By Nicolás Quintana

It was a cold dark night in the northern coast of Scotland, and Philip had been walking for long hours now. His hands were numb due to the cold, and the threateningly dark clouds did not paint a hopeful picture. It was evident that rain would be pouring down soon, but where would he go? His car was broken and lost behind the horizon, and there was no sign of any place that could give him some help. No passing cars to give him a lift to the closest town. Just a man and his feet. 

A thunderbolt broke the sky in two and produced a deafening sound that caused him to feel dizzy for a brief period of time. The light turned the night into day for a few seconds, enough to give away a house on top of a cliff just above the sea, not more than a mile away. With the rain already starting to pour down as another lightning struck, Philip could not think of anything else but running to the house for shelter. 

After a few minutes he was outside the house and, with the rain still falling on him, knocked on the door. As there was no immediate response, he knocked again. Still without receiving an answer, he peered through the windows hoping to find someone inside. It was late in the night, so he was not surprised to find every single light turned off. What was indeed puzzling was the contrast between the outside and the inside; the outside walls were well painted, the hedges trimmed and the flowers blooming. On the inside, the house looked abandoned; old wooden chairs that were starting to rot, dusted floors and spiderwebs all around the place. The cupboards where the cutlery was kept seemed to belong to a past era. The chimney, cold and hungry for wood, stared at him from directly across the room, a pendulum clock above it which had probably stopped swinging its tail years ago. With the interiors in this condition, Phil thought, it was most likely that the house had been abandoned for some time, and set to enter without permission. He tried the door, and immediately felt dumb for having thought that it might have been unlocked in the first place. His eyes darted to his right back to the window, which was clearly unlocked. Phil thought he might not have been the first person to land in this house. The single hung window was bulky and beaten by age, but he found unknown strength in his arms to raise it enough for him to pass. He climbed through the window and landed on the dry wooden floor with a thump and a creak of the parquet. Another lightning struck, and the window fell to be shut once more. 

There was a sepulchral silence inside, and the only sound Philip could hear was his heartbeat. A few steps away he noticed a huge mahogany table, crawling with spiders and covered in dust, and a candle next to a box of matches on it. He grabbed the candle and lit it. The fire danced and provided a weak source of light, but enough to light the area around Phil and guide him to what, at least for tonight, would be his room. 

The house was astonishing in its size. It had about as many rooms a small hotel usually does, a wide and long hallway with half a dozen rooms on each side, and at its end a set of stairs, which probably led to another floor with another dozen or so rooms. The flooring screeched with every step, as if it were an animal in agony. The

silence was still present; no sounds apart from the wooden boards, the rain, and Philips’s racing heart. 

The first door he opened led him to a reading room. Shelves crammed with books lined three of the four walls, and a chess board was set in the wide table on the right corner. On the left side, a set of two leather armchairs which had passed their years of glory and a matching coffee table between them invited him to spend the night there. He hesitated for a few seconds, and decided that he would return if none of the rooms looked comfortable enough. He shut the door and moved on. 

Every room seemed to be a guest room; a bed with a single pillow, a night table next to it with a bible waiting to be read and a lamp to light the reader. A small window to provide sunlight and fresh air every now and then. After checking a few rooms on the ground floor and not being satisfied with any of them, he made up his mind to go upstairs and try his luck with a few rooms there. He kept on walking with the floor still squeaking beneath him until he reached the end of the hallway and laid his left foot on the first step of the stairs. A sudden gust of wind blew out his candle and, in despair, he dropped the box of matches while trying to light it again. It hit the floor and as the matches splattered around it, a hand landed on Phil’s right shoulder from behind him, followed by an ominously friendly voice. 

“Welcome, fellow traveler!” the voice whispered. “We are so happy to have you here!” 

Philip could not see the face of the man who was talking to him, but there was no doubt that there was a sinister sneer in his face. Without turning around and frozen in fear, he managed to utter an answer. 

“I -I -I am sorry sir. I had a problem with my car and while looking for a place to help me I found this place. And then I…” 

“And then you checked to see if there was someone inside, found that the house was empty, possibly abandoned, and decided to break in to spend the night” completed the owner. “I know son, I know.” A cry came from a room above and resounded throughout the house. “And now you are here, paralyzed, with a stranger grabbing your shoulder and shouts and cries filling your ears”. This time the howls gushed both from above and behind. Philip tried to run away, but his legs did not respond. “Oh kid, there’s no use in trying to run now.” 

The floor was creaking louder than ever, yet both men stood in the very place they had met. The shrieks were getting closer and closer. A freezing wind swirled around them, and just in that moment a spectral figure emerged from the floor. Then another one next to it, and another one to the other side. The whole staircase was full of them before Phil managed to blink again. The air chilled Phil’s spine and the thunderous sounds made his head spin. Possessed by despair, he began to bellow uncontrollably. There was no attempt to escape anymore, he just kneeled on the ground covering his ears with his hands and waited for the inevitable. Just as they had shown up, the sounds ceased, the figures disappeared, the air warmed up and the grip on his shoulder loosened. Such was his relief that he fainted and fell to the ground.

Phil woke up in a small room, the only furniture a tiny bed with a meager mattress and a puny night table next to it. A dark wooden door blocked the path to what he assumed to be a hallway, and the only source of light was the afterglow of the sun seeping through a sliding window. He sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes wondering what had happened and how he had got there, and quickly resolved to leave this place by whatever means necessary. The door was locked, of course, but he tried it regardless. There was no point in trying to kick it down; although it was obviously old, the wood was healthy and sturdy. He turned to face the window and walked towards it, the only thought in his mind “it’s also locked and you won’t be leaving this place anytime soon”. To his surprise, the window was unlocked and slid gracefully in its rails to give way to a wave of fresh air. Phil had not realised how stale the air inside the room was until he opened the window. He poked his head out and analysed his situation. The walls were slick and free of vines and pipes, so the only way down apparently was jumping. A thick set of bushes waited for him on the floor after a one storey fall. Not seeing any other possible way of escaping this prison, Phil squeezed his body through the opening. He suddenly came to a stop once his shoulders were out. He would have thought he was stuck if he hadn’t known about the lack of furniture in his room. He gave a hard push on the outside wall, but his body was unmovable. Puzzled, he tried going inside again. He did. 

The last traces of sunlight faded and darkness took over the sky. Hours passed and the stillness Phil felt when he first arrived now filled the room. The silence was so loud he could not even hear his heartbeat. 

Out of nowhere, the faint whisper of a window falling shut came from downstairs, followed by the creaking of the treaded wooden floors. Phil rushed to his feet and screamed as hard as his lungs allowed him. The only thing that left his body was cold air. He tried to scream once more, but again no sounds came out. His face filled with fright at the realization. His vision faded as his eyes involuntarily blanked. His limbs were not under his control anymore. His mouth opened to let out one single sentence. 

“Welcome, fellow traveler!”

–

Nicolás is an English/Spanish translator and writer from Argentina. His love for reading, writing and English came together to help him make his career decision. He has been writing since he was a kid, but he has not published any of his works until now.