A thousand nights

XII

'What are you doing here?' I asked.

She stared at me blankly.

She looked like a frightened deer caught in the middle of a mountain road during a cold winter night. Her green eyes were wide open and her mouth slightly agape.
Her cheeks were flushed, which made the constellation of freckles on the bridge of her nose and cheeks stand out like the small lights covering a satellite picture of the Earth.

'It doesn't matter' she said quickly 'I was going anyway' Mallory Grace Johnson headed to the door I had just closed behind me. She wrapped her pale hands around the rusty brown door handle and pushed it down softly.

It didn't open.

She tried again.

The door remained as it was.

'What's the matter?' I asked noticing her struggles.

'I don't know, the door seems locked, it won't open!' She said through gritted teeth. I came over next to her and tried to open the door myself.

'It was open just a few minutes ago!' Annoyed, I pushed the handle down harshly as I used my body to force the door open. Unfortunately, the ancient handle ended up scratching my hand, which almost instantly started bleeding. Mallory gently pushed my hand away and instead pushed her body against the door. I couldn't help noticing how cold her fingers were. I quickly wiped my hand on my jeans and the blood subsided.

'I think' she gasped' If we both push the door together we should be able to open it, we might break it but at least, we'd be out of here' I switched off my phone's flashlight and placed the latter inside one of my jeans pocket. The moon was now the only source of light in the room,  with its full white presence it managed to delineate the door, our bodies and most objects in the room. Although I could see fairly well around me, I couldn't help feeling uneasy. My exact feelings were also mirrored on Mallory's face.

'So you think we should push the door together?'

'Yes' she said. I placed my fingers on the door, next to Mallory's and together we pushed against the surface in front of us. Even though being decades old, the door was still upright and stable, it wouldn't bulge. I was surprised to see how much strength was enclosed in Mallory, she looked too delicate to have such force.

Unfortunately, our efforts seemed pointless, the door simply refused to open.

'Damn it' she kicked the door and groaned in pain.

'Woah, woah easy there, it's not a big deal!' I said, reaching out with my hands.

'It's not a big deal?' She questioned sarcastically, 'We are locked in an abandoned house, how is this not a big deal?'

'Well, why did you come here in the first place, then?' I voiced out my dose of frustration, as I was slowly realizing the gravity of the situation.
What if dad came back and didn't see me at home, in my bed like usual? He was the one who kept on prompting me to be normal, and staying out till late was a common thing for seventeen-year-olds, right?

Mallory was pacing the room now, biting her nails and tucking her hair behind her ears. Even though I didn't like her, I felt bad seeing her so upset. I did not know why, but I felt responsible for the circumstance we found ourselves in.

'It's weird you know' I suddenly said. She stopped in her tracks and looked at me.

'What's weird?' she snapped.

'Seeing you not wearing a uniform' I said. She self-consciously looked down at what was covering her body. She was wearing a black knee-length high waisted skirt over a grey shirt. To cover her arms, she had a long black and orange striped cardigan that gave her a laid back look. It really fitted her well- but that wasn't something I was going to tell her.

She looked up at me and smiled, raising her eyebrows 'Seeing you without your uniform is quite weird too'

At the contrary of her, I was just wearing a pair of dark blue jeans a hoody and a wool trench coat and black sneakers. Nothing fancy.

When I looked back up at her, her head jerked away from my direction. She started pacing the room again but, this time, I noticed that she was carrying herself in a ''stiff'' kind of way.
I scratched my head and said, 'Since we are trapped in here for now, shall we do something useful like look around the house? We might even find some other place to get out from'

Mallory made half a turn in my direction.' There aren't any other ways to leave this house' 

I frowned, contemplating how she could be so sure of it 'and' she continued 'there is not much to see really, there are three other rooms, and they are all empty but one'

'Let's go see that one then' I said excitedly. If I find something nasty, I thought, I'll have something to write about.

'You don't want to see it, trust me' she said in a serious way.

Something I noticed a while back about Mallory was the fire she had. I still didn't like her, but I couldn't deny this thing she appeared to have, an invisible armour that made her so confident sometimes, an armour that made you believe in whatever she was saying and made you submissive, in a good way.

'I'm going' I swallowed, looking away from her as if to challenge her. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and turned the flashlight on. I closed my eyes instinctively at the bright light, but after a few seconds of blinking, my eyes adapted to its intensity.
'Do you have service?' She asked suddenly.

'Do you really think there's service in here?' I checked my phone 'See?' I showed her the screen ' No service'

She covered her face with her pale hands, emitting an almost silent groan. She once again started pacing the room.

'I'm going then' I pointed the flashlight of my phone towards the end of the room.
There were a staircase in the far back and another door smeared with decades of dirt and mould. I walked quickly towards the first. I could feel the thick layers of dust and dirt underneath my shoes; it muffled my footsteps, making them as noiseless as the footsteps of a ghost. The tiny fluffs of dust floating around me made it hard to breathe, I could feel it enforcing its way inside my nostrils and gently depositing on my shoulders, enclosing me with the rest of the forgotten house. The wooden staircase was long, steep and unsteady. I climbed the first few steps unintentionally trying to be quiet, being fully aware that there wasn't anyone to disturb, right?  The stairs kept on crying at my every step as I made my way to the top.  I jumped, as a bright light illuminated all the way to the top of the staircase from behind me, my shadow appear on the wall just in front of me.

'You can't just leave me on my own in a deserted house' Mallory said. I turned around to look at her, my hand itching to touch my chest as my heart slowly resumed its normal pace.

'I asked whether you wanted to come or not, didn't I?' I crossed my arms in front of me. She ignored me shamelessly and climbed the remaining steps to the top in a few seconds and walked past me.

'Where are you going now?' I asked, pointing my phone's flashlight to her. She turned around, her left eyebrow raised in question.

'Were you not the one who wanted to see the spooky room?' She didn't even give me time to reply that she was walking away. I stood there dumbfounded at her sudden change of mind and at the way she exposed it, as I said earlier, she had something that made me cling to every single word of hers.