Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
There was no point being in school, so he’d nicked off at the start of lunch, slipped out of the door at the back of the building that the teachers usually forgot to lock when they were coming back from their vape breaks.
That gave him a quick dart across the back car park and then he was in the valley, an area full of trees and shrubbery and the river.
All he needed to do was cross the river and scramble up the bank and then he was at the football field.
It had been PE this afternoon, double rugby, and he didn’t want to be the last one to be chosen again.
It used to be a lad called Paul Adams, only he’d gone to a special school, so now he was last. He was uncoordinated and a gust of wind could knock him over, so his grandmother said.
But he was fast and good at squeezing through small spaces, and he was really good at filming and editing.
He'd decided to spend the afternoon in the abandoned house. There was some work to be done in the glasshouses, and he might squeeze half an hour in, but really, he wanted to explore the top floor, somewhere he’d only been once and hadn’t filmed.
It was only an hour’s walk from school to get there, and he could avoid seeing many people, just the odd dog walker and once a bloke who liked flashing, which had made him run faster than he’d ever done in his life.
When he got there, he checked that the thin transparent thread he’d put across the gates was still intact.
It was his way of making sure that no one else was knocking around.
At some point, he supposed, the house would be bought and they’d probably put a new one there, or maybe some posh apartments.
He didn’t understand why anyone wanted to live in a posh apartment; he’d always take somewhere old, somewhere he could discover secret rooms and staircases, old window shutters sealing into walls and maybe an old diary.
He was thinking about old diaries as he slipped in through the back door, unlocked as usual, not that a lock would’ve made much difference.
The kitchen had been gutted in the fire, everything blackened and melted, and he knew that this was where one of the boys had died.
Nothing much remained of back then, time had gotten rid of most of it, which made it less spooky than it should’ve been.
The stairs in this part of the house were stable. The old servants stairs were not – he’d once fallen right through them, but luckily it’d been near the ground floor. He went up to the first floor and then carried on, the staircase narrower, and headed up to the top floor.
The roof was gone in one part, and the floor wasn’t stable.
Falling wasn’t an option, so he kept to walking along where the supporting walls were like he was a tightrope walker, preparing to crawl flat if he needed to so he could spread out his weight.
He’d learned a lot about the structure of old buildings and he’d become interested in architecture because of his exploring.
He’d mentioned it to one of his teachers, and they’d said he’d be good at that and he had the sort of grades you needed.
He might’ve been crap at PE but he was good at maths and science and art.
There were four rooms on the top floor. One, the biggest, was completely wrecked and the best he could do was stand near the door and film.
Rain had come through the roof, which had been damaged by the fire.
The floor was missing boards and there was a big hole in the middle of it.
Wallpaper was still peeling off in places, the pattern indistinguishable, and there was still a bed in the corner, a single bedframe, metal and cheap, the sheets, or what remained of them, pulled back as if someone hadn’t bothered to make it because they were intending on getting back in it that night.
He slowly filmed around the room, just using his phone.
He’d do the voiceover when he was back home, so he could disguise it, but also so he could think a bit more about what to say and reference what he’d found out about the family that had lived there, anonymising it of course, so no one else strayed onto his territory.
The other three rooms had less damage but were smaller.
They were on the side of the house where the fire hadn’t taken so much of a hold, because while the kitchen had been gutted, the rooms above hadn’t taken as much of a hit.
One of the three rooms was storage, and it was still full of papers and photographs.
He’d never really explored it before and didn’t have time now, because he knew that once he started, he wouldn’t be able to leave it.
That would also be a really good extra part; his subscribers would be keen to view that one, so he might make it subscribers only.
Another room had been an office, no computers, which was weird, even for back then, however long it had been.
There were old bits of stationery piled up on a desk that didn’t really go with the rest of the house.
He went in there, holding his phone, showing what he was looking through.
Things like this were catnip for the Urb Ex community, wanting to know what secrets people had left behind.
The last room on this floor was locked, the key long since missing.
He pushed on the door, wanting to see if it’d give, even with his feeble weight.
He took a couple of steps back, hoping physics would help and this time he felt movement.
The wood of the frame was rotten, that much was obvious, so he tried again and this time his weight and bravery were enough to shove the door open and he stumbled at speed into an empty space.
Nothing.
Not even a hair tie or a pencil.
This was weird. He’d been in dozens of abandoned properties and there was always something left. An empty room like this was freaking weird.
It had unnerved him. For a moment, he froze, unsure of how safe he was up there and feeling for the first time like he was being watched.
Moving slowly and silently he headed back to the stairs, pausing every couple of steps, looking around him.
No one else had been on the top floor, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t entered the building after him.
He needed to get out.
Speeding up, he made his way right down to the ground floor, listening like a hawk and hearing nothing except for his own footsteps and the sound of his heart thundering in his chest. Then there was a dash to the kitchen and out of the back door.
Then he ran and ran and ran.