Candle in the Attic Window(7)

Later. Still no success, but during my last visit to the kitchen, which was at the time attached to the guest bathroom, I found the remains of a meal, a meal which I had not eaten.

Later still. I have torn several pages from this notebook and written messages, which I have then placed in prominent places, suggesting that we congregate in the foyer. In at least two instances, those messages have been removed, but I have been waiting on the staircase now for what must be at least several hours. Twice, I have heard the sounds of movement, but no one has appeared. I am tired and discouraged, but will try again tomorrow.




I grow to understand my situation even less with each passing day. I woke this morning with some enthusiasm, convinced that the enigma in which I am trapped has a solution, if only I have the wits to find it. But just when I think I am beginning to understand the rules, they change.

I found the kitchen clean and orderly and was making myself a sandwich for breakfast, Deviled Ham smeared on a hard roll, when I was startled by an ambiguous sound from near at hand. Before I had time to investigate, something burst in through the open doorway, ran past me, and exited into what should have been the pantry, but probably was not, all before I could react in any useful fashion. I didn’t get a good look at it, but it had four legs and fur.

Breakfast forgotten, I spent what must have been hours searching. There were hints of its presence – a clatter of tiny footsteps from over my head, a brief series of bumps and once a crash, as if something glass had been overturned and shattered, but I never caught sight of it again. By nightfall, or what I judged to be nightfall, I had abandoned the hunt and I sit at present in the library, dispirited.




I must remember to confine my sleeping to a bed. This morning, I woke in a chair with a stiff neck and a back ache. My mood was somber as I prepared for the usual morning search for the kitchen. It was nowhere on the ground floor, so I climbed the staircase and had barely reached the landing when a commotion broke out below me. I turned and leaned over the rail, just in time to see my four-footed visitor, which appeared to be a small doe, bolt across the carpet from left to right. The sight of it was still registering when a second figure burst upon the scene, a human figure this time, although an ungainly looking creature. It ran hunched forward; it wore some rough, colourless fabric wrapped around its loins and it carried a crudely fashioned spear!

I must have called out because it paused suddenly, glanced up in my direction, and then hurried on in pursuit of its quarry. I should have followed. I would have, except that something about the creature’s face struck me as oddly familiar. And in any case, I doubt very much that I could have caught up before the shifting realities of the house shunted it to some new location.

It was a considerable while later, while passing through my mother’s sewing room, that I happened to glance at the wedding photos she had arranged in an elaborate triptych on one wall. The face of the savage hunter was that of my father.

My predicament grows less comprehensible with each passing hour.




I have not written here for the past three days, or for my last three periods of wakefulness, however long that might be. This is not because nothing of note has happened, but rather because, paradoxically, so much has.

A low murmuring roused me from sleep, an almost subliminal sound which drew me out of my room and into the hall, where the disturbance resembled human speech more clearly. Barefoot and bare-chested, I walked slowly to the landing and looked down into the foyer. It seemed larger than usual and was certainly more crowded. Three rough structures stood in one corner, a kind of hybrid, half-tent and half-hut. Two adults were crouched a few meters away, building what appeared to be a fire in the middle of the floor. At the far end, a much-smaller individual – a child – was attempting to climb the drapes.

I suppose I should have descended immediately, but my sense of propriety overruled my enthusiasm. Father had always stressed the importance of first impressions, so I went back to my room to dress, a wasted effort as all of the clothes I had been wearing the previous day had mysteriously vanished and the closet and bureaus were empty. By the time this fact had registered, the foyer had been restored to its usual pristine state.

The disappointment was not as great as it might have been. Although I had yet to make contact with my housemates, there had been a clear progression. Sooner or later, our worlds would intersect more determinedly. I was certain of it. But the remainder of that day passed uneventfully and I fell asleep, once more consumed by doubts and apprehensions.

Something touched my cheek and I opened my eyes. A child, a female, stood at my bedside, a rather disheveled-looking waif with round, sad eyes and delicate features. She was quite pretty, but there was a furtive look about her and she recoiled when she saw that I was awake then bolted through the door.

“No! Wait!” I called and followed, but it was probably just as well that I failed to find her, as I was now completely unclothed. I mended that by fashioning a towel into a kind of kilt then conducted another fruitless search of the house, calling out occasionally, trying to speak in a calm, reassuring tone. No one answered; no one appeared.

I made several fruitless circuits of the house and, during my fifth visit to the library, I turned to the liquor cabinet, but instead of the beveled glass containers, I found two bulging, leatherlike pouches, both filled with liquid. The first appeared to be plain water, but the second, though bitter and sour, was clearly alcoholic and I drained more than half of it before setting it aside.