Without going in, the scene made him gasp. Another timid step, and he was certain. The revolting plates of congealing food, which he was positive were there earlier (it had been the deciding factor in choosing a McMuffin for breakfast) had been swept from the table and lay strewn and broken on the floor, the food debris seeping onto the thankfully hard floor. Neil stared, shaking in reluctant disbelief.
His heart jumped to his throat at a noise from the kitchen. Was that footsteps? He should never have come inside. This was too much. And then, from the corner of his eye, the giant tower of week-old dirty washing up toppled spectacularly to the floor.
The crash, as splinters of broken plates shattered against every surface, exploded in Neil’s ears. Too much for his jangled nerves, his full bladder betrayed him, its contents leaking profusely down both legs.
He fled soggily (albeit slightly warmer from the hot stinging urine) back along the hallway and out through the front door, knocking the chair and its stack of post over and back onto the floor.
Slamming the door behind him and leaving his key protruding from the lock, he passed the streetlamp and kept on running, tears streaming down his face. Reaching the end of the street, he squealed as his tiny build collided forcefully with the rotund bulk of Matthew and Lurch-like Josh—two fellow housemates walking back from the pub.
“Whoa! What’s your hurry, Neil? Slow down,” cried Matthew. He noticed the smell, and Neil’s wet trousers. “Have you wet yourself?” he sneered, a look of utter disgust on his ruddy face.
Neil’s quick mind realised his little accident at least gave him an excuse why he’d been in such a hurry.
“I lost my door key,” he lied. “I was rushing to the toilet back at Uni. And now… Crashing into you two…” Neil could hold their stares no longer.
Nothing more needed saying. It made sense. Neil struck Matthew as exactly the kind of person who wouldn’t think of using the toilet before leaving for home. The software-engineering bunch were not the most practical of people in Matthew’s opinion. If Google didn’t tell them to do it then it wouldn’t be done.
As a drama student, he was a lot more confident than his compatriots. At least, he had the skills to act that way.
“Come on then,” he said. “We can let you in. Maybe you left your key in the house. Let’s hope so! We don’t want to have to cut you another one! The landlord’s getting sick of us asking for more keys.”
Shuffling from foot to foot, weighing up his options, Neil knew he had to go back with them. He couldn’t go anywhere else in this state.
“Come on. Don’t dawdle,” Matthew badgered.
When they arrived together past the lamp post and up the path to the front door, Neil’s key was soon apparent sticking out from the lock.
“There’s your key isn’t it, Neil?” Matthew queried with a frown. Neil nodded, staring at the floor.
Matthew exchanged a knowing look with Josh. They said nothing, but shook their heads. Their opinion of Neil as an oddball had gathered significant new evidence. Even for a geek he was strange, spending most of his time locked away in his room. The brief exchange about wetting himself was the most they’d spoken in months.
They walked into the house as far as they could before the obstacle of Neil’s hurried exit prevented further progress. Mumbling a few expletives, Josh set about picking up the chair and strewn post from the floor.
Neil tip-toed past up the stairs to change his clothes. Exclamations from downstairs forced their way through the floorboards as Matthew and Josh discovered the mess in the kitchen.
“Bloody Hell!” Josh roared, joined by a whine of “What the f…” from Matthew.
Neil was just pleased they were here to deal with it now. It was more than he could cope with.
“That sodding cat must have been in again. I keep telling everyone- do the washing up, or the cat finds a way in to lick the plates... We’ll have bloody rats before long!” Matthew tutted.
Josh swore profanities under his breath as he struggled to clear up the disgusting mess of coagulating food and sharp broken crockery. He glared unnoticed at Matthew, who instead of helping, watched contentedly whilst declaring the necessity of a house meeting ASAP to make sure this sort of thing didn’t happen again.
Josh had almost finished clearing up when Bronwyn, the only girl in the house, and her boyfriend and room-mate Aeron, arrived home from their own night of pub fun. With four fifths of the tenants present, Matthew tried to air his concerns.
