The Upstairs Room | Part 1

Intro: The previous occupants must have departed hurriedly; they had left all their belongings upstairs. Almost as though they were frightened to go up there. And where was that sound coming from? Like the rattling of a locked door. But there were no locked rooms in the house.
The story concerns a friend who,for the sake of discretion, I should render anonymous; therefore, let us choose a name beginning with the first letter ofthe alphabet, and considering a name at random let us say that this friend of mine is called Absalom.
Absalom had employed a building contractor to undertakesome renovations to his house, and it was a matter of some inconvenience to him that at thesame time he should also receivea commission to do some work for a prestigious client. It is possible that you will know of Absalom by his reputation, and so to further conceal his identitylet us agree that he is an interior designer. Ordinarily he would have applied himself to this commission in the comfort and privacy of his own study, but the building renovations made this impossible and, not wishing to lose a lucrative contract and the valuable connections that would attend it, he chose instead to rent a property on a short-term lease.
Although the arrangements were untimely, he determined tobe positive and elected to leave town altogether, believing that acoastal environment would not only be pleasant and healthy, butmight also be conducive to the creative energy required in his profession.
His optimistic outlook appeared to pay off immediately when the letting agent advised him that a desirable property had become unexpectedly available only a few days earlier. It seemed that the previous tenants, a married couple with two children, had surrendered the lease on an elegant three-storey townhouse at short notice owing to the gentleman being offered a new position abroad. The lease had been fully paid in lieu of notice, and the property was vacant for immediate possession. Despite the propitious circumstances, Absalom was uncertain; a familyhome was much too big for his requirements and he would be paying an unnecessarily large sum for space he could not possibly use. The agent, presumably recognizing Absalomand scenting the esteem that would undoubtedly accrue from his business, in addition to the knowledge that he was to be paid twice for the same property, offered him a deal thatwas too good to refuse. The inspection of the house was a formality - indeed it will become evident just how little attention was given to the house at this stage - and Absalom moved in atthe earliest opportunity.
He did not take much luggage, concerning himself mostly with the work he was required to complete. A drawing board and the various other tools associated with his profession were installed in the study that overlooked the rear garden of the property. There was a large picture window offering plenty of natural light to the room, which he considered crucial. To avail himself of this, he was required to move a rectangular teak desk to the side of the room. The desk was old but of good quality; he would use the surface for correspondence and sketches, while the drawers, which he found to be empty, became the storage space for stationery and other accoutrements.
The remainder of the ground floor comprised a kitchen, diningroom, lounge, cloakroom, and a utility room leading to a garage. This arrangement need not concern us, except to note that each room was tidy and ordered,and showed no signs of having recently been occupied. The kitchen cupboards proved to be altogether empty, so there was not even the chance to make a cup of tea. The upstairs rooms, however, suggested something altogether different.
The bathroom door was ajar andhe was invited to enter by the attractive reflection offered by a full-length mirror within, which showed off the polished porcelain interior to fine effect. He was pleased with it and looked forward to luxuriating in the large oval bath at the end of a hard day’s work. There was a wicker laundry basket in the corner, the lid of which was not seated correctly. Upon lifting it he noticed a few stray items of clothing at the bottom of the basket, clearly forgotten by the previous occupants, and he made a mental note to add them to his first wash and then to donate them to a charity when the opportunity arose. Intriguedby what else he might have inherited from his predecessors he then opened the mirrored cabinet on the wall and found it to be full of toiletries and cosmetics. This struck him as being particularly absent-minded. To forget that a few items of clothing remained at the bottom of a basket was understandable; to overlook the entire contents of a bathroom cabinet seemed negligent. Therewas an assortment of products, appealing to both sexes: a man’s razor and shaving foam, for instance; a woman’s cleansing lotions. The departure from the house must have been particularly hasty for both husband and wife to forget their belongings.
If Absalom considered the oversight a strange one, he became especially perplexed when he entered the first bedroom and discovered an address book and a framed photograph on the bedside cabinet. Surely it was not possible to forget such things. Growing suspicious of the circumstances, he investigated each drawer and found them to contain various items of clothing; and then opened the wardrobe to find an array of shirts, trousers, dresses and coats. The other rooms were similarly furnished, giving every indication of still being occupied,despite all assurances to the contrary. He found evidence of money, keys, small articles of jewellery and various types of banking cards. A man’s driving licence was contained in a small leather wallet, held in the inside pocket of a woollen jacket. A briefcase was filled with important contractual documents.
The situation was alarming enough to warrant reporting and he phoned the letting agent directly, who was surprised to hear of the curious discoveries and at a loss to explain them. All the evidence pointed to a hurried flight, but that had not been the case; the family had called at the office immediately following their departure. They had explained the change in their circumstances, settled the lease and left. Everything had seemed quite in order. It had occurred only a few days earlier;there had not even been time to engage a cleaner otherwise the agent would certainly have made sure the premises were empty. He was not sure if there had been a forwarding address, but he thought not. He was not inclined to involve the police at this stage.
Absalom was not content with how things stood. He might justhave been able to put down the abandonment of one’s entire wardrobe to a drastic lifestyle change, but to leave items of expense, sentimental value and personal identity clearly pointed to something more serious. It did not sit well with him at all, and it had not escaped his attention that all the remaining effects were to be found in the upstairs rooms. If their flight was so urgent that they had to abandon their belongings, how was it that the rooms on the ground level were to be found insuch a tidy condition? The impression he received was not one of panic, but of something calculated; as though a decision had been deliberately made to ignore everything that lay in theupper rooms.
