Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26956735-20150929041301

From a young age I had always wanted to travel, and I felt that the best time to accomplish this would be when I finished my degree and had nothing tying me to some boring routine of working in the same job, in the same place for the next 40 or so years of my life. The world had too much to offer that I needed to experience, and so on my 21st birthday, right after my graduation, I began my journey to the other side of the world. To a post graduate that is now encumbered with a hefty amount of debt, things can seem pretty expensive, especially when I got to Sydney, where I was paying 4 times the amount for a drink than I would back home. The most financially challenging thing over there however, was accommodation. I could have lived in a city centre back in northern England, and the monthly rent would have equalled the weekly costs of living in the suburbs of Sydney. Safe to say I couldn’t afford it, not whilst I was working in any old job I came across. This is how I came into house sitting. You just live at someone’s house whilst they go away for a few weeks at a time, and make sure the place is tidy when they get back, and as a little added bonus, some even slipped me a few dollars just for living there. I basically got to live with no bills or any of the other household worries. There was a time where it got a bit difficult for me to find somewhere to stay however, and I was starting to look at a place to rent for the meantime, when a nice little offer came my way. I was sitting at “home”, browsing the internet for rental properties on some guys PC that had gone to Europe for a month, when I got an email through offering me the opportunity to housesit for 2 weeks, a few hours South West of Sydney, and after a brief check I found an abundance of easy work to get hold of during the stay. The place was perfect whilst nothing was going on around the city, and so I quickly fired an email back expressing my eagerness to accept the offer. I set off to the place 3 days later, and was looking forward to the time there, having secured a few weeks work on a farm to cover my living expenses and add to my savings. After following the only road for hours, I finally turned into the long driveway leading up to the house, the road beneath me casting out clouds of dust as I drove towards my destination. It was an oldish, detached house, probably as old as they got here with the westernised buildings, and was looking a little run down. The balustrades looked worn, and faint remnants of green paint could be seen clinging onto the metalwork. There were a good few similar looking houses in the area, and a few farms dotted here and there, but I saw no one and that gave the area a lonely feeling. I pulled up outside the house and walked towards the door, noticing that the house was even bigger than it had seemed. I liked the look of the place, none of that over the top modern fanciness or ugly brickwork, just simple elegance and a feeling of character. My hand was moving to knock on the door when it slowly creaked open, revealing a frail old lady with long thin wisps of hair hanging loosely over a hardened face. She smiled weakly at me and ushered me in, bombarding me with constant offers of coffee and food as she guided me around the house. I laughed, telling her of how she reminded me of my grandma. After showing me the bedrooms, offering me any I wished to use, she stopped me at the beginning of a long corridor, with only one door visible at the end and on the left. “Never under any circumstances do you go in that room” she said, with a stern expression fixed upon her face. “Yeah yeah, sure thing” I said, not even thinking that much about it, just assuming it was some personal room or something. The old lady, Maggie she was called, looked like one who had a lot of secrets, and so a room like that wouldn’t have surprised me. Maggie went about gathering her stuff to leave, refusing all my attempts to help her with her stuff. She handed me an old key and we said our goodbyes as she exited the door with her suitcase, then I went to see what I could do around the place. Turned out there wasn’t much, a simple store selling household products and groceries, but nothing that really sparked my interest. I decided it was going to be a laid back stay and so headed back to the house, kicking off my shoes and heading upstairs to get some rest, not even paying any attention to the corridor. I slept soundlessly for the first few nights, starting my job to keep me occupied and kicking back with some beers at the end of the day before retiring to my room. On the third night, things started getting a little weird. I was woken by a soft sobbing noise from within the house. Getting up and equipping myself with an empty beer bottle, I headed out of my room to see who it was. I followed the noise and found myself looking down the corridor that held the one door at the end. Then the idea struck me, was this Maggie keeping some poor bastard locked up in this room? No wonder she didn’t want anyone going in there. I started making my way down the corridor and towards the door. “Hello, are you ok?” I asked as I paced towards the door. Then it stopped. I slowed down as I approached and asked the question again. No answer. After I tried a third time with no response I shrugged and walked back to my room, putting it off as my imagination. Yeah stupid I know but I’m young and a firm believer of if something weird happens, there’s generally some boring explanation behind it that isn’t worth investigation. Anyway I got through the rest of the night and the following day without incident, not even giving the sobbing noise a second thought, until I got back to bed and it resumed. I left it for a while to make sure I wasn’t just imagining it, and when I was certain there was certainly something making the noise I made my way back to the corridor again, but