When one door shuts, another opens. That’s how the saying goes, doesn’t it? But I’ve found, when one door shuts – it’s quite possible that you’re trapped.
So that New Year’s Eve, Mum and I drove miles out of London, west into the countryside, up hills and down dales until we reached a remote corner of the world and followed a dirt track that led to a steep slope and a massive beige-grey stone structure that had the largest collection of turrets jammed next to each other that I had ever seen. The holiday rental was less of a house and more of a small castle and behind its vast number of windows secrets certainly loitered.
It was on the eve of that new year that somehow, I had lost myself – swallowed up into the walls as the night pressed against the panes of large arched windows of my guest room. Tomorrow, the curtainless windows would welcome the light of the new day, the light of the new year, the light of hope, but for now, in the darkness, amoeba-like shadows kissed the glass beaconing me to join in the hell-scape of their games.
I sat cross-legged on the bed in my black sparkly strappy dress and in the low light of the bedside lamp my hoodie, inhaler and rucksack lay in a heap on the stone floor. No signal. I tossed my phone towards the end of the bed, and it skittled in the semi-darkness along the blankets like a stone skimming a lake and landed just short of the edge. Nothing would make me go back downstairs. Not even the lack of Internet. The joviality of the night’s festivities was a farce: the effervescent laughter; the endless toasts and the disingenuous gifts all formed the stage of rumbling and riotous banter amongst the adults, hoots of surprise and now and again a squawk that escalated into an uproarious scream.
Why was I there in the first place, you may ask? This, in fact, was a very good question. Apparently, I couldn’t be trusted to be left at home alone. Well, that’s not quite what Mum had said. What she actually said was that it would be fun to spend New Year’s Eve together and with her friends and that everyone was bringing their kids. What she didn’t realise was that all the other teens had a life and I was the only sixteen-year-old in the whole world who had to tag with their Mum to a New Year’s Eve gothic inspired party in the countryside. What’s not to like – it will be fun, she insisted. There’s even going to be a Quadrantid meteor shower, and it’s going to be a clear night; we should have a perfect view – what better way than a shower of shooting star fireballs to bring in the new year, she said in a vain attempt to fill me with excitement. But that was Mum, forever excited about the skies, an astronomer, a planetary scientist and nothing stopped for her research, even New Year’s Eve. What she didn’t say, but meant, was that if she left me alone in charge of the house, her house, she wasn’t so sure that it would still be standing when she returned.
I lay back on the bed.
The walls and ceiling seemed to undulate, rather pulsate, beating in time with the ticking of the clock on the mantel. The clock was white marble with the circular clock face set in the rectangular block of alabaster stone. The face of the clock, with black Roman numerals set against a faded sepia background, was at odds with the ultra-modern marble. The whole clock contrasted the jaded heavy fabric of the chairs, bed and tapestries. But the ticking was, by far, the most disturbing. Each passing second did not just seem to tick and end, but rather, tick and echo somewhere deep in the recesses of the stone walls reverberating infinitely. A cacophony of raucous screams from below cut through the clicks of the clock. It would be midnight soon.
The wallpaper was an embossed forest green that depicted a repeated barren woodland scene. Winter trees and branches sprawled across the walls and ceiling like arthritis-gnarled fingers, painful and disjointed, bent in unnatural ways. In the centre of the ceiling hung a dusty chandelier with the dimmest of glows through the obscured crystals, where the dust particles cast strange dull threads across the wallpaper.
I closed my eyes.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The room felt heavy and cold – the small hairs on my arm stood to attention as I sensed the shadows permeate the windowpanes and close in against my body. I longed to grab my hoodie, but my arms felt like lead and legs refused to obey my commands. My breath was suddenly short and shallow – was I dying? Maybe I was dying?
Silence.
Dizziness.
Blackness.
A shriek of laughter jolted me from my limbo, and I opened my eyes to be blinded by the brightest stream of light. I sat bolt upright, but that was a mistake. My head pounded and my body screamed as if it had been splintered into a billion glass particles. I lay down and listened.
Heavy shoes clattered up and down in the stone hallway as high-pitched voices laughed and shouted – children. Small children. Giggling, squealing, whooping. Which of Mum’s friends had small children?
I turned my head and opened my eyes away from the monumental windows. The room seemed the same in the dim glow, but different. The bedside lamp was replaced by a small candle, there was no clock on the mantle, and the bed was a four-poster mahogany with deep wine-red drapes that were hung open. The tapestries were the same, but the room simple and bare. I blearily peered over the side of the bed. Nothing. Where was my hoodie? My inhaler? My rucksack?
As my eyes adjusted, I raised myself slowly. Rich aromas from downstairs permeated the walls; my stomach rumbled.
I slid off the bed and that’s when I noticed the door. The heavy prefab fire door with a fire escape instruction plaque was gone. The door before me was heavy dark wood in the shape of an arch and set into the stone. There were six great silver hinges that almost resembled swords. Three large ornate hinges on the left side of the door that opened the whole door and three smaller hinges that seemed to open a smaller door set in the bigger door. Each hinge was elaborately carved with flowery swirls, while the handle to the smaller door was adorned with highly polished intricate carvings. A tightness rose in my chest and pressed down on my sternum. My breathing became shallow. As in a dream where you are running and get nowhere or scream and no sound comes out, I dropped to my knees, and in a screaming whisper I cried, “where’s my inhaler?” My voice sounded both far away and near, both soft and loud, both echoey and clear. I felt the panic rising and strangling my airways. Air! I rose and stumbled to the windows and grabbed one of the black handles and pushed the arcane pane open. The freezing night accosted my senses and temporarily calmed my breathing; I leaned against the stone wall breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, slowly and deliberately holding the cold air in my lungs before releasing it in a cloud of misty breath. That’s when I noticed it. The sky. Trails of white, yellow and blue explosions that streaked across the midnight sky, streak after streak of fireballs erupting in light. Like rings on a giant ancient sequoia, the Quadrantids formed a hypnotic spectacle and I felt the ticking of the clock deep in my mind. I turned back towards the door. Where was I? When was I? And most importantly – was I trapped?
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The Gold Shoe Writer 