En route to the stairs, I insisted on making a quick detour to grab a poker from the fireplace.
I'm choosing to ignore the hazards of allowing myself to be in possession of dangerous weapons. If something or someone whispers in my neck again or makes shoe noises in the dark, I'm swinging to strike, whether it is a shadow, a branch or a ghost. I am armed, and I'm not afraid to... Well, I'm a little afraid to use it...
I've had it with this place.
David runs his eyes over the poker I'm holding, cocked and ready at my shoulder and I don't blame him for looking nervous. I would be terrified if I were him. He has no idea what levels of klutziness I'm capable of.
We walk up the stairs using the required amount of stealth. Well, actually, according to David, the requirement seems to be zero, because he is climbing the stairs as if he's in a friggin' mall and not in a house with disappearing rooms and secret passages where the clocks attack you with sound, and someone might be lurking upstairs.
Much more sensible, I'm very carefully sneaking up the steps, which is causing me to fall behind, until I decide to sacrifice some of my superior stealthiness to catch up with him.
We stop at the short dark hallway, and David flips the light switch, bathing the entire first floor in jaundice light. There is a light switch at the start of both the flanks up here; they both control all the lights outside of the rooms.
I watch David reach out to the first door on our left.
"We don't have a key to that room," I tell him, and he lowers his hand.
"Oh, that's right, it's been gone forever," he says. "It used to be my father's room when he was a kid."
Oh great, the room of the little boy who sleepwalked and thought there was a woman wanting to take him away. Just where I want to be right now. I take one hand off the poker so that I can use it to cling to David's arm.
"What was it before it became his room?"
"I'm not sure; I think it was always the nursery. The farmer who rented the place after my grandparents moved out never used this room. He didn't use most of the rooms; he was more interested in working the fields. Actually, I think he lived in the cottage, not the house."
"What cottage?"
"The old groundskeeper's cottage at the western edge of the orchard. Cannot see it from the house. I'll show you when the weather clears up, and we can go outside again."
Making up his mind not to go down his family's memory lane right now and stir up more ghosts and strangeness, David holds up the bunch of keys, searching for the one we need.
"You marked them," he observes, and there is an appreciative smile in his voice. Yes, I can be very useful to have around in a crisis if some light admin work is required, such as filing and marking keys.
"The one you're looking for will be 1R2. That's for floor one, right, room two." I had a system... it might not make sense to anybody other than me.
Stepping closer to the door, he hesitates near the small table at the end of the corridor, just outside the room, which I wish he'd just unlock so that we can get this super fun activity over with. Turning, he gazes across the length of the hallway to the twin table at the other end, and then he is giving me a rather odd look.
"What?"
Glancing past him, my eyes fall on the sailor and his lady still lovingly gazing into each other's eyes on the table next to David.
"They missed each other," I shrug, and he is not laughing at me; there is a slight frown on his brow, and his eyes have softened in a way I haven't seen before.
"Yes," he says. "They did."
I am not sure what he is seeing or thinking, but he is just looking at me rather intensely for an uncomfortably long time.
"David?"
He starts out of the trance he'd slipped into and gives me a lopsided smile before he turns to the door, slips in the right key and unlocks it with an overly loud click.
"Light first," I warn him when he starts to open the door, and nodding his head, he sticks his hand inside and flips the switch before he pushes the door open all the way.
Dust and furniture ghosts greet us, just as I remembered it. They still startle me, though.
David is not intimidated by the crowd of silent sheet-draped figures standing guard along twisty pathways weaving among them. He marches into the room as if he owns it, and I let go of his arm to hold my poker with two hands again.
Yes, he might own this room and everything in it, but I don't, and I still remember the rule about sneaking and being stealthy. Clearly, David didn't read the memo. This is a creepy room containing spooky-looking shapes, and somewhere in there, a music box suddenly played a haunting tune a short while ago. A tune it hasn't played in all the time I'd been here, and from the reaction of surprise there'd been from David, he hasn't heard it before either.
The melody itself was vaguely familiar, but the tinny sounds of the music box distorted it too much for me to put my finger on it. I think some of the teeth of the comb or pins on the cylinder might be missing, destroying the melody.
David is working a path through the furniture, lifting and dropping sheets, moving boxes, and trying to find a possible source for the music. It would've been very helpful if the music would be so considerate as to start up again, but there is only silence, except for the howling of the wind and the loud ticking of the nautical clock on the landing.
I'm running my eyes over the sea of shapes, some tall, some stout, some are clearly tables piled on top of each other, and others are chairs. A flicker of movement catches my eye to my right, and I turn my head towards it, but everything is still. It was one of those barely glimpsed moments where you see something move just outside of your peripheral vision.
