The House My Grandfather Built

Written by Jia Zhang

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Peter was eleven-years-old. Unlike other children his age, Peter did not like staying home alone. It was not because he was a chicken, Peter had once retorted to his friends—but the presence of only himself in his house gave him a deep breath of the macabre. Peter did not like the silence that bled off the scarlet walls, or the emptiness that thundered throughout the large rooms. When he was on his own—sure that he was the only one in the house—he always felt as if many eyes were watching him from within the walls of the house. It scared him terribly.

And this dark evening was of no omission.

Tonight, worst of all.

His mother and father had to attend some party this evening, and had left the house before it was twilight. They left him dinner, numbers to call, snacks to eat, a kiss good-bye and to behave himself.

He was always anxious to be left unaccompanied, but Peter didn’t want to say anything—he was old enough to care for himself. He was eleven, for god’s sake! All of his other friends loved to stay at home, alone. I should too, he told himself.

He was not a chicken. He was not a scardy-cat.

But this notion did not help him.

Peter sank deeper and deeper into the wedge of the sofa, his small harms clinging onto a bowl of chips for comfort. His eyes, large and wide, were glued onto the transforming images on the television set. His ears were perched for the movement of any queer sound that did not belong in his house. He was a guarded watchdog, sitting alone in the center of the living room.

Outside, there was a thick fog of miasma and rain; the dark waters beat against the windows steadily, making horrible symphonic music—an orchestra parade of deathly, nightmare sounds. The hiss and crazed laughter of thunder and lightening chills through his bones, and he unconsciously sinks further and further into the quicksand of his black sofa.

Peter watches the woman on the television speak—his world revolves around her in this piece of time. He watches her mouth move to make words of Os and Cs and Ss, but he does not care of her subject matter. She is an anchorwoman; Peter would watch her talk of things he did not care for and did not understand. She spoke of people and places he had no concept of—and it was comforting, this far away reality that assured him that there were no beasts in his closet or monsters under his bed.

Thunder and lightening explodes up in the sky; Peter jerks in his seat, greasy chips fallen all over his lap and the floor. He stares wide-eyed at the velvet curtains of the window, the tremors of light that painted shadows of claws and teeth.

Then the darkness opened its mouth and swallowed everything into its stomach.

Peter quivered. He dared not to move. His breath was quick and low. He contracted deeper and deeper between the cushions of the sofa. The black surrounded him in a tight embrace, crushing his blood and lungs—the air escapes him and a whimper that he quickly swallows into his stomach.

He sits there for a long time as the tempest wind and lightening raged outside. It’s a blackout, he told himself, just a blackout.

Peter painfully wills himself to move; he drops to the floor, and crawls slowly to the window, the thick carpet beneath his finger tips—his heart pounds against his chest at a 100 miles per hour, breaking skin and giving birth to new terrors. He reaches the ledge of the window, and carefully raises himself up—he gazes outside at the violent storm. There were no other lights but the quick flashes of blue fire. He was right—it was a blackout. But this did not reassure him.

He agonizingly turns around, pushing his back up against the small piece of wall underneath the window. His eyes begin to adjust to the emptiness of light. He ponders at his surroundings, panicked as to what to do. Fear’s thin, claw-like hand grasped his throat firmly; he was choking on his paranoia. His mind chanted a sacred mantra of protection—no monsters, just your imagination, no monsters, just your imagination—but the terror had found home in his small body.

Shadows of things would be born from the spasms of jagged razors of light, etching themselves onto the colourless walls of the living room. The chips lay abandoned on the sofa, half-spilled onto the ground.

Peter wills himself to move. He needed a flashlight, that’s what he needed, he thought to himself desperately. He crawls through the living room, past the rocks, and grass, and into the cold, marble floor of the kitchen. His mother placed a flashlight under the sink, he remembers.

He turns around quickly to look behind him. He hears a voice—a soft sound, but definitely a voice. He gasps in fright as he gazes through the ebony covers, his eyes adjusting in the throe of night. There was no one, he thought. There could be no one; he was all alone.

He was, he hoped, all alone.

Peter had moved into this old house when he was ten-years-old, after his grandfather had passed away. His mother had inherited this house, and she insisted that the family move it. Peter’s mother had grown up in this house, and had always loved it. A few repairs here and there and their family would move in. The house had been especially close to their old home, so his father didn’t object to his mother’s ideas either. Peter fought hard to stay at their old house—from the moment he saw this place, long, long ago when his grandfather was still alive, he did not like it.

The house reminded Peter of some creepy abode out of a horror movie. It was three-stories tall, built with large eye-like windows, a place surrounded by the twisted arms of trees and vines. It was the home was goblins and ghouls, monsters and beasts, a place where all the nightmares burst forth from beneath the floor boards—a parade of ghosts from the netherworld.

That’s nonsense, Peter’s father had said, there’s no such things as monsters or ghosts. It was all in his imagination.

Slowly, Peter reaches into the cupboard beneath the sink, and rummages till he finds the object of his frightful search. He turns on the flashlight and shines it across the kitchen, into the living room. The wind howled outside, and Peter’s breath was cold. He catches the flash and image of something in the darkness. It moves, faster than the eye could see. He gets up from against the cold floor and moves towards the stairs.

Reality forgotten, lessons lost, Peter was sure it was something. It was not his imagination. He was not along. A ghost, a beast, something was watching him from within the womb of darkness with golden eyes. He was sure.

He bolts up the stairs, running as fast as his legs could carry him. He darts quickly into his room; he can hear the creaks of the floorboards—the thing in the darkness chases after him. He can feel it. Peter slams the door shut to his room and bolts under the covers. He can hear the thing moving outside—he hears the movement of his parent’s bedroom door. It’s looking, searching, he thinks.

He thinks it’s a ghostly beast. It is quiet thing, he thinks. Does it know where I am? Peter ponders.

He points the flashlight towards the door. He hears something outside, in some room, far but near. A ghostly whisper coming through the cracks of this house of lurid and fantastic things.

A loud thunder cracks; Peter screams. He must get out. He must get out, he thinks, out of this house his grandfather built. He hears the voices of the ghostly beats. He cries in terror, and springs from beneath his covers. He runs and runs across the hallway, fastly, quickly down the stairs—he feels a pull at his legs, and his muscles giving way.

Peter falls. The flashlight flies out of his hands and ricochets off the wall and down the stairs. Peter tumbles and fumbles, and cracks and breaks till he reaches the bottom of the cold wooden floor. And instantly, he hears no more of ghosts or beasts.

The flashlight rolls to a stop, and lights up the passage up the stairs to shine on the thing in the darkness.

There was nothing there.