Forgotten Valentine - Michael Whitehouse (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

card was red with a white circle in the middle. In that circle was a boy and girl walking hand in hand into the distance, together. I did not care what it said inside, because I have always had a way with the written word, and knew I could put something down which came from the heart. I bought it. After leaving the card shop I went straight into my local newsagents. I had kept aside my last two pounds. My mother gave me an allowance to buy my lunch at school every week, and I knew she would not give me more should I spend it. Despite it meaning I would have to go without lunch for a few days, I bought a box of chocolates to accompany the card.

I rushed home, walked straight past my mother, who barely greeted me, grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and went upstairs. I knew I would get into an unbelievable amount of trouble for it, but I didn't care. I cut a slither of material from the red curtains hanging in my mother's room and tied the makeshift ribbon around the box of chocolates. In my mind it now looked like a Valentine's gift. I wrote in the card explaining how I felt about Lisa and how much those walks home had meant to me, signed it, sealed the envelope and slid it under the ribbon so it sat nicely with the chocolates.

I waited for the next day. It came all too slowly.

The 14th of February. I will never forget the excitement of getting ready for school. I took one last look at the chocolates and card before slipping them into my bag. I think I made it a little too obvious that I was carrying something important and delicate, as I cradled the whole bag in my arms for most of the day.

I was so enthused, so focused that I was going to march straight up to Lisa and give her the gift without a care for what the others, some of whom could be very cruel, would think.

But she was not there.

She wasn't in the playgrounds, she wasn't in her classes. For the subjects we shared, I just sat and stared at her empty desk and chair. School finished and I found myself walking the same route Lisa and I would normally. I stood outside her house, holding the chocolates. I can't describe the feeling I experienced there. Call it the effects of a lack of food or the exhaustion of having been so primed for the day, but anxiety took me and as a result I couldn't bring myself to knock on her door. I went home, dejected. I couldn't so much as eat a bite of the undercooked ham my mother threw down in front of me, so I simply went upstairs and crawled into bed, barely sleeping all night.

For the next two days I walked that same route and found myself holding onto those chocolates, not daring to cross the threshold of the little white fence in front of Lisa's house. On the third day I asked our teachers about Lisa's absence, something which just hadn't occurred to me to do. I associated any authority with being cold, distant, and unfair, and as a result normally avoided contact with my teachers at any cost. Mr Randall, our History teacher, told me that Lisa had come down with a bad fever and was very ill.

She could be off for weeks.

With this news I was resolute; I was going to knock on her door, and knock on her door was just what I did. I knocked, and knocked, and knocked, but no one answered. The next day I did the same, and again, no one answered.

It had now been five days since I had last seen Lisa. It was a Saturday and, once again, I went over to Lisa's house, chocolates and card in hand. As I approached her house, the sky clouded over, casting a dull hue over Lisa's seemingly deserted street. It was clear to see that Lisa's father was not a gardener. The garden path split an overgrown and patchy lawn in two with clambering weeds stretching up towards the sun through numerous cracks in the concrete slabs. I stopped to look around and focused my gaze on what seemed to be a smallish gnome figurine smothered in the undergrowth; it had sadly been broken.

Many suggest that when something is wrong, a person knows. They may not be aware of precisely what has happened, but that they can almost feel a palpable sense of dread in the air. I looked around and continued towards the front door.

Something was different.

I was sure that the house had seemed as deserted as it had on the previous days I had visited, and while the house was for all intents and purposes exactly the same as before, there was one change. The front door was open. I was convinced that it had been shut when I had arrived, but I dismissed this as simply the by-product of my fascination with the condition of Lisa's garden. You see, I can't quite explain it, but there was something suffocating about that house on that quiet street.

I reached the door and grasped the door knocker, chapping three times. No answer. I repeated my knocks more forcefully this time, but still no one came.

The door was only slightly ajar and as such I couldn't really see much of the interior. All I could tell was that the house was dark and that the air escaping through the doorway was musty, as if nothing had stirred inside for days. I started to feel nervous. I didn't really know why.

