A Writer's Wonderland [PDF] - University of Portsmouth

‘We’ll be like The Avengers: Paranormal investigators in a cynical world.’ He talked to the
window with his hands behind his back. Dull rain spat down in response.
‘Or, like the pound-shop Mulder and Scully.’
The rain itched down onto York harder as the afternoon drew in. Stuart and I squared
up to the house and observed it in a haze of shower. My eyesight was just as ropey as it is now,
and I roughly dried my drenched glasses on the lining of my coat before looking over at
dripping Stuart, his normally neat parting devastated by the weather. York’s supposed spectral
pride loomed over our modest party, and I heard Stu’s camera click out a greeting.
‘Seems pretty vanilla,’ mused Stuart, ‘well,’ he backtracked, ‘apart from the colour.’ He frowned.
And he was right. A house that old, with the harsh weather of the north; years of wind and rain
battering the whole country, and the red had lost none of its power. The same red then
crumbled in my mind, and a freeze came. It could have simply been the rain, but there was
something about standing outside that house made my blood stand still and watch with me. We
turned to each other and nodded in respect to the thing that had stopped our steps whilst Stuart
popped the collar of his coat as he started up the stairs and into its belly.
I shook my head slightly like a dog out of the rain as Stuart wiped his feet on the mat
provided as if he was coming into his own home. The foyer’s well-trodden wooden panels
knocked a greeting on our boots. I inspected my damp thatch of hair in the relic of a mirror that
hung just above a simple table and closed my already tired eyes for a few seconds. Stuart
squeezed the water from his coat and put his hand on my shoulder. My eyes started open.
‘You see,’ he reassured, ‘it seems pretty harmless to me. Nothing bad ever came from wandering
around an empty house.’ His nervous irony once again concealed a good point. It was empty.
Back then, I just assumed that rain and early afternoon had taken all the revellers to an early
lunch, but now, now the jury’s out. Perhaps the feeling that had run up my spine in the shadow
of the house had run through the blood of other potential visitors, and maybe the same thing
that had compelled us on had told them to turn around and walk away.
‘Upstairs?’ asked Stuart, through the distraction of his chirping camera. The old wooden
staircase creaked in either agony or gratitude as we trudged up it. At the top sat a chair, as
simple as the table in the foyer, solemnly looking out of a line of windows lining the corridor
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