Emily Winslow - The Whole World

It came out to him what I’d been thinking, and he talked me down like a man. It all deflated out of me. I hadn’t been brave, I’d been idiotic. I’d never felt so ashamed in all my life.

Mum sat on my bed but I wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t try to make me talk; she kept smoothing the covers. Eventually she told me about my uncle and how someone dying was the worst thing in the world. She told me that I’d been brave and good to try to protect her, and Marie, and Lion. She thanked me.

She told me I could have anything I wanted for lunch. I asked for a cherry lollipop and a butter sandwich. She offered to tuck my soft toys in with me, but I felt too grown up for that, suddenly. I felt heroic.

There was no one to bring me lollipops here. It was puerile to have come. I got up and readied to re-scale the fence.

My leap back onto it knocked over my bike on the other side. I hung there off the ground, in a staring match with my bike’s headlamp. It wouldn’t have enough charge to get me home. It couldn’t even get me back to the last pub I’d passed. I had to wait for daylight.

I got down off the fence and turned to face the building. It was bigger than I remembered. My memories hadn’t exaggerated; if anything, they’d minimized the length of the drive. By the end of walking it, the door couldn’t shock me. Its immensity was inevitable.

I poked my key at it, but the lock had been changed. It was smaller, for a modern key. This key she’d given me was large and old-fashioned.

The rain intensified into cold stabs against my shoulders and scalp. I shivered and followed the perimeter.

There were two more doors on that part of the house, both with new, small-holed locks. I kept on. The house was massive. I felt like the bricks were multiplying to keep ahead of me. I jogged, half believing I really did have to outrun them. I didn’t slow down until I got ’round the corner.

Around the back at last were the remains of the original house, much older than the impressive, decorative front that had been stuck onto it. This solid block had been adapted into a grand kitchen wing, at least it had been planned to be used that way.

It had its own door, which predated the rest. The key fitted and turned.

The door opened outward. As soon as I swung it toward me, beeping emitted from a box on the inside left wall, echoed by distant beeping elsewhere inside. Really, I didn’t know if the house was occupied or not, and, if so, whether it was still owned by Lesley. I leaned in, not technically entering, to press the glowing green number keys in the order she’d told me five years ago. The noise persisted until I pushed in the largest button, an “enter” rectangle. The beeps cut off, leaving only the loud hum of the now pounding rain. The house must still be Lesley’s. I leaned into the blackness inside, giving a few seconds for a dog or person to come investigate.

When nothing happened, I put my foot onto an old stone block, the step down to the original floor. At first I felt it was a hollow under my foot, smooth from centuries of use, wobbling me. I sought to steady myself with my left leg, planting it down hard, alongside my right. But it too wobbled and then swung out forward. My first foot pushed sideways, sliding behind and under my other leg, stretching them past each other into a horrible right angle.

Cheap plates. Lesley had rigged the one unmodernised door by putting actual dinner plates on the slippery step below it, as a bit of extra homemade security for the old door. Whether this was a Victorian method of security or one of Lesley’s own invention, it had served its purpose.

One plate spun and the other shattered. My right hand plunged down onto another plate, which sent my upper body falling. I ended up lying on the floor along the step, my legs blessedly together again, with a conk on my head from the corner of the stone and a sharp pain in my left ankle.

I lay there for a while, until the cold blowing in from outside and the cold coming up through the stone floor pushed through my daze. I hauled myself up to sitting. Pressure on my left foot caused a starry burst of agony around my ankle.

The weather had gathered itself into a temper. I managed to close the kitchen door by hopping up and out on my right foot. Bringing the door back with me was harder, necessitating a hop back onto the slippery concave stone, which, even empty of plates, was slick. I fell again and this time bashed my hip.

“Shit!” I said out loud. “Bloody hell.”

The thermostat didn’t respond to my nudging, but the heat was at least minimally on, I would guess to keep pipes from freezing. I was sceptical that the tap water was potable, but there were two long-dry glasses in the sink, so I took a chance that I wasn’t the first to drink it. The pantry had a few long-life foods. It was obvious Lesley stayed here only occasionally, probably to monitor progress on the outbuildings or as a pied-à-terre. Telephone service was not yet connected.

My right foot started to swell. It too must have been hurt, but, in comparison to the horrid pain on the left, I hadn’t felt it. I wrapped myself in a coarse blanket folded near the door; it was probably meant as a mat for wiping muddy feet when the place was occupied. I only needed, I was sure, to get through the night.

The utilitarian gates were convincing evidence that Dovecote was not yet finished. The rain would stop and the builders would return. Surely.

The stone floor in the kitchen would only chill me worse, so I crawled out into the hall beyond. I reached up to press the button on the switchplate by the door. A lamp hanging from a bulky chain glowed a sallow yellow in response. I pressed the second button. The room beyond suddenly dazzled-hundreds of pinpoint stars shone from the ceiling onto a wooden table near twenty feet long.

I shuffled into the dining room on my knees, staring up. Even with the enormous table, the room felt vast. There were no chairs yet, no sideboards. Just space. I leaned back against a wood-panelled wall to marvel. Had she put in constellations? Or was the patterning random: space observed from another galaxy entirely?

The door to the hall fell shut, crack! My arms flung out in surprise, to steady myself. And my left hand recoiled from a sharp point.

More than a dozen sets of antlers were piled in this corner, some of them huge, and my disturbance sent them toppling toward me. One pair of spirals fell into my lap. They were monstrous up close.

Marks high on the walls showed where they all had once been displayed. Of course Lesley would have taken them down. She’d never tolerate anything along the lines of hunting or taxidermy.

I pushed them away, with a horrible clatter, and backed toward the now-closed door, sliding on my bum. Obviously, I’d nudged the door when I’d entered, that’s all. For some reason I needed to open it again. It seemed important to confirm that the hall was still on the other side of it.

There it was: hall, stairs, yellow light from the hanging lamp.

A tiny marble rolled out from under the tangle of antlers, past me and out the door.

There must be a stuffed creature there too, now one-eyed. I didn’t check.

There was no rug, but the floor here was wood, an improvement over cold stone. I crawled underneath the banquet table, as if it were a tent. Caught up in a figment of camping, and reduced even in my fantasies to mere expedience, I wished for a rock on which to lay my head.

I spread the blanket from the kitchen over me, and stacked my hands to form a pillow. The fibre-optic stars above twinkled mechanically, alternating between blue and white. In my mind, one-eyed owls hooted from antler-sprouting trees. I slept.

I woke the next day hungover. Rain streaked the tall, bare windows, adding a further filter to the daylight which was having enough trouble getting through the persistent layer of cloud. I could still make out the ceiling stars, but they had little effect without the contrast of full darkness. The aggregate of antlers was, of course, in exactly the messy pile in which I’d left it. My relief that they hadn’t organised themselves overnight was absurd.