The outside was quiet and dark. Frost glittered silently on the ground, illuminated by a few bright moonbeams. Spread around the house was a vast forest, almost picturesque in the soft, cool light. I tugged the curtains to, then turned my back to the window with a shake of my head, eyes adjusting from natural night to artificial day.
My mind was fuzzy, a muddle of lights and sounds that resisted being pieced together. The last thing I could clearly remember was a platform announcement and wheeling a suitcase through a busy train station, these memories backed up by a cardboard slip by my bed, with a date inked onto it.
That had been three days ago.
Since then, I had arrived at this cabin in the middle of the woods, and in doing so forgotten everything about how.
My knowledge of the place was limited. There was the bedroom in which I had woken up, and then there was a bathroom, both done with tasteful, rustic furnishings. Having scouted out my immediate surroundings, I prepared to open the door to the rest of the house.
It swung open without a sound. The room was only faintly lit by the bedroom light, yet I could feel a comforting openness from this new place. After fumbling for a light switch, I was met with quite the quaint little residence. Outside the bedroom there was a kitchen, which had been opened up into a dining area and lounge. A small corridor led to a utility room, and that was that.
After mapping the house, I could turn to another pressing concern. The kitchen addressed my hunger with a bowl of leftover soup, and the knowledge that alcohol had not been the cause of my amnesia; there were no empty bottles or cans anywhere.
I stood, eating, and as I ate, I pondered. The only sound in the cabin was the humming of the fridge, and the scrape of my spoon against the bowl.
Scrape.
Scrape.
Scr-Wait.
In untangling the knots in my mind, I had missed that something had begun to respond to my eating, and now continued on alone, following the same rhythm.
The sound made me stop, a chill running down my back. The tone was insistent and distinctly different from my own. Mine had been sterile, this was primal, nails grating against something that was too hard for them.
It came from the centre of the room.
Suddenly aware of every breath I took I crept towards the source. To my relief, the floor was well kept and didn’t complain at my weight. The scraping continued as I approached, slow and deliberate, with the tone shifting higher and more hair-raising with each repetition.
It was now coming from beneath my feet.
Concerned that after all their silent service the floorboards would now reveal me, I knelt down cautiously. Sweeping aside the heavy wool carpet, I found my hands whiter and less steady than I had remembered them. The edge of a trapdoor began taking shape, a lock and a heavy ring. As if to answer my question about the lock, a key had been laid down, old fashioned and heavy duty.
My hand still quivering, I reached for the key, freezing as my fingernails ground against the wood. The scratching continued, unabated, and in that moment it was somehow a relief. The key slid in smoothly, followed by an unmistakable clunk, and suddenly, there was no barrier between myself and the noise.
Beneath the wooden portal however, nothing stood. All I was met with was a smell of old, cold and damp.
Fool that I was, curiosity pushed me onwards. My bare feet sunk down into the darkness, toes curling against the freezing concrete. My hand jerked on a cord, and in response a fluorescent light wheezed alive, chattering out its displeasure at being roused.
The basement was small, but not unclean. I had only a moment to look about before I became aware of the scratching again, insistent and dragging me onwards.
It now came from a suitcase placed prominently atop a chest at the opposite end of the room. I squeezed down on the key so hard as to feel it biting back against my palm, as I painstakingly approached the suitcase, each footfall sending chills through me.
This one was not locked. I reached for each of the clasps in turn, unlatching them, and then quickly pinning the lid down in case the suitcase leapt at me.
The suitcase, of course, did not leap at me, but nor did the scraping stop.
I threw open the suitcase. Within, neatly organised clothes, toiletries, a case for a laptop. The clothes, it was evident, belonged to a woman. Bras, a dress, a makeup bag. I pressed down on the piles and found them stiff and firm, without any possibility of a hidden pest having somehow snuck their way inside. What then had made that noise?
The scratches returned. Chills ran down my back. They stung at my neck, pricking up the hairs and setting free a bead of cold, clammy sweat. As I examined the clothes, the chills hooked memories from corners of my mind and yanked them forth.
My hand settled on a dirty laundry bag, suspiciously plump and full despite how organised the rest of the suitcase was. I opened it, pensive, then gazed at the articles within.
There was blood. It was dry, ugly, brownish and flaky, and it had spread across an innocent denim shirt-dress. As my hand sank through it, the days I could not remember began to creep back through my mind, like water finding a crack in a dam.
My words. Her words. My actions. Her actions. The conclusion, in its irreversible truth, and her fingers, now running down my back with a malice brought from the grave. A malice that as I turned, confronted me, in all its awful truth.
The truth of what I had done.