I nodded, then punched myself in the leg for trusting a stranger with the truth – a stranger who somehow knew my name. “My dad will take care of it.”
I moved to walk away, but the man stood up and towered over me like a giant from The BFG. There were more scars on his neck, like someone had once tried to cut off his head. Instead of cowering, I stood my ground. It felt important not to show fear – even against a terrifying stranger like this one.
“You’ve brought something home, boy. I can’t tell you what it was because it takes many forms, but it’s in your possession, which means your entire family is in mortal danger.”
Mortal danger? What did that even mean?
I started to walk away, keeping my shoulders straight and my stride long. The guy was obviously crazy.
There was whole lot of crazy in my life lately.
“Don’t wish for anything,” the man barked after me, his voice a few decibels below a shout. “Not even in your head. Every time you make a wish, you have to pay for it. Your injured friend is currency used to clear debt.”
People in the waiting room started to look our way, and many frowned to see a young boy being accosted by a scruffy old man. The stranger – Thomas Quick, he had said – seemed to realise this because he gathered a long woollen coat from the back of his chair and put it on. He placed the playing cards in an inside pocket. “I’ll come and see you soon, boy. Accept my help when I do.”
Dad shouted over to me then, but not because he’d realised I was in trouble. “The police want to talk to you, Martin,” he said. “Come over here, please.”
I glanced back towards the stranger, but he was already halfway towards the exit, his long coat flapping behind him. It struck me as odd he was even wearing one in the middle of summer. He must have had ice in his veins.
Weirdo.
I took my time walking over to the waiting police officers. Having to cross the distance between us made me feel guilty, like a naughty child, and by the time I reached the seating area my cheeks were burning hot.
“Hello, Martin,” said the officer with the goatee. “My name is PC Dorrens. This is PC Morrison. We’d just like to ask you a few questions about your friend, Courtney.”
“He’s not my friend,” I said, and from the frown on the officer’s face, I realised I had said it in an oddly defensive way. I’d seen enough TV shows to know that the police tried to trick you with their questions, so I had been defensive from the get-go. “I just mean he’s my sister’s boyfriend. I only really met him for the first time last night.”
“You saw Courtney last night?”
I glanced at Dad, trying to get a clue on how to answer. His expression gave me nothing, so I had to just answer on my own. “He was with my sister last night for a bit. I wasn’t paying much attention because the wrestling was on.”
PC Dorrens smiled. “My son loves wrestling too. Who’s your favourite?”
“DX.”
The office nodded, but I suspected he knew nothing about wrestling. Maybe he didn’t even have a son. His partner looked at the notepad he was holding and spoke without making eye contact. “What time did Courtney leave your home last night, Martin?”
“About eight o’clock.”
“Your sister said nine, could that be more accurate?”
“She’d know better than me. Like I said, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Fair enough. At any point last night did Courtney seem upset or angry? Troubled in any way?”
I shook my head. “He got me a Big Mac from McDonalds and then asked me to get my sister’s CDs from the lounge. He seemed fine. I like him. I don’t understand why this happened.” Tears teased at my eyes, but it wasn’t a tactic to make the police leave me alone. It was an actual surge of sadness that suddenly hit me, unleashed by having to talk about the worst events of my short life.
And it was a hundred times worse for Courtney.
“So you have no idea where Courtney might have gone last night after leaving your house?” PC Dorrens glanced sideways to look at the notes his colleague had just made.
“I have no idea. Mum got home from our next-door neighbour’s house and then asked Courtney to go home.”
Both officers looked at Mum, who shifted in her seat and looked down at her hands. What had I said wrong?
PC Morrison stared at me for a moment. “That’s strange, because your mother told us that when she got back from the neighbour’s house, Courtney had already left and that you were in bed with a stomach bug. How are you feeling, by the way?”
