Bitter Vacancy

“Well it would be almost impossible not to really, in a house like this anyway.” He says, though I was briefly distracted by that rogue breadcrumb resting gingerly on his sleeve, that last one was only there for a few seconds before he brushed it off.

“It’s not the house, necessarily, more just the surroundings. I’m living in complete isolation; I could die and not a soul would notice.” I say, with an unintentionally melancholic tone. That crumb’s still there.

“Hmm,” he leans forward and rests his head on a hesitant fist “I hadn’t considered that.” He trails off slightly at the end there, stares off into the distance. I’m unsure as to why – but it makes me feel uneasy, as if I’ve gifted him some sort of sinister notion he previously ‘hadn’t considered’. The noise my chair makes as I push it back to leave is near excruciating, wooden legs scraping against rough kitchen tile – domestic nails scraping a chalkboard calling his drifting eyes back into consciousness. He watches me as I take my now empty plate from the table in between us, there’s still half a roll left on his that he doesn’t appear to be showing any interest in.

“Are you finished with that?” I ask, he nods in haste and gently pushes the plate closer towards me. I place it atop the one already in my hand and carry them over to the basin (after throwing the leftover bread in the bin of course), it’s only a few crumbs, so I give them a quick rinse and rest them on the side to dry. “Would you like anything more to drink?” I ask, half hoping he declines.

“No, no, I best be off – it appears to be getting dark.” He says, glancing out to the window on the left. I follow his eyes in interest – he’s right, it is dark, but it always is nowadays. He told me he only came spontaneously, ‘was in the area so I thought I’d stop by’ he said, helping himself to a cup of tea I didn’t offer him. ‘There’s nothing around for miles,’ I thought to myself at the time ‘why on Earth would he be in the area if he wasn’t planning on visiting me?’. We talked as if it were old times for the first thirty-five minutes, then he just had to go and bring up mother and her blasted inheritance, consequently reminding me why I never invite him over anymore. I tried my best to change the subject, but no matter what I brought up he’d just find a tenuous way to link it to the estate, it’d have been more compelling to press my face up against the blackened glass and converse with the rain instead.

“Ah, I’ll get your coat.” I say, perhaps too eagerly. I rush off to the front door and pick his overcoat up off the second hook, he’s waiting impatiently behind me when I turn around to give it to him, running a pale hand continuously through his tousled hair. He takes the coat out of my hand, yet doesn’t put it on, “It’s raining out there, you know,” I say, though he doesn’t react, “it would be wise to wear your coat, Joseph.” He does this unnerving flinch when he hears his name, but still ignores my advice – doesn’t matter to me anyway. As I open the door to let him out, I’m hit with a strengthened rush of bleak wind, it’s not necessarily cold (as one would expect), just off-putting, it almost feels empty.

“Right, I’ll be seeing you.” He says, stepping out of the door and into the outside.

“Have a safe journey.” I say, closing the door before getting to the end of that last word – it’s unlikely he was listening anyway. I walk into the parlor, planning to watch him leave my vicinity through the window, though I can’t quite spot him. It is rather foggy I suppose, though in spite of the abysmal weather I can still see the pathway considerably clearly. How strange.

I can feel the night falling in, I’m merely sitting in bed, waiting for it. My attempt at lighting the fire failed wretchedly, nothing but a few charred pieces of wood left sitting on the floor left to show for it, so as a result I’m sitting resentfully in the sour dark. Too dark to read. Too dark to write. Just dark enough to lurch around in my inexplainable misery, lost deep within it, like a frog without limbs trying to escape a shallow pond. You’d think in a house this big I’d have no trouble finding something to do, but I don’t have anywhere near enough stuff to fill every room, so most are just these melancholic husks I try my hardest to avoid. I had it all planned out once, the first floor bedroom I’d turn into a study, the second floor I’d turn into guest bedrooms (one of them being mine) and then I’d rent out the third in an attempt to alleviate my solitude, though of course I never got round to finishing. I began by plastering one of the second-floor bedrooms, but it was so insanely boring that I just couldn’t possibly finish it, so instead I have a rigid, merciless reminder of my inadequacy at the top of the stairs, taunting me. Why is the window open? I didn’t even know you could open the windows, not in this room anyway. I certainly didn’t open it, it’s so cold in here – there’s no need to make it even colder. I get up out of my bed and go to close it, drops of rain have blotched the carpeting, making it look almost spotted – the same happens to my hand as I reach out to pull it closed. They tarnish my hand at a sharp pace, it’s like I’m being pricked by some sort of Antarctic needle. The rooms fills with silence as I pull the window shut – I was so used to hearing that unbroken blustering of wind that I didn’t even realize it was there, not until it was gone.

