Neve Emek: Room 102 - Part 6 of ?

6

The door creaked open just enough to let the light spill out, and in the narrow gap a face appeared. The man beyond the door was old, in his late sixties, or perhaps older. He was bald save for a few wisps of hair sticking out at odd angles, and his face bore the hardened lines of years, marked with pale scars that caught the overhead lightbulb that kept flickering in a steady beat. His clothes hung loose on him, rumpled and stained.

He peered at me, eyes small but alert, before abruptly drifting past me and towards the empty pathway, then back at me again. Though it was impossible to know for sure, it felt as though he had caught something in the darkness – something he didn’t want me to notice.

“Who are you?” he said, as I was about to follow his gaze to the pathway. Like the other Israelis I had encountered up to that point, he had a thick accent. “What business you got here?”

I cleared my throat, forcing myself to keep calm, but it was easier said than done. Something about the man’s constant flickering behind me put me on edge, like he was keeping an eye out for something that I wasn’t meant to see.

“My name’s Sami, sir. I came here because of, uh, some inheritance issues. Apparently, this place,” I took a pause, letting my eyes briefly settle on the large building up ahead. “It used to belong to my grandfather.” And when the man failed to reply. “I’m sorry, but… may I know who you are? I don’t remember the solicitor saying—”

“You came alone?”

“I’m sorry?”

He opened the door wider, leaning in. “Did you… knock on the doors?”

He said the last phrase in a lower voice, as if he feared someone might overhear us. I arched my brows unbeknownst as soon as I picked up on this shift in tone. The doors?

“I thought this place was abandoned,” I said, adding. “It’s not?”

“No.”

“But the lights—”

“People here don’t like to wander outside past midnight.”

“…Wander? But what has this to do with me?”

He gave a short nod before following it up with the very words I feared I might hear coming here. “You’re Palestinian, aren’t you? I know the old man was.”

“You knew my grandfather?”

“Just answer the bloody question.”

“I am, yes,” I said. “Why is this relevant?”

A smirk formed on his lips as he briefly looked away, as if amused by my reaction, refusing to reply. Was he mocking me?  

“Sir, why is this relevant?”

 “You’re asking me why,” he said. “But don’t you know the answer already?”

“I—”

“Anyway, best you keep that fact to yourself.” He smirked again. “Just in case.”

“Just in case?” I repeated to myself before shifting my focus back to the stranger, who shouldn’t be here, on this property. “And who are, exactly? Why do you keep beating around the bush?”

“Me? I’m the caretaker.”

“The… caretaker?” I said. “But how come the solicitor did not—”

“Mr Sami, you might not know, but my family’s kept these grounds for generations. Long before settlers came.”

“But I’ve never heard of you. If that were the case, wouldn’t my grandfather have told me?”

“Well, you didn’t know about the property, either,” he said, his voice laced with confidence. “Did you?”

“Right. Please,” I said, waving my hand to gesture ‘go on.’

“Your grandfather treated us well, fed us and gave us a roof over our heads. Which is exactly why I have no bad blood with the Palestinians. But the others? That’s another story.”

“The settlers took over the country decades ago…” I paused, trying to process it all. “Are you telling me that deep-rooted grudge continues to this day?”

“It’s pretty much alive, yes. That’s why keeping your identity, at least for now, is the best course of action.”

Hearing this, a sudden thought crossed my mind.

“You know about the conditions for the transfer of ownership. How?”

A why smile formed on his lips before fading. “Like I mentioned, my family has been taking care of the property for ages. Isn’t it natural that your grandfather confided in us?”

I wasn’t convinced, not nearly as as I wanted to be. But it was getting colder by the hour, and I had no place to stay the night. Though not the wisest decision, I changed the topic. But not because I trusted the guy. Only I figured that there’d be enough time later on to question the caretaker’s background and identity. My priority was to find shelter from the cold.

“I know this comes out of nowhere… but where do I, uh, stay?” I said, then quickly added upon seeing the caretaker arch his brows. “I thought there’d be a guesthouse or something here. But there’s none. It seems.”

“Neve Emek is not known for its hospitality, no. But…”

 “But?”

He hesitated. Why? Why would—that was when I noticed him glance at the building. It happened so quickly that I failed to follow his gaze before he addressed me again. Did he notice me?

