Fourth Fiction - Round 4

Round 4 Challenge: Weave an element of Fyor’s story into your passage. It should be no more than 450 words.

Dad ordered me a plate of egg and chips, and returned to reading his paper as I tucked in. The front page that blocked him from view was filled with news of the high-profile murder of a district judge. After my second coke, I was told to go to bed.

Later that night, his voice woke me from sleep. I was surprised because it was so late. My clock glowed a red one thirty-two precisely. His voice mumbled through the thin walls of the guest house and he seemed to be talking to someone. I waited to hear if a voice would reply to my father but when no one did. I turned over in my bed, pulled the blankets tightly round me and, though I was worried about my nightmares, tried to get back off to sleep.

I was barely dozing when a soft tapping sounded on the wall. I knew my father’s room was on the other side and lay for a minute unable to think why he would want to wake me with tapping. I imagined it as Morse code being tapped on the wall, but if my father had had anything to say to me he would have said it in the bar earlier. There was no message in these taps, just a simple, urgent rhythm, growing more urgent as time passed. Tapping became banging. I could hear a woman’s voice slowly rising, a soft hissing sound that began to fill up with vowels as the banging grew louder. It grew into a shout, an urgent plea, and I began to be frightened. It sounded as if the woman, whoever she was, was being hurt.

I left my bed quietly and stepped urgently onto the landing. The sounds were louder here and I could hear a grunting that ran under the other sounds. I walked with my head down, my eyes fixed on the worn red carpet under my bare feet. Its swirling pattern seemed to follow the rise and fall of the clamour coming from the room. I reached my father’s door and knocked quietly at first. The noises halted for a second then resumed. I knocked again, louder.

‘Shit. Who the bloody hell is that?’ It was a woman’s voice for certain.

I heard my father tell her to shut up before the door opened a crack. Dad looked down at me from where he stood leaning round the door and said, ‘Go to bed. Now.’

The door closed and I went back to bed.

The remainder of the night was undisturbed and nothing was said about the incident the next day. Our holiday went on as normal with its long drives and bed and breakfasts broken up by walks around a castle or a church. I never told my father that from where I stood outside his room I could see the mirror perched on his dressing table. I never told him that in it I saw the woman he had kneeling on his bed. I never told him I thought her hair looked like my mother's in her photographs.