Letters, Lessons and Puzzles Part 5 (extended)

This is where the original excerpt from this short story fits. I have expanded it, in the (forlorn) hope of fitting the last part in one post, and edited it as per all but one of Lorraine's suggestions below. One I just had to leave in, Persian Rug style...

Please let me know what you (honestly) think.

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Smythe’s Journal

Thursday09 Jan 12:51 am

 

I have torn my home apart.

 

Following my discussion with my cousin, to whom I am grateful for giving me some perspective and comfort, no matter how brief, I saw the clues. They were there, now conspicuous through the medium of the devices written to camouflage them. At the time they made little sense, these constant references to 'mistakes’, even though I knew them for what they were, and I foolishly took them at face value. I first revisited my office and, finding nothing rather petulantly emptied off the shelves and drawers before I admitted to myself this latest letter would not be hidden in the same place as the first. I reread the clues and, to cut a long story short, destroyed my bedroom. As it is the staff's night off I have had no restraint in continuing the pattern with other rooms on the ground and first floors but to no avail. 

 

At length I returned here to my study. It did not take long, enough time to drink two glasses of scotch, before I began here. I was careful at first, stacking things neatly, but that did not last and I made the room a sculpture of my frustration. It progresses from stacked, ordered books by the window to strewn drawers and a broken lamp by the door with all of the intervening states along the walls from one to the other. I am as much a mess as that final portion, having mentally journeyed through all of the stages in between. 

 

Now I sit amongst the wreckage, chair righted and desk swept clear with my forearm so that on it might sit the final letter. After all this I found it by accident. Accident. Chance. I struck the shelves next to the door and dust fell from the top. No servant cleans in here save for a weekly vacuuming of the rug under my supervision. I do what I can myself as a ritual to calm the mind. How calm I will be once I tidy and clean all of this up! Ha!

 

Ha. Ha indeed… the dust led me to realise that on top of those shelves was ‘the last place I would look’, a phrase repeated one way or another over and over in the second letter. I stood on a box and retrieved the letter, covered in dust, leaving a perfectly clear spot. No; I do not know how that can be. The only way is impossible. Yes, yes I know I admitted such a thing might be done yesterday but I did not, I do not, believe it. I cannot.

 

And so the letter, still covered in dust save for my finger-marks, sits there much as the second did: sealed and inviting. Or tempting. And teasing. Fo-

 

***

 

He stops writing, pen hovering above the page and finds himself staring at the unopened letter between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. I am tired, he thinks, and this is pointless.

 

Before he can complete the thought, there is a thud, followed by the sound of a creaking door. Odd, none of the doors in my house creak. Then comes a rhythmic tap, like a golf ball being dropped on a hard floor or a clockwork mechanism begin forcibly overwound. It stops abruptly.

 

Concentration broken he leaves the room to investigate leaving his journal open, his pen uncapped on the desk and the letter still in his hand. The hall light is off, but there is light enough coming from the open bedroom door for him to see his way easily down to the source of the sound: the library. He makes his way towards the closed door, wincing as he passes the wreckage of his bedroom.

 

A light is on, he thinks, but I haven't searched in there yet. After his fruitless search of his office it made no sense to search where he had found the second letter. It can't be the main light though, it's too weak, what can it be? Perhaps that is the wrong question.

 

Who can it be?

 

He reaches for the handle, then stops. Did this door creak? He reaches out, touches the hinges but he is none the wiser. He turns the handle and opens the door slowly and without a sound. There is a light, but not one he was expecting. On the mantel piece to the left is a lit torch, an old and solid serviceable thing made like a truncheon. It points to the corner to his right, immediately behind the door and as he moves to look at its target and shields his eyes from the glare he sees the Turner on the floor. He looks to where it had been hung and freezes. On the wall are two words, written neatly, and freshly, in what looks like black marker pen.

 

READ IT

 

For the first time since he stopped writing in his journal he notices that he is still grasping the sealed letter in his hand. He wants to drop it, he makes to throw it to the floor but he cannot. As terrifying as it has become, as unwelcome all of this is, his own curiosity has him enthralled. He steps fully into the room and closes the door, aware of everything… the glare of the torch, the click of the door latch, the softness of the rug under his slippers, as he moves into the centre of the room.

 

He turns to face the door so that the angle of the torch gives him the light to read. He holds up the letter to see the seal, the paper crumpled by his grip and the dust still forming a haze around the edge. So innocent a thing, like a box that contains an asp…

 

He breaks the seal, takes a breath, and reads. The shock of the words leaves him motionless.

 

“My efforts with these letters has failed.

 

“I am waiting by the stairs. When you come out I will lead you to where you need to be.

 

“I will show you what you need to see.

 

“Come now.”

