I Know What I Saw

I freeze until the pain subsides and then when it does, through the smoke I see a door. It is black, painted in high gloss, as the others are in this road. But it’s smaller than the main one at the top of the stairs. Maybe it had once been a tradesman’s entrance, or an annexe or a flat? I try to wipe the rain from my eyes, but it clings, blurring my vision. Something doesn’t feel right. And then I see it.

The door is ajar. Just.

3 Tuesday

There’s no light coming from the gap in the door. In that infinite bordered space, there is nothing and everything. I rub my left eye to clear the smears but the mist lingers.

My head is still thumping, and between the waves of sickness, I tug at the memory of what happened. Rory attacked me. No, not Rory. A man. Just a drunk in the park. I dig the tips of my fingers hard into my temples. For a moment the pain subsides, but then returns and with it comes other pain that I had relegated to the edges. My ribs ache. My legs are trembling. I take a final drag of my cigarette before flicking it into a storm drain. I look up.

The darkness in the gap behind the door pulls at me. I could go in, I think. I could. It would be dry. Just for a few minutes. I push the door slowly, keeping my ears pricked for anything beyond, any voices, or even a television, but there’s nothing. Then I pause. I can’t go into someone’s house. It’s illegal. But still, I keep pushing. I could shelter in the hallway, just until the rain stops? The door gives way smoothly under my touch and I step into the space behind it. There’s a smell that I recognise. A kind of ‘closed-up’ odour that develops in empty houses. It’s as if the absence of a person from a house, even for a day, begins a kind of decay. As if the separation from its heart makes the house die a little. Inside, I shut the door behind me, softly. The darkness begins to recede as I blink furiously. It’s not warm in here, but not cold either and not wet. I want to sink to the floor and rest just a little, in this covered nook that’s resolving before me into a narrow, tiled corridor. Clearer with each passing second.

‘Hello?’

I throw my voice deep into the hallway. If it catches a person, if there’s someone there, I can explain I found the door open and was just passing. That I’m just warning them against criminals, warning them against myself in different circumstances. There’s no answer so I call out again, but only the silence comes ringing back.

Hopefully, I feather the wall with wet fingers until they find a switch. The hall fills with light and Victorian tiles appear at my feet arranged symmetrically, intricately, black on white. A huge gilded mirror glares at me from the left with Tiffany wall lamps on either side. The house of an old dame.

A pause. My heart quickens with the waiting. If there’s anybody beyond this hall, these lights will alert them, so for seconds or minutes I am frozen. Waiting. Until … nothing.

Finally, I sink to the floor, my back against the heavy wooden door, and breathe. The pain kicks up again as the adrenaline dissipates. And then I begin to shiver. My heart drops in my chest. It is beginning. If I don’t get dry soon and warm, I am going to get very ill. I rub life into my cold fingers and then when the dexterity returns to them, I unpick the laces of my leather boots and tug them off. Rainwater has pooled inside them so I upturn them against the door to drain them. I stare at my feet, which are covered in plastic bags for warmth. I pull them away and then peel off the damp socks beneath them. The skin of my feet is pale, deathly. I look away from the blisters and the blackness that rims the nails. It always shocks me that my own body sickens me like this. On the cold tiles I stand and take off my coat, shaking it out before wrapping it around my boots and socks. Newspaper I had missed earlier falls now to the floor in sodden balls and the cold begins to climb from there into my bones. I shiver. I watch the other black door at the far end of the corridor, waiting for it to spring open and for anger to appear in its light. I strain my ears for sound but all they pick up is the rain outside. I rub my temples again but the pain refuses to be eased by touch.

If only it will stop for a moment, so I can think.

I gather my coat-boot bundle and walk towards the other door, catching my face in the mirror. It startles me, this face that I know but don’t recognise. My cheeks are burned from weather. The beard is the most striking thing – it’s the thing about me that I forget most often. But the real surprise is in the eyes. And not just that the left has swollen almost shut, but the impression they give: they seem lost, somehow innocent. And then as I am puzzling this, my expression catches me in a flash of anger that I didn’t know I was carrying.

Before I turn the handle on the door, I call out again.