Shadows do that sometimes.
I turn my head to find David again. He is still noisily moving around the room, opening cabinets and vanities and again, I see that movement, just out of reach and turn my head to get a better look.
There is a tall thin piece of furniture covered by a sheet. A pillar of some kind, and on top of it sits a stuffed crow I didn't notice before. Why would anybody want to keep that? It's pretty dreary looking, morbid and depressing.
"David," I ask, glancing away from the bird to look at him, bent over, inspecting the contents of an old sideboard. "Do you like taxidermy?"
He is not answering, too caught up in his search for the music box to register my question, and I turn my attention back to the bird, locating it on the edge of a covered sofa.
Wait? What?
"David," I say, suddenly finding it hard to breathe; I need him to look at the bird and tell me if he sees it and where he sees it. "David!" I ask a bit louder when there is once again no response from him.
I also no longer hear him digging in drawers and cabinets. I turn to where I last saw him, and he is not there. All I see is covered furniture, and the crow is now sitting on a coat rack about two steps more to the left from where I last saw it, and it is turning its head to look at me.
"David!" I call frantically.
I move towards the spot where I saw him last, but he is not there, and I cannot remember which way it is to the door. How did the room suddenly become such a big never-ending maze of covered furniture? This makes no sense! The door was behind me; I barely took more than two steps into the room.
"David!"
The crow has moved again, and it is now seated on the pelmet above the covered windows and on a bookshelf and on a mountain of tables. And it is looking at me from all those angles. The room has gone eerily quiet. I no longer hear the wind; I no longer hear the nautical clock ticking outside in the hallway, and I no longer hear David.
All I can hear is the rushing of my breath, the pumping of my blood in my veins and the loud drum strokes of my heart.
"David!"
My eyes find the pillar structure again, and I can see the sheet bulging out as a shape moves underneath it, pushing it out and slowly sliding the sheet off, causing it to slip. Soon I'll see what is under it.
I don't want to see it! I don't want to see it!
I'm desperately looking around for David, calling his name over and over, but there is no answer, and I'm drowning in a sea of sheet-draped figures. My vision is starting to dim, becoming watery and smudged with anxiety. It is fading in and out of focus.
And then the crows attack, and I swing the poker again and again, beating at the birds, feeling some strange satisfaction when I connect with their fat bodies. I don't like this game! I don't like hurting animals, but they are coming right at me. Their eyes are filled with angry light, their sharp talons aiming for my face, their wings flapping violently.
I hear a yell, and a strong vice wraps around my wrists, pushing them down, causing me to lose my grip on the poker, and then I open my throat and scream the scream of terror that has been locked up in there, unable to come out.
"Belle! What are you doing?!"
David is staring into my eyes when I open them, shocked to hear his voice. He is holding my wrists, his face filled with worry, and I can see a thin trickle of blood running from a small cut near his hairline.
"They're attacking!" I shout, not understanding his words. Clearly, they attacked him too, drawing blood. "And it is coming! Look!"
Wrenching one hand free, I point at the figure that was trying to lose its sheet and giving an angry roar; David lets me go and storms towards it, yanking sheets off furniture as he goes.
I scream when he reaches the tall figure and grabs the sheet.
"I don't want to see it!"
"Belle!" he yells, and suddenly he is next to me again, dragging my hands from my face. "Look around you! Look!"
Furniture. I see furniture! Only furniture. No crows, no figures... Just furniture. The one I'd seen moving, stripping off its sheet, is a beautifully carved wooden pillar, perfect for holding a pot with one of those long-leaved ferns sprouting from it and drooping towards the floor. It would look amazing.
"Why didn't you answer?" I hiss, grabbing David's arm.
"What do you mean?"
"I called out to you, and you didn't answer, and then you were gone," I sob, wiping a hand angrily over my face. "Please don't play games with me."
"Belle," David says, his dark green eyes peering earnestly into mine. "You didn't say anything. You didn't even move. I walked right past you, and you just stood there, staring out in front of you. I was getting worried because you wouldn't respond to me at all, and then suddenly you started hitting me with the poker."
I stare in horror at the thin rivulet of blood running from his cut. I did that?!
The air is thick with dust, tickling at my nose and scratching at my throat. Covering my face with my arm, protecting my nose and trying to stifle the coughs bursting from my lungs, I turn around and run, escaping the room through the elusive door, which is now exactly where I'd left it earlier, two steps from where I was standing.
I don't want to be in this weird place a minute longer!
"Belle!" David calls after me as I take the stairs two at a time, running for the front door.
I'm getting out of hell right now!
☼☼☼