Prologue
I’ve always lived here, next to that haunted house. Well, that is what people said anyway, but who really believes in haunting these days? Then again, we seldom went near the place, I don’t know what it was exactly, but it had a feel about it like something really bad had happened there. My sister and I used to play games around that house, daring games. Silly really, now that I look back on what stupid, stupid things we did, and how it got me here.
I was in a constant competition to better her, go that one step further, and she knew that too. She knew that if she challenged me to go into the house, down to the basement and get a jar of whatever disgusting stuff happens to be in a haunted house, I would do- because she said that I couldn’t. So, one day I did exactly that.
The door had been old and cracked for as long as I could remember, and probably longer, but that time I took special notice of the escape route; the peeling blue paint, crusting to it exposed the grey-brown undercoat, the rusty bronze doorknob that had lock had long since been broken, and the electric bell that hadn’t worked since before I was born. I’d stepped inside and the warm overwhelmed me, not just a musty-old-house warm, but it was like I’d stepped into the center of the earth. The air was thick, and I could hardly draw breath, it was a hotness that chilled you to your bones. The floorboards creaked under my weight due to years of woodworm, and I forced myself not to wince with every step I took.
Then the most cliché thing happened to me- I had got maybe four feet into the room, when the door slammed shut behind me, I’m sure I’d have jumped ten feet in the air if it was possible. I bit down hard on my tongue until blood filled my mouth, to stifle back a scream until it was a rasping sigh. I’m sure it was Grace, trying to win her bet, I wouldn’t let her. I stepped further into the house, searching for strange jars filled with pickled limbs or whatever was meant to be in haunted houses. Needless to say, my eight-year-old self was disappointed, I found nothing. Yet the feeling of being watched didn’t leave me. I was terrified yet exhilarated that I would meet a ghost before my sister. But it moved too quickly, too quickly for my human eyes to see. Wanting to gloat, I went for the door, pull the handle, and waited for it to open. Only it didn’t. At first, it was a joke, Grace pulling tricks, but the thought of being trapped in here, with that... Thing! I strangled and pleaded at the door, but she was gone, there weren’t any stifled giggles or desperate scuffles on the other side of the door. I was alone. Alone in this house, with this silent shapeless stalker.
The heat became more intense, and I slammed my fists against the old wood, but it didn’t live up to its age, Tears stained my face, and I wished we’d never come here. I sat head resting just below the door handle, so I’d know if anyone would open it. Grace wouldn’t just leave me in here! She couldn’t!
I hear something smash in the small dark room on my left; I flinched and leapt further into the house. I ran up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms on the right-hand side, I crouched in the corner, crying, and paralysed with fear.
I remember a small light, small enough to go unnoticeable at first, but it inflated and grew until it was all I could focus on. I watched, fascinated with child curiosity, as my tears dried on my cheeks, as the room got hotter, and hell unfolded...
A great inferno rose up in a wall of flames, licking the ceiling, turning it dark charcoal; wallpaper peeling off the walls in swirly amber patterns, like the peel of an orange shedding and revealing the underlayer of dark burnt brick. Flames played shapes, forming dancing figures walking among the flames. Not really figures, but shadows. I couldn’t look away; some invisible force kept my eyes glued to the tragic scene unfolding. The first shadow stood apart from the other two, standing tall and gloating, while the smaller figure held the third in its arms, while it silently cried out in pain. The other laughed, I think it was laughing, but what came next didn’t quite make sense. He raised his arms, in an almost cordial way, and the fire grew from his embrace; the two figures stiffened but endured the heat. Illusion, ghost, vision, whatever it was, I was sure it was real. I could feel the heat on my skin and smell the smoke and the bricks burning. The third writhed in pain before finally slumbering to a halt, the other held the figure tighter, and from the silence, screams ignited the flames as if they were gasoline, spreading out to the rest of the house, washing over me as a hot bath, just that little bit too hot. Fazed, maybe too shell-shocked to move, by the mass of orange that should have burned but didn’t. I watch the scene unfold.
As a child, I believed that this was a ghost of someone long dead, an afterimage of their death maybe, but I wasn’t to know then, that it was in fact the ghost of my future.
