by Ingrid Fry
I pointed. ‘There’s the house.’
It appeared exactly as it always did, except for one thing. The front door was wide open.
‘Nice place,’ Jason said. ‘Not my style of architecture, but nice.’
‘What should we do?’
‘Nothing. Go home. What are we supposed to do? There are no shadows, no noise, no tawny frogmouth, no nothing.’
‘How about we ring the doorbell?’ I suggested. ‘It’s not safe to leave your front door open when it’s right on the street. Anyone could walk in. Let’s ring, and when they answer we can say we noticed the open door, and we were worried for safety reasons. Neighbourhood watch an’ all that.’
‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘Why? Maybe the owners are away and the house has been burgled. We should check it out.’
‘Trust me, you don’t want to get involved. You’ll just get us into trouble.’
Jason’s unwillingness surprised me. I wanted to get the hell away from the house, but I was also worried for the owners.
‘I think your attitude—’ A sharp yap from Boo cut me off. She leapt forward, jerked the extenda lead from my hand. It clattered along behind her as she tore across the road, through the front door and up the fancy staircase.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jason said.
‘Boo, Booo-ooh, come back!’
I unzipped my trusty bum bag and extracted Boo’s favourite squeaky toy. She always came when she heard it.
Squeeeeeeeek. Squeeeeeeeek. Squeeeeeeeek.
Jason gave me a look. ‘Maggie, shhh. You’re disturbing the neighbourhood.’ He strode across the street. ‘Come on, let’s ring the doorbell.’
‘There’s no one around to disturb,’ I said as we walked up the front steps and he rang the bell.
It was your ordinary, everyday doorbell. Nothing special.
We waited. We looked expectantly into the hall. A large mirror over the antique hall table reflected back our anxious faces. Intricately designed octagon floor tiles spread out before us in a black and white mosaic. Thousands of eight sided white tiles interspersed with black diamonds were corralled by white zigzag tiles around the edges. So many tiles. They needed to be counted.
‘Don’t even think about counting them,’ Jason said.
‘Wasn’t,’ I lied.
Two beautiful table lamps with brass stands illuminated the gilt edge of the ornate mirror and cast pools of yellow light on the walls and floor. A carpeted staircase hugged the wall behind the hall table, its bannisters casting teeth-like shadows.
Ding Dong. Ding Dong.
Still nothing. Only silence.
I stuck my head inside the door and yelled, ‘Boooo,’ whilst frantically squeaking her toy.
Silence. No Boo.
‘Helloooo, anyone home?’ I called.
Not even an echo.
I turned to Jason. ‘Now what?’
‘We have a number of options,’ he said, in his let’s be rational, we have all the time in the world kind of way.
‘One, we call the police and tell them our dilemma. We wait at the front door until they arrive, then we all go in together. I mean, Boo’s in the house, so she’s definitely not run away.’
‘Yes, but why isn’t she coming back? She never does this, never goes near strange places in the first instance, let alone inside weird houses. It’s not like her. I have a bad feeling.’
‘Calm down, don’t panic,’ he said continuing. ‘Two, one of us stays here, while the other goes to a neighbour. We tell them what’s happened, ask if they know anything, and get them to come in the house with us. Three, one of us stays at the front door, while the other goes into the house and gets Boo.’
‘You can count out number three. That’s dumb, unless you want to go into the house alone, and I wouldn’t let you do that anyway. I’m calling the police.’ I took out my phone and dialled the number. ‘Damn. No signal. What’s going on?’
I tried once more. Still no service. ‘For God’s sake, we’re in the suburbs. Ridiculous.’
‘I’ll try the neighbours,’ he said. ‘Can you stay here and look out for Boo?’
‘No worries.’ I pulled out my Swiss Army knife and tucked it in my sock.
Jason grinned at me, rolled his eyes and strode off. His silhouette cut a fine figure under the street lamp. He tried the house next door, but no one was home. Nor at the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that.
He yelled from halfway along the street, ‘I’ll try the other side.’