There was still the topmost floorto explore, which was reached by a small staircase at the far end of a long passage. It was narrow and presented a steeper climb than the one offered by the main staircase, and there was a cramped turn to the right after the first few steps. The stairs were carpeted in the sameburgundy that adorned the landing, but the material was thinner here, frayed and threadbare in places, and the ageof the floorboards was given away with much creaking and groaning.
There were only two rooms to be found at the top, their doors facing each other across a slim, plain, unappealing corridor. Eachof them was empty and gave every indication of having been that way for some time. The air was damp; the bare floors were uneven, loose and mottled; the walls were grey, with ancient paint flaking and peeling away, little pieces flecking the dusty floor and hanging in cobwebs. Such light as there was entered through grimy, uncurtained windows. There were electric light fittings in the sloping ceiling, but none held a bulb. Therooms were intended to be dark places.
Each seemed identical in its gloomy appearance, the only points of any note occurring in the west-facing room where one of the walls was found to have been scored here and therewith long deep lines, as though afork had been scratched along the surface. And yet it would have had to be a large fork – perhaps a gardening implement of some kind - for the lines weretoo far apart for them to be the marks of anything smaller. Therewas also a dark stain on the floor, in the middle of the room, perhaps brown in colour though it was hard to tell what it might originally have been, much less explain its cause.
These ugly, unsettling features made this room even less promising than its bleak neighbour, and Absalom was glad that he had no need of the extra space. He closed the door behind him but it did not remain shut; the catch was too old and worn to be effective now, and the locking chamber had been removed entirely. The same wastrue of the opposite door. Absalom pulled at each of them in turn, and each in turn insisted on remaining open, creaking its way to a standstill, beckoning one to enter.
Absalom, made unnaturally disconsolate by the surroundings, returned to the ground floor rooms where the neatly appointed and comfortable features cheered him immediately. He was pleased with the room where hewas to work, and he looked forward to making a start. Before that he only had to arrange a few things to settle in. He located the nearest shops and found everything he neededto stock the kitchen; and cooking himself a meal at once made the place more of a home. He ate well and felt the exertionsof the day beginning to have their effect, and decided on an early night so that he might make a prompt beginning to his work the next day. Going upstairs, he chose the largest of the four bedrooms, cleared the spaces of the apparently unwanted clothes, and replaced them with his own belongings. Being accustomed to travel he was not upset by unfamiliar places, and he felt the satisfying lull of sleep even as he wound his watch. The strange business with the abandoned property did not concern him for too long,and the peculiar features of the attic rooms intruded upon his thoughts only a very little. Sleep came upon him almost at once.
It was in the early hours of the morning that he awoke, when the sky was still dark and the streets were empty, and all was silent. At first he did not know what had caused him to stir, but he came to realise that it must have been the odd sensation of the dream that had disturbed him. In his dream he had become aware that someone was in the next room. This person was pacing the room andseemingly searching for something, for Absalom could hear the repeated noises of drawers being opened and closed, and doors swinging on hinges. The activity must have been agitated as the noises werequite audible. It was this that had caused him to wake, and now he sat upright in his bed, staring into the dark and listening for the same noises. A flicker of good sense reminded him that it had just been a dream and that silence was all hecould expect; but as he sat there,his eyes becoming accustomed to the dark and allowing him to discern the features of the opposing wall, he became convinced that the silence was not of emptiness but of inaction. It was the silence that occurs when one becomes aware of an unwanted presence, and actions are stilled so that one’s own presence is unnoticed, as when one is hiding and does not wish to be detected. Whatever was inthe next room - and he now had the unshakable conviction that something was in the next room - it had ceased its movements soas to remain hidden. The intruder had stopped because it knew Absalom was awake and was listening. It knew Absalom was there. The unease was great enough to keep him awake, and though he told himself that it had only been a dream, he was awkward and stiff in the way he lay down, and he chose not to turn his back on the door. There was only the silence, but this did not instil sleep until the morning light seeped through the curtains and began to creep across the floor.
The next morning Absalom was not as embarrassed by his behaviour as he would have liked. Ideally he should have been flushed with a feeling of idiocy at the way he had been tricked by his own imagination. It caused him greater consternation that he did not feel a fool, but instead remained uneasy at the memory of his experience. Although the notionof a broken dream offered an obvious explanation, he could not bring himself to accept it. There was an immovable part of him that remained fixed on the idea that something untoward had been at hand.
This conviction was such that hefelt moved to enter the adjacent room and check that all was well. At first everything seemed in order, or at least as much in order as was possible, given the strange way that the previous tenants had left the house. It was true that certain drawers were uneven in their arrangement, and one of the wardrobe doors leaned slightly open, but Absalom sensibly attributed this to his own investigations of the previous afternoon. Yet a troubling doubt required him to ask if he had really been so anxious as to leave the room in quite such disarray. He pulled at one or twoof the drawers at random, though he could not have said what it was he sought, and was about to call an end to this pointless endeavour when he noticed a key, old and rusted, resting on a pile of white shirts. The contrast in their colour was marked and Absalom was surprised that he had not noticed it immediately the day before. He turned the key between his fingers, looking at itclosely and observing a curious series of circular scratches that girdled its shaft, seemingly madeby a small blade. If the scratcheswere intended as a mark of identification, it was still not easy to connect the key with any room he had so far come across. All the internal doors were unsecured and none of thecupboards required a key, so he imagined that it was for something he had not yet encountered. Perhaps something in the back garden. There was a toolshed and a summer house, he noted; most likely it was for one of those. Hereplaced the key where he had first failed to notice it, and left the room.
Absalom tried to apply himself to his work that day but made unsatisfactory progress.