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3.

Thump.

Radcliffe started with a catch of breath. He rubbed his eyes and sat up a little, groggy. He had dozed off whilst sitting upright on the window sill, and had slumped into the nook, leaning crookedly with his head against the icy glass.

He sat upright and cracked multiple areas of his back and stiffened neck, rubbing them after. He was stiff and sore, and tired.

Thump. He paused, shooting his eyes towards the door. It sounded like a heavy chest being carelessly dropped onto the landing.

It echoed, his door vibrated and it sounded close no matter how far down the hallway it could have been.

Instantly, his mind shot to the caretaker. What the hell was he doing? The night was still black, and all was calm and silent but for the noise.

His ears pricked again at the sound of slow, heavy footsteps as they creeped up towards his end of the landing. They were slow and heavy, like an obese man plodding along one struggling waddle after the other.

Yet there was no wheezing- no breathing. And as the floorboards groaned under the significant weight, it could not be Wraight because he did not own a pair of heavy boots.

Radcliffe stood and shivered as the icy tendrils of the early hours snook in through his travel coat. His mind was foggy from his brief nap. He knew it was brief because the aroma of smoke still lingered in the air around him.

He didn’t remember nodding off. But every creak and little unnerving noise in between the heavy thump, thump, alerted his every sense, and the boots themselves filled him with a sense of dread and doom. The same boots from the living room, he realised.

His ears shrank back every time they fell, and pricked at the little shuffles and groans. The candles still burned at the fireplace, but oddly enough their flames were stout and confined to the tip of the wick. All of them.

Why, Radcliffe could not fathom. Adapting to the darkness as best as he could, he searched about the fireplace and brushed against the stand of tongs and sweeps.

They jangled briefly, and the boots stopped. The floorboards groaned, betraying a shifting movement. Whoever was there listened.

Radcliffe breathed through his nose as calmly as possible, though his heart beat heavily in his chest. A cold sweat began to dampen his armpits and eyebrows.

He plucked a fire poker from the stand and grasped the cool brass with both hands, wielding it. he never had to do this before.

But in the moment, he didn’t consider his actions. He thought it worst to face the deranged caretaker at this ungodly hour without precaution.

He stopped, just before the door as he heard the boots approach again. They sounded sticky, peeling off the floorboards as they approached the door, and stopped right outside.

Radcliffe held his breath, poker raised over his shoulder, meters from the door himself. The floorboards groaned, but he stayed silent, his eyes wide, his mind racing.

He waited. Depending on how the caretaker entered, would depend on how violent the writer’s actions would be. Sean only had himself to blame, skulking about so late.

He obviously did not consider the racket he was making, and that Radcliffe would be awake. He then wondered how the man was so silent in his breathing. Not even a shuffle.

Radcliffe began to quiver with impatience. He waited longer. The tension was unbearable, he leaned forward and pulled the door inward in one swift movement, wielding the poker like a maniac and waiting to see the caretaker’s reaction.

He wasn’t there. Not in the doorway at least. Of course, the candles were still subdued to a ball no bigger than the head of a screw, so anything but the door frame itself was swallowed in darkness.

Was Sean there? Radcliffe went rigid.

‘Sean!’ He meant to exclaim as a question, but ended up shouting just the same. It rang down the narrow hallway sharp enough to disturb even the hardest of souls, if any were watching in the darkness.

Nothing stirred. Radcliffe became impatient, still wide eyed and licked his lips. ‘Show yourself, god d****t!’ He shouted again.

‘are you…?’

There was no one there, was there? He lowered the poker slowly. The inky darkness breathed a slow, icy draught into his face, chilling him deep within the marrow.

Sod it. sod you, Sean. He was about to move, when a deep baritone growl suddenly rose from just beyond the threshold. The hackles suddenly rose in Malcom, all the hairs on his arms, chest and the rest of his body stood straight and bristled.

An icy, child-sized clammy finger ran up his spinal column. The poker dropped from his hand with a heavy, dull thump and rolled away onto the carpet.

The growling rose louder and more violent- the tortured fry scream of some beastly demon whose low tones never rose, but the growl became more violent.

A gust of foul, cold air that reeked of rancid, maggoty meat hit Radcliffe straight in the face before he finally reached for the door and flung it shut with a booming slam.

The growl was immediately cut off. The stench dissipated- just like it had never existed. Darkness again, but for a faint glowing out of the corner of his vision.

