The Room by JG Welch
	Doleful, I reached for the devil's-head knob. The coal ominous door seemed to creak mysteriously open, as if some oblique messenger had announced my coming. I'm used to it now. I come here often in the course of writing my book, on the fallacy of witchcraft. This was the only place in my entire sixteen-room Moorish home where I could work diligently and uninterrupted. No one... no one would chance coming to the top of the stairs leading to the attic room but me. Often my family scrambled to my lair, rousting me from a sound hibernation. They swore of hearing scratching, thumping noises, coming from this vicinity. I, forever in vain, told them it was probably a mouse or fidgety rat, in search of some tasty morsel, in its hungering haste upending a book from my library shelf directly opposite the door. Or maybe the 'chanted wind spelled those heavy window shutters to bang. Unabated, they would keep sending me to investigate, as indeed I'm doing now. Upon first stepping in, there was a dank cumbersome odor. I always opened the shutters to let in fresh air and even left them open when I finished. But whenever I returned, they were shut, prison tight. Walking gingerly, I turned on the kerosene lamp, which gypsy-flickered casting lifeless voodoo shadows. I crept to the shutters, on the right of the ceiling-to-floor bookshelves, and opened them with mustered strength. It was a strange pentagrammic room. The ceiling, walls, floor measured a perfect square. Most attics were usually more long than wide with triangular arched ceilings. There was a picture on each swamp-gray wall; two showing haggard soldiers, warlocked in mortal, bloody battle. The other two pictures were of overcast wintry scenes with drifts of relentless snow. The snow weighed down anorexic trees on a grim day. The lamp perched bat-like on a hook, exactly over a bolted-down steel chair. Oft-times upon sitting, I launched up immediately as if I had sat on December's nail. The chair's icy feel left me shivering whether I sat six minutes or six hours; it remained morbid cold, death cold. Unearthly, the chair guarded an elephantine, immovable crypt's-table in the center of the room. I scowled at the ancient Vladian floor. It was covered with etchings that appeared to be of tormented, wild crimson-eyed, tailed, almost human figures. They cruelly laughed from grotesque, shark-toothed mouths, which ran from one set of ears, to the other set. I saw no books lying amiss or evidence of any rodents- I had figured as much- nor any mouse holes, for that matter. After snuffing out the lamp's leer, I retreated, pulling roughly at the door. It swung around impertinently, pushing me as much as I was pulling. It slammed, echoing as I started back down winding dungeon's stairs. Almost at the bottom of the stairs, I lurched to a halt. Were those scratching, thumping noises I heard? I raised my foot to make a step and halted in midair. Was that shutters, closing? I smiled behind Salem-black, lidless eyes.
	Copyright © 2006 JG Welch