Mr Scarecrow

 There was silence in the house.  Halibut — a stupid name, given to him by stupid parents — stood in the entrance hall, listening for any sound at all.  There was a steep wooden flight of stairs in front of him, and a narrow hallway ran past it to a closed, green-painted door at the end.  Unusually for houses of this build there were no other doors off the hallway, but the recesses where they had been, now bricked up and wallpapered over, remained.  They formed odd niches and someone had stood chipped stone plinths in each one.  Atop the closest was a pair of scuffed brown leather shoes and even though James had been wearing blue shoes Halibut got a sense of dread just from looking at them.

The silence dragged on until his own breathing seemed loud and when he held his breath, the pounding of blood in his ears seemed to deafen him to all other noises.  He tensed, realising that he was either alone in the house, or whoever else was there was better at waiting than he was, and took a step towards the brown shoes.

Underfoot a floor-board creaked.  He stopped immediately and started listening again.  The house was supposed to be empty, but the shoes on the plinth also suggested that it hadn’t been empty all that long ago.  Would the creak be interpreted as the house settling by anyone here, or would they come and investigate.  He felt his heart thump in his chest, almost unpleasantly hard, and wished that he were braver.

The floor was brown and bare and looked as though it had never been carpeted.  There was just on it, but not enough for him to look for footprints — not that he’d even thought about that, he realised.  The wallpaper was white with a faint yellow pattern on it; where the sunlight through the window to the side of the door struck it it glimmered, but he couldn’t make the pattern out.  Yellow on white seemed like a poor-contrast choice.

He made himself take another step.  The floor remained silent now, and he reached the plinth without any more creaks or groans or worrying noises.

The plinth was rough sandstone bricks piled up in a rectangular column with a  larger red tile on top.  He thought it might have been a paving slab before its current job.  The edges were slightly discoloured, in some places paler and in some places darker, as though plants had grown around it and been peeled away.  The shoes were neatly placed side by side.

He picked one up and looked inside it, pulling the tongue up to get a better look.  He found the size — European 38 — printed in tiny gold letters that were barely worn away.  He turned the shoe over again, looking at it more carefully now, and saw that while the uppers were scuffed the sole looked almost new and the laces were still stiff with disuse.  James wore a European 41 though, so they couldn’t be his.

Halibut set the shoe back down and the plinth grated for a second.  He started, stepping back, and the plinth, as though freed by his movement, started to turn on top of the pillar of bricks.  The grating of stone against stone seemed painfully loud in the silence and he instinctively retreated again until he was back by the door, facing the stairs and staring at the plinth.  It stopped turning after it had moved through ninety degrees.

“Hey mister,” said a voice and he started so violently that his leg jerked and he almost fell over.  He stumbled, throwing out a hand and catching himself against the door.  “You ok, mister?”

The voice seemed to be coming from above him and when he looked at the stairs he saw a young boy, perhaps nine or ten, standing at the top.  He looked at the boy’s feet next, and was unsurprised to see that he was wearing only socks.

“I’m fine,” he said.  His voice was firm and calm and didn’t indicate that he was clenching as hard as possible to avoid wetting himself.  “I just wasn’t expecting to see… a ghost.”

The boy took a step down the stairs and there was a creak as he did so.  “I’m not a ghost, mister.  Why’d you want to call me names like that?”

“You’re a ghost,” said Halibut.  Everyone knew that the kids that came into this house never left.  The Scarecrow saw to that.  “Everyone knows the kids in this house are ghosts.”

“You’re mean, mister,” said the boy, taking another step down the stairs.  His shadow seemed to be growing longer as he did, but Halibut knew that the light was coming in the wrong direction for that shadow to be real.  He reached behind him for the door handle.  His fingers skittered across painted wood for far too long, then found the satisfying coldness of the iron handle.  “Mr Scarecrow wouldn’t let you say things like that if he was here.”

“He’s not at home?”  Halibut’s heart jumped and he fought to control his excitement.  Perhaps he had arrived before the Scarecrow; if James wasn’t here yet then there might still be a way to save him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”  The boy stuck his tongue out at Halibut and took another step.  The staircase seemed to groan under the weight, even though Halibut was sure that a ghost should be weightless.

“You just said he wasn’t,” said Halibut.

“So you’re deaf as well as stupid?”  The boy sounded more adult now and Halibut realised that he’d grown taller too.  It was as though he was aging as he descended the stairs.  Halibut gripped the door handle tightly and wondered if he’d know when it was time to run.

“I just came looking for a pair of shoes,” said Halibut.  “Looks like you’ve not found them though.”

“There are shoes right there,” said the boy.  His voice deepened suddenly as though breaking and he took another step down.  There were, Halibut counted, only four steps left.  Unless the boy jumped down the rest.  “You were looking at them, weren’t you?  You must be really stupid.”

Halibut pulled on the door handle deciding that it was time to get out.  The door didn’t move.

“Doors have locks, you know,” said the boy.  He stepped down again and he no longer looked like a young boy at all: now he was a man in his early twenties and looked like he worked out regularly.  Halibut tugged on the door again, hoping it was just stuck, but he could hear a rattle behind him that might just be a lock jiggling against the doorframe.  The sense of dread from earlier returned like night falling and seemed to seize him a freezing cold grip.

“Well, would you look at that,” said the figure on the staircase casually.  He stepped down the last two steps as one.  “Looks like Mr Scarecrow is at home, after all.  Why don’t you say hello to me, Halibut?”