A short story about the mystery of things.
Once there was a man, not yet old, who lived in a lovely home filled with books and pictures and music. And every night he sat and listened to music while he read. Then, one night, he felt quite out of sorts, so he sat in his book-filled room with its colourful paintings in silence. After a while, he began to hear a strange sound, as if he could hear the next-door neighbours softly whispering or like something caught behind a painting on the wall. Like a fly, a very small fly, a little gnat perhaps or a miniature bee. He took the painting off the wall, but there was nothing there. He listened carefully again. Yes, there was something, but now it seemed to be coming from somewhere behind the books.
Determined to get to the bottom of it, the man took all the books down and piled them up in the hallway. But it wasn’t behind the books. He decided the only thing to do was to clear the room completely. But before he did, he listened again, and this time he listened so deeply that all he did was listen. At last, the sound came again, and it was like the faintest voice imaginable. But it wasn’t his neighbours. He was sure of that now.
Let me in, it said. Let me in.
Immediately, the man cleared the room of everything, all the records, the paintings, the furniture, the rugs. Everything. Now he could hear it more clearly than ever.
Let me in. And then he heard his name.
It seemed to be coming from near the floor, so the man lay down fully on the bare boards, and there it was. The smallest ball of light no bigger than a minute mote of dust caught in a sunbeam. And there he lay all night with this glowing golden ball of tiny dust-light.
Weeks went by and some of his neighbours started to realise that they hadn’t seen the man for some time. Eventually, one of them went to the man’s door and knocked.
Hello? said the neighbour through the letterbox. Are you there?
And through the letterbox, the neighbour could see post piled up in the hallway, stacks of books and paintings and records.
Are you there? said the neighbour again, worried by this time and thinking the worst.
To the neighbour’s surprise, the man was suddenly there, opening the door and saying hello in a voice that suggested he was not entirely sure why his neighbour was kneeling on his doorstep and looking through his letterbox. Can I help you?
But the man let his neighbour in, apologising for the state of the place, what with all the books everywhere and the kitchen full of furniture.
Doing a bit of DIY are we? said the neighbour, relieved to be making sense of the situation. Spot of decorating?
Oh no, not at all, said the man, I’ve cleared things away to…well, let me show you. And he took his neighbour into the lounge and showed him the tiny ball of light hovering above the floor of the lounge.
This is what made everything, said the man with a gesture that took in the lounge, the house, the street, the country and the entire cosmos.
The neighbour immediately became deeply anxious. The man had clearly gone mad. Then he remembered reading in the newspaper that you shouldn’t challenge the ideas of the mentally ill, so he went along with the man to humour him until he could get out and ask someone what he should do.
Fortunately for him, there was a knock at the open front door and another neighbour called out, Hello, can we come in?
Oh yes, said the first neighbour, so relieved to have some support that he forgot it was not his place to invite people into the man’s house. We’re in here.
And then the second neighbour came into the lounge with her young daughter, and the man showed them the softly gleaming ball of shining dust-speck. The second neighbour looked, but couldn’t see what on earth the man was going on about. The child looked too and said that she had seen something like it at her grandmother’s house. At that, though, her mother took her by the arm and said in a strange voice that it was time they got going, and she gave the first neighbour a peculiar look.
Anyway, to make a short story of it, the neighbours left the house and left the man alone for a while. The second neighbour’s daughter, however, often used to sneak into the garden when her mother wasn’t looking and watch the man lying on the floor. He was smiling. Perhaps it was the streetlights, but the young girl thought that the man was glowing more and more golden every time she went back.
Eventually all the neighbours got together and decided that enough was enough. There were children to think of, so they phoned the police. The police knocked firmly at first, but then they forced the man’s door open. There was no one in the house. The man was never seen again.
After a long time, and using very expensive lawyers, the nephew of the man inherited the house. He immediately put all the paintings, books and furniture back. He even put back the records and the old-fashioned record player. The nephew was a hardworking young man, and he had all kinds of plans, including getting married the following year. His fiancée loved the house very much; she could see them being very happy there. But for now, the nephew lived there happily on his own.
He often worked late, and it was relaxing to come home to a nice house, make some food, pour a big glass of wine and watch a film or something. He often fell asleep in front of the TV or in the middle of replying to a work email on his laptop. But then, sometimes, in the dead of night, his neighbours would wake him. Perhaps they were having a bit of a party: Get me gin, he might just about make out coming through the wall. Or Set to spin, if they were doing some washing. But most of all, one of them had stayed out late and forgotten to take a key.
Let me in, they would whisper in that night-time, quiet-loud voice. Let me in.
They were good neighbours, so the nephew didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but it really was annoying to be woken from sleep in the small hours, and one night he nearly lost it completely and went around there.
Get another bloody key, why don’t you? Keep it under a bloody flowerpot or something, he would have said if he had gone.
But he didn’t go, and it was probably for the best, because it seems that his neighbours came to same conclusion about the key and must have got a spare one cut.
Now the nephew lived in the man’s house with his wife and children very happily. And he didn’t hear a thing from his neighbours for another 40 years or more.
The End