Is there anybody out there?
This was the only warm place in the house. The hulking range cooker saw to that, but its heat didn’t even touch the painful chill of the stone floor as she gingerly tiptoed across the room. The light switch was one of those where you really had to force the tiny gear stick to move, and as it clunked up, then down, nothing happened to the bare bulbs hanging in the middle of the room.
She fuddled around on the windowsill for the candle and matches, which she hoped she remembered seeing there. Tin opener, corkscrew, a ring of mystery keys, and… were those forceps? The net curtains brushed the backs of her hands like cobwebs as the whistling wind rattled the small uneven single glazing.
There was the skinny candle in its Wee Willie Winkie style holder, and the box of matches. She breathed a small sigh of relief and her breath curled in the air in front of her. Once, twice, she scraped the match head across the box, on the third time it spluttered weekly to life. There was a flash of something ghost-like staring back at her through the window; in the faint reflection she looked alarmingly like something from a Japanese horror movie; her straight black hair falling over her pale face, her small dark eyes like two deep holes in her head. The imperfections in the old glass distorted her round face slightly, gently twisting it like a scream. She carefully lit the candle casting a small relieving circle of light around her. It helped her not to stub her toes on any of the bulky wooden chairs crowding the table, making thing feel normal again.
A black and white drawing of a the back of a girl with long black hair staring out of the window.
Even before the storm and the power cut the house had begun to spook her. It was so big that every time she opened a door it seemed to lead to a different room from the one she was expecting. The doors creaked eerily, there were rattles and taps inside the walls (which she hoped came from the ancient pipes), certain sockets sparked when she tried to plug things in and so, not wanting to burn the house down while she was house-sitting, she’d let the charge on her phone and laptop run down. Now she needed to save it in case of an emergency.
She shook herself briefly and drew the blankets more tightly around her as she curled in front of the Aga. She shouldn’t think like that - it was simply the storm spooking her, the power cut sparking unpleasant thoughts or the fact it was Halloween night creeping her out. She had never believed in stuff like that; no ghosts, no ghouls, no haunted houses, nothing she couldn’t see, touch, or hear.
Or smell actually, and what was that smell? Gas? Was this godforsaken mansion trying to kill her? Had she been lured here to die by some sinister psychos? Why weren’t the owners staying here themselves to stop teens trashing it as part of their trick or treating? What was she even going to do if something did happen?!
Take a deep breath. It’s not gas, just the lingering hint of burnt something from inside the oven. The owners weren’t out to get her, they were just wealthy enough to go somewhere warm in the winter. And nothing was going to happen tonight, only two groups of kids with their parents had bothered to come this far out of town to trick or treat - and that was before it had started raining. Another deep breath. There was nothing out there.
BANG!
The window slammed open. Rain drenched the curtains, puddled on the windowsill, extinguished the candle, sizzled briefly on the still warm hob and made the floor treacherously slippery. She jumped up to force it closed, jamming the latch down over a damp piece of paper to help it to stay closed. She stood there, arms outstretched palms against the icy glass, her breath coming in short gasps, her eyes wide. She kept her weight forward, braced against the window, partly to keep it closed against the howling storm and partly in an effort to keep those intrusive thoughts out of her mind.
Was that just a coincidence? Had it just been the wind or was something, someone trying to get her attention? How could she be sure that there was nothing more than this physical world? Ghost stories persisted over generations, rumours of the paranormal and the supernatural. There were always people who believed in things they couldn’t see; horoscopes, aliens, spirits, and millions of normal, sensible people who worshipped one god or another.
She pulled away quickly from the window and it held, one deep breath and then another. She was so cold. She grabbed the blankets again and bundled herself up, sat on the floor with her back against the oven door, the handle digging slightly into her back as an uncomfortable, yet comforting, reminder of reality. Warmth began to seep back into her body, and she brushed her rain damp hair away from her face. But she couldn’t shake off the discomforting thoughts which engulfed her. Didn’t she actually believe, at least a bit, in what she couldn’t see; a quick knock on wood just in case, a half-hearted attempt at manifesting good things for her future (it hadn’t worked, but could that be her fault for not being quite positive enough), crossed fingers for a bit of luck, and a mumbled unfocused prayer on a plane in a bad patch of turbulence?
No, if she was going to be honest with herself it was more than the just-in-case-things, and the old-habits-for-comfort-in-bad-moments. She believed in love, which she couldn’t see but was one hundred percent certain that she’d felt. She believed in justice, something more real than courts and juries, otherwise she wouldn’t get so mad when the justice system failed. She believed in good and bad, right and wrong; not that everything was clear cut or easy to tell, or even that something would be the right thing to do in every situation but, yes, she had felt guilty for doing the wrong thing, even when no-one knew about it.
She believed in herself, that there was more to her than just a shivering body, more even than a mind running wild fuelled by things society had told her and half remembered horror movies, there was a her who made choices, who disagreed, who thought carefully and rationally (most of the time), who believed in things and who could overcome her fear.
She stood up. She hadn’t managed to convince herself that there were ghosts, in fact, she still thought that very unlikely. But she was sure that sitting in the foetal position, huddled in the corner, in the dark and in damp clothes wasn’t going to do her any good. She would change, pull on several pairs of socks and check all the windows and doors were secure against the storm. There would be a battery powered torch somewhere and perhaps the matches hadn’t been soaked and she could spend the rest of the night cuddled in her duvet and a comfy chair and just forget about what had happened.
As she walked, determined, confident and resolute towards the kitchen door she heard it. Quiet footsteps on the drive. A quick light series of crunches coming closer and closer. An elongated creak as a door swung open on its uneven hinges. Just an animal, the noises of an old and empty house, a late-night prankster braving the storm or something more menacing? She slowly pushed the kitchen door open and in the patch of moonlight saw the hairs on her arm standing on end. Her voice sounding very quiet and quavery she called out into the darkness on the other side.
“Is there anybody out there?”
~ Hannah Lewis