Jason was soon out of sight. I stood by the front door feeling upset. It was deathly quiet. Where the hell was everyone?
Peering inside the house again, I noticed it was exceptionally clean. Utterly spotless, so pristine it didn’t seem real.
‘Boo?’ I called, in a squeaky little voice.
The house must’ve been soundproofed as there was no echo; the sound was sucked away.
My heartbeat ramped up as I stepped into the hallway. I left one foot firmly on the doormat. I’d read somewhere if you have one foot outside you can’t be charged with trespass, and I liked to be a law-abiding citizen.
A sound tinkled in the distance—Boo’s collar?
‘Boo?’
A whimper.
‘Boooo?’
Perhaps her lead was caught on something and she couldn’t break free. Without thinking, I stepped fully into the hallway.
BANG!
The door slammed shut behind me.
I jumped. Bloody hell. I was trapped. I grabbed the door handle in a panic and the door opened. It must have been the wind—yet there was no wind. Where the hell was Jason?
Tinkle. Tinkle.
There it was again. Boo was upstairs. This was ridiculous. If there was a burglar they’d be long gone by now. I had my phone. I’d video myself going into the house, collecting my dog and leaving. Jason and I would call the police when we got home. That way I’d have evidence, just in case. I’m sure Dad would give that plan the tick of approval.
I opened the front door wide and tucked the doormat over the frame to stop it closing. Then I started recording.
‘Hello, is anyone home? I’m going upstairs to find my dog.’
The sound evaporated as soon as it left my mouth.
I touched the smooth wood of the staircase banister. It felt inanimate. Funny, it didn’t have a vibe. Lifeless.
A few steps up the staircase now, treading on the plush, spotless carpet. My heart was beating faster with each step. At the top was the window facing the street, the one where the shadow had been.
The house felt unreal, the colours just that tiny bit brighter, the wood just that tiny bit woodier. And what was with the damn silence?
My heart pulsed in my throat. I was breathing and moving but couldn’t hear anything inside myself. I’d gone deaf. I tapped the banister with a fingernail. No sound. Panic stirred in my gut.
A movement near the front door caught my eye. I whirled around.
Oh, thank God. It was Jason.
He saw me at the top of the staircase, waved and stepped inside. His lips were moving, but no sound reached me. I replied but couldn’t hear myself either.
Jason ambled towards the stairs, as though someone had pressed the slow-mo function on the TV. At that speed, it would take him a day to reach me. He suddenly launched into fast-forward and was halfway up the stairs before he stopped, frozen in mid stride. His eyes locked desperately onto mine for a moment before he shifted into fast forward again and appeared right next to me.
A sound smashed through the silence—the front door had slammed shut. It was a beautiful resonating sound, which reverberated in my chest. The ominous finality of it reminded me of a castle gate closing. As the noise dissipated, a surge of colours gushed from the door. Chromesthesia—colours evoked by sounds. I was a synesthete, but I’d never experienced it as acutely as this. The look on Jason’s face made me realise he saw it too. How could that be?
A thousand
glistening hues of colour rose in a tidal wave of effervescence and coursed towards the ceiling. We stared speechless at the spectacular display as the wave of colour rushed along the path of least resistance: the stairs. As it hurtled towards us I gripped the banister and braced for the oncoming tsunami.
‘What the hell?’ I screamed, and a silent current of coloured shapes gushed from my mouth.
Jason’s eyes widened. ‘Stuffed if I know!’ he yelled, and an equivalent stream of colours erupted from his mouth. Nothing was behaving as it should.
I held my breath and steeled myself as the wave rose over our heads and crashed down, swamping us. We were surrounded, drowning in colours and shapes. I couldn’t help but breathe them in. My body tingled as the colours penetrated my skin. Jason became a shadow in the wash and whirlpool of opalescence. If it weren’t so terrifying, it would’ve been beautiful.
A kaleidoscope of luminous colours dripped from our bodies as the wave receded. Florescent pools glittered on the floor like mirrors. My horrified face was a brief reflection before the pools evaporated, faded into nothingness.
