Tell Me I'm Worthless(42)

As they approached the House, she started to feel something around her. Two opposing forces, one pushing her away, and the other drawing her in. Her body couldn’t decide what it wanted to do. She didn’t ask if the others felt the same way, because she didn’t want them to think she was weak. But they felt it too, in their own ways.

Leave here now, and then Come closer.

It was still hard to see, even when they got to the gates that marked the boundaries of the land. They were overgrown with vines that twisted up the rusted metal. A sign telling them to KEEP OUT hung on the gates, another saying DANGER OF DEATH placed next to it. The gates were difficult to open, the hinges had rusted shut over the years and fused together. But further along the road, along the high wall that the vines had reclaimed, they found a crumbled hole between the bricks which was big enough for a human to enter. It was easier for Hannah to get through given how small she was, so she went first, squeezing through the gap, and when she was on the other side she helped pull the others through. Ila got a graze from the stone on her upper arm and grumbled all the way up the drive to the House’s front door. The drive wasn’t really a drive anymore. They could still barely see anything outside of Alice’s torch beam, but the light found the impression of a track leading forwards, and then settled on the door, which was old wood. Over the years the paint had chipped off, and now it was bare, and hanging open, ready to enter. Alice moved the torch across the front of the place, taking in the plants which crept up its brickwork, the windows with no glass in them. Nobody had ever bothered to board them up, so they were holes open to the elements. Even if the front door had been impossible to go through, they could have climbed into one of the windows on the ground floor easily, brushing the ivy out of the way and jumping down into the dark oblivion within. As it was, all they needed to do was push through the open door.

Alice went first, holding the torch. Hannah watched, the last of the three, as Alice edged her way inside, illuminating whatever she saw in front of her. When she was in, it was like she’d suddenly vanished completely. Hannah couldn’t see her through the crack, couldn’t even see the torch’s light. This is a terrible idea, she told herself. You could just turn back and they probably wouldn’t miss you, right?

Then Alice called for them.

“Come on!” she said, her voice distant. “It’s so fucking cool in here, you have to see.”

Ila was next. She put her hand on the door, as she had done when she was just a teenager and had been dared to get as close as she could. Ila had won that game. It had been a badge of pride where one was sorely needed. Now she would elbow her way past that and see what came after. She ducked down and went into the dark.

Hannah walked forwards and waited for a moment. She really could have turned back. The feeling was strong, overpowering the other feeling that tried to pull her inside. It was about to win, when Ila’s hand suddenly appeared, beckoning for her to grab it. Hannah did so, and in she went.

As she went through the door, a cobweb, which somehow hadn’t gotten Ila or Alice, became entangled in her hair, and she yelped, stumbled, and fell out of Ila’s grasp. She hit something hard. Alice shone the light on her and laughed, as she lay there on her knees trying to pull the web out of her hair.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Are you scared?” asked Ila, who was, of course, terrified.

“Yes. Yes I’m scared.”

She stood up and grasped the shoulder strap of her bag with one hand. It felt good to hold onto something, gripping it hard enough to be slightly painful.

Alice played the torchlight around the entrance hall, trying to grasp the geography of the place, which wasn’t easy. The torch’s beam was too small to truly see anything. In the House it was a murky, inky dark that swallowed the beam, but they could see open doorways to either side, and the staircase, desperately unsafe, sloping upwards before them. Alice turned around, and shone the light through the windows, which were thick with vegetation, so thick that the light wouldn’t have been visible to anybody standing outside, looking at the building. The floorboards creaked as they moved around. Everything that wasn’t them was as still as a painting.

And there were things in there with them. The House had been open for a very, very long time, and all sorts of life had found its way inside. The ivy and vines that covered the brickworks snaked around through the windows, covering the brickwork with a thick bed of tangled, knotted root. Rats scurried in the corners. Foxes nested beneath the sink in the kitchens. The house was its own habitat.

Things lived in the House, yes. But as they stood there, with the stairs in front of them, beckoning, everything was very, very still.

“Come on!” shouted Alice.

Hannah jumped as the quiet was snapped open violently. Alice was striding to the left.

“Let’s look down here, find the dining room.”

“How do you know the dining room is that way?” Ila called after her, hurrying.

“I don’t!”

Hannah didn’t want to be left there, alone, with no light at all, so she went as fast as she could after them, through a doorway that had no door. There was a dining room there, almost as cavernous as the entrance hall. Or at least, she thought that must be what it was. There was no table in the room, no furnishings at all. There was a hole in the middle of the floorboards, and when Alice shone the torch down it they could only see a thick layer of spiderwebs.