made sure to keep quiet this time. As I tiptoed down the corridor the sobbing grew louder, and a high pitched hum started with it. I approached the door and noticed it was different to the others in the house, slightly smaller and made of an older wood, and showed obvious signs of rot in various places. The thing that grabbed my attention however, was a metal symbol fixed into the door, at about shoulder level. It showed a crudely formed eye encased in a circle of words, of which language I could not tell. As strange as it sounds looking into that eye made it seem as though I was being watched and it gave me a shiver after staring at it for merely a few seconds, making me break my gaze. I noticed now that the sobbing noise had stopped, and it had become eerily quiet. I got down on my hands and knees to see if I could get a glimpse of what lay beyond the door, but my eyes fell only upon an empty darkness, so I quickly gave up and stood back up. As I did I noticed I could not see, as though I was still peering at the gap between the door and the floor, not as if one had closed their eyes, but as though you were gazing into an abyss, the darkness holding a feeling of despair and endlessness. I started to panic, clawing at my eyes as I pulled back my eyelids, trying to satisfy the craving for light. I attempted to run back down the corridor, banging into the walls multiple times in my visionless panic, and lost my footing at the top of the stairs. I landed at the bottom with a hard crack of my head against the solid floor. A sense of relief overwhelmed me as my vision started to blur into focus, only to be quickly forgotten by the throbbing pain in my head. I managed to make my way to the sofa before passing out for the night. I woke the following day late for work as I had left the alarm in my room. I threw on some clothes and as I looked in the mirror I noticed a large amount of dried blood painting my forehead, leaving behind a large swollen gash when I washed it off. This at least made my late excuse for work believable, telling them only that I had fallen down the stairs and passed out, however they deemed me unfit to work that day and so sent me home so I could see the doctor. I sat basking in the sun enjoying a few beers instead of actually visiting the doctors, as I actually felt fine apart from a slight headache that was slowly fading throughout the day. I stumbled to my room early after I had a few too many, alcohol always tires me out, but just before lying down decided to try to get a different bed for the night, to see if I could get a better night’s sleep. I awoke in the middle of the night to find the most beautiful woman I had ever seen standing at the foot of my bed. Her long golden hair rolled past her shoulders and upon her chest, her piercing blue eyes distracting me from any rational thoughts that would have normally occupied one’s mind if there was a stranger at the end of their bed. With the most heart melting giggle she turned and walked out of the room, her thin white dress caressing her perfect figure. I was completely hypnotised by her beauty and could not control my body and I scurried out of bed and after her, not wanting to break the view I had of her. Overwhelming joy filled me as I got close and reached out and grabbed her hand that she offered me, and looked me deep in my eyes beckoning me to come with her. As I stared back at her, completely taken by the beauty of her eyes, I saw something that allowed me to take control of my senses. Deep within her eyes I saw the symbol on the door looking back at me, chilling me from within. As I pulled away from her the smile on her face turned into a hideous frown, and she gave a piercing shriek, pulling me with unexpected force towards her. My face exploded with pain as it collided with the rotting door in the hallway. Where I was holding the woman’s hand I was instead grasping the door knob, and had twisted it, allowing it to be opened if I would push it. I quickly removed my hand and backed up into the wall behind me. Breathing hard I turned to make my way back down the corridor, but as I took my eyes off the door I heard a sound that made my stomach drop and feet freeze in place. It was unmistakeably the quiet squeak of a door knob slowly turning. I quickly turned around to confirm my fears. The squeaking stopped as the door knob stopped turning, and all I could hear was my heart pounding loudly as fear swept my entire body. My legs hardly obeyed me as I tried to back away, as they were seemingly drained of energy as terror sapped the strength from me. I made slow, shaking steps as I tried to distance myself as quietly as I could from the door. Then the door cracked open. I was expecting some beast to lumber out at me, to come devour me where I stood, but it didn’t, in fact nothing actually seemed to leave the room, instead something more terrifying happened. The small amount of light provided by the moon was ripped from around me as the house plunged into darkness like I had witnessed by peering under the door, and the temperature dropped to what felt like sub zero. I tried to sprint for the stairs, but it felt as though I was sprinting through an icy desert, with piercing arctic winds tearing any remaining heat away from me, and producing a howling noise that made my ears bleed with pain. I had no idea how far I ran until I felt a shatter around me and my legs rammed into solid brick as I tumbled out of a window. As I fell I saw shadows billow like smoke out of the smashed window. Then I hit the floor.

I woke up a few days later in a hospital. I had broken bones and cuts all over my body from the broken glass. The doctors were confused about the case of hypothermia I had encountered in such a warm climate, but I knew why. I was questioned by the police what I was doing in the building so I explained that I was house sitting for someone on holiday. They told me the house had been empty for years. 