The Quiet House Read online

  ***

  “I don’t know how I got away.” Joe said. “Everything became a blur. I remember running and falling on the cellar steps. I remember reaching the front door. Sophie found me, she knew that I had seen something she had not in the plans. When she got to my house she found me sobbing on the front doorstep, holding my head in my hands. I’ve been living with her since then.”

  I sat back in the chair and let out a long breath. “That’s quite a story.” I said. “So Father Selmund was living here all this time?”

  “No, don’t you understand? Father Selmund was dead. He was dead long before I came to this house.”

  “You said he moved, he got up and attacked you.”

  “It doesn’t make much sense, I understand that, but something else was animating the priest’s body. I know how it sounds but there is not a chance that man was alive when I went into that hidden room. He wasn’t breathing and his flesh was rotting. He was dead.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Nothing. Sophie has heard the story but she refuses to set foot inside this house. She doesn’t want to know if it’s true.” Joe stared at me with pleading eyes. “That’s why I need you to look into that room.”

  I didn’t really believe him but even so I felt shock run through me at the proposition. “What?” I said.

  “You’re sensible, level headed. I can trust you to be truthful and to be accurate. I’m not asking you to go into the room, just stand outside it, shine a torch inside, and see if it is as I described. I need to know that I am not mad and I can’t bring myself to go near those stairs, let alone into the cellar. Please, I need you to do this if I’m ever going to sleep easily again.”

  It was impossible, the whole thing was impossible. Joe looked so drained and yet had this hunger. He really did need to know. The story he had told me was incredible but it sounded to me like Joe was suffering from some sort of madness. If this is what he needed in order to start seeking help then...

  “Ok,” I said, “I’ll do it.”

  A thin smile spread across Joe’s lips and he closed his eyes for a moment. “Thank you, thank you so much. I’ll just get you a torch.”

  It was the work of moments for him to find one and hand it over to me. He wanted to give me a hammer too but I refused. “I don’t believe in ghosts or zombies or anything like that.” I said. “If there is someone down there then they probably need help and not a hammer.”

  Joe was unwilling to let me go down without it but I insisted. He led me over to the little door under the stairs and opened it. He pressed the light switch and gestured me inside. I stooped as I stepped through and looked down the bare wooden stairs to the hole in the plaster ahead.

  So that part at least was true, there was a secret room. I could feel my throat tense and my hands clenched themselves against my will. I swallowed a few times and began to walk down the steps. I felt foolish for my panic and kept repeating to myself that there is no such thing as the undead. I took another few steps and turned the torch on.

  When I reached the bottom step I hesitated before shining the beam of light into that hole. “Hello?” I said, detecting the little shake in my voice. “Is there anyone there?” Slowly I raised the beam of light.

  The bare wall across greeted me. There was a crucifix on the wall but aside from some dust it was clean. The walls were not stained, just cheaply painted. Still standing outside the hole I scanned around as much as I could. There was the chest of drawers but there was no tongue lying in a bowl. There were no papers on the floor. The place smelt slightly damp but it was no worse that wet plaster.

  I couldn’t see the bed from where I was standing so I carefully lent into the room and shone the torch around. The bed was there, neatly made and fresh besides some dust. There was no body, no stained sheets. The whole place just looked like a bedroom underground.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief and let my tension go. This may not mean good things for Joe but at least it was something he could get help for. Almost as an afterthought I decided to take a few pictures of the room on my phone. If he refused to come down here then these would convince him that nothing was wrong. He was feverish at the time, probably still ill and was hallucinating. I took photos of the walls, the chest of drawers, the floor, and finally the bed. I left the secret room and, almost chuckling at having been so taken in, headed back upstairs.

  Joe’s face broke into a relieved smile as I came out of the cellar. “I was worried I’d done something terrible in sending you down there.” He said.

  “You don’t have to worry, Joe. I know this may not be easy but you have to know. There’s nothing down there. The furniture is there but it looks like no one used it. If it is the work of your priest then it seems he never used it.”

  Joe stared at me with a blank expression. When he spoke his voice cracked a little. “Y-you’re sure?” He said.

  “I’m positive, Joe. The scariest thing down there is a bit of damp.”

  “I-I don’t-“

  “I took pictures, Joe. You can see for yourself.” I pulled out my phone, selected the gallery and handed it over.

  Joe was some time looking through the pictures before saying. “Is this a joke? Did you want to mess with me? Why would you do that?”

  “What? Joe, what are you-“

  “Why would you put yourself in danger like that?” He shouted. I grabbed my phone from him.

  The wall in the picture was stained and the crucifix covered in dried blood. I went to the next and saw papers littering the floor, strange scrawls all over them. The next one, the chest of drawers held a silver bowl in which lay some twisted flesh that may well have been a tongue.

  I knew what the last picture was and my heart leapt up into my throat.

  It wasn’t lying in the bed but standing next to it, the restraints on its wrists and ankles stretching back to the fouled bed. Its body was wasted and rotten, with one clawed, long fingered hand inches away from the camera. Its wasted face was screwed up in a rictus of agony and fury. Its eyes burned with hatred and its open mouth revealed a hideous, mangled mess where once there was a tongue.

  I looked up at Joe and I could feel the blood rush from my face. A wave of numbness spread through me and we turned to the cellar door just as the thumping started from below.