The Haunted Snow Globe (Chapter Four)

Chapter Four

The Mysterious House

   Standing on the doorstep, with crystals of snow sticking like sequins to her hair, Abigail surveyed the white wilderness in front of her. Fear gripped her heart.

   “I don’t understand,” she wailed. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

   The boy was hovering in the hallway behind her. “I tried to warn you,” he shouted above the howl of the wind. “I told you not to go outside, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

   Abigail was shaking her head in disbelief. “But where are the trees and cars and houses?” she cried, peering into the misty, white haze. “Where have all the people gone?”

   “There’s nobody here,” the boy shouted back. “Nobody except you and me.” He touched her gently on the arm. “Abigail, please,” he begged. “Please, come back inside. If you don’t close the door immediately, we’ll both freeze to death in minutes!”  

   Beating her hands against her chest and stamping her feet to warm them, Abigail closed the front door and then followed the boy into the sitting room. Her fingertips were still numb from the cold outside, so the two children sat on the floorboards in front of the fireplace and warmed themselves in the golden glow of the flames.

   The minutes crawled by with a snail-paced slowness. Abigail was thinking furiously. She was trying to rationalise in her head what was happening to her, but her mind was going round in circles.

   She turned to the boy. “So you still don’t remember how you got here?” she asked.  

   The boy shook his head. “Apart from the four-leaf clover and the lucky black cat, I don’t recall anything,” he replied apologetically. “But what about you? Can you remember how you came here?”

   For a very brief moment, Abigail looked confused and she crumpled her brow into a frown. Her mind was a total blank. Had the freezing cold outside numbed her brain as well as her fingertips? 
   Then it came back to her. “There was a snow globe,” she said. “It was a birthday present from my mum and dad. I told them I didn’t like it, but it was beautiful. I think it was an antique. I took the snow globe upstairs to my bedroom and noticed there was a model of a house inside. It looked just like my parents’ house. And there was a boy too. Curiously, he looked a lot like you. Then I gave the snow globe a shake and fell asleep on my bed. When I woke up, a few minutes later, I found myself here.”

   The boy was screwing up his face in concentration. “A snow globe,” he whispered, and gently massaged his left temple with his fingertips. It was as if a memory was beginning to resurface in the back of his mind.

   Abigail didn’t notice. She was pointing excitedly at a nearby wall. “Look,” she cried. “Look at the wallpaper!”

   As if by magic, a patch of flower-patterned wallpaper, the size of a small puddle, had suddenly appeared on the grubby white plaster. It looked new and clean, just like the wallpaper in her parents’ sitting room at home. Even as she stood there watching, Abigail could see it broadening and spreading out across the wall. Here and there, on all four walls of the room, other patches of wallpaper were also beginning to appear. It was as if the house was alive and growing another skin.  

   The boy followed her gaze. “Yes, I’ve noticed the patches of wallpaper before,” he said. “It’s as though house is repairing itself, bit by bit. And there are other strange things too.” He pointed to the fireplace. “The flames in the fire never die out, and there’s a loaf of bread in the kitchen that never goes stale or mouldy.”

   Abigail scratched the top her head. “How very odd,” she said.

   There was another long pause filled by the crackles of the fire.

   “The snow is beginning to stop,” the boy eventually said, nodding at one of the windows.

   Abigail looked round. The world outside was still dark and grey, and only a few solitary snowflakes were drifting past the window. She suddenly began to feel a little weary. Perhaps the warm, cosy glow of the fire was making her drowsy. She closed her eyes for a few moments and when she opened them again she found herself lying on her bed at home. The boy had vanished and beams of bright sunshine were angling through her bedroom window. She could also hear the familiar noise of her mother vacuuming the carpet downstairs.

   Sitting up on her bed, Abigail rubbed the sleep-grit from her eyelashes and wondered if she’d been dreaming. Then she saw the snow globe standing on her bedside table and her face went white with shock.

   The figurine of the boy had moved. He was no longer standing in front of the house.

   But Abigail could clearly see the pale, oval shape of his face peering through a downstairs window.

   To be continued...