“I’m fine. It was just a quick thing from some bad chicken.” I shrugged, trying to figure out what to say next. It seemed best to just act like I didn’t know anything. “I assumed Courtney left when Mum got home because that’s usually when Sarah’s boyfriends have to go. Maybe he left earlier than that, but it was around the same time. Again, I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Because you were watching wrestling? But you were ill?”
“I was resting. Trying to feel better.”
“Okay, so Sarah’s boyfriends usually leave when your mum gets back from the next-door neighbour’s. Does your sister have a lot of boyfriends?”
“Hey,” said Sarah. “Courtney and me are going out. There’s no one else.”
The officer turned to her. “Any ex-boyfriends who might be jealous, Sarah? Have you broken up with anyone recently?”
Sarah froze, making it obvious there was an interesting answer to his question. Mum saw the situation escalating and intervened. “She recently broke up with a boy named Darren, but he has nothing to do with this. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
PC Morrison tapped his notepad with his pencil. “All the same, we’ll need some details. Do you have his address?”
Mum shook her head. “Sarah, do you?”
“I know his phone number, if you want that?”
“Yes, please,” said the officer.
Sarah recited Darren’s phone number, then lowered her head into her hands.
The officers turned their attention back on me. I felt like they were going to snap handcuffs on us any minute and lead us away. They were just waiting for me to say the wrong thing and land us all in trouble. How much longer did I need to keep answering questions?
PC Dorrens cleared his throat. “Okay, Martin, you told the doctor earlier that you were the one who found Courtney. Can you describe what happened? What time was it exactly?”
I said I didn’t know, which felt like a safe answer. “We came here right away, but I don’t remember what time it was. I was in the living room watching a film and someone started banging on the door. It was loud and it made me jump, so I ran to open it.”
“What film?”
“Um, the Mighty Ducks.”
“If the banging worried you, Martin, why didn’t you get one of your parents?”
“Because it scared me in a different way. Like, I thought maybe it was Sarah, and she was in trouble.”
“Why would she be in trouble?”
I sensed more traps being laid, and I realised that the Mighty Ducks had been on during the afternoon, not when I had claimed to have opened the door to Courtney. Would they catch my lie? “It’s just a rhetorical thing, isn’t it?” I said. “I didn’t mean she was actually in trouble, just that I was worried by the banging on the door.”
“I think you mean hypothetical,” said PC Dorrens, “but I understand what you mean. Please go on, Martin.”
“Well, I um, opened the door and Courtney was there. He was on his knees, moaning in pain. I didn’t understand what was wrong, so I called out for Mum, who was in the kitchen.”
“She was in the kitchen?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t she hear the banging? You said it was loud enough to scare you? How large is your home?”
Dad spoke up. “What does that have to do with anything?”
PC Dorrens shrugged a single shoulder. “If you lived in a six-bedroom mansion, it would ma
ke sense not to hear the front door from the kitchen. Do you live in a large home, Mr Ademale?”
Dad sniffed. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
PC Dorrens turned back to me, nodding slowly. “So, why didn’t your mum come to the door when the banging started, Martin?”
Should I tell them it was because she was in a weird daze, standing in front of the sink and staring out of the window? A daze that had started after a strange door had appeared on our landing.
“I had my headphones in,” said Mum, and it sounded completely plausible, despite the fact I had never seen her wear a pair of headphones in my life. “I thought I heard something, but it wasn’t until Martin started shouting that I realised someone was at the door.”
PC Morrison wrote something on his notepad. PC Dorrens stroked his goatee and seemed to think about things. “That makes sense then. Okay, well, you all should get yourselves home. It’s getting late and Courtney’s parents are on the way. Probably best they’re given some privacy. This will be a terrible shock to them.”
“I can only imagine,” said Mum, shaking her head. “It’s just awful.”
“I want to stay here,” said Sarah. “I need to be here for Courtney.”
“There’s nothing you can do for him right now,” said PC Morrison. “I suggest you leave a number where the nurses can contact you and wait for them to call.”