“Me and Josh have been forced to clear up a disgusting mess in the kitchen. The bloody cat’s been in again cos of all the food left on plates.” Josh looked skywards, shaking his head at Matthew’s inclusion of himself in the tidying.
“Okay. Okay!” placated the newly arrived couple in Welsh accented unison. “Can we talk about this another time?” Bronwyn slurred. “I’m not feeling my best right now.”
“Fine,” Matthew had no choice but to agree. The couple left to sleep off their inebriation. Matthew, noticing the good job Josh had done, disappeared too. Josh tutted, any chance of help now absconded.
Being last to leave the kitchen and lounge, he checked as he left that all windows were closed to prevent further feline intrusion. Feeling around the frame to the handle, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. The window was already locked. Why would anyone open it in such cold weather anyway?
But if they were closed, how did the cat get in? Still puzzled, he pulled the curtains shut to conserve any warmth. Walking across the room, frowning and drumming his leg, he reached the lounge door and paused. With his finger poised near the switch, a reluctance to plunge into darkness prevented him pressing it.
Glancing around, his eyes darted to every corner. Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as a wave of nausea crashed over him. But his nervous glances revealed only that everything seemed to be in order.
His gaze returned to the light switch as clammy sweat trickled down his forehead. With gritted teeth, he forced himself to move his hand to the switch. From the corner of his eye, the curtain flapped over the window. It couldn’t be wind. He’d just checked it was locked
Thump, thump, his pulse drummed in his ear. The hairs on his body joined those on his neck, sending a violent shudder down his spine. His wide eyes stared at the wall. Knowing someone was watching him but certain no-one was there, he couldn’t bring himself to check. Muscles rigid with fear simply wouldn’t be coaxed to move that way again.
Instead, he flapped at the switch, fumbling the light off after several failed attempts. He didn’t turn to look further into the room. Slamming the door behind him, he sprinted up the creaky stairs to his bedroom.
Halfway up, a loud bang almost made him trip and fall. He couldn’t help but steal a look back towards the lounge but immediately wished he hadn’t. The light he had struggled so to turn off glowed from the crack under the door.
Teetering on the edge to glean any noise which might offer a clue to who was there, Josh slipped with a painful thud onto the step below. His heart leapt to his throat, the sound of it blocking all else. He didn’t know what he expected, but someone, or something had turned the light back on. And if they heard him on the stairs…?
He ran, lurching up the last three steps, skidding around the half landing towards his room. Rattling the door handle which usually gave no trouble but now seemed contrarily determined to torment him further, he finally (more through luck than any moderation of technique) managed to shake it open. He leapt inside, snagging his sweater pocket on the handle, catapulting him back onto the landing.
Untangling himself, he slammed the door shut, then reacting to the total darkness he’d rushed into in his panic, he batted his hands on the wall hunting for the light, knocking a few empty cans and DVD cases to the floor.
At last he found the switch. Thankful for the light, he leaped the room to his bed in a single bound, hauling his covers over his head. He knew it wasn’t a good idea to sleep in his clothes, but there was no way he
was moving again until daylight.
Chapter Two
Neil’s ears pricked. Fitful sleep had succeeded by him leaving the light on and stuffing a feather pillow over his head, but something now penetrated his defences and woke him. Identifying a source over the pounding in his chest was hard. Pulling away the pillow, he reluctantly gave it his full attention.
He fought the urge to call out. Part of him wanted to—a reply from Josh or Matthew would put his mind at ease—but responding to the impulse, his hand clasped over his mouth. What if someone else, or something else answered instead?
Too late. He had already spoken.
“Hello? Who’s there?” His heart banged harder on his chest, desperate to escape. “Why did I do that?” Neil berated himself. No answer came from Josh, or Matthew, or anyone. But there was still the sound.
