Writing Prompt:
The Locked Room
Summer vacations in my family
weren’t the usual kind. My parents
always rented a house in a different part of the country each year in order to experience
what they called “a wider aspect” of society.
I was always an introverted
child, much more interested in inside of the house than out of it and I
preferred reading a book to touring around the local sights. When my parents made their vacation decisions
I championed the older looking houses, hoping to find something interesting in
the attic or an old family story I could investigate.
In 2006 we made the 1200 mile
journey from our home in New York to a small town in Louisana.
The house was huge and at least a
hundred years ago. The realtor had said
that the property was permanently on let to vacationers, but somehow the place
had still retained a certain charm that countless visitors hadn’t spoiled. I immediately loved it.
After making a tour of the house,
from cellar to attic, I came across a locked door to what appeared to be quite
a large room. This was unusual given
that the house was on permanent let. What
could be the reason to lock it?
After much Googling I found out
that the house had not had a permanent resident for the past thirty years. The last residents had been a Glenn and
Jessica Cartwright in 1976. They were
still listed as the owners today, now living in the Florida Keys. Curious.
Why would you uproot and leave your house, never to return? I had to find out what was behind that locked
door as I felt sure that that would provide me with the answers.
I was confident after years of
watching people do it on the television that I could easily pick a lock with a
bobby pin. I was wrong. Day after day I tried, but the damn thing
just wouldn’t open. Eventually I gave up
on the door and found other pursuits to amuse me.
The day before we were due to
return to New York I passed the door again.
The bobby pin that I had been using was still nearby on the floor, where
I had thrown it after my last failed attempt.
I decided on one last go.
This time though, with barely a
wiggle of the pin, the lock on the door opened and I hesitantly opened the door
and peeked around the side.
Unlike the rest of the house
which had a modern, clean lines feel to it, this room was decorated in a distinct 1970’s
style, the time when the owners had last lived at the property. Moving my eyes away from the desk in the
corner and the brightly coloured wallpaper, I noticed a small child’s bed in
the corner with a huge teddy sitting on the pillowcase. The name “Kimberly” was embroidered onto a
picture over the fireplace. This was a child’s
room.
Moving further into the room I
saw that the linen was still on the bed, the toys were on the floor; everything
appeared as though someone had walked out of the room one day and never came
back, simply locking the door on it. It
was a room preserved in history.
Realisation flooded into my
mind. I now understood why the Cartwright’s
had left this house, never to return. I
went back to the computer and found what I was looking for. An article in July of 1976 about a little
girl called Kimberly Cartwright, drowned in the local creek at the age of 8.
I went back to the room and
carefully locked the door again with my fashioned bobby pin key. My entry into the room had gone unnoticed by
my parents and I never told them what I found inside. It was a reminder that not every locked door
should be opened.
The
next day we flew back to New York.