“You see that building over there?”

“Yeah, sure. Hard to miss.”

“Your grandfather built and designed it himself back in the good ol’ days. Before the settlers came, that is. There should be plenty of rooms there where you can stay the night. Been closed for years… but it stands.”

I frowned. This was a first for me. From what I could recall from my childhood in the occupied Palestine, my family was in no position to either own this place, not to mention have the financial means to design this kind of huge structure.

“When was this place built again?”

“Should be ’03.”

“That’s five years before we fled…” I said under my breath, the confusion mounting and reaching new heights. Where did Seedi get all that—

“Or—” he hesitated, “—you can stay here. With me.”

I was too lost in my mind to realise what he was meaning. “Stay, where?”

“Here,” he said, gesturing at the small hut. “Not nearly as spacious, but just enough for a single guy like me. I have a room to spare, if you don’t mind the critter. You know? Spiders and things like that.”

 “Well, I’d rather not impose. Thanks, uh, anyway.”

It took him half a second to reply for some reason. “Oh, yeah? Your call, then. But don’t tell me I didn’t try to help you.”

“Help me? I don’t think I—”

Before I could finish asking, the caretaker shuffled back inside momentarily and returned with a ring of keys that clinked in his hand. The ring was huge and the keys… Why were there so many? Sure, the building itself was massive, but did it really have so many rooms?

“Here. See this bronze one? It’s for the old wing, west side. Stairs down to the end, turn right. You’ll find one of the guestrooms down the hallway. Place is a maze. Don’t wander, it’s easy to lose yourself.”

“Lose myself? How come?”

“Place is a maze. Mr Khalil was, let’s say, an interesting man. He liked a good chase and was a man of few words. Never told me why he built this place like this, but I believe he had his reasons.”

I took the keys, albeit reluctantly after hearing this, before another thought crossed my mind. “One more thing: do you perhaps know where the bus stop is? Tried looking for it on my way here, but don’t recall seeing it.”

“The bus comes once a day. Five hours between stops, and only at dawn. You miss it, you walk. But I wouldn’t do that if I were you. The closest town is several miles east. It’ll take hours on foot.”

“Right. So, uh, where is it?”

“He pointed towards the blackness beyond the burial ground, like I knew this place like the back of my hand.

“You’ll see a signpost. Northwest.”

“I’m not following, sir.”

“See that synagogue?”

I squinted. “I see a minaret—”

“Once you pass the synagogue, you keep walking till you see the signpost. Should be easy enough. Anything else?”

“No—” The door shut with a hollow thud before I could finish my sentence. “—thank you.”

With the keys clutched in my hand, the perpetual darkness that seemed to hang over the burial ground stretched and expanded around me. What the fuck? It was almost as though the guy was in a hurry. Or like he didn’t want me around for too long. And didn’t he just call the place a maze? Why not help me navigate the place than just—

A whistle.

I whipped around, holding my breath.

Behind me spanned several acres of tombs and tombs only.

I let my eyes sweep around, trying to find the source of the sudden din, when my gaze settled on a grave marker in the distance. Eyes open wide and breath hitched in my throat, I watched as the silhouette of a child sprinted into the depths beyond the burial ground, towards some sort of forested area adjacent to the place.

My legs moved of their own accord for reasons I could not fathom or decipher. They had their own will. Like I was possessed by something other than the will of my mind. Even now, in safety, I cannot and dare not say what caused me to do such a dangerous thing. But I guess this was the pivotal point in the sequence of events that would soon start happening to me, and I was nothing but a pawn in a larger scheme at the time.

The earth grew uneven beneath my feet as I neared the marker. My breath came fast, misting the air. Just as I reached out, the ground gave way beneath me.

I lurched forwards, catching myself at the last moment, gravel skittering down into a hollow below. What the…

An open grave yawned at my feet – freshly dug.

I staggered back, my heart hammering against my ribs. For a moment, I thought I saw movement within, the flicker of something pale, but when I blinked, it was gone. It looked… familiar. Like something I had seen before. I could swear I had seen it, but… The thoughts eluded me. If I concentrated just enough, then maybe, surely, I’d have to remember. Right? So, why couldn’t I?

