The House of Sherbet

1

the house of sherbet

The Oakhouse reared up out of the wintry gloom. Finally, after six hours of travelling, they had arrived. Jake stood in the knee deep snow and surveyed the house, his gaze moving across the snow-softened angles of the roof and down the ivy clad walls to the thick timbered front door. Close up it was evident from the crumbling brickwork and rotten window casements that the once imposing house had fallen into disrepair.

He shivered and stamped his feet, more to shake off the mantle of gloom that was settling upon him than to dislodge the snow. He was glad to have Flash by his side, wagging her tail and barking at the door.

He lifted the iron knocker and brought it down against the sturdy oak door.

Thud.

He waited, listened, and knocked again.

Thud.

He could almost hear Elly’s voice, as if she were standing next to him, waiting alongside him for the door to open. You couldn’t make it up. That was their latest phrase, their private sliver of language that passed between them like secret currency. It had originated from Elly’s dad; Mr Thorpe would turn from the television screen, his face agape with wonder at the latest documentary, his hand delving into a monster sized bag of crisps, to deliver his pronouncement: You couldn’t make it up.

Elly. He’d seen her less than twenty-four hours ago yet he was aching to see her again. When would he see her next? Five days, six, a week maybe? It seemed half a lifetime away.

He felt the skin-crawling sensation of being watched; instinctively, he looked up — just in time to glimpse a pale face and a halo of white hair retreating from a high up window.

It wasn’t the first time he’d sensed the weight of a watcher’s gaze. Everywhere he went in recent days he felt that he was being followed. He saw shapes in the shadows and heard whispered warnings on the wind. He’d taken to hurrying between places and looking over his shoulder. Paranoia, Elly would have said. But Elly wasn’t being watched, Elly wasn’t being followed.

Behind him, his parents prised themselves stiffly from the car. They joined him on the step, which was miraculously free of the drifting snow that lay all about. Mrs Webster put one arm around Jake and the other around her husband. Jake saw that she was crying and felt his heart tug. ‘I’m okay,’ she mouthed, smiling and mopping her eyes with a ragged handkerchief. ‘It just brings back memories.’

They all faced the door, waiting for Granddad Sherbet.

Jake knocked again. Thud. Beside him, Flash barked at the closed door, each bark sending her skidding backwards off the stone step.

Thud followed thud like the tired echo of distant drums.

‘Dad!’ called out Mrs Webster, shocking Flash with the strength of her cry.

There came a scraping noise coming from deep inside the house followed by a distant shattering sound as if a mirror or window had been broken.

‘Seven years bad luck,’ Mr Webster said to nobody in particular.

A wedge of light came to life under the door.

‘State your business,’ boomed a deep voice from behind the door. Granddad Sherbet, no doubt, in all his geriatric, bent-backed glory, thought Jake.

‘About time,’ said Mr Webster, rubbing his hands. ‘It’s bloody freezing.’

There next followed a coughing fit from the person on the other side of the door succeeded by the vivid auditory biology of a throat being cleared and a gobbet of phlegm summoned and then expelled.