I arrived at the house just as dusk was falling. From the outside, it appeared unchanged – dark, dank and forbidding, set back from the road behind a clump of laurels and a beech hedge as if it were trying to hide from sight, withdraw from the world. With good reason, I thought.

Inside, the layout was as I remembered it but everything else had changed, and in ways I found hard to understand. Not surprising, given how long had passed. The grandchildren were living there now, oblivious to what they’d inherited. That was about to change.

I wouldn’t have called myself malicious or vengeful – in any case, I’d had no time to understand what these words really meant – but now I understood that circumstance and opportunity can combine to just this effect. Here I was, on earth for however long and perhaps for exactly this reason. I didn’t have anything else to do. This had become my reason for being; my vocation. I had never had one before. I’d never really had anything.

I drifted around the ground floor, peering at some of the objects lying about. There was much that was strange to me, even though I was vaguely aware of the changes to life which had taken place since I was last here.

Whereas before everything in the house had been rough-hewn and functional, most of the things now were new and shiny. The place was now dominated by the idea of comfort rather than mere survival. There were some older pieces of furniture which sat slightly sullenly in the corners like elderly relatives at a ball designed for the enjoyment of the young. With a shiver, I felt I recognised the dresser in the living room and quickly turned away. That was where Mrs Gerrard used to keep…well, this would all be set to rights now.

Upstairs, it was much the same. Before, the bedroom floors had been unfinished wood with a few rough rugs: now there were thick carpets. Gone too were the mean little trestle beds, which had been replaced with padded creations, some with drawers beneath and some with neatly turned legs, and all piled high which soft pillows and coverlets. Curtains had been added. The windows no longer let in draughts of cold wind and rain. That was about to change too.

The last room I went into was at the end of the corridor. This was where the whole business had started and had continued for several years. As for the conclusion, that had been just outside the back door where the hard and mould-damp flagstones separated the house from the vegetable garden. This was all such a long time ago but it seemed so clear, so powerful; particularly the ending. Endings often are.

I passed through the doorway and was aware of a horror which set all my singular emotions in action.

This was now a child’s room, just as it had been in my time – but now light and airy, full of hope and promise. The furnishings were much as in the other rooms but on a smaller scale and with two beds, one above the other like bunks in a ship, set against the far wall. Two children, then. So much the better.

What anchored my feelings, and provided the clue for all that was to follow, were the two brackets on the wall by the window. These had been turned to a decorative purpose: but they were still there. To these I had been tied after the slightest imagined infraction and often beaten by Mr Gerrard or his wife. The punishments to their orphaned servant became ends in themselves: and then one day…

I became filled with a sense which you might describe as malevolence or, at best, vengeful fury. I have no use for nor understanding of such distinctions. To me, it was merely a sense of purpose. I was here for a reason – I had previously not known what, but now it was clear. The difference in generations was unimportant. All was one, the blood line flowed: inheritance passed and benefits or curses were transferred.

And here I was.

The vessel of my sorrow, for so long yearning for expiation, was now brimful of darkness. Let them come and experience a taste of the horrors from which their lives had proceded.

I saw lights flashing across the front of the house, a roaring as if from an engine which was then suddenly stilled, doors closing, the sounds of voices including those of children. Let them come.

A hundred and twenty years had been but a moment for me to wait. And here I was, settling in to a place where I had for four miserable years of my short time on earth cursed every day.

And so now I faded myself into the wall, into the doors, into the mirrors, into the very fabric of the place, re-acquainting myself with this house of misery – one of the dead, waiting for the living to appear. Let them come…

Brian Quinn
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