Chapter 5 The Locked Room (from Rats)
1489 Words
It happened in Suffolk, near the coast. There is a tall, red house
there, built in about 1770, perhaps. It has a small, untidy garden
behind it and from the front windows you can see the sea. Tall,
dark trees stand around this lonely house. Near the front door
there is a sign which shows that this was once a public house,
where travellers could stop to eat and sleep.
One fine spring day, a young Cambridge University student
called Thomson arrived at this house. He wanted to spend some
time in a quiet and pleasant place where he could read and study.
No one else was staying there at the time and Mr and Mrs Betts,
who managed the house, welcomed him and made him feel very
comfortable. They gave him a large room on the first floor with a
good view from the window. He spent his days very calmly and
quietly Every morning he worked, he walked in the country in
the afternoon, and he usually had a drink with some of the local
people in the bar in the evening before going to bed. He was
very happy to continue his life like this for as long as possible. He
planned to stay for a whole month.
One afternoon, Thomson walked along a different road from
the usual one and in the distance he saw a large white object. He
walked towards it and discovered that it was a large square stone
with a square hole in the middle. He examined the stone, then he
looked at the view for a moment - the sea, the churches in the
distance, the windows of one or two houses shining here and
there in the sun - and he continued his walk.
That evening in the bar, he asked why the white stone was
there. ‘It’s been there for a very long time, since before any of us
were born, in fact,’ said Mr Betts‘People used to say that it brought bad luck ... that it was
unlucky for fishing,’ said another man.
‘Why?’ asked Thomson, but the people in the bar became
silent and clearly didn’t want to talk about the stone any more.
Thomson was puzzled.
A few days later, he decided to stay at home to study in the
afternoon. He didn’t feel like going out for a walk, but at about
three o’clock he needed a break. He decided to spend five
minutes looking at the other rooms on his floor of the house -
he was interested to know what they were like. He got up and
went quietly out of his room, into the corridor. Nobody else was
at home. ‘They are all probably at market today,’ he thought. The
house was still and silent, except for the flies. The sun was shining
and it was very hot. He went into the three rooms near his own
bedroom; each one was pretty and clean. Then he tried the door
of the south-west room, but found that it was locked. This made
Thomson want to know why it was locked and what was inside
it, and he took the keys of all the other doors on the floor to try
to open it. He finally succeeded, the door opened, he went in and
looked around him.
The room had two windows looking south and west, so it was
very bright and hot. There were no carpets and no pictures, only
a bed, alone in the corner. It was not a very interesting room, but
suddenly ... Thomson turned and ran out of the room, closing
the door behind him noisily.
‘Someone was in there, in the bed!’ he almost shouted. There
were covers over the whole body on the bed, but it was not dead,
because it moved. He was not dreaming, Thomson knew: this was
the middle of a bright, sunny day, after all. He didn’t know what
to do.
First, of course, he had to lock the door again but, before he
did this, he listened. Everything was silent inside the room. He
put the key into the lock and turned it as quietly as he could, buthe still made some noise. Suddenly he stopped: someone was
walking towards the door! He turned and ran along the corridor
to his room, closed the door and locked it behind him as fast as
he could. He waited and listened. ‘Perhaps this person can walk
through doors and walls?’ he whispered to himself. Nothing
happened.
‘Now what?’ he thought. His first idea was to leave the
house as soon as he could, but if he changed his plans, Mr and
Mrs Betts would know that something was wrong. Also, if they
already knew about the person in the locked room but they
still lived in the house, then there was surely nothing for him
to be afraid of. Maybe it would be better to stay and say
nothing. This was the easiest thing to do. Thomson stayed there
for another week and, although he never went near the door
again, he often stopped in the corridor and listened, but there
was only silence. He didn’t ask anyone in the village about the
locked room because he was too afraid, but near the end of
the week he started to think more and more about the person
in the locked room and he eventually decided to find out more
before he left. He made a plan - he would leave on the four
o’clock train the next day and, while the horse waited outside
with his bags, he would go upstairs and take one last, quick
look into the room.
This is what happened. He paid Mr Betts, put the bags on
the horse, thanked Mrs Betts and said, ‘I’ll just take a last look
upstairs to be sure that I have all my things.’ He then ran up the
stairs and opened the door to the room as quietly as possible.
He almost laughed. ‘It’s not a real person at all. How silly of me!
It’s just a pile of old clothes,’ he thought. He turned to go, but
suddenly something moved behind him. He turned quickly and
saw the pile of old clothes walking towards him, with a knife
stuck into the front of its jacket and dried blood all down
its shirt. He pulled open the door and rushed out of the room and down the stairs. Then he fell and everything went black.
When he opened his eyes. Mr Betts was standing over him
with a strong drink in a glass. He looked annoyed. ‘You shouldn’t
have done that, Mr Thomson, sir. It was a stupid thing to do after
we’ve been so good to you. Why did you want to look in that
room? Nobody will want to stay in this house any more if you
tell people what you’ve seen,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to know, that’s all.’ said Thomson. ‘I
won’t tell anyone, I promise.’ So, before he left, Mr and Mrs Betts
told him what they knew.
‘People say that a rich gentleman lived here a long time ago.
One evening, he was out walking in the village, when a group of
men attacked him. They wanted to steal his money. They held
him down on that big, white stone which you saw when you
were out walking the other day and they killed him with a knife.
Then they threw his body into the sea. Later some people from
the village moved the stone away from the village; they said the
fish along this part of the coast would not come anywhere near
it. The fishermen were not catching anything, you see. The
people who lived in this house before us told us to lock that
bedroom but to leave the bed in it. because the gentleman’s
ghost might want to come back and sleep in the house again.
You’re the first person to see him since we’ve been here. He’s
never been a problem to us. But please don’t tell anyone.’ they
repeated. ‘We don’t want people talking about ghosts in this
house.’
For many years, Thomson didn’t say a word to anyone about
what happened in the Betts’s house in Suffolk, and I only know
his story because, years later, when he came to stay with my
family, I was the person who showed him to his bedroom. When
we reached the bedroom door, he opened it very loudly and
stopped outside. He stood there for a minute and carefully
inspected every corner of the room before he went in. Then heremembered that I was standing there and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, my
dear, but something very odd happened to me once.’
And he told me the story I have just told you.
- Writer
