Day: Three
Date: March 1, 2012
Time: 10:55 A.M.
Aligned perfectly parallel to the floor, the door produced not a single squeak as I took my time opening it, my lungs not letting go of the deep breath I took as the living room revealed itself to me.
I wasn’t ready for a wrestle with some bad guy, my hand seemingly becoming softer the more I created a solid fist with it. However, it lost its toughness on its own when there was no longer a need for it.
Everything was perfectly still as my eyes scanned for any possible signs of an intruder. There was none. The only clue I got was not how there could be an infiltrator inside my house, but how there could be none. My mouth dropped when my eyes found the lifeless television.
Am I insane?
Not wanting to be convinced that I needed a psychiatrist, I went closer to where the stylish 62” flat screen grinned menacingly back while felt the blood vacate my face as I turned into something paler than a ghost as traced the cord from the tip of the plug back to what it was connected into, and it went inside my television’s rear.
It’s not even plugged.
My double sockets were vacant.
I let myself sink down the couch for a second to figure out stuff. My mind seemed to be playing tricks on me, and I’ve had enough. I really didn’t want to blame the house but I’ve never been like this when I was still with my dad in our old place. Having squared off our home at a price that seemed reasonable for me to survive on rentals, I burned my eyebrows as an architect at the tip of the pen, earning dollars ‘till I had enough to buy this nice, auctioned house.
Now I’m having second thoughts if the house was nice.
No, it was nice alright, just not nice to me.
There’s something odd about this place, something I only feel when watching horror stuff. I confessed to having covered my eyes with one hand and settled to peeking in between my two fingers whenever I sensed a shocker part in a horror movie. I was sure that the scares and screams stayed inside the discs I bought for Saturday nights, but the things that were happening to me occurred only when those discs rotated inside my player, and I only saw the horror on a quadrilateral screen. Well, there were times when my hair stood, but that was it. Absolutely no hands-on experience on weird stuff until now.
There was a fine line drawn between covering one’s eyes to skip horror scenes and hearing footsteps dragging chains when you’re completely alone in the house.
I wanted to clear my head.
I was only on my third day on this seemingly normal house when I looked at it from the outside, but it’s different whenever I’m in it. Today didn’t seem to be the right day to work on the design after all. Noticing that everything went south when Camille left this morning, I decided that I wasn’t at my best today, and that’s not good while doing architect stuff. Making designs in my point of view required a healthy mental state – no disruptions while running lines and curves in the middle of points, no matter how distant. A second of losing focus could cost me the attempt, thus, rendering every previous effort useless. A blot meant I needed to start over, and blots happened only when my mind drifted off somewhere.
For me to accomplish the cathedral plan, I needed to make sure that I would hear neither chains nor footsteps. The only distraction I’d allow myself was Camille.
A four-legged creature came down the stairs with alternating steps. I felt the cylindrical can in the paper bag I held and saw my cat’s tail standing to its end, as if aware that I brought home a treat. Shaken still, it jumped me again, transforming my lap into a cozy bed. I never saw its retractable claws ever since I rescued it from its probably natural habitat, which I thought to be a sign that it liked me already. I rudely interrupted its motionlessness when I stood up and went to the kitchen.
Sorry kitty, but I got to prepare your meal.
It was my first time to provide a cat with an actual food. My dad never allowed me to spend more than what he thought our pets deserved back when he was still amongst the living. Our dogs and cats ate the same thing – leftovers. I wasn’t used to presenting my animal friends what I could call a decent meal, so I steamed some rice grains to be mixed with what I bought. While waiting for the boil, I learned that my cat was a female. It waited anxiously as the steam from the pot filtered the light coming through the window into a haze.
I forgot to buy Marla her own dish. Marla was the name I gave my fluffy friend. I was sick of referring to the cat as an “it” rather than a “her”. As I poured the steamed grain and fish flakes into a plastic plate I sacrificed, I watched her munch in delight. I left her and went upstairs to freshen up.
……………………………………….
I pulled a towel out of the closet whose mystery I was yet to solve. The lock was still bothersome, and I feared that it would only return to its broken state if I attempted to replace it again, so I left it the way it was and proceeded to the shower. No point in provoking things to prove that I’m crazy.
I stretched the curtains and turned the transparent switch on, hearing afterwards the familiar sound of water jetting out of the shower, feeling the cool liquid against my skin. Under the continuous revitalizing bath, I lathered some shampoo onto my scalp and massaged it as I kept my mind busy thinking of an entirely different matter. Camille would come in between thoughts, but so did the weird things I’ve been experiencing as of late.
Suds of soap suddenly got into my eye, causing a stinging sensation under my eyelids. I was quick to cope with the irritation, rubbing my eyes constantly under the continuous pour of water. It was then in the middle of scratching my eyes when I caught a glimpse of the shower curtain to my left, and the shadowy figure standing behind it.
I saw it one to two times before I hugged the walls, the cold bathroom tiles becoming in contact with my naked back. My vision was still a little distorted, but my instinct led me to withdrawing towards the wall so that the shower was in the middle of me and the silhouette. In a blink of an eye, the shadow that startled me vanished as I fully regained my sight, but my heart remained racing like a desperate horse as I stood frozen, my knees still hesitant to move. I pulled the curtain to the side, sliding the rings that held it across a bar at one end. The shadow casted onto the synthetic material of the curtain belonged to nobody, for I was alone.
Nervous, I wiped myself half dry and darted outside, sprinting to my room drenched. Although having just taken a bath, I could feel my sweat forming on my forehead, rendering the shower I took pointless. I shut the door behind me and hurriedly put on some clothes. Majority of horror movies I have watched explained the meaning of fear to the protagonists at night. On the contrary, it was a very bright noon when I found myself panting like a dog, having ran wrapped in a towel by the waist along the corridor that separated my room to the bathroom.
.
.
.
Whatever haunted me was slowly breaking me down. It had to stop. I was hungry for some answers, thinking that knowing the reasons as to why I’m tormented would help me put an end to all this madness.
There was one possible way to find out. The key, I thought, must have kept itself intentionally hidden within the words of the one that came before. One who doesn’t know how to look back would never reach his destination, bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Looking at the diary, I went over to my bed and began to read once more.