The Quietest House

The greatest horrors happen in the most unassuming homes. That’s what my grandmother told me before she died. When I asked my father what it meant he looked over at mother and a silent exchange occurred. When it was done, he simply told me to forget it. I suppose he just wants to shield me from the bleaker realities of life.

It’s the middle of winter, approaching late evening. Trees creak in frigid winds and thick sheets of frost cling to the windows. Inside our fire is burning and we’ve closed off all the other doors to try and keep ourselves warm. Our mother is playing vague melodies she used to remember on the piano while the rest of us are huddled around the table, fumbling cards. We have to squint to see properly—our electricity never works when it’s this cold, something about interference in the lines. We’ve learned to live with it, but the sea of flickering shadows from our candles creates an eerie ambience around us.

My father wins another set and my brothers throw down their cards down in frustration. I don’t mind losing, and my father points to the kitchen and says to me, ‘Take some candles over and I’ll heat us up dinner.’

I take two plates from the table which we’ve stuck candles onto. The wax sloshes to and fro as I carry them over so I’m careful not to spill any. We’ll have to empty them soon or they’ll overflow, but I can’t pour it down the sink or in the bin and I’m not allowed to take it outside.

I put one plate on the bench and I’m sliding the other onto the kitchen windowsill when something catches my eye. The frost on the glass makes it hard to see but if I squint I can make out someone wrapped in a heavy grey coat, staggering through the slush. I nervously click my fingers at my father and he pushes me aside to look out. I see his jaw clench.

My father isn’t a big man, nor is he particularly strong, but he used to get angry and that would always scare me. I know he won’t hurt me—he’s never even hit me before, unlike my oldest brother when he used to try and sneak out of our room—but I occasionally hear him arguing with our mother at night and there’s usually broken furniture or blood in the morning.

My father follows the man’s movements from inside the house. Our mother is still playing the piano and I’m crossing my fingers, hoping the man will just keep walking. But when he reaches our porch he stops and turns, hauls himself up the steps and quietly knocks on the door. I wish we could pretend we weren’t home but the candles flickering through the window shine like a beacon in the pale night, and my mother’s piano sings a siren song. So my father opens the door a few centimetres. ‘Can I help you?’

The man in the grey coat rubs his hands together and blows into them. Particles of snow are drifting through the crack in the door. ‘My car broke down a couple houses away. Could I trouble you to make a phone call?’ His voice is hoarse and desperate, and I can see under his coat he’s a thin man. My father glances back to our mother and shakes his head.

‘Our power’s out, we can’t help you. Sorry.’ He goes to close the door but the man has his foot in it now, a pleading look on his face.

‘I’ve got a mobile but I can’t use it out here. Please, can I just come inside for a few minutes? Nobody else would let me in.’

I watch my father’s face morph through a few different emotions. Fear, anger, frustration, helplessness, then finally defeat. He tells my brothers to stand next to me and he lets the man in, shutting the door tight after he’s through. He takes the man to the fireplace and stands close by, arms folded. The man shucks off his coat, revealing an old sweater and pants just as grey as the rest of him. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips it open, then pegs a few numbers and raises it to his ear. While he’s talking one of my brothers goes over, peering up at the small device held in the man’s hands. My father grunts at him to get back but the other man waves him off, rubbing the boy’s hair. ‘I know, I know, but I can’t get back home. Can you just swing by and pick me up? I’ll sort it out in the morning. Hm? Yeah, it’s just, uh…’ he looks at my father and whispers, ‘sorry, what house is this?’

I watch my father’s eye twitch, and after a moment he says ‘108, Caesar Street.’

Next to me my eldest brother says, ‘Aren’t we 38?’

I’m not sure who’s right but my father gives the man an apologetic smile. ‘Yes, 38. Sorry, I was thinking of somewhere else.’

The grey man relays the information back to the person on the phone and when he goes to put it back in his pocket my brother reaches out for it. The man grins and flips it open and closed a few times as my brother watches in amazement. ‘You like this?’

‘Why were you talking to it?’

‘It’s a phone. Surely your dad has one?’

My brother shakes his head and then my father steps between them and nudges the boy back over to stand with me. The grey man is hustled toward the door, but before he goes out he turns to us to say goodbye and when he looks at me he stops. His expression becomes… different. He reminds me of when our mother is trying to play one of her old songs but her fingers just won’t find the notes.

