𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞┃ Anthony Lockwood┃2┃

Chapter Eleven - Miss Wintergarden

Tap, tap, tap.

Nola's eyes fluttered open with a frown. She tilted her chin forward as she laid, eyeing up her surroundings.

It was the middle of the night, so the room was dark, but everything seemed to be as it should be. The door was shut, the light remained off, the vase of rapiers was still by the foot of the bed.  The striped wallpaper was the same (despite being in the shadows), and the curtains made from gold and green fabric hung as they had when Nola had gone to bed. The paintings depicting foreign countries still hung on the walls, each as straight as a pin, and the armoire in which Lockwood kept his clothes remained untouched.

Everything seemed fine.

Steadying her breath and closing her eyes, Nola rested her head back upon the pillow, whilst simultaneously pulled the duvet cover up towards her neck.

Tap, tap, tap.

"Lockwood." The girl said, her expression unbelievably emotionless. She had bolted upright in bed, and was clutching onto the wrist of the sleeping boy who lay beside her. "Wake up." She shook said wrist back and forth.

"What?" Lockwood sprung up beside her, turning on the lamp on his bedside table. "What is it? What's wrong?" He looked at her through sleepy, half-closed eyes of which he was rubbing with the backs of his hands. His brunette locks were flopped over his forehead, and his voice was a stretched rasp. "Did you have another nightmare?"

Nola shook her head. "No. Something woke me up... something making a tapping nose. I heard it twice."

Lockwood raised a pointed finger before his lips, and the pair fell into silence. It was like listening out for white-noise. The room was as noiseless as a deaf man in an empty church. Their eyes darted back and forth as they waited. And waited...

"I can't hear-" Lockwood began.

Tap, tap, tap.

Nola clutched onto the boy beside her even tighter. "What in the hell was that then? Do you think there's someone here?" Her hands had now moved from grasping his wrist to engulfing the entirety of his slender arm. The last time she had been woken up by something in the middle of the night (that was not a nightmare), she found her egregious ex-employer standing at the foot of the bed. Hence, her fear was justified.

Lockwood froze in his spot, listening closer. "It's probably just George getting some food downstairs."

Tap, tap, tap.

"Lockwood, if that's George getting some food from downstairs, then I'm the bloody Pope." She glanced at the alarm clock that rested on the bedside table by her side of the bed. "It's 3am! George will be dead to the world by now. He didn't even have a case last night!" She hissed in the lamplight.

"It sounded like it came from the window." Lockwood peered over to the left-hand side of the room, where a small square pane of glass was covered by the gold and green curtains. "I'll go check."

Nola's grasp on Lockwood's arm tensed for a moment as she feared being alone in the bed, but after he gave her a reassuring smile, she let go. She stretched over to the foot of the bed and wielded one of the spare rapiers, clutching it tightly in her quivering palms. Watching intently, her eyes following Lockwood as he climbed out of bed and stumbled sleepily towards the window.

As he drew the curtains back, the inky blackness of the night's sky flooded into the bedroom. The smattering of stars were like little torchlights, littering the carpet with beaming spots. Outside of Lockwood's bedroom window was a small, concrete ledge that hung on an angle. Its original purpose was to drain away rainwater, preventing it from flooding the wooden window frame. However, at 3am on that very morning, the small concrete ledge was accommodated by something other than rainwater.