Short-Story
That house next door…
artwork by amina
Over the weekend the crows pecked through the wire screen of a kitchen window and as they flew in the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside. Outside, it was a bright spring day. The sun was high in a clear blue sky, shining with proud lustre, and a cool breeze was blowing, soothing everything into a becalmed state. The scurrying of the crows in the kitchen made a raucous sound that soon reached the house next door. The noises sailed in with the breeze into Khaled's room, where he sat in front of his desk, cramming for an exam he had the next day. The noises distracted him immediately. He wondered what the noises could be - they should not - could not - be coming from that house next door. It had been abandoned and had been standing empty from a time long before Khaled's family moved into the neighborhood. Local lore had it that the house had been the home of a Hindu family who immigrated to bilet during the time when the country first started experiencing heightened religious tensions. Khaled did not know much about those times, but he could guess how frightening it might have been to be a part of the minority back then. Even now he could see that the minorities were marginalized, when it was supposed to be a more enlightened and tolerant time. The odd thing about that house was that even though it had been abandoned for so long - and no one had ever showed up laying claim on it - the squatters and the land grabbers never moved in. Maybe it was because it had been lived in by Hindus (and so was considered taboo) or that it would be just too much trouble to work out all the legal entanglements - no one knew exactly where the owner was or even who he was. Whatever the reasons, soon everybody just completely forgot about it. Passersby would never notice it and the people of the neighborhood simply looked past it. In a way the house had managed to become something magical, something that had become invisible, disappeared while being in plain view of everybody. Everybody except for Khaled, that is. The main reason Khaled could not forget about the house was because it was always staring him in the face. The windows of his room faced the back boundary wall of that house. And immediately in front of this wall, in the top right corner of their yard, was a guava tree. It was tall and thick, and its branches reached the roof of that house next door. Sitting there, with his textbook open in front of him, Khaled decided the noises merited further investigations. His curiosity had been piqued and he had to find out what those noises were. At the very least it would give him a reprieve from his studies, which he knew he could not possibly get back to unless he solved the mystery of the noises. He sneaked out into the back yard knowing that he would be scolded by his parents if they caught him going over there. In fact, he knew it would go past a severe scolding - that his father would give him a real beating. But he just could not help himself; however, if he was careful he knew they would never find out. No one ever thought about that house, and anything connected to it - a thought that someone might sneak in never entered anyone's mind. He climbed the guava tree without difficulty. He had always been a good climber and the tree's branches were strong and thick, more than capable of holding his slight frame. He shimmied across a horizontal branch, which grew over the wall, and easily reached the roof of that house. The floor of the roof was completely covered in moss, carpeted in a dark green that in places was black. Khaled tried to carefully drop down from the branch but the moss was too slippery, and he slipped as he touched the floor, sliding down with a loud thump. He lay motionless for a moment, terrified that his parents might have heard it. He started to become a little afraid about continuing, and made up excuses to not go on. But the fearful thoughts soon lost their sting and he stood back up. The door of the roof was made of sheet iron, which through the ages had become rusted over and had started to be eaten away. It made a piercing sound when Khaled pulled on it, nearly taking it off its hinges. The piercing noise lasted especially long for Khaled, whose paranoia at getting caught elongated the moment and made the noise that much louder. The stairway leading to the first floor was pitch dark. As the sunlight stabbed in through the doorway, Khaled could see how dead and empty that house was. The windows along the stairways were covered in thick layers of dirt and grime, thick networks of spider webs covered the passageway from wall to wall, and the steps were cracked and crumbling. But Khaled could not be turned back now. He stepped straight in, into the complete gloom. He started slicing through the spider webs along the walls. They all swayed down to the floor, clearing a path big enough for him to walk through untangled. As he walked down those steps, the smell of age in the air became stronger; it was the scent of stagnation, of an air that had not moved in eons and carried the heavy stench of decayed time. His eyes soon acclimatized to the poor light and he could make out the contours of the steps and the railing and the floor. But he could not make out any movement anywhere, but then again there weren't any - not even the flight of a dust-bunny. He could make out clouded shapes made by the grime upon the window-panes; it reminded him of the frescos in the medieval cathedrals he had seen in his history books. The house seemed to him like a mausoleum. Nothing moved and nothing stirred. Even the noises that had attracted him - still bursting forth from the kitchen - became as faint as whispers in the gloom, and the only stimulant was the dim light coming in through the grime covered windows, the filtered remains of the bright day outside. Yet he could still make out much of the house, and could see which path led which way. He decided the first call of action was to go to the noises. He could hear it clearly enough, and could see that there was light there too. And so he followed. The crows were cawing away and crashing into the pots and pans. The air of the kitchen was heavy with the dust that had been stirred up, and Khaled started to cough violently when he walked in. His coughing spooked the birds, and they rushed to a retreat, squeezing through the hole in the screen through which they had come in. Within a minute, they were all gone, and Khaled was still bent over, coughing vehemently, trying to stop from choking. He couldn't take it anymore and rushed out of the kitchen, but as he ran he stirred up the dead air, and all the dust of ages rose up and it became a whirlwind as thick as a sandstorm. He couldn't breathe anymore because the dust was so thick. He became light-headed, started grabbing at the furniture, trying to keep himself from falling over and passing out. Everywhere he went, the sound of crashing could be heard, things falling off from shelves,chairs tipping over, and vases breaking. But all he could hear was the rasping of his own throat and the effort of his lungs as he tried to breathe. The last thing he remembered was a loud boom coming from someplace ahead of him and then light breaking the gloom. As he fell and passed out, he could hear a hub-hub of voices over him, but he was not be sure if they were real or harking back to the past life of that house. When he woke up, he was in the front yard. Holding his head was his father, asking "Khaled, are you alright?" Patting him on the back a couple of times to help with the convulsions of coughing. It seemed that the noises he had made had caught the attention of his father and others in the neighborhood - and they had all realized that it had been coming from that house next door. They stormed in and broke down the door, and found Khaled rolled over and choking. Khaled looked into his father's eyes and knew that he was in trouble. 'Oh shit!' he thought to himself.
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