 

He just stares and swallows. There is a chill to the air he had not noticed before, seeping through his thin indoor jumper. He folds the letter and places it next to the torch. After a moment some part of him begins to think and another, deeper part of him begins to slowly fill with a cold, dense form of courage. He takes the torch and deliberately turns it off. There will be light when I leave this room, he thinks, I'll leave my silly fretful self in here, in the dark, and I'll meet whatever is out there head on.

 

His courage, however, barely survives contact with the door handle. When he grasps it he does not feel smoothly polished. Instead it is pitted and old and difficult to turn. He digs deep once more, turns the handle and opens the door. It creaks on its hinges, the same unlikely sound he heard a few minutes before. Gooseflesh appears and his entire body is attacked by a shiver which seems to echo round his joints as he forces himself into the half-light of the hall.

 

“Just the cold”, he hisses to himself, “Chilling but natural. Nothing to fear, you fool.”

 

But there is. His body is wracked by another quake as he sees, standing at the top of the stairs, a figure straight from the pages of a penny dreadful, motionless and menacing. It is the size and shape of a man but covered in a dark grey robe. A great hood covers its head leaving its face in shadow. Just for a moment it seems content to simply stand, motionless, watching him tremble, then it descends the stairs into the light of the hall below.

 

White-knuckled, Smythe grips the torch and follows. He passes his bedroom and office but both doors are now closed with no hint of the lights he left on. Unwilling, unable, to dawdle he rushes down the stairs.

 

The scene that greets him at the bottom makes him sure he is losing his mind. The figure is gone and he cannot be sure whether he is relieved, curious or more terrified. It's somewhere, he thinks, looking for it will drive me mad, and worrying that it is behind me, like a spider one saw and now cannot see, will make me jump at my own shadow.

 

His train of thought rattles on; Why does this place look odd all of a sudden? The hall is unkempt, it looks like an army had just marched through here. And all of the lights are on? Is the baggage train about to follow?

 

Finally he sees it, in the only shadow by the front door. The figure seems less frightening, small by the large entrance and less menacing without being under-lit and unexpected. It is a man, Smythe decides, no bigger than me. Even so he cannot approach it. After a few seconds, which feel far longer, it raises a robed arm to points towards the kitchen. Suddenly Smythe hears voices, real ones he hopes, and tears himself away from the hooded miscreant to head the other way down the hall. The prankster is revealed, he thinks, let's play his game for now. The thought does not calm the hairs on his arms or the growing knot in his stomach.

 

The voices are gibberish, overlapping and interrupting like half a dozen news feeds playing simultaneously. As he reaches the door to Roberts’ office there is a sudden clarity. Only it is not Roberts speaking in there and he recognises just one of the faces on the screens.

 

“There is no will?” one of the screens says, a young woman with blond hair and a toothy smile.

 

“No,” says the man in the office, “Nothing on file.”

 

“There bloody well should be,” Smythe yells, “If not on file I'll draft the bloody thing now and have it notarised by nine!”

 

All of the screens just smile and, even looking over the shoulder of the man in the room, Smythe can tell he is being ignored.

 

“They cannot hear you,” is whispered in his ear, but when he turns the robed figure is nine feet away, “No interaction is possible.”

 

“How are you doing that?” Smythe demands, unable to keep a crack from his voice, “And what the hell does that mean?”

 

The conversation in the office continues, the scurrilous band behind him dividing his assets and business interests like a family dividing a tin of chocolates on Boxing Day.

 

“We are observers here,” comes the whisper again, “Observing them, unseen and impotent. We are out of place, out of time, here to learn.”

 

“More riddles,” Smythe barks, “My arse to your riddles. I have chased them for days and now here I am. Halt this charade and explain yourself before I stop playing along and raise hell!” Still the crack in his voice; oh, he thinks, it is anger now, not fear!

 

The conversation behind him is still going on as if they have not heard him. Actors, good ones perhaps. Is this man in the robe another one, perhaps, rather than the architect? Must I really play along to get to the true culprit?

 

Before he can begin his next verbal assault he hears what can only be a whispered laugh in his ear.

 

“Hell?” it says, “Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”

 

With that it turns and heads towards the front door.

 

Smythe looks at the office and shakes his head. A room full of monkeys, he thinks, the organ grinder is not here. He walks down the hall to the front door and leaves his house.

 

It is cold, leaves blow around his feet and the only illumination is from three feeble streetlights leading down a path to a gate in a low wall. This is not my street, he thinks. I was a fool to come out in slippers and a housecoat to begin with but I hardly imagined I would wander so far away from home without even remembering the walk.

 

He looks around for his secretive robed guide but stops abruptly.

 

An row of objects on the ground catches his eye. That is a headstone, he realises, and so is that. There are more. This is not a private plot in a garden somewhere, I am in a graveyard.

 

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[Old PS Having done this I have a new found respect for people who post their work on here, especially for the first time. I have accomplished a lot procrasting about posting this...]