The Forbidden Room

The Lady of the House

"It started when we returned from Africa," my husband says.

In the candlelight, his face is half in shadows and his gaze faraway.

"This was Alma's bedchamber. She had the baby, but her mood changed after the birth. She wouldn't leave her room and in the end she...You saw the blood. Neither she nor the child survived."

My hands fly to my mouth but I stay quiet, mesmerised by his low voice and his tale. Next to us, Sam has his stare on the carpet.

"We kept the room locked afterwards, and when I married Mary...For a while it seemed that we could move on. Then, one day, I was in London, and Mary somehow managed to enter the room. Sam found her hours later, in the walled garden."

Sam shifts his weight on his feet and grimaces at the reminder. My husband meets my gaze for the first time since I emerged from the forbidden room.

"I apologise for hiding this from you, Amelia, and for endangering you in this manner. But there is something in this room--"

"I've seen it," I interrupt him. "Some sort of spirit, or wraith, or... It showed me things that weren't there. Then it attacked me."

Both my husband and Sam stare at me now, their eyes wide. Their surprise cuts me short. Do I sound like a lunatic? Did I imagine what happened in there?

"You've never seen it?" I add, my voice small.

My husband shakes his head. "Whenever Sam or I enter the room, everything is always as it has been since Alma's death."

My chest deflates. I've heard of people sleepwalking and having dreams so vivid they seemed real. Is this what happened to me? But then, how to explain Mary's death? Surely the likelihood of the both of us being drawn to the locked room, making our way inside and to the window is too small to even consider. My husband is right, there is something in this room. Something that led me to the window and called to me outside. I recall my fingers gripping the windowsill, its wood hard and rough against my skin, just before I awoke from my daydream. Something had snapped my attention back to the reality of the bedroom. The memory of a hard object knocking onto the floor comes back to me.

The statuette.

Whatever the spirit inside the room is, it didn't like me fiddling with it. Could it mean the two are somehow linked?

My husband's eyebrows draw into a frown. "What is it?"

"The figurine," I say, my mind racing.

It has to be it. My husband brought it back from Africa, which is when the dramatic events started in the room. I have to ascertain my intuition. I have to show the statuette to my husband. I take the candlestick from Sam.

"I'll show you."

Without thinking, I grab the doorknob and twist it open.

Things happen so fast I barely have time to gasp. As if it was only waiting for me to touch it, the door swings open violently, pulling me in before I can let go of the knob. My husband shouts my name behind me, but too late. I stumble forward, my fingers slipping off the doorknob, and the door slams shut behind me with a loud crash.

The dark silhouette hovers before me, and I face it alone again. The light from my candleholder seems to be swallowed by the moving shadows of its immaterial silhouette. My heart rate accelerating, I glance between the closed door – my husband is pounding on it again – and the statuette on the windowsill. The apparition drifts closer to me, and I make a decision in one instant.

I lunge for the figurine. The spectre shrieks as my free hand closes around the statuette, and in my panic, I drop it on the floor. As it hits the carpet, the dark spectre briefly disappears.

Does this mean that destroying the statuette will make the threatening silhouette vanish? It's a small hope, but I cling to it. I don't think it'll let me get to the door and leave with it now anyway.

I retrieve the figurine on the floor and the spectre moves closer to me again. My hands shaking, I look around, desperate for a means to distract it. The hammering on the door is still loud but it doesn't disturb it. With all my strength, I send the statuette flying against the wall. To my dismay, it doesn't smash to pieces as I hoped but it only breaks in two.

The ghostly apparition shrieks again and flings itself forward, but I duck out of the way and snatch a piece of the broken figurine. I run to the closed window and without taking the time to open it, I throw the half of the statuette through the windowpane. It shatters into tiny pieces of glass and the wooden fragment falls into the garden below.

I turn around to verify the effectiveness of my stunt on the apparition. It is screeching again – but more immaterial than before, the tendrils of shadows somehow thinner in the candlelight. Anger flares in stomach. 

I am the lady of the house. I will not be driven out.

I look about me, until my gaze settles on the remains of the statue.

With a desperate instinct, I drop my candle on it. It catches fire and immediately, the ghostly figure bounces up and down as if drunk, making ear-piercing shrieking sounds. I cower against the door as it makes a final loop below the ceiling and vanishes in an explosion of embers.

On the floor, a tendril of smoke rises from a singed hole in the carpet. Breathless and flushed, I marvel at the sudden silence in the room.

Then I open the door for my husband and Sam.

***

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And stay tuned for the epilogue...