3. Thomas, Wilson

Thomas, Wilson

13 Beeches Road

Silent Falls

Parents, who needed them? Casey thought. All they did was shout and complain, and tell you what to do. Trying to do everything in their power to prevent you doing what you had to do. Why not be a doctor? Or a teacher? Because maybe you didn’t want to be a doctor, or a teacher.

She had enough money saved from her hotel cleaning job. She was leaving home, and she would not be leaving alone. Her friend Rebecca from the hotel was coming too. The house in Beeches Road seemed ideal. It had two bedrooms (neither of them wanted to share), and was a reasonable price for both of them, as well as being a short bus ride from town, and the hotel.

Yes, the parents complained, You’re only seventeen, but the girls didn’t care. They were free. That first night they sat in the living room, talking about the parties they’d throw in the next few weeks.

“It’s going to be so much fun!” Casey said. “Everyone from work can come. And it can last all night long, no one to tell us to be quiet, or turn the music down.”

“Yes, there is!” Rebecca laughed. “The neighbours, on either side.”

“They won’t do anything,” Casey told her, as she stretched out on the couch, fully relaxed. “We’re the new neighbours, and we’re young.”

She was wrong. That weekend, they invited everyone they knew up to visit. They got drunk, and they got loud. So did the music. There had been no interference from neighbours, until around three o’clock. It wasn’t much, just a dull banging on the wall. But it did show someone wanted to sleep. Not that they cared. They partied on, until four thirty, when there was another bang.

Their friend, Matthew, who was very drunk by this point, let out an irritated sigh. “Look!” he shouted through the wall. “If you want to sleep, sleep. Put your ear muffs or something on. Just don’t disturb our party!”

So that was that. No more bangs on the wall. The neighbour had clearly given up. They had expected to see the blurry eyed complainer at the door the next morning, especially Rebecca, who was a little nervous of getting evicted only a week after moving in. Her parents would never let her forget it.

Casey, on the other hand, was confident that Matthew had scared them off, whoever it was, and now they could have as many parties as they liked.

Despite the fact that Matthew didn’t come to visit that weekend, others still came. And they still got drunk (very quickly, Rebecca had thought when nursing a sore head and funny stomach the next day). This time it was two o’clock when the banging sound came. Casey had been leaning on the wall from which it came through.

“Shut up!” she shouted, banging on the wall with her fist. “Trying to get drunk here! Kimberley, turn the tunes up!”

Kimberley was slumped, barely awake beside the hi-fi. With a dazed look upon her face, she turned the volume up. She was very drunk as well, Rebecca thought. And she’d been on many a wild night out with Kimberley. She drank like a fish and still wanted more, sometimes starting at 6pm, and going on until the next morning. Still, Rebecca couldn’t remember seeing her like this.

Casey let out an excited scream. “How do you like that?” she asked.

The neighbour seemed to have quietened for a while, but at quarter to three, there was another bang.

“Shut up!” Casey mumbled, now lying on a pile of cushions beside the same wall, barely conscious. Weakly, she lifted her head to look around. Everyone was lying down, some asleep. Rebecca was on the couch, Kimberley had moved onto the rug. The others were scattered everywhere. She thought some would even have gone upstairs. And still the music blasted, hurting her head. She stumbled over to the hi-fi and turned it off. The silence felt wonderful, she began to walk over to the spot where she’d been, but collapsed just a foot away from where Kimberley lay. Before drifting off to sleep, she mumbled, “Hope you’re happy.”

Clearly not. At six o’clock, there was another bang, louder this time. The majority of sleepers were roused from their sleep. “What is it?” Rebecca asked sleepily, feeling the throb in her head and the contents of her stomach churning.

“Neighbour,” Casey muttered. “Music’s stopped.”

Some of the sleepers got up and began to move around, mainly upstairs. Casey, who still felt drunk crawled over to the cushions and fell back asleep, as did Rebecca. It was just after nine when the next bang came, closely followed by another one, each louder than the last.

“We’re being quiet!” Casey shouted furiously. She looked up to see that there were no guests in the living room, just her and Rebecca. “Where did everyone go?” she asked her.

Rebecca was lying on the couch still, but her pale face shone with sweat. She didn’t look good. “Don’t know,” she whined as she attempted to get back to sleep. Casey, feeling more ill than drunk now. They didn’t have that much, she thought, looking at the bottles in the kitchen, most unopened.

As she wandered upstairs, she saw that all of the rooms stood empty. Everyone had left. She found her bed unmade, evidence that someone had slept there last night, and she crawled into it.

Both girls were very ill, and somehow the party didn’t seem worth feeling how they felt now. As they sat sipping soup that evening, they agreed, no parties next weekend.

The illness lasted a few days, and it was still fresh in their memory by the time the next weekend rolled around.

“So,” Matthew asked Casey at work on Thursday, “Party at yours this weekend?”

“Don’t think so,” she told him, remembering how bad she’d felt. “We’re not up to it.”

“Not up to it?” he asked as they folded towels into a cupboard. “The party animals? Not up to it?”

“Really,” she said in all seriousness. The last thing she’d need would be for him to just turn up.

She had seen most of the guests occasionally that week. Kimberley had been ill too. But apart from Matthew, who hadn’t been there, no one asked about the coming weekend.

As they’d agreed, they didn’t drink at all, and had no guests. They spent Friday night watching films.

Around ten, a bang came. “What the hell?” Casey shouted at the wall. “There’s no music!”

