Trapped Within

by Bradshaw, Duncan P.

  James Walker was the first person to see the new house.

  He opened the curtains that morning, expecting to see the same thing that he always saw—a plot of land that had been empty for as long as he could remember. Instead, he saw a too narrow, too tall, grey house with a tilted chimney on its slanted roof.

  He stared at the house, trying to work out what was so wrong about it. The chimney was clearly askew, but for some reason it seemed straight when you looked right at it. After a moment of consideration, James realised that the whole house was askew, though the longer he stared at it, the harder it became to tell which way it was leaning.

  A large ‘1’ was carved into the centre of the front door. This struck him as odd because there was already a ‘number one’ house further up the street. He stared through the window at the object that hung under the carved number, squinting across the distance to make out what it was. He was looking at a very large, brass doorknocker that was hanging where the letterbox should have been. He squinted a little more and determined that there was no letterbox at all.

  His hands still held the curtains; he hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t let them go. And now, he wasn’t just holding them; he was gripping them, the colour slowly draining out of his knuckles.

  Who doesn’t have a letterbox? he thought, chewing the insides of his cheeks. He didn’t suppose that a missing letterbox would be considered scary to most people, but this wasn’t an ordinary house with an ordinary door in the first place, and it creeped him out more than anything ever had—until he noticed the next oddity. There wasn’t even a door handle.

  Next, he noticed that the house had no windows; no glassy eyes to look at him with, and yet he felt that it was watching him somehow anyway. Besides the engraved number on the door and the peculiar chimney, the house had no distinguishable features.

  The weirdest thing about this house wasn’t even in its physical construction, but in how it came to be there in the first place. It had quite literally appeared, in its entirety, overnight. Not a single brick of it had been there the previous day, but now there it was looming over Lannhill and throwing a huge, dark shadow towards James’s house. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that that shadow was reaching for him.

  Lannhill was one of those tiny towns where everyone knew everyone else. You couldn’t so much as sneeze without someone opening a window a few houses away to yell ‘bless you!’ People grew up there and had the same neighbours for their entire lives. They lived in each other’s pockets, and that’s how they liked it.

  If ever there was a place that still had a genuine sense of community spirit, it was Lannhill. James had received over one hundred cards on his last birthday, and each of them was posted personally, and with love, by each card giver. If there was a death in the town, hundreds would turn up to the funeral, even those who hadn’t known the deceased. It was just the done thing.

  However, James had not heard so much as a hint of this new house—not from anyone. Not even from Old Man ‘Carp’ Carpenter who lived a few doors up, and he was a guy who knew everything and was happy to tell you so.

  “What are you staring at?” The voice was quiet but it startled him out of his thoughts. He was suddenly aware of his aching hands and he released the curtains, shaking out his fingers.

  Kelly was looking at him from their bed with a sleepy and curious expression on her face. He managed to hold her gaze for a second but then lowered his eyes to the floor. Still, that was a second longer than he’d managed to make eye contact with her for a while.

  “There’s a weird house across the road,” he replied, and then headed towards the door.

  “What?” She smiled, rubbing her eyes. He pointed over his shoulder towards the window.

  “Have a look.” He left, turned in the corridor, and went into the baby’s room.

  Things hadn’t been right between them since the miscarriage, and James felt terrible for that, amongst other things. Kelly had been trying—he knew that—but he just couldn’t face her. She was the love of his life, but he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to look at her again without that nasty stab of guilt.

  They’d been together for two years when Kelly had told him she was pregnant. He was surprised, as was she, because she’d been on the pill the whole time they were together, but they accepted the hand they were dealt.

  She’d moved into his family home with him almost immediately, and a few months after that, his parents had move abroad, as per their retirement plan. They’d intended to the sell the house, but with James and Kelly’s new situation, they decided to hold off and give them the house for a few years, until they had enough money to get their own place. No grandchild in their family was living in rented accommodation, thank you very much.

  James and Kelly moved into his parents’ old bedroom, and after the initial panic of an impending new life had subsided, they’d got to work turning James’s old room into the baby’s room.

  They were in their mid-twenties, and James’s reflex reaction to the news that he was going to be a dad was utter panic, though he would sooner have died than let Kelly see that. She was panicking too, and the last thing he wanted to do was put the idea in her head that he was going to lose it and bolt, though the thought had crossed his mind. But only for a minute.

  After a firm talking to from his dad, James had realised that there were really only two options: be a bad father, or try his best to be a good, responsible one. He picked up more hours in work to save money before the baby came, and while he was working those shifts, Kelly went to her appointments alone.

  The day she came home and told him that they were going to have a boy was the single happiest moment of James’s life. The next time Kelly returned home from an appointment, the baby’s room was painted a soft blue, and James was hard at work constructing the crib. He hadn’t grown up as handy with tools as his dad had encouraged him to be, and the crib was the first thing he’d ever built. He considered it his masterpiece.

