In the beginning I thought the noise was coming from the pipes.
In the beginning I was in control.
49 Carver Avenue wasn’t much of a house, but it was our house. Our first place of our own, finally a chance to move out from my folks and to feel that I really could support my family with my ‘silly little drawings’ as my Dad liked to refer to them.
Jayne and I had met at university. I was on an art course and she was studying for an English Lit degree. I dropped out in my second year, I had barely scrapped through the first year and was finding it increasingly difficult to stay interested in the topics, then I got an offer at a small time comic house as an inker and that made the decision for me. The pay was crap but it was a step on the ladder. Jayne completed her degree, gaining a first, and was in the process of applying for jobs when she discovered she was pregnant. We married on Rosie’s first birthday.
We spent the best part of three years living in the spare room of my parent’s house and in all that time Jayne never once complained and never once suggested I get a regular job, she knew comics were my passion and more importantly knew that I had talent. Then out of the blue I got a call from an old friend at Vertigo asking if I’d be lead artist on a new comic they were doing based on a Neil Gaiman novel. I had finally made it.
Jayne and Rosie loved the house from the moment they saw it, I thought it needed a lot of work. However, as Jayne was quick to point out, we weren’t likely to find another house of its size within our meagre budget and it did seem like a nice neighbourhood. We offered five thousand less than the asking price by way of an opening offer and were amazed when it was accepted immediately; apparently the seller had inherited the property and wanted a quick sale.
In order to even move in we first had to replace all the windows and the front door, the former had all been smashed over the years and were boarded with heavy grade plywood and the latter hung from its hinges. The money we had saved on the purchase came in handy for these initial works and several other things that needed urgent attention. The rest of the renovation became Jayne’s project and she worked hard over the next eighteen months doing as much as the shoe-string budget my meagre income allowed, to turn the house into a home. Honestly you wouldn’t have believed it was the same house.
A local lad by the name of Jamie Forrest, polite and well mannered, for a fifteen year old in this day and age those are rare qualities if you ask me, used to call in some days on his way home from school to see how Jayne was progressing with the renovations. He appeared to have a fondness for the place and was delighted to see us doing the old house up. He even started to come by on weekends to help us with the work, refusing any payment other than a glass of milk and a Kit-Kat or Mars bar.
When it was finally at a level of repair that Jayne was content with we decided to have a housewarming party. Most of our families attended but many of the local people we invited either couldn’t attend or simply failed to reply to our invites. Indeed the only neighbours to attend were Jamie’s parents and the Monroes, a young couple recently moved into number twenty seven.
It was during the party that I first noticed the knocking sound. It was my fourth or fifth tour round the house when I noticed the faint sound, it seemed to be coming from the airing cupboard but I investigated no further and continued to show my guests around. Two days later Jayne and Rosie had gone to Jayne’s moms for the night and I was home alone. I went upstairs for a bath and as I lay there thinking about the latest project I was heading up at work I heard a faint but audible knocking. Tap, tap it went and then silence for a minute or so before again sounding tap, tap. After several instances it began to irritate me so I decided to investigate. Thinking firstly that it may have something to do with the bath taps I tightened them as much as I could. Silence. Then tap, tap again. Now I tightened the taps of both the sink and the bidet. Again there was a period of silence in which my hopes were raised that I had discovered the cause of the irritation only for the grating tap, tap to sound out again. I left the bathroom to get dressed and again heard the noise this time coming from the airing cupboard. I dressed quickly in sweat pants and an Addidas t-shirt and approached the airing cupboard.
When the girls returned home on the Sunday afternoon I had cleared out most of the attic, convinced that the source of the noise lay amongst the rafters. Jayne and Rosie claimed to be unable to hear any odd noises and I had to admit that it had indeed stopped. Rosie kept me company as I stored the boxes back into the attic and we talked about their weekend at granny’s.
It was several days before I heard the noise again but when it returned it seemed both louder and more regular. It was the following Thursday and my work on the forthcoming issue was complete so I left the office at noon and grabbed a bite at the local pub with Chris from ad-sales. I returned home to find the house deserted, Rosie had swimming on Thursday afternoons so I would have the house to my self till six. I decided to do some drawing in my study room. My study was in what would have been the third bedroom if we had more children but we were happy with just our Rosie, and Jayne wanted to start work full time once she was at school. I sat at my drawing board and before I had made my first pencil stroke I heard it. Tap, tap. I sat bolt upright, it was definitely louder this time and appeared to be coming from beneath my feet. I went down to the garage and pulled the dark blue crow-bar down off it’s hook on the wall, went back upstairs and commenced lifting up floorboards in search of the source of the noise. When the girls returned I had worked my way through most of the upstairs. To say Jayne went ballistic would be to understate her rage by about a million percent. Once again I was at a loss as to why they were unable to hear the noise and after issuing forth apology after apology I collected the Paslode nail gun from the garage and commenced the task of fixing the floorboards back in place. By Rosie’s bed time I had done her bedroom, the study and most of the landing and promised to take the next day off to finish the task.
Friday started well enough, we had a nice breakfast together and I waved them off to school. Jayne works Fridays for a local estate agents and I knew I had till at least five to get the house back into shape. Before I knew it the clock was showing one and I had replaced all of the loose floorboards. I decided to treat myself to a greasy fry-up and it was as I was cracking the eggs into the pan that I started to hear the noise again. Tap, tap, this time it was coming from the ground floor of the house. It was definitely coming from the walls, this time I was certain of it. I entered the garage and collected a hammer off the paint spattered work station. I would just make a small hole in the wall and have it repaired before anyone got home. An hour later I had demolished much of the cavity walling between the kitchen and lounge and had made my way upstairs to search the walls there. The noise now seemed to be booming out like a big drum being bashed by an enthusiastic child.
When Jayne and Rosie returned this time the noise carried on. Tap, tap. It was now so loud that it drowned out whatever it was that Jayne was shouting at me. It was then that I realised that the irritating noise was coming from Jayne herself, as she paced up and down the landing shouting at me the noise went with her. I grabbed the nail gun without a seconds hesitation and unloaded nail after nail into the side of her head, her body went limp in my arms before she had chance to utter the smallest of screams. The noise went down several decibels and was now coming from my daughter’s room. I entered to find Rosie sat at her dresser listening to her I-pod, the noise grew louder. Tap, tap and I was certain she was the source of it. I drew close behind her and fired a single nail up into the base of her head, she fell forwards with ear-phones still attached and the noise again went several levels lower.
As I stood in the doorway of Rosie’s room I heard a voice shouting from the front door, I recognised the voice as that of Jamie and proceeded down the stairs. As soon as he saw me he started to talk extremely quickly, something about going to the library to find out about the previous owner of the house and how it turned out the guy had killed his whole family with a hammer and nails. The police had been alerted by a neighbour and discovered the man methodically knocking a six inch nail into the head of his dead wife. I barely heard most of the story as Jamie read it from the print out he held in his hand. The noise had started again, this time louder still. I realised where it was coming from, and raised the nail gun to my head.
In the end there was silence.
In the end I was in control.
Copyright © 2007 by Ross Warren