The House on Marlow Lane

There stands a house on Marlow Lane. In this house lives a deafening sense of silence. It’s tucked away so tightly amongst the great oaken trees it was built within that no sound, nor wind, nor creature of earth or sky dare to trespass. The wind chimes on the porch no longer sing, the wooden floors no longer creak, and the grandfather clock on the second floor landing sits quietly alone. Forever frozen at 3:03pm. The house has never seen a murder, nor was it born on sacred ground. No curse was ever laid on the clay below, no ritual ever desecrated its heart. Opposite of this fact, no children have ever laughed in its homely halls, no Christmas gatherings were ever made into memory in its grand living room. For you see, the house died long ago, breathing life no more and never again.

If one could describe the overwhelming sense of quiet that resonates in the halls of the house on Marlow Lane, they would tell you that, should a gun be fired within the open foyer space you would never hear the shout of the barrel releasing demise into your back. The quiet decay of abandonment has stolen the song from its well-worn bedrooms. To stand in the grand glass and cherry oak parlor, you could feel a sense of great importance. A sense that resonates with a feeling of being hastily brushed under the authentic Persian rug of navy and gold beneath your feet by an old tattered broom. There’s a need to flee from the land you trespass in.

A great note of importance when it comes to the house on Marlow Lane stands behind the walls of the second floor landing, where the clock still sits at 3:03pm. The shelves of this great second floor are lined with a vast ocean of literature, crammed full of books, bindings worn down from the agony of abandonment and age. Many of the manuscripts once attempted an escape to freedom. Pages pouring out of their hardened homes onto the floor like a downpour of rain, only to be destroyed either by weather wear brought on by the still open windows on the west-hand side of the home or burned away by the relentless sun.

At 3:03pm, due to the dense forest and the earth itself fearing this forgotten homestead, the sun begins to creep in through those aforementioned windows on the western front of Marlow Lane as it descends. The house becomes altogether dark, like death embracing an old friend long-overdue for his embrace. At 3:03pm comes the tick. The tick not from the long dead clock. You see, the tick at 3:03pm comes from behind it.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

A sound, much like feather-light boot-steps are heard within the paper-thin walls. It comes from the north-hand side of the home. The very side of the home where the great grandfather clock, face busted in a territory fight long ago, still stands watch at the top of the stairs. Like Saint Peter guarding any unworthy from trespassing beyond the black marble ascent to clarity.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The noise within those paper-thin walls walks slowly from the left-hand side of the fifty foot long curved hallway toward the right, keeping pace with the darkness of night draping across the rotting paneling. This is the only sound for miles.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Standing at the foot of the stairs, you could almost make out a wandering shape of a woman, passing alongside the inclement darkness, should your mind be inclined to believe such things. The strong tick comes across like a heart-beat. The life of the home long lost, suddenly resuscitated and panicking for one more glimpse of immortality. The walls themselves seem to breathe, if only for a moment. That is, until what would become three-o-three and thirty two seconds in the afternoon, that the peaceful, rhythmic thump hastens to a panic. Darkness falls like a blanket, eclipsing the grand north facing wall in a shadow of decay and breathlessness. The tick becomes a clamor of panic, reaching the eighteenth foot mark of the twenty two foot long hallway on the north-hand side of the house.

3:03pm and fifty eight seconds.

Tick. Tick. Silence.

This is the loop that suffocates the house on Marlow Lane at 3:03pm in the afternoon. This is the moment that time, memory, God himself, has forgotten. For you see, my dear friend, as you hold these cracked and decaying pages of yellow and faded ink, you become witness to the minute that changed the house on Marlow Lane. For you see, my dear friend, I am Samantha Ainsworth, eternal house-maid to the beast that died here on Marlow Lane. I am the shadow that creeps along the wall you see before you as you stand at the foot of the landing, captivated by the clock that time abandoned. For you see, my dear friend, at 3:03pm on a Sunday afternoon, as the night fell over my home, is when I died - trapped within the walls of the northern side of the house on Marlow Lane.

….And in a matter of time, 3:03pm will come to take you too.

(This short horror tale was originally posted on my blog, disturbancesbyalycia.weebly.com, on June 28th, 2017)