Moreover, whose grave was this? Freshly dug, gaping wide. Had someone from the village passed away recently? That would explain why it was dug open the night before the actual funeral took place. Still, I wasn’t convinced. Not entirely. Not enough. I was missing something. But what?

My first thought was to go back to the hut and inquire about the grave. But I didn’t. Something stopped me. Difficult to say what. I guess it was my intuition telling me to stay away.

Instead, I leaned closer to the grave and peered into the hollow; the earth smelled damp and raw. My eyes strained against the dark, half-expecting to see something shift beneath the soil, a hand clawing its way up or a shrewd face staring back. But nothing of the sort happened.

I exhaled and relaxed the grip on my suitcase. See, I told myself, it was nothing. Ghosts aren’t real. Shouldn’t be. I was just tired, and it showed. I needed to get some sleep, to clear my mind, and stop it from wreaking havoc inside me. With these thoughts fresh in my mind, I started for the building, or rather, The House of the Crossing. Why was it called that? Should’ve asked the caretaker. Well, if things went according to plan, I’d be trapped here for the next six months, so there was no need to rush things.

 When I arrived at the gate, I figured the largest key would fit into the lock, and that was exactly what happened. Once I twisted the key, the hinges groaned as though the gate hadn’t been opened in decades, and the latch snapped back with a clank. When I pushed, the gate barely swung. Instead, it more or less collapsed inwards and sent a small rain of dust drifting down from above the frame.

The first thing that struck me as I passed the doorway was this stale, thick, and sickening air unlike any other. Hard to describe using plain words, but it had this nauseating rank of a place sealed for too long, where the air had no means to circulate or ventilate. Damp wood, mildew, the subtle odour of rust – all of it blended into a staleness that instantly caused me to gag and cover my nose.

The next thing that arrested me was the entrance or some kind of lobby spanning before me. It was vast, almost canonical in its proportions. The ceiling vaulted high above in arches, where patches of ceiling had fallen away to reveal the skeletal structure of the building.

The entire building was literally falling apart.

It should be dark as hell here, too, under normal circumstances, but some moonlight had managed to trickle in through the narrow, high windows, which were clouded with grime, so that light barely entered and shadows pooled where the light could not reach.

I stepped forwards, the soles of my feet aching from the ceaseless walking. Once, I thought, this place had been a polished and sophisticated structure akin to and no less than a museum, but nothing was left of its former glory. Almost as though it had been subjected to some heavy disturbances over the last few years. And I wasn’t talking about the fires. No, something else had happened in this place, and whatever it was, I didn’t want to know. At least for as long as I stayed here.

On either side of the lobby, corridors stretched away into darkness, lined with several doors. The caretaker had warned me about the maze, and boy, he sure did not exaggerate – not one bit. The very architecture seemed to have been built to disorient on purpose. But why would my grandfather do such a thing? I recalled him as a laid-back guy who had thrown his former life away to start over in a new country, a new place to save his family. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d build a place like this.

Or maybe I didn’t know him. Not as much as I thought I did.

The left corridor narrowed almost immediately as soon as I turned the corner, the vaulted space of the main hall giving way to claustrophobic stone passageways. The striped wallpaper was slick beneath a film of mould that climbed up in mottled green patches. In places, the paint had peeled away as well, revealing rough stonework beneath. Where did all this moisture come from? It made little sense! Sure, the entire place was in bad shape, but the cracks on the ceilings were superficial.

I froze more than once as I kept following the corridor, convinced I heard a footstep trailing behind me or the rasp of breath from within the shadows. But when I snapped around, there was only the long and narrow corridor vanishing into shadow behind me and nothing else. Like I was hallucinating it all.

There were alcoves in this part of the building as well. They looked like shrines or chapels, which were small and crumbling spaces tucked off the main artery. Each contained remnants of something that once belonged there, like a rotting bench, a distorted table that might have been an altar once, and niches where candles had burned down to wax and been left to die.

Deeper still, the corridor split and branched in ways that made no sense whatsoever. It took me a moment to assure myself I hadn’t got lost. Again, easier said than done, when a stranger had just told me not to get lost moments earlier.

So, what exactly was I seeing, and why did it confuse me so?

From what I could tell from this angle and position, a set of steps seemed to descend to another hallway, only to rise again and reconnect with the storey I was still standing on, but from the opposite end. Like in a winding circuit. But it wasn’t until I set off down one of the hallways that I understood why that stairwell was there.

