The Dark Place (#FrightFest2016 Gold Winner)

The Dark Place - Chapter One

Tamicka didn't enter. She just watched from the doorway as her father walked through the little foyer with the cases. Only when he had disappeared through the smaller oak panelled door directly opposite did Tamicka cross the threshold, making sure to close the front door behind her.

What appeared to be a condemned shell of a building from the outside looked completely different  once she had walked into the entry hall. The walls of the foyer were clean and white. There were no cracks in the plaster, no flaking paintwork, not even the slightest hint of a cobweb could be seen. The black and white marble tiles, which covered the floor, were pristine. Tamicka could see her reflection in them as if she was looking down at mirrored glass. She liked the click-clack sound her shoes made as she walked across them towards the second door through which she had seen her father disappear. It was like moving across a giant glass chessboard where she was the only piece.

When Tamicka entered the main hall it was as if she had been transported back through time. She imagined that nothing much had changed from the time the house had first been lived in. Three solid oak doors lined the wall to her left and four to her right, each with a shiny brass doorknob and coat of polished lacquer. At the far wall, another two doors of exactly the same description flanked the magnificent central staircase. The black and white tiles continued throughout the main hall but for the strip of carpet with its William Morris floral pattern, which led from the entry hall to the great staircase. The crystal chandler had probably been added much later when gas had given way to electricity but it still managed to look in keeping with the rest of its surroundings.

The little girl explored the ground floor in wide-eyed amazement, going from one huge, antique filled room to another. From the study to the large reception room, through to the massive living room. Each one had walls covered in expensive looking wallpaper with an embossed burgundy, blue or green floral pattern on a cream background. Some of the floors were covered with plush, deep pile carpets; others had luxurious antique rugs laid over the same chessboard floor tiles as in the main hall.

Tamicka finally reached the last door on the left. She turned the handle and pushed it open. After the cool shade of the great hall, the brilliant sunlight that beamed through the glazed wall in front of her dazzled Tamicka for a few seconds and she raised her left hand to shield her eyes. She stood in the doorway just long enough for her eyes to adjust. The room was cluttered with easels, canvases and paint pallets of all shapes and sizes. On the white painted wall to her left hung half finished paintings, landscapes mostly, that looked like some of the countryside she and her father had passed through on their long drive up to the house.

On the wall to her right was a painting that was different from all the others, a portrait of a girl about her age standing in front of an old house. Tamicka thought that the girl looked how she herself had felt every day since her father had moved her away from all of her friends and family in Canada; sad, frightened, but most of all alone. The girl in the picture looked like she really didn't want to be anywhere near that strange old house surrounded by dense woodland. Her right hand pointed accusingly behind her towards it as the smoothly painted features stared wide-eyed directly at the newcomer. Tamicka didn't want to look at it. The painting frightened her but she couldn't tear her eyes away from it.

A bump from somewhere upstairs startled her back to reality and she looked up at the ceiling high above her head.

Daddy?

She brought her gaze down to the painting again, but only for a second, then she turned to the door and made her way out to the main hall.

Tamicka climbed the first flight of steps up to the landing where the stairway branched off in opposing directions. She ascended the flight to her left and went through the door at the top of the stairs into a passage that was decked in velvet wallpaper and rich, dark wood panelling. In the dim pink light that filtered through the stained glass of the window at the far end of the passage, Tamicka saw four doors to her left exactly like those down in the main hall, each one flanked on either side by a silver light fitting in the design of a creeping vine. She ran her fingers along the soft wallpaper in search of a switch, found it not far from the door next to her and flicked it down. In a second the whole passage came alive, bathed in a subtle amber glow.