With the pillow in his hands, the impulse to throw it back over his head was hard to fight. Realising sleep would be impossible until he knew what had woken him, he had to be brave and investigate.
“You’re gonna regret this,” he warned as he pushed the duvet aside and placed his feet on the carpet, hard with encrusted stains from coke and food.
Pushing himself to stand, he steadied himself on a chest of drawers when his sleepy legs failed in their solidity. Walking towards the door, he shook his head. He had a bad feeling about this.
The sound became louder as he moved, a whooshing noise he recognised but couldn’t place. With his hand on the doorknob, he froze. His sweating palms struggled with grip and he seemed to have the strength of a baby.
Pulling his pyjama top down to hold the knob with more friction, this time he threw it open with an unwelcome force. He stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, anxious the source of the noise might be alerted to his presence.
And then, with a laugh of incredulity at his edginess, he recognised what had woken him. The muffling thickness of the door must have disguised the sound. Someone was running a bath.
The wall caught him as he leant back, a hand on his shaking head. Bath taps. That’s all it was. Turning to his room, he chuckled again and grabbed the door to close it, but something wasn’t right. Glancing back down the hallway, then staring fully, Neil’s sleepy head tried to work out what it was.
The sound of running water was unmistakeable, so what was wrong? Darkness. There was no light in the bathroom. Someone must have turned on the taps and forgotten about them. He walked with purpose to turn them off. Who would do that? A flood would cause so much damage. He tutted, flinging the door open with annoyance.
His hand outstretched, he shuddered. Looking at his bare arm, watching detached, almost as if it were a nature documentary, all the hairs moved thirty degrees up, their follicles protruding in little mounds. He smiled in fascination as though witnessing a sunflower grow from seed to ten feet high in rapid time-lapse film. Then the fear which goes along with this biological reaction gripped him as the light faded and the bathroom door creaked closed.
“What!” Neil leaped towards the diminishing slither of light, terrified of being alone in the dark. Why hadn’t he just switched the light on? Stumbling over something on the floor, his arm flailed as he fell, grasping for support, his arm tangled in the grubby pull chord with its little china cat on the end. The force of him falling with it in his hand propelled the small blue feline at speed toward the ceiling where it smashed into a hundred pieces.
The noise reverberated around the room, but soon a reason for the darkness blocked the memory when the grating motor of the extraction fan ground into life. Filling the air with its hideous noise, juddering and shaking the entire house.
Neil disentangled himself from whatever he had tripped on and pulled the chord again. In the split second it took for the light to fade, his heart leapt to his throat at what he glimpsed. Long hair floated on the surface of the bath water concealing naked female flesh beneath.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry,” Neil uttered, hurriedly closing the door behind him. Running the few steps back to his room, he slammed the door and leaned against it.
“Shit!” Bronwyn would be so mad with him. How would he explain that to Aeron? “You perving on my girlfriend?” he could almost hear him yell. He pulled at the collar of his T-shirt imagining his large hands around his neck.
He forced a laugh. “They’ll see the funny side, I’m sure,” he said, muffled by his pillow which he’d returned to its comforting position over his head. He lay, trying desperately to push images of the nakedness from his thoughts and steal some sleep.
Morning brought relief. Neil lay staring at the ceiling and contemplated moving. A knot in his stomach tightened and his face glowed hot. The redness came before the memory.
“Oh, God,” he sighed, his hand over his eyes. He allowed his feet to swing around and contact the floor. “I hope I don’t have to deal with them yet,” he said to the empty room, knowing he probably wouldn’t. Most mornings, he was last out of the house, apart from Josh who slept through the day, venturing out only for lectures and Starbucks.
Going downstairs, he was pleased to find the kitchen tidier than usual—a benefit of the depleted crockery being washed out of necessity, he supposed.
