Locked Door (2) - Heavy Steps (3)
The house was set back from the road and, although I enjoyed reading horror stories, there was no possible way I could conjure any weird or ghostly atmosphere from this place. It was somebody’s idea of a joke. And I knew who that someone was. You see, I had an email yesterday (from an old friend) with a photograph attached, a photograph of his parents’ house in the suburbs of the city half-hidden by trees but clear enough to reveal the most unprepossessing house it had been my misfortune to notice, to be made to notice, if you see what I mean, because my friend knew I dabbled in landscape painting on a (if I say so myself) talented but amateur basis – and he wanted me to paint his parents' house so that he could give the painting to them (framed) for Christmas. Paint it from the photo, he said. He’d give me a good price for it. To buy time, I emailed my friend and said it was impossible to paint it from the photo he had provided, especially with the trees in the way. Could he give me the address? I’d visit it (I vowed to myself) so as to wreak some real atmosphere from it for my painting. My friend didn’t really appreciate horror stories, as I did, but I’m sure my imagination when in full view of the house would compensate for any lack of imagination from the house itself! Houses with genius loci were far and few between. But an artist surely could create a spirit of place (albeit a creepy one) for any house-and-setting where, in reality, one did not exist.
Imagine my disappointment when – after making a difficult bus ride mixed in with office commuters on their way home – I approached the house down its leafy avenue. A central position between like-minded houses. I first had to ensure I got hold of the right house so I had to peer at the gates for the correct house-number before committing my artist’s gaze towards the potential subject. You may have indeed imagined my imagination, but it was nothing compared to my real feelings. You may safely read between the lines. You surely can imagine the house for yourself as easily as you imagined my initial feelings about it. No need for me to describe it with words. In any event, I actually needed to preserve all my artistic strength for (later) painting it for real, with paints and paintbrush. I was not intending to erect an easel on the surburban pavement, mind you. Commuters still tramped either side of my stationary figure towards their own houses along the avenue as the dusk thickened. They clasped brief-cases and cast sullen glances towards one they assumed to be an inexplicable loiterer. No, I would weigh the house within the balance of my surveying, then remember it as I rode back on the bus so as to attach its residues of last impressions to further interpretations of the photo once back in my studio. But I was disrupted from the image’s steady imprint upon the sensitive backdrop of my prospective memory by one of the commuters brushing past me more roughly than the others – only to disappear up the garden path towards the very house in question.
The shape did not look old enough to be one of my friend's parents. Perhaps, I had got hold of the wrong house after all. Had my friend given me the wrong house-number? Even the wrong avenue in the wrong area of the suburbs? I took the photo (that I had earlier printed from the attachment my friend had sent by email) from my wallet. I had not wanted, for artistic reasons, to compare it directly with my real-time view of the house but, now, I had little option. I needed to cross-check the trees and gate colour and distant walls of the half-hidden house. Perhaps the shape of the commuter I had seen disappear up the garden path was my friend’s younger brother (if he had a younger brother at all) who still lived there with his parents. To my amazement, I was stirred from such unverifiable speculations by the photo itself showing a house that was quite different from the house I remembered being depicted in it when I first saw it on the computer screen and now showing a house that strongly resembled the very house up the garden path of which I was now being led by the commuter with the brief case who soon reached the front door – evidently locked and he had no key. All this I assumed from the body language.
I heard the front door bell ring. Meanwhile, I felt myself become more and more exposed in this embarrassing position, lurking in the front garden, uninvited and eventually misunderstood. I tried to merge with the shrubbery. If a meanwhile can have its own meanwhile, I did have the self-possession to maintain a critical gaze towards the house because – come what may – I still intended to paint the unpaintable, viz. a house so ordinary, even the windows sunk back into their frames with a sense of paranoia. It would have seemed out of place in any picture-frame, out of place on any chocolate or jigsaw box. I would go as far as to say it would find no window of opportunity in even the least self-respecting of any photo album. In extremis, it would find no place anywhere – as house or house’s image.
Yet, despite all these factors, it did at least have the security of a locked door. And a bell that rung but was never answered. I heard heavy steps behind me – as if I was in turn being followed – but by somebody who did not have the same surreptitious grace as me to maintain a low profile within the shrubbery. I had proceeded on tip-toe. This person had heavy steps. I had the human feelings of fear and obtrusiveness. I was something that could not be avoided by power of sheer bodily existence. The one with heavy steps was a ghost, no doubt – because, when I turned, there was nobody there behind me and, when I turned again, there was nobody at the front door. In any event, thank goodness for that locked door. It was something that made the house a house. Impenetrable but truly there. I had begun to wonder, you see. But still uncertain of my own position, I threw all caution to the wind and tore the photo into several pieces and then threw them after the caution. Imagine my dismay when I suddenly realised that the attachment was still attached to the email in electronic space. And I returned with heavy step down the garden path led by the prospect of painting the unpaintable, having just failed to describe the indescribable. There was a bus waiting for me.
(written today and first published here)