Panting, Malcom realised he had fallen to one knee, silently. He was shaking so violently his teeth chattered. He turned his head, rose his wide eyes above the fireplace and saw the candles had restored their tall glow, burning brighter than ever.

He slowly took a sweeping gaze about the chamber. There was more light than there ever had been. All the murky shapes and ghostly furnishings stood unshaken.

He was afraid to look anywhere too dark. He eventually rose, his hands uncontrollably shaking. This had never happened to him before, which turned out to be more disturbing than whatever had taken place.

He glared at the door. No noise from the other side. Not a whisper. Silence shrouded his buzzing ears like a leaden blanket, and weighed the fear harder down upon his fragile mind.

What the hell was that?

He grasped his head and swallowed, trying to catch his breath. Heart beating against the ribcage, blood coursing through him, there was no sense of relief.

He staggered back and plonked back onto the window sill. He had seen nothing. And what he had heard, he wasn’t sure even the most deranged of lunatics could manage such a horrific growl.

It was beyond animalistic, even. It was… other worldly. His skin prickled just at the thought. He swallowed hard again, struggling to take out his cigarette case with fumbling fingers, and then trying his best not to spill the matches.

His sweaty, unchanged clothes stuck to him icily. He inhaled his cigarette so deeply, it burned and burned and burned with a warm red glow all the way down the cigarette until he could draw no more, and then released the plume of smoke.

He closed his eyes. More darkness. What had taken place in the living room, although very similar, had been nothing compared what had just happened. He rocked back and forth, trying to shake the fear but it just was not working.

After another smoke, he began to relax and ceased to shake. But his mind still raced. He was still jittery. Sitting in the deathly silence was no good.

He rose, and walked over to his hard leather luggage case and cracked it open. What clothes he had scrambled together and crammed inside spilled out onto the floor, as did his little wooden box of materials.

He held it but did not open it. the man who had made it for him was a skilled carpenter, the father of his late fiancé, Emily.

His stomach curdled to think of it. The nagging voices and sounds lurking along in the back of his mind. He couldn’t silence them when he was this excited.

A fine crafted box it was. White ash, gleaming with fine polish, neat dovetail joints on the corners and his initials stamped on the front in black ink.

He could not face its contents now. the last thing he wanted to do was work. His mind was too broken. His heart was not in the work anymore, nor in anything but pieces.

He rose and approached the highest object hidden under the white, dusty linen. He pulled the cloth down with a sweeping motion and a shower of dust, and was right in assuming it had been a wardrobe.

A very intricately designed wardrobe with detailed, dull, delicately thin handles. He opened it, and placed the box on a high shelf, examining the rest of the wardrobe. He then scooped up his clothes and began to fold them and rest them on the other shelves.

He removed his travel coat and replaced it with a large, fluffy towelling robe instead, wrapping it tightly around him and shrugging himself warm.

Once it was empty, he slid the luggage into the larger compartment of the wardrobe, and closed it. avoiding the black mirror, he stared around the room again, more accustomed to its mysterious shadows.

In daylight, perhaps, to a normal individual who had curiously wandered up the driveway and just happened upon the empty house would think it a perfect warehouse of inspiration, fantasies and a setting for multiple stories of multiple plots and characters.

Radcliffe presently saw it as more of a perfect place to kill himself, under perfect conditions. His head was his own enemy, more so than Sean. The isolation had yet to agree with him like casual suicidal thoughts.

I can hang myself from the chandeliers, or fling myself from the attic to the stone below. If he did not perish from a heart attack.

His nerves were shot, and his mind would not drag away from the growl. The house was completely soundless. The dreaded footfalls did not walk back down the hallway either.

Radcliffe had to return to the window, tempted to open it and hear if any sounds of life echoed through the still night, or was it this quiet everywhere in the countryside?

It was cold enough with the window shut, and he left it shut, huddling himself tightly, running his hands along his robe. Sleep was another thing he wished to avoid. He couldn’t physically sleep anyhow now.

He was still on edge, and could not stop the terrifying thoughts that he was trapped in a house where things lay. Things from another dimension, so to speak.

With no evidence for what it was, there was no labelling the place from whence it was born. Yet in this house, in this life, in this very night, it had visited him.

For what, he was unsure. But it had happened. And now, on his first night staying here, he sat and pointed his fingers in a steeple under his chin and tried his best for hours to comprehend what exactly he had gotten himself into.