Where the Heart is?

‘On  the wrong side of the tracks ‘ was what came to his mind when Martin looked upwards at the huge granite building looming darkly. The melting snow dripping its trail  groundward through a trio  of rusty satellite dishes making the building look alive, as water dripped from the icicles onto the windowsills. The top floor of this gloomy looking place was to be his new home and a return to his roots ,his first time living alone in a flat for twenty years at least , since the divorce. His marital home had been quite different from this, ‘ a posh house in the outskirts of town’ ,as some of his older relations might have said  in their day. He shivered in the December cold , his choice of a denim jacket in winter had not been the best idea.

He paused momentarily, would he take everything up to the flat, or leave it until tomorrow, hoping that the temperature would rise, and the snow melt away?

There was a bed in the flat and the letting agency had intimated that the heating and electricity was  in  working order. He would sleep there tonight and move everything up in the morning.

           He opened the door and entered the  freezing cold building, the lighting was working, but there was no evidence of anyone else being in, no lights in windows, no sounds of music playing , peoples’ voices or anything, they must be out partying, it was that time of the year.

The stairwell was silent, aye,  like the night, he thought, recalling the famous Christmas carol, and another familiar Yuletide ditty popped unbidden into his psyche, 'Deck the halls with boughs of holly 'tis the season to be jolly,’ or not, he thought. Jolly was not how he felt today.

Once in the flat, he put his keys in his jacket pocket, where he kept his wallet , somehow dislodging a small passport size photograph. It was a pic of Rachel, twenty years ago, when she had longer hair, he had commented that she looked a bit like Beth Gibbons , the singer with the band Portishead . She liked that, as she was a major fan of their music. Martin was a big music fan, and somehow the subject of music would find its insidious way into conversations whether welcome or not, as his opinions were not always shared by others. He remembered meeting Rachel at the office party years ago, and his stuttered bumbling attempts at flirting , which proved to be successful. A raft of recollections from that night surfaced from the deepest recesses of memory, dredged up by the photo . One stood out from the rest, him and Rachel walking uptown in the snow from the hotel the party had taken place, laughing and joking , making their way to one of the many pubs in the city, where others from the office had arranged to meet up. The place was teeming with drunken people, as this was ‘Mad Friday,’ the last Friday before Christmas , when everyone and  their dog went out ‘on the town’ drinking . They saw two older looking  guys, sitting on a wall passing a bottle of wine back and forth and swigging from it, two old guys expensively dressed, in their suits and cashmere overcoats , not winos, or down and outs, but two of their senior managers, steaming drunk, and shouting abuse at passersby ,so much for those who were seen to be respected  in the workplace!

He recalled a lot of things on this day, the first day of his living alone since his time as a student back in the 1990s, when you could drink ten pints of lager without having a hangover, back when it was Blur vs Oasis on the music scene, and Tony Blair was Prime Minister. What was the slogan in his day, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’? today for Martin could things actually get worse? Rachel was a work colleague at first , but the relationship soon blossomed, they had a lot in common;  they were both members of a writing group also. She had indicated that she liked his poetry and got them talking. She wrote poetry too, was published in a recent anthology of local poets.

They appeared at the writing group announcing that they were ‘together,’ and everyone was happy for them . They made a lovely couple, and were two genuinely nice people, it was said.

           Martin looked around the flat. It looked ok, it was not exactly the wrong side of the tracks and would do for now. Bare varnished floorboards, no carpets, or rugs. Storage heaters which were controlled by a timer, just like in his student flat. The furniture was not great: a battered leather armchair, a small table, somewhere to put his laptop , he would get round to the collection of horror stories he was writing. His working title for the collection was ‘Before I Become a Ghost.’ He had ten  stories written, which covered  the usual tropes of the genre: ghosts, vampires, hauntings, monsters,  strange occurrences, and general weirdness. They were pretty damn good he thought, and he had received some helpful feedback on various writing websites, and social media pages, so that must count for something, mustn’t it?

