A loud scream echoed through the crumbling building, the force of the sound bringing down the weakened walls, the roof crashing through the tumbling shell in a choking mushroom of dust.
Epilogue
Catherine Phelps tooted the Range Rover’s horn as she pulled into the gravelled driveway. The front door of the house opened immediately, her husband, Dan, waving at the occupants of the car - his wife and their four year old daughter, Ashlee waving back enthusiastically.
Neither Catherine nor Ashlee had seen the house before, other than in photographs. Dan, a builder by trade had bought it at auction – a surprise present for the couple’s sixth wedding anniversary. The property had been little more than a shell and he had purchased it for peanuts with the idea of spending a couple of years completely renovating the place.
In order to maintain the element of surprise, he had been adamant that his wife was not to visit the house until it was finished, and, up until that morning, she hadn’t even known where it was located. Her entire sum of knowledge regarding the property consisted of the exterior and interior photographs that Dan had snapped before any work had been undertaken - her only contribution to the project, choosing kitchen and bathroom designs from the stack of glossy brochures her husband had brought her.
Dan beamed as he watched his wife unbuckle their daughter from her car seat. He was sure they were going to love their new home. They should have been seeing it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but he’d hit a last minute snag in Ashlee’s playroom. A number of the floor boards were rotten and it had taken several days to track down replacements of the same size and age that would blend in. Luckily, he had found some at a reclamation yard forty miles away that were a perfect match, although, one of the boards, with two dark knots like eyes, was creaking a bit in spite of Dan’s best efforts to fix it.
“Daddy!” Ashlee ran up the drive to greet her father, Dan kneeling and opening his arms to hug her as she leapt towards him. He stood back up, the little girl hanging around his neck, and kissed his wife as she reached the front door.
“So?” Dan’s face was lit with expectation, “What do you think?”
Catherine recalled the exterior photo’s she had seen and mentally compared them to the building that now stood in front of her with its new roof tiles, modern double-glazing and freshly rendered walls.
“It looks amazing, babe.”
She stepped through the front door, “Now, where’s my new kitchen?”
Dan chuckled, “I’ll give you the grand tour in a minute, but first, I think we should let this little one go and see her playroom…”
Ashlee’s eyes lit up, “A playroom? Just for me?”
“That’s right, sweetheart. A room for all your toys and paints and books. Come on, let’s go upstairs and take a look.”
Dan led the way, carrying Ashlee up the staircase, Catherine following behind running her fingers admiringly over the ornate, varnished bannister.
“I’ve not bothered with carpet in the playroom, babe – I figured it’ll be much easier to mop up paint spills from the bare floorboards.”
Catherine nodded her agreement, thinking of the countless times she’d had to scrub the carpets in their old home to clean up paint, glue and ground-in play-dough.
Putting Ashlee down at the top of the stairs, Dan pointed to the open door at the far end of the landing, the bright sunlight shining through the window giving it a glowing, warm ambience. The little girl ran excitedly towards the light, Catherine immediately spotting a shoelace flapping from her left foot.
“Slow down, sweetheart – your lace in undone, you’ll-“
Her warning was cut short as the four year old tripped, falling face first to the wooden floor, her cries immediately filling the empty playroom.
Catherine ran to her daughter, picking her up gently. “Come here, sweetheart, let mummy take a look...oh no!”
Blood was pouring from Ashlee’s nose, a puddle left on the knotty floorboard where her face had impacted.
She turned to her husband, “Looks like you’ve got your first spill to mop up, babe. Where can I clean her up?”
Dan led them into the bathroom.
“This is your fault, Daniel Phelps,” joked Catherine as she carried her bawling daughter across the landing, trying not to drip blood on the new carpet, “you and your crappy nosebleed genes.”
Dan frowned. It was true - the Phelps’s had always been prone to nosebleeds, just the slightest knock releasing a red tide from the nostrils.
As his wife sat on the toilet seat, tipping Ashlee’s head back and pressing a wad of tissue over her nose, Dan pulled several sheets of toilet paper from the roll and headed back to the playroom to clean up the floor.
Looking around the bare room, tissue at the ready, he couldn’t see a spot of blood anywhere.
“Cath? Whereabouts is this blood?”
“In the middle of the room, where she fell. Most of it was on a floorboard with two dark knots.”
Dan looked again – the floor was spotless, the boards bone dry.
Perhaps Catherine had imagined it, he mused.
The seed of a headache was beginning to bloom and he massaged his temples as he spotted a chisel he’d left on the windowsill. He picked the tool up, intending to put it safely out of harm’s way – the chisel was razor-sharp and they didn’t need any more accidents today.
As he headed back to the bathroom to check on Ashlee, a voice echoed through the house, Dan’s