“Yeah, because it’s that easy to sit and wait.” She sounded as if she had never heard anything so stupid. In fact, I was pretty sure she was going to call the officer an idiot. I was glad when she didn’t.
Mum patted her knee. “You can go spend the day with Deb tomorrow, honey. I’m not having you at home crying yourself silly. You need to be around your friends.”
Sarah rolled her eyes and shrugged.
Both police officers smiled at my mum, suggesting they agreed with her parenting. Then they both looked at me. PC Dorrens spoke. “Thank you for answering our questions, Martin. Try not to think too much about what’s happened, okay? I don’t want you having nightmares.”
I nodded, but I was definitively going to have nightmares – nightmares about being trapped inside my own head, unable to see or hear or speak. Living in a world of darkness and silence. It made me want to scream.
“You all take care,” said PC Morrison. “We’ll be in touch.”
Dad stood and shook hands with both of them. “Thank you, officers.”
Once they’d gone, Dad stood and put his arms around me. “Good job, Martin. It’s over now. We can all go home.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, but the thought of going home wasn’t all that appealing; and Dad was naive if he thought things were over. There was more going on than we understood, that much was clear. I hadn’t even told him about Thomas Quick, the stranger who warned we were all in danger.
The stranger who would turn out to be right.
13
And so we left Courtney at the hospital: blind, deaf, and with secrets he couldn’t tell. If we’d known what we were up against, we would’ve gone home and torched our house, but even that wouldn’t have saved us. We had no idea what we were dealing with.
How could we?
Upon leaving the hospital, Dad took us to a late-night cafe on a nearby road. Nobody said it, but we didn’t want to go home. We didn’t want to go upstairs. We didn’t want to see if it was still there – the room. The dangerous thing in our house.
I had become certain that whatever had invaded our home was vile, an unnatural presence that meant us harm. Aliens, ghosts, demons… I didn’t know, but my innocence had been supplanted by the revelation that the monsters under my bed were real. As places of spiritual awakening went, a greasy, smoky old cafe made an odd location.
Dad left our table to use the toilet, and a miserable waitress brought our food during his absence. We were already eating by the time he returned. Mum and Dad had ordered ham and eggs while Sarah’s plate had a row of sausages she barely touched. I’d gone for a warm tuna baguette, which I devoured in massive bites.
Dad raised his eyebrows. “Wow, buddy. You starving?”
I spoke with my mouth full. “Yeah. When did we last eat?”
Sarah nudged her plate away, only half a sausage gone from the line-up. “I think I’m getting a cold.”
Dad frowned. “Then food is the best thing. You need to eat, sweetheart.”
“I can’t. I’m too upset about Courtney.”
I put down my half-eaten baguette and winced at the thought of his injuries. Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry any more. “I still can’t believe what happened to him.”
Mum reached forward and grabbed our hands across the table. “It’s been a long day, kids. Things will get better, I promise.”
“No shadow lasts forever,” said Dad. “My grandmother used to tell me that all the time.”
“I don’t want to go home,” said Sarah, broaching the subject none of us wanted to talk about. “I never want to go back.”
“It’s our home,” said Dad. “Where else can we go?”
“A hotel.”
Dad grimaced. “You think we can afford that? We’d be broke in less than a week.”
“God, I am so sick of having no money. Mum, why did you even get with him?”
I was shocked by my sister’s spitefulness, and my mouth fell open. Dad looked down and prodded his food with his fork. He was clearly tired of fighting.
Mum let go of our hands and sat back in her creaky plastic seat. She stared at my sister for a good long minute until Sarah eventually rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Take a picture, why don’t you?”
“I’m so disappointed in you, Sarah. I know you haven’t always had it easy, but I’m genuinely let down by the woman you’ve become. I had hoped for more.”
I expected Mum to continue, but that was it. She just lowered her head and resumed eating. Sarah frowned, seemingly as confused as I was that she hadn’t been torn apart. She kept her mouth closed.
