A New Estate - Crimson Peak

On A Dark Foggy Night at A Quarter to Three - Halloween Special - Part Three

(It's already Halloween here in the old UK when I post this, so I hope everyone enjoys the day of spook whatever you do!)

Raising my knuckles, I take a deep breath before knocking on the door, wondering if he would even hear it from deep inside the house.

As I stepped back and waited for any signs of life behind the wooden block I picked at the stitches on my right wrist, a habit I knew I needed to stop before I accidentally lost a limb somewhere in town.

After a period of too slow time, I deduced that he probably wasn't going to answer and turned to leave, looking over my shoulder with a frown.

For a moment, I thought that I could see Thomas stood at one of the windows on the second floor, staring down at me as I walked away but I pushed that thought to one side and told myself that I was seeing things.

Two long days dragged out and I still hadn't heard anything of him.

It was proving hard to concentrate on anything as my worry kept building, but I told myself not to keep attempting to visit, that he would come to me if or when he was ready.

Late into the third day of me being unable to concentrate on the book I was reading, a knock sounded at the door drew my attention away from the page I was reading for the third time in ten minutes.

Placing the worn bookmark between the pages, I closed the book and set it to one side while removing my glasses, a circumstance of having eyes that weren't your own was that the chances of your eyesight being more than skewed by the reattached nerves was strikingly high, I set those atop the book and then got up to head to the door.

I would have been lying if I said that seeing Thomas on the other side of the door was a surprise, it was rare that other residents came to visit me.

Off the top of my head I could think of three that I had what I could consider a friendship with, but even then we weren't what I would call close.

"Hello," I said in a tone that I hoped came across as calm but friendly.

"Good afternoon, I hope I'm not interrupting."

"No, I was just reading."

"I should have guessed," he laughed, glancing down at the doorstep between us before he cleared his throat, "may I come in?"

"Yes, sure," I nodded and stepped to one side, allowing him in.

As he walked into my hallway, it reminded me of the night that he dug himself out and I brought him home, the night our friendship started.

I pushed the door closed behind me, waiting for the crooked and oddly shaped door to clunk into the frame before moving through the hall and going back to the living room.

"Is there a reason you're visiting?"

"Someone said they saw you outside my home earlier," he explained, sitting down on the nearest chair as I took my spot on the end of my worn couch, "I thought it only polite that I came to see what you wanted."

"I wasn't aware anyone had spotted me."

"That would be no surprise here," he offered a friendly smile, making me think that everything that had happened the other day was water under the bridge.

"You have a point," I nodded, looking at him before sighing loudly, "I came to apologise about how I acted the other day."

"Oh, there's really no need."

"There is, I overreacted and took offense when I shouldn't have."

"But I can understand why, what I said could have been construed that way."