Jason shook his head, sending out a spray of drops which sparkled like rain drops in sunlight. His mouth moved, and I recognised the shape of some choice expletives.
‘Are you okay?’ My voice was distorted—deep and slow.
‘You sound weird!’ he replied, in the same slow-mo mode.
Our movements were sluggish as though we were trapped in a permanent Tai Chi class. Something caught our attention, and we oh so slowly turned and gazed back down the staircase.
Tendrils of blackness flowed through the doorframe of a downstairs room. Smoke! The house was on fire. Jason stared at me with enormous eyes that screamed run!
We would’ve if we could’ve, but we couldn’t. So we didn’t.
The smoke filled the lower hallway. A thick tendril moved towards us, pointing like a bony finger. The cloud of black swirled and thickened, drawing its tendrils back into itself. It expanded and contracted, forming strange shapes. The vague outline of a winged creature appeared, its wings flowing and distorting like ink through water. Morphing into new forms, the smoke creature drifted across the shiny tiles towards the staircase.
The black cloud solidified into a tall, dark form, which stretched from floor to ceiling. Skeletal arms and legs formed and the arms stretched out extending long clawed fingers towards us. A head formed, pointed and skull like. Amid the inky darkness, the whiteness of a ribcage appeared, the crystal blackness of a beating heart, a collarbone, vertebrae, and eye sockets whirling with volcanic fury. It was at that point I figured the house wasn’t on fire.
The powerful, muscular entity slowly ascended the staircase.
I’d watched enough nature shows to recognise its stance, crouched low, slinking, head extended, each clawed foot carefully and precisely placed—it was stalking. Us.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was as dry as a chip. My knees knocked uncontrollably. I’d never had that happen before. A barrage of hideous psychic images assaulted me. The thing was trying to beat me to death with them. I started to count the floor tiles in the hallway below.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six...’ Distract yourself, Maggie.
Jason’s eyes were fixed on the darkness as it approached. I hoped his brain was coping with what he saw. I could sense his mind racing.
‘... seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven ...’ What harm could a shadow do? It was only a shadow. But what was making the shadow? Maybe the shadow maker was invisible but still cast a shadow? Then it wouldn’t only be a shadow. The idea made me feel sick.
The creature surveyed the path before it. The blackness of the thing pulsated with energy. It was a dark force the likes of which I’d never experienced in all my supernatural encounters. A billion laser pinpricks pierced my skin and danced across my flesh. The radiation prickled in my muscles. As it progressed up the stairs the smell of stinking, charred flesh burned in my nostrils. Was it my flesh?
Shiny fragments incandesced within the creature. It was a piece of the night sky out for a stroll. The Dark Force paused; its head quivered as though sniffing the air. I sensed invisible eyes latch onto mine. Their focus burned into my brain and my heart filled with despair as an avalanche of demonic images continued to assault my mind.
A Bogong moth dropped from the ceiling light. It hit the banister generating a puff of moth dust. The dust settled for an instant before it was sucked, along with the moth, towards the creature. They swirled in a slow-motion tornado towards the thing and fluoresced in contact with it. Sparks erupted. Fizzzttt! Gone. The effect was similar to an electric light insect trap, except in this case, not a skerrick remained.
Jason stood frozen, hands clenched around the banister, mouth open, eyes wide. Definitely not a confidence inspiring look. In situations like this—if you believed the movies—the guy was supposed to have the steely narrowed eyes, clenched, chiseled jaw, one muscled arm shielding his loved one, and a shiny Smith & Wesson in his other hand.
I looked at Jason again. Check none of the above.
The thought occurred to me that what had happened to the moth could, in all probability, happen to us, if we chose to stand and gawp.
The Dark Force was three quarters of the way up the stairs and faced squarely towards us. The paintwork faded as it passed, the banister pulsed and buckled under its touch and the walls flowed and rippled like water.