Dead-end. Barricaded. Completely.

It was impossible to move past the heap of whatever parts of the building had collapsed and blocked the entire left wing. At least through this hallway. I had to retract my steps and follow the steps down a floor, then follow them up to the other side of the blocked path. And so I did.

The other side of the left wing was just as bad, with its own set of several branches of hallways and stairwells to explore. Some passages I followed ended abruptly at brick walls, while others were literal traps leading several feet down into the abyss. One misstep or rushed move, and I would have fallen to my death.

I doubled back more than once, uncertain whether I had already passed the same crack on the ceiling or the same broken lantern hook. Where was that bloody guestroom, anyway? Why wouldn’t it show itself?

I must’ve walked in circles for several minutes before I ventured to one of the narrower hallways and spotted a crooked sign nailed above a door. Guestroom 4. Surprisingly, in English, too. I was too drained to question why that was the case; instead, I spent the next few minutes trying to slide the correct key into the lock, twisting and turning hard until it gave with a reluctant groan.

A rush of stale air spilt out a soon as I opened the door, causing me to retch yet again, but for a much shorter time now. Seemed like I had adjusted to the rank smell and mildew in record time.

The guestroom was larger than I had imagined, more spacious and expanding in places too dark to see completely. The ceiling here hung low, and in the far corner, parts of the walls had collapsed and caused a jagged hole of some sort, where a flickering light spilt in from the other room it was connected to. It wasn’t anything too large, but when I peered through the hole, I noticed that the flickering came from a lit candle placed directly on what looked like a half-sunken bed. But it wasn’t the why that made me frown. It was the how. There were no doors in that room, no means for anybody to enter. So, how did that candle end up there, and who had lit it?

As I was having these thoughts, I felt something on my shoulder. Like a brief but firm squeeze. Once I turned and searched my surroundings, well aware that I would find nothing, both the bed and the candle disappeared. I blinked several times, trying to summon them back to life, but they remained elusive.

Was I dreaming stuff again? I couldn’t tell.

Inside the guestroom was a narrow bed that stood against the wall. The mattress was sagging in the middle, and the sheets, if they could still be called that, were little more than strips of fabric, eaten away by mould and something else that had stained it brown. A table sat nearby, one leg uneven, and littered with curled scraps of paper and something that might once have been a candle stub, now fused to the wood.

I placed both my suitcase and backpack in the corner, near the door, and moved cautiously around the space. At the other end, across the hole in the wall, I noticed a wardrobe slumping against the plaster. Its doors were almost rotted off their hinges. But that wasn’t the reason it caught my attention.

I heard something. At least, I thought I did.

A knock. No, tapping. From within.

I advanced towards it, unable to stop myself.

My breath caught in my throat as I got within reach, my ears straining to make out what kind of sound I thought I was hearing. But when I pulled the door open wide, my motions rushed and panicked, and only dust rolled out before me. It took me a few seconds to regain my bearings and calm myself down. That was when I caught the outline of a hatch inside the wardrobe. Though I tried to pull and push it open several times, it remained firmly shut.

The wardrobe itself wouldn’t budge either. It had been nailed to the wall and floor, tightly secured. I’d need tools to pry the screws loose. Maybe the caretaker could help me? Or… maybe I’d find another way in. Surely, the caretaker, if anybody, should have the tools needed to pry this massive thing?

But for now. Sleep had priority. I had to sleep. To fall asleep.  

The idea of lying on the mattress, however, made my skin crawl. Either that or… sleeping on the floor infested with critters. Just to put this on record, not a big fan of critters. Especially the ones that had made this place their home.

Sitting down first, I tested the weight of the frame. It shrieked under me. Literally. That was how bad things were. I lay back slowly the second time, eyes fixed on the ceiling, trying not to think about the damp pressing in from all sides, or the mould that might seep into my mouth as I slept.

Sleep embraced me into its arms not long afterwards, lulling me into a false sense of drowsiness as the darkness around me shifted subtly. But I couldn’t keep my eyelids open. Not for much longer.

That was when I saw it. From the corner of my eye.

A small figure near the collapsed wall.

The doll.

The… doll?

The…

To be continued...