“Maybe it’s the TV,” said Rebecca. “Maybe it’s too loud.”

“It’s hardly even up!” moaned Casey, but she turned it down nonetheless.

Another bang came at midnight, and one, quarter past, half past three. Both girls were in their beds, trying to sleep without success. Morning came and neither of them had slept.

“That is ridiculous!” Rebecca said at breakfast the next morning.

“I know!” agreed Casey. “They’ve got a cheek to complain when we’re making noise.”

Just then, it occurred to her that they’d never seen the next door neighbour before. Not even in the window. If they were making so much noise, why didn’t the neighbour come to the door and complain, instead of just banging on the wall?

“We should go and see them,” Casey declared.

“What?”

“Well that kind of noise is unacceptable. They didn’t appreciate it from us, so why should we take it from them?”

With a sigh, Rebecca agreed. She hated confrontations, especially when Casey lost her temper. But she did have a point this time. After breakfast, both girls went to meet their neighbour.

The garden was badly overgrown. Neither of them had noticed before, but they hadn’t really paid much attention. Now, however, as the grass came up to their knees and they struggled to find the concrete path leading to the front door, they wondered how they had missed it. As they got to the door, both of them noticed that the bright white paint that was on all the doors on this street was very badly chipped, revealing natural dark wood beneath. There was a scratched name plate on the door. Casey squinted and could just about make out the name Benson.

She pressed the door bell, but it made no noise.

“Don’t tell me you honestly expected that to work?” Rebecca laughed nervously as she gently knocked on the door. They waited anxiously for a few seconds. No answer. “Must be out.”

“You hardly even knocked!” said Casey, knocking on the door with much more force. Again, they waited. Again, there was no response.

“You happy now?”

“Okay, maybe you’re right. We’ll come back after tea.” They began to walk away, when they heard a creaking sound as the door opened behind them.

They turned to see a small, elderly lady standing in the doorway. She wore a faded grey dress, and a headscarf. Tinted glasses almost hid her eyes completely, and her skin was very wrinkled. Casey noticed the yellowed tinge to her skin.

“Hi,” she said, feeling nervous herself now. She didn’t know why. “Em, Mrs Benson?”

The small woman nodded, and Casey stepped closer. Rebecca stayed back.

“Hi, we live next door. We moved in a couple of weeks ago.” The woman didn’t respond. Casey thought she might be deaf, and stepped closer again, yanking Rebecca’s arm and taking her with her. Immediately, Rebecca scrunched up her nose. There was a horrible smell from the woman. Casey noticed it too, but managed to keep her reaction discreet. That was just what old people smelled like.

“Yes,” she continued speaking, in a slightly raised voice.  “I’m Casey Thomas, and this is my friend, Rebecca Wilson. We’ve moved in next door. And you’ve been making, well, a lot of noise. Now I understand that for the last couple of weekends we’ve hardly been….”

Her voice trailed off as the woman held her hand out telling her to stop and motioning for them to come inside. Slowly, Casey followed her inside the house, dragging Rebecca, who remained mute, behind her.

The smell was stronger inside the house, much stronger, almost unbearable. They could last five minutes, Casey told herself. And it would only take five minutes, she was sure.

The woman led them in to the living room, which was tidy, almost too tidy. No clutter on the coffee table, not even a cup of tea, or a newspaper. The only dim light shone weakly through the dark brown curtains, which were drawn shut. There was a large photo, probably of the woman in younger years, with a husband and young family, hung above the fire place, which was also free from clutter. It should have been on, Rebecca thought, it was freezing. The woman sat down on the armchair, and motioned for Casey and Rebecca to sit on the couch. Maybe she couldn’t talk, Casey thought, in which case this conversation would be difficult.

“Well, as I was saying,” Casey said in a loud clear voice. “Rebecca, and I, we’ve been hearing loud banging during the night, and maybe you don’t mean it, but it’s keeping us awake, and we both work early morning shifts.”

The woman looked at them, but showed no response, so Casey continued, feeling the sudden need to rush so that they could leave this house and its smell.

“So, I understand we’ve been having parties that may have been annoying, but we promise to stop. If you stop the noise, please.” She smiled weakly at the woman, who got up and walked out of the room without looking back.

“Where is she going?” Rebecca whispered.

“I don’t know. I think she can’t speak. Maybe to get some paper, or make tea.”

“We need to go! It smells.”

“I know, it’s just what old people smell like. We’ll go soon.”

“No Casey, I’m going to be sick. It’s not old people. It’s like, rot.”

“Well, old people rot!” Casey snapped impatiently, and hoped that the woman wouldn’t hear.

They sat in silence for a moment, then they heard the banging again, coming from the other side.

“Oh my god Casey!” Rebecca cried. “We need to go! Really, we need to go, I can’t stay here!”

Casey abruptly stood up and both girls ran to the hall where the noise was coming from, and stopped. The woman, was hanging dead from a rope suspending from the stair banister, and swinging from side to side, hitting the walls.

They ran, out of the front door, out of Beeches Road, out of Silent Falls, and back home to their parents.

They’d been expected back. Their parents were sure that once they saw how difficult living alone was that they would be back home. Although not with this story. They wouldn’t even go back to collect their things. That was left to the dads. However, when loading the car, Rebecca’s dad got chatting to a neighbour who confirmed that Mrs Benson had hanged herself, after her family stopped visiting her ten years ago. The house had been vacant since, almost.