Silent Footfall Part 4
Gina inhaled the damp atmosphere as she stepped into the hall of the old house. It had an unlived, neglected feeling. Her throat dried She gagged. It smelled as cat piss. Looking in from the front hall she sees the room she had seen through the window. The middle of the floor had a bare white square as if a large carpet had been there at one time. Where the white grimy square ended a wide band of patchy stained floor board marched around the room. The house was quiet but she had a sense of expectation as if it was waiting
She looked over her shoulder. The front door was still open. He hadn’t closed it as he always did before taking her to his room. She had the feeling she was in imminent danger. She looked out from the dimness of the hallway to the sunshine outside. The man goat was walking towards them Chalkie’s limp body cradled in his arms. She shrank back against the peeling wallpaper as the creature passed. Was it a man with a mask or some kind of creature? “Chalkie needs water,” she croaked out. He showed no sign that she had spoken but she was sure she could hear a hollow laugh rumble somewhere in his belly. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
He prodded her to move forward. Her feet seemed to have turned to stone. He prodded her again, more forcefully this time. She moved forward down the passage that ran alongside the side of the stairs. Her feet stumbled on the uneven stone floor. You know this house. All its little escape routes. You’ll find a way out, her inner voice whispered.
Max was in the kitchen skinning a rabbit. The goat man stood beside him Chalkie in his arms. Max’s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his forearms and hands were splattered in blood. The sight of the blood spooked Gina. Whirling around her rushed for the bathroom.
The lock on the door was still broken. She vomited her lunch into the toilet bowl brown with want of cleaning. The edges of her vision blurred. Weakly she fumbled down the wooden lid and sank on to it. She looked around dully. The bathroom was much the same; mismatched floor tiles, cracked hand basin, an old fashioned claw footed bath with one tap. She shuddered. She knew if she turned on the tap ice cold mountain water would gush out. She wiped her clammy hands across her stomach. She remembered climbing stark naked into the bath the first time she taken her period She’d gasped as the icy cold water bit into her skin like sharp pointed needles. She knew instinctively, he wouldn’t like the blood. He liked her clean and pretty; my little princess he called her. In the beginning she had soaked up his undivided attention. He was kind and loving. Buying her little presents; combing her long red hair until it shone like spun gold.
. She felt her stomach heave. As soon as she got free of him – when her parent’s stopped coming to the holiday park, she had shorn her hair until she looked like a skinhead. Her mother had seen it as an act of defiant adolescence. Stupid cow, too interested in her golf and drinks with friends to see what was happening to me, Gins thought.
Puke spurted over her summer sandals. She covered her face with her hands. She could smell her own vomit. Had she been an exceptionally naive stupid child? She couldn’t imagine any of her thirteen year old pupils as stupid as she had been. She made sure they weren’t. They got tired of her banging on about not to trust the first person who was kind to them. Love is not supposed to be possessive. She always used the analogy of a bird in a cage. “If you keep a bird a prisoner in a cage something inside it dies. But if you open the cage and let it have its freedom, it will come back to you,” she murmured to the stained tiles. She knew she was really talking about herself.
She had been his little girl until her breast had started to bud and she was showing signs of being a woman. Then he had introduced her to the face maskers. It’s just like a big face painting party, he smiled. Grown-ups men and women dancing and leaping amongst the trees their faces painted in obscure patterns like the images of serpents; their face masks and body costumes flashing like peacocks in the shadowy dark of the gloom. He told her it was bringing light to the darkness – she hadn’t known then what he had meant.
. She had come back to him. “But not because you wanted to. You came back to face your past and set yourself free,” she said vehemently rising to her feet.
Gemma Hill 2014 ©
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 