Acceptance
OUR young teenage boys stopped across the street from a neat
two-storey house with a well-tended lawn. The front yard was
surrounded by a line of shrubs, which served as a fence. Aaron could
see a path that led to the patio. A buzzer had been inserted to the
left of the white double doors, and a large number 5 had been
positioned directly below it.
"This is it," Joe announced, staring at the house. "Number five Ezekial Street."
Aaron looked at the building along with his friends. The place looked normal enough. It wasn't stereotypical of movie horror houses where some long dead being was trying to be reanimated. In fact, it was quite a nice house, with it's patterned brick and orange tiled roof. There were white shutters covering the windows on the lower story and old lacy curtains on the windows above.
Even though the house looked stylish, Aaron didn't like it. The place was secretive somehow. It looked like one of those masks that people wore at masquerade balls. As though it was trying to keep up appearances but there was something it couldn't quite cover up. Perhaps the house was the mask itself, a blanket that enfolded the person within it.
Aaron was about to say that the lawn looked recently mowed but Joe was already crossing the street toward it, followed by Luke and Jason. He joined Joe who was standing a little off to one side from the other two boys and the two of them continued to look at the house.
"Go on in," Joe urged, pushing Aaron's back and shoving him forward.
"Hang on," Aaron said, pulling away. "I'm not ready yet."
"Quit stalling," Joe complained, and Aaron had the eerie feeling that he'd somehow been returned to the kindergarten playground, and his fellow schoolmates had told him to enter the tunnel they'd found at the bottom of the sports field. He'd been terrified of going in, but had gone in anyway, simply because his peers had double-dared him and he'd lose their respect if he didn't. At three years of age, he'd wet his pants when a spider crawled over his hand. Now Joe was the one who had double-dared him, and for some reason the house terrified him lots more than the tunnel ever could.
"Are you sure nobody lives here?" Aaron asked dubiously, and Joe sighed. "Yes, I've already told you that."
"Then who looks after the lawns?"
"Are you chicken?" Joe snapped.
"I'm not scared of a stupid house," Aaron replied candidly, fearing that whatever respect may he'd already earned from his friends would be taken from him in his moment of doubt.
"Then get in that house, go upstairs and open the window!" Joe said, his tone ending at a loud note on the last word.
Aaron crossed the street toward the house. He stepped up onto the footpath, entered through the gap between the hedge and listened to his boots stomping on the paved pathway which the owner of the house had built. He stepped onto the narrow patio and pressed the buzzer, hearing it chime inside. Aaron took this moment to look over his shoulder at Joe who was motioning for him to just go inside.
Aaron shook his head vigorously and decided to wait until the people within (if there were any) answered the door. When no response came after a full minute he tried the door handle, expecting it to be locked, but not surprised to find it open. He swung the door inward and cast Joe one last longing look before going inside.
The house was tidy and precise, but not clinically so. Aaron looked around uncomfortably. Despite the fact that this would've been a nice place to live, it gave him the creeps. The house was deserted, he knew that instinctively without having to check all the rooms or call out. Joe was right, nobody was home. Yet when he passed the fern in the entrance hall he noticed that it was not a plastic one like he'd first assumed but very much alive. And it was flourishing.
Aaron reached out an unsteady hand and fingered the dirt that held the plant in its pot. It was moist. He swallowed dryly and went farther into the house, not wanting to ask himself any questions about the pot-plant and certainly not wanting to draw any conclusions. He could see the stairway three metres in front of him, with open doors to the left and the right.
Going past one of them he suppressed an urge to look but couldn't avert his gaze from the room on his left near the staircase. It was the living room, and beside an armchair facing him was a tiny table, the kind of fashionable side table that people used primarily for their telephones to sit upon, or perhaps a modern lamp or statuette, but this table held none of those. This table, with its skinny steel legs and glass top held an ashtray, and there was ash in the ashtray, and a cigarette in one of the little holder things which ashtrays were indented with. But the worst thing about this particular scene was that the cigarette was still smoking.
Aaron felt his throat dry up and he gripped the banister tightly with his right hand before going up the stairs one at a time, not wanting to but having to. His heart was thumping in his chest, and his imagination was conjuring up all sorts of terrifying images of what he would find upstairs. The possibility of discovering a number of fly-ridden, swollen and decomposing bodies was the one foremost in his mind at the moment, but running second best was the option of coming across some pasty-faced zombies, their arms extended, fingers wiggling loosely as they walked slowly and surely toward him (or at the moment, as he walked slowly and surely towards them).
Of course this idea was preposterous, but so was a smoking cigarette and damp soil. He pushed this idea away and it went willingly enough, not wanting to be explored any further. With each step upward his feet felt heavier and heavier, until he was positive he would not be able to lift his boot over the last rise. Oddly enough he managed, but he stood at the landing for a little while, gathering his bearings (and his courage) as he looked around.
