THE HOUSE OF CANTED STEPS
Excerpt from THE HOUSE OF CANTED STEPS, a novel by Gary Fry (PS Publishing 2010)
Prologue
1922
The girl liked visiting her grandparents. Their house was so much nicer than hers in fashionable London. Her mother and father hadn’t been getting on very well lately, either, so it had also been a relief to travel up to Yorkshire and stay here. There were lots of bedrooms to choose from, though the girl had selected one that overlooked the pretty back garden. Suddenly moving away from its window, she decided to go and play outside now.
Last night she’d suffered a bad dream involving someone looming over her in bed. This person’s face had borne an evil expression. Maybe that was just her way of dealing with her memories of the man her mother sometimes invited around to their home whenever her father was away on business. Still, the girl knew that she’d left all those difficulties behind her for a while. She should simply enjoy her break in the small town up north. Perhaps later this afternoon she and her grandparents might drive into Hantley and buy something nice from any of the small shops situated in the market square.
In the meanwhile, however, she could help herself to one of the boiled sweets from the kitchen. She skipped down the staircase, trying to keep her balance because each step was slightly tilted at an odd angle. The house was quite new, so the builder must have included these deliberately. The girl couldn’t think why anyone would wish to do that, but this wasn’t really an important issue and it didn’t concern her for long. Once she’d taken one of the confections from a bowl on the dining table, she hurried outside, the better to stroll in the bright morning sunshine.
Her grandparents were currently talking together in one of the upstairs rooms, and earlier the girl had overheard from the hallway outside it her own name being mentioned. They’d both sounded rather alarmed, but she imagined this was all to do with grown-up problems, with family issues that she simply couldn’t understand. She was, after all, only six years old.
Once she’d reached the back garden, she glanced up at the property and again admired its sprawling design. It was very big and almost blotted out all the daylight falling on to a piebald lawn and several neat flowerbeds. The brickwork had been covered in a thick white substance, like heavy makeup on a woman, while a network of pot guttering ensnared the tiled roof in the manner of some large tight noose. All the windows resembled eyes watching her, though the girl didn’t feel threatened; in fact, she believed that the building would actually protect her, that it was looking out for her in a way that her mother and father had rarely bothered with more recently. Even the dark shadows caught under the deep and dusty eaves didn’t scare her. Indeed, her nightmare last night had been nothing to do with the house. The place now appeared too friendly and supportive to have caused such horrid imaginings.
With these thoughts in mind, the girl unwrapped the boiled sweet she’d taken from the kitchen and put it in her mouth. She knew it would be very silly to take any of what she’d just been thinking seriously. Buildings couldn’t think and didn’t feel anything at all, either like or dislike for the people who lived in them. The girl then started sucking the sweet and at the same time headed towards the wall that divided the property’s grounds from a narrow lane and lots of huge green fields beyond it. She loved the countryside – there wasn’t much of this in stinky old London! There was also lots of wildlife to see in Yorkshire: cows, pigs, horses, and…and…
At that moment the girl sensed something moving in the hedge near a fence that separated this garden from the neighbour’s. Still rolling the confection around in her mouth, she stepped quickly towards the spot where she was certain she’d seen a brief movement. She thought she’d heard a sudden sound from there, too. A few plants had been whipped savagely and this had surely been accompanied by a quick low hissing noise. When she reached this area, she squatted at once to take a closer look.
And that was when the thin snake lurched up to snap its swollen jaws at her.
The girl jerked backwards, and despite knowing (having learned this at school only recently) that there were no such creatures as snakes in England, she couldn’t prevent terror from immediately filling her body. Nevertheless, when she suddenly glanced again into the flowerbed, she noticed that there was no snake at all, that she must have simply imagined it.
But it was too late. The boiled sweet had become caught in her throat.
She’d begun to choke.
The girl attempted to cry out, yet all she produced was a weak and strangled whine. Then she turned to the house and started waving her arms frantically.
However, the property now merely gazed back at her, belying everything she’d believed about it only minutes ago. She knew immediately that it wasn’t eager to save her…in fact, it bore quite the opposite intention. And as she fell to her knees, the girl suddenly thought that, even if she had been physically capable of making enough noise to attract her grandparents’ attention, the property would somehow stop this cry from reaching them in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
The place undeniably wanted her dead.
Indeed, it continued to watch with either indifference or a kind of suppressed glee as the girl then slumped to the floor and finally breathed her last.
