by
Jennifer Greylyn
The
thief crept toward the house.
#
They heard him coming and awoke.
#
His
avaricious eyes were fixed upon it. Lit only by moon and stars, it stood all on
its own in a patch of skeletal woodland. Years of neglect had seen the trees
grow tangled and thick, but it was always visible because they never bloomed.
The earth was barren too, grassless, weedless, dry as
dust.
He did not notice. He saw
only it.
#
More
of them awoke the closer he came.
#
It
had been untouched for years. It was older than the town. The town grew around
it and ignored it. People were fearful. There were whispers of strange
happenings and horrific crimes. Ghostly laughter.
Demonic screams. The dying cries of slaughtered bodies buried in the cellar.
But he was young and they did not deter him. Such places always bred dark
stories. He had watched it for weeks now and seen nothing. It was deserted.
But
he did not think it was empty.
#
They were all awake now,
listening, desperately listening.
#
It was his prize. He
deserved it. Because only he was not a coward. Only he
dared to approach it. To explore it. It was huge,
sprawling, ancient. It had been sealed for ages. Lifetimes. It had to contain unimaginable things. Gold hidden in rotting chests. Silver plate stored in warped
cupboards. Jewelry secreted in little decorative boxes. His fingers itched in
anticipation.
It would make his
reputation.
#
They
began to whisper among themselves, excited, unable to keep quiet any longer.
#
He
heard them as he worked his thin-bladed knife into the crack between the
shutters on a ground-floor window. He froze for an instant and then relaxed, hearing
only the creaking of old wood in the wind. It did not occur to him that he
could not feel the wind licking the sweat from his neck. It did not bother him
that he heard no other noise at all, not even the rattle of bare branches.
Excitement had narrowed his mind to one task.
He let out a triumphant
sigh when he lifted the rusted latch.
#
They fell silent in
anticipation, no noise escaping them at all.
#
He climbed through the
open window and stood up. The first thing he noticed was the stillness. The air
felt like ice. He did not dare breathe, afraid he would crack it. But he could
not hold his breath forever. The stillness pressed against him. Sharp. Cold. It was more than stillness. It was deadness. The absence of life.
His tortured lungs ruptured
in a scream. But there was no sound. Because there was no
room for it. They were upon him.
They bunched around him
and they carried him along. Up stairs. Down stairs. Through
rooms and corridors and cellars. They swept him through the whole of the
ancient house and, with every breath he tried to draw, they filled him…
…with the
hazy, skittering memories of countless insects…
….with the sharper, slower
and more patient memories of spiders in their webs…
…with the
dark, darting memories of bats in the chimneys…
…with the
nervous, bemused memories of pigeons huddled in the attics…
…with the quick, dim
memories of mice running through the walls, nesting in the backs of old drawers
or in the seats of chairs leaking their stuffing…
…with the
sleek, confident memories of cats hunting the hallways, padding through the
dark, ears alert for the faintest twitch…
…with the
memories of babies, sometimes sleepy, sometimes startlingly bright…
…with the
memories of children who saw eyes in the windows and dragonwings
in the shadows…
…with the memories of
young men and young women who were nervous under their parents’ eyes, who
avoided each others’ eyes but who still knew, meeting
for kisses and fumbles in the closets…
…with the
memories of married couples who quarrelled and loved and laughed…
…with the
memories of the very old who treasured even their dying moments…
…filled him with all of
those who were gone, gone save for their memories.
Those lived on, taking life where they could find it. They took it from
him. They turned his hair to snow, his skin to parchment and his bones to
glass. But they did not take it all.
They left him enough to
lurch away, blind with panic, scrambling back through the window, when he was
full and could hold no more of them. Because they did not
just want to live. They wanted to be free.
And, when he was outside
the house, able to breathe again, if only in arduous gasps, they left him with
every breath he exhaled.
They would become rumours,
dreams and nightmares, borne on the wind. Some people would grow even more
fearful of the ancient house. But others would become obsessed by it, tempted
by it, until they could not resist seeing it for themselves. Then those ones
would find the open window and more of them would be free.
Those that were left
settled back into their death-like slumber. They could only wait and endure.
But at least the house was
no longer quite so crowded.