The Window by Gareth Clegg

It looked incredible. Black oak aged for three centuries, originally used on an ocean-going vessel from the heart of the age of sail. The price had been incredible too—over two thousand pounds. But, how many people could boast a window frame dating back to the early seventeen hundreds?

We’d seen an advert about the wood beam, reclaimed from a Whitby shipyard as they wrapped up their business because of the current economy, and just couldn’t resist.

We made a real feature of it in the bedroom, decking the room out in an opulent array of pirate maritime chic. When it was complete, the room was the spitting image of something you’d expect to see in Pirates of the Caribbean. My wife and I laughed at the imagined view of Johnny Depp flouncing around from the table filled with map charts to lean into the soft oval curve of the frame and the beautiful window seat it edged in its ancient dark timber.

We both loved it, and it wasn’t until the third night that I awoke dripping with sweat and feeling as sick as a dog. The entire room seemed to be shifting and rocking. The nausea was unbearable.

It was pitch black. Rain lashed at the glass panes, thunder roared amidst the brief flashes of light that illuminated the room through the heavy velvet curtains.

In an attempt to settle my roiling stomach, I rolled up to sit on the edge of the bed. My feet almost recoiled from the wooden flooring. It was so cold that it felt wet.

Another flash and the bellow of thunder that followed almost made me leap out of my skin. In the pitch blackness, I reached for the bedside table hoping a sip of water would calm my grumbling belly. I couldn’t feel anything there. I must have rolled too far along the edge of the bed.

My hand crept out for the lush crimson fabric that covered our gorgeous window. As I pulled the curtains to allow some light in, my stomach lurched as I took in the scene outside.

It was a full-blown storm. Rain lashed across a dark moonlit sky into the crashing waves, throwing great plumes of snowy white spray and foam thirty feet into the night air.

I blinked back my shock, this must be a dream. I pinched myself, but instead of waking, my body protested with a sharp stab of pain in my forearm. Then I saw it.

The cold floorboards were black with moisture from a stream that seeped from the frame. Blood welled on the sill and soaked the window seat cushions before oozing out and dribbling over the lip, falling to the floor in a grisly waterfall. Salt spray and the iron tang of blood filled my nostrils.

My scream woke me.

It was pitch black. Rain lashed at the glass panes, thunder roared amidst the brief flashes of light that illuminated the room through the heavy velvet curtains.

***

I sat staring from the window in my room, white uPVC, cold and clinical. In fact, there’s no wood in the room, it’s all plastic of some sort. Nothing to remind me of dark wooden timbers. The view between the white-painted metal bars is pleasant enough, trees and a well-mown grassy lawn that mirrors the calming green walls.

They said I didn’t stop screaming until they sedated me, that I’d rubbed my hands raw trying to scrub away whatever I thought was on them, but I’m better now. I’ve told them what they needed to hear—that it wasn’t real.

Now I sit silently in contemplation in my pleasant surroundings, rocking gently to an unseen rolling sea. But even with the plastic blinds instead of curtains, I can sense the storm growling, a bass rumble that I can feel within my body as the darkness gathers in the distance.

It will arrive tonight, as it has every night for the past five years.

How do I know it’s been five years?

I reached up and my bleeding and splintered fingernails scratched another line into the dark bloodstained timbers of my cell.