Clearing my throat, and stammering slightly I asked 'hello?' several times without answer. The street was empty and the whole place felt devoid of life. Then a thought began to ruminate and gather momentum within me. What if Lisa and her father were hurt? I started to play out all of the possibilities in my mind, the two of them lying somewhere in the house injured without food or water for days. Then I remembered that my History teacher had said Lisa was ill. He must have spoken to someone to know this, probably Lisa's father. I hoped that she was not so sick that her father had taken her to hospital.

Despite the logic of my thoughts, I still could not dismiss the horrible feeling that something was indeed wrong. Fear began to grip me, yet I closed my eyes only for a moment and found the memory of Lisa's embrace all the solace I needed to overcome it. I held on tightly to the card and chocolates as I pushed the door fully open. It moved silently, but I was sure the noise of it hitting a doorstop on the floor would alert anyone to my presence as the bang echoed throughout the house, but still no one came.

The house was bathed in darkness.

I took one last look around me and crossed the threshold. While Lisa did not come from an affluent family, the house had an upstairs and must have had at least four bedrooms with an attic. Perhaps the fact that Lisa was an only child made the house seem all the larger or emptier, but as I slowly made my way down the hallway, I felt as if each footstep echoed throughout distant passages and rooms.

Beginning with the living room on the ground floor, I moved from room to room occasionally asking if anyone could hear me, but I quickly became aware that I was only talking to myself. The air was stiflingly hot and running my hand across a radiator I realised that the boiler must have been on for some time.

As I moved into the kitchen at the rear of the house, I heard something. It was an almost rhythmic dull thudding. I couldn't identify what it was, but I knew it was coming from somewhere upstairs. I left the kitchen, which I was glad to do as it was filled with the smell of rotting food, and walked to the foot of the stairs.

The staircase was quite narrow and ran along the inside of a wall. At the top of the stairs was a landing which curved round to the left and led onto the other rooms. The dull thudding was now more pronounced and as I slowly climbed the stairs the same fear which had gripped me at the door returned. The realisation of wandering into someone's house uninvited came to the fore. Stopping for a moment, I closed my eyes and thought of Lisa again. I continued on.

As I reached the top of the stairs, the thudding noise stopped; I shudder now even just thinking of it. There were three doors leading to the other bedrooms and one leading to a bathroom which I could already see was empty. The door to the first bedroom lay open. I peered in slowly almost expecting to find someone there. There was no one. It was Lisa's father's room, neat, organised, with almost no objects of any note. The only curiosity was that the curtains were not drawn.

The door to the second room was closed. Again, I was overcome with a sense of intrusion. I was walking around inside someone's house without invitation. In effect, I was a trespasser. I knocked on the door quietly. Waiting for a moment I realised the room must be empty and turned the brass handle on the door. It opened. As I pushed the door it creaked and then suddenly stopped after only a few inches of movement. Something was behind the door. I pulled it towards me and then pushed again, but no luck. With each attempt the wooden door bashed off of something. I suddenly became aware of the noise I was making as each attempt echoed throughout the house. It was not dissimilar to the thudding I had heard before.

I tried one more time, pushing against the obstacle as hard as I could. No luck. I was about to give up and move on to the next door when I saw what was blocking my entrance. I will never forget the cold glassy stare of the face which seemed to be peeking out from behind the bottom of the door. The skin a pallid grey, a few retreating locks of hair covering an otherwise balding head, globules of sweat congealed under. Most of its features were obscured by the door, but the only visible eye still stared, clouded and covered in shadow.

I didn't scream because I quickly realised that not only was this the face of Lisa's father, but that he was very much dead. I felt numb, but looking back I realise I handled the situation much more calmly than many of my age would have, but then I did have a strange fascination for such things, reading many accounts of quite horrific death scenes.

I stared for a moment, composed myself, and then instantly turned to thoughts of Lisa and where she might be. Was she in the same room? Was she in the attic? All I could hope for was that she was OK.

Something then happened. An event which I have to this day repressed, ignored, and avoided as much as I possibly could. Something which shook me to the core. Something which I have never told a soul.

The face staring up at me through that gloom filled gap in the doorway, moved. At first it was only slight and I disregarded it as the effects