  Almost halfway into the pregnancy, Kelly came home one day from work at a supermarket in the next town over, and informed James that she had quit her job. Just like that. She was pregnant and tired and didn’t see why she should be on her feet anymore, especially since James was earning a decent amount, and even more especially because they didn’t have to pay rent. He’d been furious. How could she make a decision like that without consulting him first? Was she aware that they had a baby on the way? Did she realise that had she kept her job, she would not only have had paid maternity leave, but a job to return to afterwards? What was she expecting, for him to take care of everything? Was this the twenties all of a sudden? Was he expected to earn the money while she stayed home and baked pies all day?

  He’d called her a freeloader, and she’d cried, but she always cried when they argued, and he didn’t pay attention. He told her that he was going to the pub to blow off some steam, and that’s when she’d keeled over with her hands pressed to her stomach.

  Her breath was coming out in shuddering, tear-filled sobs, and for a second he’d been irritated by how child-like she looked and sounded with her face scrunched up like that. And then she’d complained about the stomach pains.

  James stood at the centre of the room but tried not to look up from the carpet. The crib he’d built stood by the window, the mobile with its swinging bunny rabbits hanging above it. That was the hardest thing to look at, he’d found, even though they’d suffered the miscarriage months ago. He could barely look at the walls, let alone the stuffed toys, and he had no idea why he’d entered the room in the first place.

  He’d thought that he was underprepared for a child when they were expecting their son, but he had never felt worse than when Kelly had told him that was no longer the case. When she’d left for the hospital, screaming at him to leave her alone as she went, he was worried, but not that worried. He thought at the time that if something was really wrong, Kelly would have put their argument aside and let him go with her, but s
he hadn’t.

  Being told that she’d miscarried because of stress had hit him in a way that nothing ever had, and he thought nothing ever would again. The loss was a unique type of pain unlike anything he’d experienced before, and the guilt of knowing he could have been responsible for it had been slowly driving him into the ground ever since.

  Kelly told him that it wasn’t his fault; sometimes these things just happened. But he knew in his heart that he shouldn’t have been shouting at his pregnant girlfriend, that perhaps he should have been more understanding about her leaving her job, and that it had been his duty to make her feel supported, and he hadn’t. They’d lost their child because of him. Every time he went into his son’s room, he felt like another piece of him dissolved, but sometimes the compulsion to go in there and try to pretend that everything was still fine won.

  Today, however, his imagination wouldn’t comply and the weight of what had happened was heavier than usual. Then, something else occurred to him—he ought to go across the road and knock on that door.

  He didn’t know why, but suddenly he felt a stronger draw to that unexplained house than he did to the room he currently stood in. Before he even knew he was moving, he was headed towards the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Kelly called to him as he rushed past their bedroom. He heard her but didn’t feel that he had time to stop and explain. He slid his hand down the bannister as he ran down the stairs, stumbling on the last few steps in his hurry. He reached the front door, threw it open, and took off across the street without stopping to put his shoes on.

  He had almost reached the heavy-looking front door of the place when he came to a sudden stop, wondering what on earth he was doing. When he’d first seen the house only ten minutes before, he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near it, and now here he was, running outside in nothing but a t-shirt and his boxer shorts, intending to bang on the door of a house that well and truly gave him the creeps.

  The sun must have been moving in the sky, because the house’s long shadow drew back and seemed to disappear into the house itself. He knew it wasn’t possible, but the closer he got to the house, the colder the air felt.

  He was about to turn around and head back when another compulsive surge went through him, and the next thing he knew, he was so close to the door that he could smell the wood. He waited for a moment, listening, but there was nothing moving inside.

  He curled his fingers around the doorknocker, expecting it to feel dry and rusty. It was smooth and—incredibly—warm. It was inviting. He lifted it, and then without exercising much added force, let it fall. It hit the door a lot louder than he expected and he shrank back a little. The single thump echoed back to him from within, as if the noise were hurtling around the house and ricocheting from every surface, somehow louder each time it came back to him. Then, it abruptly stopped, as though someone had muted it like they would mute the volume on a television.

  James waited. He wiped his hands on his shirt, leaving damp prints. He was starting to feel like an idiot—he didn’t know what he’d been expecting—and was about to turn back, when he heard something.

  “Hello?” he asked, pressing his ear to the door. The sound came again—a voice—a hushed, serpent-like whisper that slid through the cracks in the door like a tongue. It told him something.

  He was sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands when Kelly appeared in the doorway. He was aware of her presence, but he couldn’t look up at her, now for a completely different reason than usual.

  “You okay, babe?” she asked. Her voice cut through him in a way he didn’t expect. Suddenly, he was angrier than he had ever been, and he didn’t know how to handle it. So he continued to sit there without looking up, gripping his hair until his head hurt.