Creaking floorboards. Candlelight flickering through the tight gap where the door meets the wall. I rub my woken eyes to establish a lack of deception – it appears to be genuine. I push the sheets off me, it doesn’t seem as though I slept for long – the carpet appears still faintly freckled under the window. Intact with drowsiness, I mope towards the door, deeply unsure of what this aforementioned light could possibly be. My shaking hand meets the doorknob, it seems hesitant to open it. The flickering is still there, just as conspicuous as it was when I first woke – it’s inevitable that I find out what’s causing it and I can either do so on my own terms or wait until it’s perilously unavoidable – with that in mind I begin to push down on the handle. The light leaves as I do so, ergo I forcibly drive the door open and scan what seems to be an empty corridor. A litter of footsteps echo down my right ear, followed by an elusive trail of smoke in my nose, I dart my head round to the right-hand side of the corridor to find a somber figure coming to a stop at the end, he’s clutching a vacant lantern in his almost ghostly left-hand, in his other, his deceptively gnarled fingers are wrapped tightly around the handle of a lightly bloodied hammer. I let out a discernible gasp, unwittingly alerting him of my whereabouts – he abandons his lantern (endowing it an undignified hardwood death at the end of the corridor) and begins striding with menacing purpose towards me. An impulsive left turn tears me towards the stairs ‘if I can make it downstairs, I can make it out’ I think to myself, as I sprint through corridor after corridor; the rumble of groaning floorboards acting as a constant reminder that I’m being chased. I’m being chased. And he has a weapon. I throw myself down the staircase with little thought once I eventually reach it, my short nightgown making it relatively untroublesome to do so. I sprint through the (in this moment) regrettably grand foyer, my eyes planted on the front door. It’s already open, for a reason I can only imagine is related to the person I’m now being chased by, I must’ve mindlessly forgotten to lock it. That once empty wind brushes against my face almost comfortingly as I near the door – ripped from me. His hand snatches the back of my bedgown, wrenching me back towards him. I try to grasp onto what little balance I have left but it’s too late, a forceful push lands me on the wooden floorboards. His angular figure towering over my forlorn remains, he turns to face me, looking down on me with a face I know all too well.

“Joseph,” I plead through gasping breaths “…why?” I’m not even surprised it’s him, it’s more plausible than the idea of it being a stranger who just so happened to stumble upon my manor, there’s no one around for miles. No one to find my body. He doesn’t answer my question, but instead brings his fatal hammer above his head and forces it down, dragging me to a realm of unconsciousness.

Oftentimes, when I catch myself going through a period of great difficulty (take mother’s death, for example), my unconsciousness can act as my only sanctuary – away from my thoughts, my feelings, it’s a sort of voluntary solitude. Of course, this time was different – I was already escaping, my lack of cognizance caused me to be unwillingly rescued from my own freedom, and now here I am, lucky to be alive really – though I don’t exactly feel lucky. I wake abruptly, instantly becoming aware of the torturous agony opening from my head, then I see him. I’m in a bed, which he’s sat at the end of, staring at me. He forces a smile when I wake up, shuffles closer to me and goes to rest a hand on my head. I push it away before he gets too close, causing him to frown.

“You’re finally awake, are you feeling okay?” He says, an outsider could easily mistake his tone for concern – the burning soreness I’m feeling in my head leads me to believe otherwise.

“Get away from me, you bastard!” I spit back at him; I sit up straight and go to get out of the bed he must’ve put me in, it’s the second floor bedroom I woke up in earlier, if I can make it to the door I might have yet another chance at escaping.

“Goodness! I beg of you sister, please calm down,” He says, his bitter hands holding a tight grip on my wrists so I’m once again unable to move, “Please, whatever is the matter?” He says, his inflection riddled with sinister condescension. What does he mean? He is ‘the matter’, has the fact that he just tried to kill me been completely repressed from his memory?

“What do you think is the matter? You tried to kill me!” I say, though I shouldn’t have to, it’s not like these particular events are easy to forget. He tries to give me an empathetic look, though it comes across as further patronizing.

“Night terrors. That’s what it is, isn’t it, sister,” He gets up off the bed and looks straight ahead at the wall “not good, not good at all, a sign of hysteria it is.” He looks me right in the eyes when he says that last part, though I can’t bring myself to meet them. It felt so intensely real, I can’t have dreamt it, I can’t. This pain, too fierce to be the result of a mere ‘night terror’, though I can’t really make sense of it all – what use would Joseph have in killing me? It felt so concrete, but I guess now, looking back it doesn’t seem at all conceivable. “Come, sister, I’ll assist you to the doctor – you need a great deal of help.” He pulls me gently from the bed, I’m too weak to resist, no choice but to go with him. He wraps his arms around me, helps me to the door I so vividly remember my shaking hands pressed upon earlier, but they weren’t were they.

 Not really.

“I suppose you’ll need someone to watch over the estate while you’re gone, I doubt the doctor will discharge you right away.” He says, pushing the door open. My head hurts too much to comprehend what he means; moving’s very much exacerbated the pain.

“…. hmm, I suppose.” I say nonchalantly. He helps me through the door and we turn right, it’s quicker this way I think, we can go straight through the side exit, avoiding that unnecessarily large foyer. Each footstep lingers in my ears, the pounding, the creaking – it all seems so familiar. But it can’t be. I trip slightly as we get further down the corridor, Joseph picks me up swiftly and holds me tight. I feel trapped. No. Protected. I think we’re nearing the end of the passageway now. I can’t lift my head up to see, but we’ve been walking for quite some time, there can’t be much left.

A sharp pain in the bottom of my right foot. The floor’s littered with broken glass.

The remnants of a smashed lantern.