‘Do you go to school around here?’ he asks me.

‘We home school’, my dad says. ‘We moved here from a different country a few years ago so we’re still trying to adjust.’ He clears his throat.

‘Right. Sorry, you just… remind me of someone.’ He looks at me for a few seconds longer, and only the wind and the muted sounds of the piano drift through the house. I watch the man, see his lips purse and his brows creep higher on his head and his Adam’s apple jolt when he swallows quietly. He goes to say something, then changes his mind and lets himself out the door. It’s quieter now because there’s no music and I realise our mother isn’t at the piano anymore.

My father goes to the hall and I hear them talking. I can’t understand what our mother is saying but my father is saying ‘let it go, just let it go’. When he finally comes back out he’s alone and there’s a dark look on his face. I watch him cross to the kitchen window but when I try to join him he won’t let me. There must be something going on out there but the wind is too loud and the glass is too icy to see anything, and after a while I get bored and join my brothers by the fire.

It’s a long while before our mother returns to the living room. She comes in through the laundry door and she’s changed her frock. She gives my father a long look and he clenches his jaw, then ushers us all downstairs to our bedroom. It’s so cold down here that he brings in extra blankets and lets us all bundle into one bed.

My father stays with us until he thinks we’re asleep, then heads back up and locks the door. I hear muffled voices again and can’t make anything out, but our mother sounds upset. Then my father must say something he shouldn’t because there’s a screech and a thud, and then the sound of someone being dragged into their room.

Later in the night I see blue and red flashes through the floorboards, and I hear knocking on the front door. It takes a while for someone to answer it, and at first everything is quiet and calm. I can hear our mother talking to them, something like ‘went back to the car’, and eventually the visitors start to leave. But then someone shouts. My father, his heavy footsteps pounding down the hall from his bedroom. How did he get out? Only our mother has the key. I hear him cry out, say a hundred words in a second, and then there’s another screech and a thump but this time it’s louder than I’ve heard before.

There’s more shouting now. I hear the group run back into the house and our mother shrieks and I know she’s doing it again, turning into that thing that kept my father, and my older brothers’ fathers too, kept all of them inside the house until they tried to escape. More shouts, more screeching, more yelling and screaming and thumps and thuds, and then there are loud bangs and flashes of light and I cover my ears to try and block it out.

The door above us is thrown open and my father gasps at us to get out. He helps us up the ladder with one hand but his other is holding his stomach where thick streams of blood are leaking out. He ushers us down the hall and through the living room door I can see someone in a uniform dangling from the ceiling, arms flailing as his partners try to pull him down. There’s a cracking sound and a desperate scream and something tears and I can’t look anymore. My father pushes us into the laundry and unlocks the door, and from the living room there’s another short scream and then a snap and it cuts out. My father’s face pales and I hear something running down the hall toward us, something on all fours, and my father slams the door shut between us just as something gaunt and pale and covered in blood dives on top of him.

My brothers pull me away from the door and around the outside of the house, and I can hear my father yelling and other, horrible sounds. We pass the bins and I see a grey coat streaked with red bundled inside, and around us the sky is lit with red and blue flashes. My brothers take me across the yard, going for next door’s house but I’m not used to the bitter cold of the outside and the thick slush of snow beneath us and I fall. One of my brothers keeps running but my oldest hauls me up, and I see his eyes widen as he looks behind me. I know she’s coming. I know what she’ll do. My other brothers and sisters, the ones I never saw again, tried the same thing. I pull away from my brother and hunker on the ground, covering my eyes and ears, and hear a whoosh as something passes overhead. There’s no scream, no shout, just a soft thump in the snow. It happens again a few meters away where my other brother was running.

I don’t move, don’t uncover my eyes or ears, even when I feel mother pick me up. She cradles me gently and takes me back to the house, sitting me by the fire and going back to her piano. All I can do is slowly rock on the spot, listening to the slow, discordant melodies she plays for me.

We’ll be moving houses soon, before the rest come for us. I’ll get new siblings and a new father, just like last time. And our life will continue as it has, behind the locked doors of a quiet, unassuming house in the suburbs.

(1993 words)