He was standing on an ocean of light blue carpet, looking at assorted oil paintings as they hung perfectly centred on the wall, all of them protected with a glass covering that were framed slightly away from the paintings themselves. Some of the pictures beneath the glass were of children playing in a field of daisies, and others had tall ships with weathered sails. All of them seemed to match the decor of the house perfectly, and Aaron wondered briefly if an interior designer had decorated the place. It made him feel as though he was in a display home, the kind that building companies used to fill their prospective clients with awe as they progressed from one room to the next. Walking around suddenly didn't seem so difficult anymore. There was nothing scary about a display home. He moved down the corridor, passing a few closed doors on the way.
Now he walked by rooms without checking them, knowing that a room (probably a bedroom) with a window was at the far end of the house. He didn't turn his head to look into a bedroom on his left that had the door wide open, but out of his peripheral vision caught a bed with pink blankets and a large colourful pile against one wall that could only be toys. A little girl's room. He passed another painting, this one a night scene in some European city, probably Switzerland or Germany judging by the mountains in the background. He spared it a glance and what he saw made his heart leap in his throat and he jumped away in surprise.
His head swivelled on his neck so that he was looking over his left shoulder at the corridor behind him. Nobody was there. Aaron looked at the painting again, his eyes wide and fearful, his body still tense, not yet over his fright even though he was beginning to doubt what he'd seen. The picture held the image of the city and nothing more. But the glass, his mind argued, there was a face reflected in the glass. Yes, he was sure he'd seen it, but it wasn't there now, and he hadn't heard anybody following him.
He whimpered deep in his throat, a pathetic noise that he loathed to hear coming from his own vocal cords but couldn't help. Perhaps he'd just seen a reflection of his own face. But it was a woman's face, his mind yelled at him. And you saw your own face as well! Aaron pushed this fact away and it went, but not completely. It left a bit of itself behind for him to chew on until it returned and he could feed on the rest. For now Aaron focused on the task at hand.
He reached the closed door at the end of the short, wide corridor and opened it without knocking in one swift movement, bracing himself for whatever horror he might find on the other side. As he stood slightly past the doorway of the room, his hand still resting on the doorknob, he found himself staring at a rather pleasant room. It held a queen sized bed with a floral doona and pillowcases that matched. On either side were tables that held modern looking lamps with upside-down lampshades. Beside one of the lamps was a radial clock with red numbers, and it told him the time was exactly twelve o'clock. Aaron checked his watch. It was almost half past two. He wasn't sure if the clock meant twelve noon or midnight, but it was definitely wrong, and the precise hour of it gave him the shivers.
Opposite the bed was a set of drawers and a mirror atop them. Small ornaments were scattered in places to give an embellished but uncluttered look. The room was tasteful and pleasant, and his nose smelled a hint of perfume in the air, as if the woman, the mother in this household had just sprayed herself recently. He approached the window, passing the mirror on the way over.
He caught sight of his reflection and yelped in fright. He spun around once again to face nothing but an empty room. His mind whirling at a rate that was dizzying as he faced the mirror again. A woman in her early thirties was standing at the foot of the bed, both her hands on the shoulders of a little girl. They were both pretty brunettes, and both of them had the same worried look on their faces as they watched him. He looked over his shoulder again, and this time strained his eyes to have a really good look at the spot where the mother and daughter had been.
He could see a faint blue outline of their bodies traced in a barely visible smoky vapour, as if they were almost there. Aaron then turned back to the mirror to see their helpless faces. He discarded the theory that he might be looking at a pair of ghosts. The mirror said they were real, sort of like vampires in reverse. But it was like they were trapped in a parallel reality or something, as if they couldn't quite enter real time. Aaron closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again. The mother and daughter were still standing there, and the little girl had tears in her eyes. He thought he could hear someone speaking, and wondered if the woman was talking to him, but the voice was coming from outside.
He padded over to the window and looked out at Joe who was practically jumping up and down on the spot as he hollered up to him. He unlatched the window and pushed it to one side, hearing Joe clearly now that there was no glass barricade. "What's taking you so long?" Joe screeched.
"I... uh... I'm being looked at."
Joe tilted his head sideways and carefully studied Aaron. Even though there was a fair distance between them, he could feel the intensity in Joe's eyes. "Your mind's just playing tricks on you."
"But I'm being looked at!" Aaron bellowed, his fear beginning to show its face once again.
Joe slowly turned to Luke and Jason, talking to them softly before the three of them made as if to leave. "Stop!" Aaron ordered angrily, helplessly. Joe turned around and smiled up at him with a grin so wide it seemed to fill the whole lower half of his face.
He waved at them before popping back inside and shutting the window. When he returned he ignored the females in the mirror and left the room.
Aaron no longer wanted a part of this. He'd just wanted to be accepted by his friends, and now things were getting out of hand. He rushed down the corridor and then downstairs where he stopped to a sudden halt in front of the door. Calmly, he gripped the doorhandle and turned it, letting himself out so that he appeared in complete control to his friends. He strolled down the path and met up with Joe, a small grin on his lips.
"So who was looking at you, Aaron?"
"Nobody in particular," he replied, shrugging. Joe threw his arm over Aaron's shoulders and led him away down the street, followed by Luke and Jason who both cast one look over their shoulders at the house and shivered.
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