The bread bin hunched on the worktop, ready to assault his senses. Neil squinted, and opened the sliding plastic door with a spoon to avoid touching the butter smeared surface. A packet of bread inside looked happy to be released from its grimy incarceration and rewarded him by being relatively mould free. He carefully picked the few green flecks from the crusts and toasted two slices under the grill satisfied the heat would kill any germs.
Next, a search for something to spread on it. There was butter, still in its packet, but so contaminated with jam and marmite and goodness knows what else that he was indisposed to use it. Solidified honey stood forlorn at the back of the cupboard. A quick run under the hot tap would render it usable again and clean the stickiness from the bottle.
Wiping away clutter from the table in the lounge, Neil landed his toast and honey, and a steaming cup of sweet tea, and sat down. This wasn’t what he had expected from life in a student house, he considered, whilst chewing his first bite of toast.
His own room was a mess, but it was an organised mess. He could find most things he needed right away. And it was clean; apart from the assortment of cups, glasses and food plates from when he snacked in his room, which was most days. Okay, so it wasn’t clean at all, he realised. But it was his mess. He took more care in communal areas.
When he had first learned of the available room, Matthew had even warned him that Bronwyn, was ‘a bit of a neat-freak.’ But apart from her occasional nagging, and insisting on having the downstairs bathroom all to herself, there had been little evidence of it.
He took comfort in knowing the Christmas holidays were coming up. To be back with his family in a lovely clean house, with his mum’s cooking… heaven. This term had been so long. And so much harder than last year.
But beyond the mess, it was all the weird stuff he was most keen to leave behind, and he was damned sure it wasn’t the cat. The large furry beast had been a nuisance when they first took over the tenure, due to the previous occupants feeding it. After weeks of shooing it away, it learned it was no longer welcome.
Yowls of disdain were still heard occasionally outside Josh’s window (no mean feat, as it involved the scruffy thing climbing to the second storey of the high ceilinged Victorian house to a precarious perch on the sill), but a well-aimed empty beer-can made enough noise to chastise it away. No, Neil was certain none of the weirdness could be blamed on any cat.
He almost choked, recalling again with horror, the excruciating embarrassment of last night’s bathroom blunder. Gripping the table and perching forwards, he dislodged the wayward toast crumb, washing down any remains with tea, ignoring the globules of fat from the on-the-turn milk.
But Aeron and Bronwyn’s disapproval was the least of his worries. As he stuffed the last crust into his mouth, drib
bling honey down his chin. If anything, it was a useful distraction from his constant nagging fear. He was smart. He knew that. But how could logic explain everything that had happened? And it wasn’t just the things he could identify either. It was more... a feeling.
How did he feel? Unwelcome? Yes, that was it.
Someone, or something, wanted him out.
Chapter Three
“That’s it!” screamed Bronwyn. “We’re having a house meeting!”
Her hysteria was caused by the discovery of her clothes, which she had left in the tumble dryer, strewn all around the lounge.
“If someone needed to dry their own washing, they could have folded mine, or waited, or at the very least piled them in one sodding place!” she fumed. “This little temper tantrum one of you has had is pathetic.”
Flouncing around the room, she collected clothes from their unusual resting places. Knickers on top of the telly, a bra behind the sofa, and all number of once crease-free items crumpled in heaps like rags on the dirty floor.
“This is sooo disrespectful!” she shrieked. No-one came forward to own up. She didn’t even know who was in. She should find out, because whoever was home would be the culprit.
Folding her creased clothes, she left them in a pile on a chair, then presuming to uncover the offender, she marched into the hallway and shouted up the stairs. “Hello? Hello?” No-one answered. She couldn’t be doing with this. She had enough work to do without this hassle.
A long hot shower in her nice clean bathroom, her own little sanctuary with no boy mess, would calm her temper. But before that, she scrawled a note on an old envelope:
‘House meeting tomorrow (Saturday) as soon as everyone is up! We need to talk!!!’
Blurred Lines: A box-set of reality bending supernatural fiction (Paranormal Tales from Wales Book 9) Page 36