We attempted to move away, but our minuscule movements got us nowhere. ‘… twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen ...’ Maybe I was having a magic mushroom flashback. If so, Jason was having the exact same flashback. But Jason had never taken drugs, never got wasted, aside from getting rotten on apple cider with his mates in the back of a panel van, while listening to Neil Young, down by the surf, once upon a time. ‘… sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen ...’
We needed to move and move fast. I had no intention of doing the ‘Fizzzttt! Gone’ thing. But fast was not happening. The Dark Force was moving ever so slowly. We needed to move ever so slowly, but much faster, away.
There was a door behind us. It was more a cupboard type door, than a room type door. It was next to the big window where I’d first seen the shadow. Boo was nowhere to be seen.
We had limited options. Fling ourselves out the window, jump over the banister and land in the hallway, or hide in the cupboard. Perhaps the thing couldn’t open doors. Then again, maybe it didn’t need to.
My limbs were as heavy as lead, each movement like walking through mud. My jaw rattled with an agonising vibration. Great, we were dealing with an invisible dentist as well.
I grabbed Jason’s arm with one hand and turned the door handle with the other. I opened it and peered in. Blackness. An inky void. Shit.
The Dark Force was at the top of the staircase. Decision made. I dragged Jason inside and slammed the door.
In the pitch black, it was impossible to determine the size of the area. Was it a cupboard or a room? There was nothing but Jason’s ragged breath rasping in and out. I took a breath to calm myself and the sense of heaviness departed from my limbs. The unsettling vibration stopped. I tested my voice.
‘You okay?’
‘Who knows,’ Jason said in a strangled voice I hardly recognised. ‘It’s dark,’ he continued, stating the bleeding obvious.
‘Yes, even the white bits are black.’ I giggled but wanted to scream hysterically.
I took Jason’s hand and shuffled two steps forward into the blackness, one arm outstretched for obstacles. My stomach gurgled—sound had definitely returned. My heart was thumping so loud it scared me.
Our footsteps sounded out as if on wooden floorboards. Nothing impeded our progress. It was a room. I let go of Jason’s hand and waved both arms around. I felt my pupils straining into the darkness. A faint tinkle sounded.
‘That’s Boo’s collar,’ Jason said, his voice back to its normal deep timbre.
‘Sshhhh, listen. There it is again.’
‘Boo?’ Jason called softly.
My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, the blackness not so black anymore. A small pinprick of light came from somewhere. I couldn’t tell if it was close or distant. We stood expectantly, eyes straining.
The pinprick of light grew larger and the blackness receded. About twenty-five feet away there was a small night light on the floor. Next to the light was Boo. She sat and stared at us with the earnest gaze she gets when she’s really focused. Like when she sees a cat.
We were in a huge bare room with floorboards and no windows. It seemed safe enough, albeit weird. What a bizarre space. The house must have been way larger than it appeared from outside. How had Boo got in here?
We moved towards her, but as we walked she receded and the further away the end of the room seemed.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Jason said. ‘It’s like Alice in bloody Wonderland.’
His language alerted me to the fact he was niggly and in no mood for recalcitrant rooms which wouldn’t behave according to the agreed laws of physics.
We walked on with purpose, making some headway, although it was still like walking up a down escalator.
‘Let’s stop and call her,’ I suggested. ‘See if she can come to us.’
We enthusiastically called her and slapped our knees.
Boo sprang to life and trotted towards us, nails clicking on the wooden boards.
‘Come on, girl, come on!’ Jason said.
Boo picked up the pace but wasn’t getting anywhere either. It was like walking on a treadmill. Curiously though, the room contracted with each of her steps. Eventually she stood right in front of us. She had brought the corner of the room, and herself, to us.
The space was now smaller by half, and the light next to her was not a night light after all. It was a spherical object made of crystal or glass and blazed a beautiful luminescence with subtle variations of the most exquisite colours. It was about six inches in diameter and gave the illusion of hovering slightly above the floor.
‘Wow, it’s amazing,’ Jason said, reaching out to touch it.
‘Don’t!’ I growled. So did Boo.
My teeth began to chatter. The horrible vibration was back. The door rattled and started to bubble and pulse like cheese on toast under a hot grill.