  “Babe?” she repeated. He raised his eyes to her, noticing the way she pressed her hand to her tummy, as she had been doing for months. He’d noticed it before, but assumed it was a subconscious gesture on her part. He’d felt sorry for her every time he’d seen her hand resting there, as if she still held on to that protective maternal instinct. Now, the gesture seemed obscene to him. Not just obscene, but sick.

  She was about to say something else, and then she noticed the way his blazing eyes stared at her hand. The tired smile fell from her face as her hand fell from her tummy. He knew.

  He raised his eyes to hers and they stared at each other for an expanse of time that tortured them both. James sat shaking in his chair, commanding himself not to jump up across the table and strangle her. Kelly pressed herself into the doorway as if she were trying to sink into the wood and disappear. She wracked her brain, trying to come up with an explanation that would somehow alleviate her of any responsibility.

  How the hell had he found out?

  Eventually, James rose from his chair. It scraped back against the tiled floor, making her wince. He walked around the table, praying that she would just move out of his way so he could leave the room. Everything in him was screaming violence. He wanted to kill her.

  Kelly, as usual, was oblivious to his feelings, though they were obvious. She was inside her own head, frantically trying to figure out how to make this his fault. She only surfaced from her thoughts when he was face to face with her.

  “Get out of my way,” he snarled, through gritted teeth. She stared at him, not moving. He drew in a breath. “And then, get out of my house.”

  “Babe, you have to understand, I was afraid that you…” she started, but didn’t finish. She was interrupted by the back of James’s hand across her cheek. Her face burned immediately, like she’d been leaning into a fire. She stared at him, shocked. He stared back at her even more shocked by the fact that he’d hit her. He’d never put his hands on anyone, male or female, in anger before, and he didn’t like how it made him feel.

  He expected to feel remorse and shame. He had always hated men who hit their girlfriends. But he didn’t feel anything but powerful. He despised the satisfaction that came with it. It was as though the strings that held his long-standing morals together were fraying and snapping away.

  He’d loved this woman for years and had done everything he could to make her happy. He had never imagined a day that he would look at her and feel so repulsed.

  “You hit me!” she screamed, breaking the silence. The old James would have cared, but the old James had been killed by the secret that the house had whispered to him. New James felt nothing but irritation that although he’d hurt her, the blow to her face didn’t even register compared to the pain she had inflicted on him.

  “You’re a piece of shit, Kelly,” he breathed. His face was now as red and as hot as hers. She shrank back out of the kitchen, realising that she wasn’t looking at the James that she had known all this time. This James didn’t appear to be one she could manipulate, because this James had somehow become privy to the knowledge that not only did he owe her nothing, but he had been living a lie.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied, with fake sincerity. She was screaming inside her head, sifting through options. Yelling at him wasn’t going to work, because he didn’t look at all guilty for smacking her. She had the terrible feeling that crying wasn’t going to work either, and that meant that she was going to have to resort to trying to twist everything.

  “Please don’t kick me out. I’m sorry,” she said. Tears slipped over her cheeks, but James now saw them for what they were—a control tactic, devoid of any real emotion.

  “Get. Out.” His fingers closed around the edge of the door, digging into the wood. He was feeling an ugly urge to hurt her a lot worse than his backhanded slap had, and was desperately trying to restrain it. He’d never felt so provoked, angry, or out of control. Even worse, he had never been so sure that he was capable of something horrible. He hadn’t suspected that this side of him existed, and the mixture of feelings it brought was disorientating.

  “How did you find out?” she muttered, finally lowering her eyes to her own feet. She was ashamed, which was an
uncomfortable feeling, and she was beginning to resent him for inflicting it on her.

  “You’ve got one more chance to leave, or I’m going to do something that I don’t even think I’ll regret,” he replied.

  “You don’t understand,” she tried. “I thought you were going to finish with me, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  This brought a fresh wave of rage that rippled through him. His fingers now hurt as he dug them into the door. Was she actually trying to justify lying about getting pregnant? Not only justify it, but blame him for it?

  His mind flicked back through images of their relationship previous to the ‘pregnancy’. She’d always been insecure, though he didn’t understand why she’d worry about his feelings for her—he’d fallen in love with her almost instantly and she knew that. He went over his memories, remembering the odd occasion that he’d caught her out in lies. She was prone to exaggerating—he’d always known that about her. She did it so often that her friends made fun of her for it, but he’d found it sort of endearing and assumed it was tied into her insecurity. Everyone was guilty of exaggerating on occasion, if only to make whatever story they were telling a bit more interesting. With her flair for drama and need to be liked, Kelly just did it a bit more than the average person.

  Now and then, he’d get home from work to find her home already, though she was supposed to finish work later than him, and she’d explain that her shift was moved, or she’d had an early finish. He would always discover that she was lying, and that she’d called in sick because she just didn’t feel like going to work that day. It perplexed him that she’d lie to him about that, but assumed she was just embarrassed because she’d been too lazy to get out of her pyjamas.