Eventually Dad broke the tension. “We’ll stay in a hotel tonight, but tomorrow we’ll have to go home. I’m not sure what I saw upstairs exactly, or what happened to Courtney, but we’ll figure it all out. We’ll get answers.”
Sarah deflated like a balloon, and she even gave Dad a smile, but Mum remained impassive, chewing chips one after another, almost robotically. It gladdened me that we wouldn’t be going home. At least not yet.
“There was a man at the hospital,” I said. “He was weird and scary, but…”
Mum put down the chip she had been about to pop in her mouth and stared at me. “But what, Martin? What man are you talking about?”
“He told me his name was Thomas Quick, and he seemed to know what was happening. He said we had brought something home with us and that we were in danger.”
Sarah scoffed. “Liar.”
“I’m not lying. He was wearing a baseball cap and had a big scar on his chin.”
Sarah rolled her eyes.
Dad shook his head. “Martin, why on earth didn’t you tell me? We should’ve told the police if he threatened you.”
“He didn’t threaten me. I think he was trying to warn me. He said he would come see me soon and that I should accept his help.”
Mum started laughing, and at such a high volume that the grumpy waitress behind the counter glanced over at us before returning to the newspaper spread out in front of her. “I feel like I’m on drugs. Charlie, we need to go back to the police and tell them everything.”
“Are you joking? Machende! You want to tell them there’s a magic room in our house that ate Sarah’s boyfriend?”
Sarah put her face into her hands and started sobbing.
Mum pushed her plate away and turned to Dad beside her. “A stranger approached our son, Charlie, and said he would come back.”
“If anyone tries to hurt Martin, they’ll have me to deal with, but let’s not overreact until we understand what’s going on. If we go to the police with half a story, it’ll end badly. The guy wa
s probably just a loon.”
“So what do we do then? Wait for the next bad thing to happen? We’re cursed, Charlie. Like Martin said, we brought something home with us.”
“I didn’t say that. The man did.”
Dad sighed. “A man named Thomas Quick? Look, this is… Let’s just find a place for tonight and see what tomorrow brings. I don’t know what else to do. If we’re set on speaking with the police, then we’ll make a plan for exactly what we’re going to say. Right now, it’s late and we’re tired. It’s not a good time to make decisions.”
“Fine,” said Mum. “I agree. Let’s go find a hotel. The Vixen is near here. Maybe it won’t be too expensive.”
I popped a chip in my mouth and swallowed it whole. Before I slid out from the table, Sarah lurched forward and grabbed a serviette from the table’s dispenser. “God’s sake,” she hissed. “My nose is bleeding again.”
“That’s it!” said Mum. “First thing in the morning, we’re getting you checked out by a doctor. This can’t be right.”
“I’ll go pay the bill,” said Dad, getting up and hurrying to the grumpy waitress.
I stayed sitting, no longer wanting to get up. It could have been a coincidence, but my tummy hurt. It seemed that whenever Sarah had a nosebleed, I got sick.
It might have been a coincidence.
But it wasn’t.
14
I’ve always had a thing about hotel beds. Whatever the size or quality of mattress, I sleep like a log, and that night at the Vixen was no different. Sleep came easily just minutes after I tucked myself beneath the crisp sheets of the hotel’s double bed. My slumber was so deep that when I woke up, it took me several seconds to realise where I was.
Sarah had shared the bed with me but apparently got up first. I heard a hairdryer blaring, which meant she had already taken a shower. I didn’t want to get out of bed yet. The events of the past couple of days hadn’t yet fully come back to me and I wanted to make the most of being safe and cosy.
I lay there for five more minutes until Sarah appeared and attempted to rouse me. Fully dressed, she was brushing the tangles from her hair. “Get up, Martin. Mum says we can go back to the hospital and check on Courtney.”
The Room Upstairs: A Novel Page 8