The Beast

‘Ladies first,’ she said, gesturing for me to go inside.

‘No, after you,’ I replied, and I really hoped she wouldn’t argue.

‘Chicken,’ she smirked. I took hold of the wooden board and pulled it back as she squeezed inside. ‘Whoa, it stinks,’ she coughed. ‘Looks OK, though. Come on through.’

Ameena braced her hands against the wood from the inside. I released my grip, screwed my courage up to a ball in the centre of my stomach, and inched my way into the house.

The smell raced to meet me as I crawled inside. It was the smell of the attic in my house – damp and stale – but ten times worse. I zipped the top of my jacket over my mouth and nose and straightened up. My hands felt sticky or wet – I couldn’t really tell which – from crawling on the carpet. I wiped them on my thighs, suddenly revolted at the thought of what I might have been touching.

Because I couldn’t see what was on the carpet. Nor, for that matter, could I see the carpet itself. Outside had been dark, but in the house, with the board back in place, the total absence of light left us blind.

I tried to speak, but my throat had gone dry. It was no surprise, really. For years I’d lived in fear of the Keller House, and now here I was, standing inside it in complete blackness. What made it worse was that when I was young I wasn’t all that sure if monsters were real. Now I knew they were. And most of them wanted me dead.

Something brushed against my back and I screamed – a high, shrill scream, with all the manliness of a three-year-old girl.

‘Easy kiddo,’ Ameena snorted. ‘Just me.’

‘Don’t do that!’ I gasped. ‘I could’ve... really hurt you.’

‘Yeah, in your dreams, maybe,’ she said. ‘Now follow me, I think I can see light.’

‘How am I supposed to follow you? I can’t see a thing.’

I felt her grab and fumble at my sleeve, then her hand slipped into mine. Her palm felt warm against my cold skin as our fingers interlocked. ‘That better?’ she asked.

I nodded, unable to speak again, but for different reasons. She couldn’t have seen my nod, but she took my silence as a “yes”.

‘Right, this way,’ she said, and I found myself dragged, unresisting, further into the room.

At first, I still couldn’t see anything, but as she led me across the floor, I began to make out little dents in the darkness. The outline of an armchair. The edge of a low-hanging ceiling light. A corner of a picture on the wall. It was enough to give the impression that Mr Keller, the house’s former owner, had just gone out one morning and never returned. In fact, that’s exactly what he had done, but I’d assumed the house would have been cleared out at some point since then. I’d assumed wrong.

Ameena stopped. Her warmth left my hand as she released her grip. Just ahead of us, a door creaked slowly open at her push, letting a dim orange glow seep through. A narrow staircase stood before us. The carpet that covered the stairs was tatty and threadbare. Floral-patterned wallpaper peeled in long sheets from the walls on either side.

The upstairs landing was bathed in the same orange light as the stairs. It was faint and watery, only barely lifting the blanket of shadow, but it was better than the darkness we’d just left.

‘Someone left a lamp on, you think?’ Ameena asked. She chewed on the knuckle of one of the fingers on her left hand. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so nervous.

‘You should know,’ I said. ‘Was there a light on when you stayed here?’

She looked at me blankly for a moment, her eyebrows dipping into the beginning of a frown. It passed as quickly as it had come, and she gave a casual shrug. ‘Didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘But then I didn’t exactly hang around long.’

That surprised me. As far as I’d known, Ameena had been sleeping rough in the Keller House for almost two weeks after our encounter with Mr Mumbles. I wanted to ask her where she’d gone instead, but there was no time for questions.

With a final glance back at me, Ameena took hold of the old wooden banister, and crept cautiously up the stairs.

ust swirled up from the carpet with every step we took. It danced in the air like a swarm of tiny agitated insects. I was sticking as close to Ameena as I could. For maybe the first time ever, she was taking her time, testing each step before putting her full weight on it, in case it should crumble beneath her.

Upstairs the same threadbare carpet covered the floor and the same peeling wallpaper drooped from the walls. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, thick with dust and cobwebs. The bulb wasn’t the source of the light, though. That seeped in through a door at the far end of the landing. It was one of four doors, and the only one standing open. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open far enough for us to see inside the room.

The smell of damp was worse up here. It reached down my throat, making me gag. Ameena seemed unaffected as she crossed the landing, making for the half-open door.

She stopped when she reached it, moved to push it the rest of the way open, then hesitated. For a long time, she didn’t look as if she was going to make any further movement.

‘Want me to go first?’ I asked, adding please say no, please say no, please say no in my head.

‘No.’

‘Thank God!’

She shot me a scowl.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to say that out loud.’

With a shake of her head, Ameena put her palm against the door and gave it a nudge. It swung open a little, then caught on the carpet, forcing her to step closer and give it another shove. It opened with a low, ominous creak.

The glow of a streetlight shone in through the bedroom window, and I remembered that none of the upstairs windows had ever been boarded up. I’d lain awake in bed countless times when I was younger, convinced I’d seen shadows moving within the bedrooms of the Keller House while I was closing my own curtains.

And now, here I was, my own shadow moving across the mould-stained wallpaper, and through the window, across the garden – my house. My bedroom. My curtains. I stared into my darkened room, wishing I could transport myself back to one of those nights, lying in bed, Mum assuring me the Keller House was empty.

I hoped she was right.

‘Hey, check it out!’ Ameena’s voice broke the spell and I turned from the window. She was sitting propped up on a single bed, her muddy boots leaving marks on the yellowing covers, her back resting against the padded headboard. ‘Bagsy the bed.’

‘You can have it,’ I said, queasy at the thought. ‘There could be anything crawling about in there. I’ll sleep on the floor.’

‘Oh, like that’s better?’

I looked down and winced. The carpet was a mess of mould and mouse droppings. Mushrooms sprouted from the soggier patches, all of them different shapes and sizes, all of them probably deadly.

A fat black insect with a shiny back scuttled past my foot. I watched it scurry across the carpet, through a clump of the mushrooms, and into a dark hole in the skirting board.

‘We should check out the other rooms,’ I said, fighting the urge to scratch my skin until it bled. ‘They might be less...’

‘Revolting?’

I nodded. ‘Hopefully.’

‘Right then,’ Ameena said, swinging her legs off the bed and taking a kick at the closest mushroom crop. ‘Lead the way, kiddo.’

Of the three remaining upstairs rooms, one was another equally filthy bedroom, one was a small box room with nothing in it, and the last was a bathroom so horrific we both agreed never to speak of it again.

The box room was where we settled in the end. It was completely bare – exposed wooden floorboard, unpainted plasterboard walls – and, as a result, hadn’t decayed as badly as the other rooms. It also looked straight on to the side of my house, meaning we could see if anyone came or went through the front door or the back. The perfect place for a stakeout.

I stood at the window, looking across the gardens to my house. In the past twenty minutes I’d seen just one car pass along the street. I’d ducked as soon as I spotted the headlights, but the car didn’t slow down as it continued along the road and turned the corner at the far end.

‘Anything?’ Ameena asked from right behind me. I hadn’t even heard her approach.

I shook my head. ‘No. Looks deserted.’