Lock the doors

Photo by Herbert Sandos from Pexels

It was June last year when they first started taking over the house. It was after the evening news, about 7.30. We finished dinner. Dad and I were watching Wheel of Fortune on the telly while Mum was in the kitchen washing dishes. She heard them first. She came into the living room, turned the telly off and looked towards what used to be the baby’s room.

“Listen,” she’d said. “They're here.”

She was right. We could hear them muffling to each other.

But it was okay. We closed that room and didn’t think about it. After a while, we got used to them being there. Aside from their nocturnal scuffling, everything was quiet in the house. For a while, at least.

The weeks passed as they always do. Dad worked at the mill. He came home tired. Then one day, the mill closed, and he got laid off. It was then that he started coming home drunk.

I guess it was around that time that I heard them again. I was in the hallway when I caught the faint sound of their scratching. The study door creaked open. I ran to my father. He slammed the door shut, locking it with his key. He was angry. His computer was in there.

After a few days he got used to not using the study. He seemed bored though. Most days he spent on the couch, he didn’t laugh as much anymore. Meanwhile I started aiding mum around the house, like dusting the shelves. I also helped in the kitchen. I was peeling potatoes for the chicken casserole when I joked that they would take over the kitchen next. Mum laughed but her face quickly turned serious again. I didn’t say any more on the matter.

As it turned out, two weeks later, they did take the kitchen. Mum wasn’t in there at the time, thank God.

“What are we going to eat, Darron?” she said, looking down at her shoes.

“Take-away!” I interjected.

My father had looked up from the telly, “nice try.” He turned the volume down and scratched his stubbly beard. “We’ll think of something, love,” he assured her, but I could tell from my mother’s expression that his words weren’t encouraging.

But we survived. Mum borrowed one of those little, round barbeques from the neighbours, and we set it up in the backyard. Dad even peeled himself off the couch to cook the sausages. When we ate in the dining room the sound of scraping of cutlery on ceramic plates echoed in the large room. We sat at the dining table, four evenly placed chairs around it and an old family picture sitting in a dusty frame hung on the wall, a reminder of our four smiling faces. We chewed our overcooked steak and the peas that inched into the gaps of our teeth as we discussed the familiar small talk of neighbourhood gossip.

I remember very clearly the day we couldn’t enter the dining room anymore. The lawn mower had woken me from a long sleep filled with claustrophobic dreams. I stumbled down

the hallway in my dressing gown, last night’s glass of water in hand. Mum had told me to set the table. With a stack of plates in my arms, I walked groggily to the dining room. I reached out to open the door but halting when I heard murmurs from inside. I never liked the dining room anyway. The single light that hung from a thin wire above the table stuffed the room with too many shadows. Dad brought the key and one more door was safely locked.

The next time they claimed more space was during summer holidays. Mum wanted me to hang washing with her, but I was too short to reach the clothesline. Sometimes I watch her, but not often. She always screeched at me for leaving my shirts inside out. I spent most of that holiday in my room. The days had felt long, stretching out like a tight canvas. My room faced the sun; heated up quickly and by mid-morning was unbearable. I would feel like one of Mum’s roast potatoes, baking in an oven. So, when they took it, I didn’t mind that much.

It was weird at first, sleeping on the floor of Mum and Dad’s bedroom. On the nights that dad never made it back from the sofa, mum let me sleep in the bed with her. Some nights, when it was too hot and sticky to sleep, I stayed up later than usual, listened to mum sobbing. I also started to wag school. I don’t know why; school wasn’t that bad, I guess. I just didn’t care anymore. The school phoned my parents, but mum was out grocery shopping and dad didn’t leave the loungeroom until they took it over. We were having dinner when it happened. My parents made me stay in the hallway whilst they argued in the bedroom. I remember dad was really screaming and that’s when I sensed something skitter across the sun-bleached floorboards at the other end of the hall. I’d been frozen, unable to move my legs. Maybe it was nothing, but too often it wasn’t nothing.

Somehow sound managed escaped my throat, “Dad!”

Dad sprinted to me, grabbed my arm, then guided us back to the bedroom. Dad instructed mum and I to brace ourselves against the door. We did. I remember mum shaking against my arm. Dad dragged the old bookshelf from the other side of the room and leaned it against the door before he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Come on,” Dad frantically urged as he pulled us towards the window. A loud scrape filled the air as Dad forced it open, like a band aid being ripped off. My parents picked me up and threw me out onto the prickle filled lawn. I glanced back to see Mum and Dad plummet to the ground next to me, their eyes round and wide.

But we’d left the window open?