The House

Chapter 9 - Day 2: Follow the Trail

Hell has opened up and swallowed the house whole, with me still inside it.

The diabolic noise that woke me is beyond anything I'd ever heard before. There is an overwhelming bong, bong, bong going on, which is making the wall at the head of my bed shudder and some of the ornaments on the vanity tinkle.

A melodious ding-dong-ding-dong, ding-dong-ding-dong, dong... dong... dong is audible between the deafening bongs. The noise carries on and on, and when the last bong finally quivers to an end, only a light, distant coo-coo, coo-coo can be heard.

"What the hell?!"

My heart is pounding painfully in my chest, and my head is spinning. I'd been having a deep, dreamless sleep when the cacophony of sound erupted, yanking me cruelly to complete wakefulness.

For a few seconds, I have no idea where I am, who I am and why I am being attacked by vicious sounds.

The clocks!

Why are they going off now? From the number of bongs and dongs and cuckoos, it must be around eleven or midnight. Were they set to go off at midnight? Why? Don't these kinds of clocks usually go off every hour on the hour? I can't remember hearing them once before now. I would remember!

If they did this every hour from now on, I'd go insane before dawn.

It is so dark in the room I can barely see the bedside table. It takes many attempts to locate my phone without causing the same kind of chaos as last night when I'd tried to grab it from the entry table.

Two o'clock. TWO?! There had been a hundred bongs and dongs and cuckoos, not just two! Was this Ron's idea of a prank? Not funny, not funny at all.

The loudest and most ominous sounding of those clocks is located way too close to my bedroom. The walls near me haven't quite stopped vibrating yet.

"Well, that's it, I guess; sleep's over for the night." There's no way I'll fall asleep again after that startling ruckus.

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I snore myself awake. 

This only happens when I sleep too deeply, and my head ends up in a weird position. Sunlight is pouring warmly into the room, bathing every surface and ornament in a bright, cheerful light. I shield my eyes and groan. 

Note to self: Close the curtains tonight, no matter how dark it seems to be. 

Why does this room have so many windows?!

I stretch and moan and finally roll myself from the too-comfortable bed. The clocks didn't go off again. Thank God! I pick up my phone and check the time. It's gone past ten already!

I feel a little druggy and sluggish, and every single muscle in my body is aching. Wars with maggots, wrestling matches with stuck doors and self-defence against luggage will do that to you. 

I yawn and stretch again, getting myself ready to stumble from the room to find the nearest bathroom, when my eyes light on the bed I'd just left, and I gasp mid-yawn, abandoning my futile stretching. 

There are mud and grass streaks on the sheet. The floor next to the bed has dirty footprints containing the same mud and greenery.

Now I'm wide awake, staring horrified at my bundled-up duvet and the cluster of pillows I'd brought from home. There's nobody in my bed. I lower my head and study my feet. There's a variety of leaves poking out from between my toes, and lifting one foot; I'm surprised to find the sole quite dirty.

"Oh, my soul!"

The dirty footprints clearly came from the direction of the bedroom door and got onto the bed, and those footprints seem to belong to me! I drop to my knees to investigate under the bed, just to be sure. Still nothing there, just my bunny slippers poking out.

I don't remember getting up in the night. I remember being woken by the hordes of hell, ringing their bells, but I do not remember running around in some muddy field. 

How is this possible? 

I turn the knob on the bedroom door, causing it to unlock and peek out, suddenly too scared to leave the reasonable safety the room provides. Exactly what is it that I'm afraid of? Myself?

Only ticks and tocks greet me. The house is as quiet and calm as I remember it being. The only difference is that there are dirty footprints coming from the down-going stairs, all the way across the landing and down the passage up to my door. 

I follow the trail along the hallway and landing, down the stairs, and surprisingly they don't lead to the front door but back toward the kitchen.

Due to the dirt, I expect the door to the backyard to stand open, but it's not, it's locked, and the footprints do not go near the door. Instead, they turn toward the pantry, run past the pantry and end at the locked door on the other side of the cuckoo clock. 

Really?

My fingers tremble when I reach out and turn the doorknob. It is still firmly locked; the knob doesn't even try to turn.

How is this possible? My footprints start from here! I came out of that room at some point in the night and left a trail of dirty, wet footprints all the way back to my bed. They are my footprints. They're the right size, and my feet are dirty. 

This makes no sense.

I remember reading something in the letter about keys. I still have my cell phone in my shaking hand. I barely manage to steady myself enough to access the appropriate image Craig sent me yesterday.

Yes, that's right, Craig gave me the front door key, which must have come with the letter. I search the kitchen for the hook containing the additional keys mentioned in the letter and locate it in a wall cabinet near the light switch. There's a key ring in there with many keys in different stages of ageing.

I grab them off the hook and hurry to the locked door. My hands are shaking too much for me to easily search for a key that might match the lock. I try several that could potentially fit, but none of them does.

This is not possible.

"Maybe... maybe there was a puddle here on the floor, and I stepped in it when I made my final rounds, just before going to bed, and I just didn't notice."

A puddle? From the roof leaking?

There's another floor above the kitchen. Perhaps the upstairs bath is leaking. And the dirt and leaves? Blown-in by that storm, maybe. The storm could've blown the water in through a gap in a window as well...

Sounds reasonable, especially when said out loud. 

I can always test whether I'm being reasonable by voicing my thoughts. I'm going to go with this theory because no other theories make any sense. I could not have come from a locked room and crawled into my bed with dirty feet. That doesn't sound reasonable, not even when not said out loud.

Since I'm already in the kitchen and I cannot think clearly on an empty stomach, I decide to make myself some breakfast. 

Peanut butter-chocolate ice cream, a banana and coffee. Perfect!

Eating my extremely nutritious and healthy breakfast, I scroll through my phone. There are quite a few messages from Craig received at intervals until after midnight and then again this morning, even before 8 o'clock. Impressive! 

And also a little weird.

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