around, falling to the carpet. No one was there. With her fingers, she felt her face but it was only skin where her mouth once was and now there was heavily, laboured breathing in the darkness.

She watched.

A black horse, almost camoflagued against the pitch-darkness, trotted into the light. It was huge, and its sides touched the hallway’s walls and its head was dipped clumsily forward and brushed against the roof. It stared at her, and its breathing quickened. It made a terrible, gut-wrenching squeal and began kicking its hind legs out and throwing its mane around wildly. Its rear hoof punched a hole in the plaster on the wall, and it stumbled forward.

She lay watching from the end of the hallway, her back against the wall, and eventually her head slumped forward.