There was a cupboard on the landing outside where there was a washing machine, in ‘good working order,’ according to the letting agency. In the bedroom was a single bed, bringing his return to singleton status rudely home. An old chest of drawers, like the one his gran had back in the 1980s prior to her last move to a care home. Hell, there would be old newspapers in each drawer like at  Gran’s house. He opened the first drawer, and was proved right, as he picked up a faded page from the ‘Evening Empress,’ the local rag, from 1974, the headline referenced a murder in a tenement  flat in Blackstock Road, Garrdein,  wasn’t that the street he was on? His mind must be working overtime, what with the emotions of the day kicking around in his head. He would sleep here, the bedding was clean, and the heating worked well, so he would not be freezing, at least. In his days as a student, he would come staggering , roaring drunk, at all hours of the night and early morning, banging the doors, and sleeping in his clothes including his ex-army greatcoat, which was great to keep out the cold of the Garrdein winter, when you couldn’t afford to heat the place, not as a ‘poor student’, as he thought of himself at the time.

       On his first night, he slept well, until the noises awoke him in the early hours!

How could there be noises in an empty tenement? He had heard the expressions that ‘walls have ears,’ and ‘home is where the heart is,’ could that really be a thing, that the building was actually a living being? He dismissed the noises as his imagination working overtime, . Okay , it was a strange flat, a new place to him, he still had to familiarise himself with its sounds, the noise of old pipes in the walls, heating systems protesting against the cold, and neighbours if there were any. He slept fitfully that night, on account of the hum of the storage heaters and his  dream recollections of Rachel in recent months. Her admission that she was having an affair with Bob from the Writers Group was a real kick in the teeth for Martin. He had never liked Bob with his smug critiques of others’ writing in the group, he always had the right answer, for everything, even though it was his phone that did all the work, rather than his powers of thought. Bob was ten years younger than Martin, and his critiques of Martin’s writing, had always been waspish. He finally got to sleep , around 3am, with a positive thought about the following day, he would start a new story, the newspaper cutting in the drawer had given him an idea.

      Morning came, and the weather was still the same. He looked out the back window, into a winter wonderland, not one he really wanted to be walking around in today. He would stay in and work on this new story , about the murder in 1974 from the newspaper. He searched some websites online and discovered that this very flat was the one,  where the murder had taken place. 52 Blackstock Road, Garrdein.Wow, this was interesting- it would get him noticed in the literary world, he could write a true crime book about it! The prospect was exciting, like a new stroke of luck coming his way.

That would really show Rachel and Bob if his writing entered the bestsellers lists!

He would ditch the ghost story anthology meantime and try his luck in the true crime arena.

He searched the local press websites, the Evening Empress archive site proved fruitful , with plenty of detail about what happened in 1974. A local 16-year-old, Ruth Taylor, was murdered by her stepfather in the flat, the neighbours had raised the alarm after having heard a commotion on the stairwell during the night . Ruth Taylor’s photograph was included along with the headline ‘On the Other Side of the Tracks’ referring to her stepfather’s nefarious criminal activities. It was Martin’s imagination , but Ruth Taylor looked more than a little like Rachel. He was overthinking again, too much on his mind. In the background of Ruth’s picture, taken out in the street, the building looming darkly, the guardian of secrets of those who had lived and died  there over the dim and distant years. Martin changed his mind and  decided on a walk around the environs in the afternoon. A walk would do him good, wonders for his well-being and all that, as his doctor said,  he would reflect on  the last few days, his writing projects, and his eventual return to work after his being signed off with stress and anxiety.

      Night descended once again, the days being shorter in winter. He returned to the flat, and it was still  quiet, far too quiet. No sign of neighbours, away for Christmas then?

He made himself a coffee and switched on the radio. Martin was someone who still listened to the radio , a small plastic Logik which he preferred over listening to music on any digital device. Radio 6 played a song by Portishead, which made him switch channels to Classic FM where ‘Essential Relaxing Classics’, would be better for him today. He made himself a couple of sandwiches, and sat down on the old leather armchair, it was really comfortable, and actually smelled ancient , musty. How old was, it Fifty years old? The leather on its arms was cracked , but the cushions were soft and he felt that he could easily fall sleep in the chair .

He dozed off after a while, and the images began to flood his mind: a girl who looked like a younger version of Rachel running out of the flat, pursued by an unkempt looking man, holding a revolver. There was the sound of screaming and gunshots coming from downstairs, echoes in the stairwell, doors opening, people shouting,

Shaken, he woke  up to find a picture of the girl on the floor in front of the chair,  a school photo, and Rachel, albeit a younger version stared back at him. On the back of the pic was written in ballpoint pen ‘Ruth – 1974’.

He heard a pounding  heartbeat in the place,  not his heartbeat though, the heartbeat of the house, as Home is after all where the heart is.

The house had given up its latest ghost.

Martin screamed.