The Window

The Window



It was an ordinary, glazed window in a wooden frame.  What had made me study it?  I have no idea. 



Set in the back of an empty modern building, perhaps it was because it looked vaguely old-fashioned, not being double-glazed like all the others, which had white plastic frames.



Brown, mock wooden paint was gently peeling away from the wood, stirring in the breeze, flaking insubstantially to join the earth from which it originally came.



The four panes of glass were filthy, with old spiderwebs partially obscuring the surface, stuck and discoloured like the dust cemented round the edges.  A haze of old pollution dimmed any view inside as if through an old camera lens, grainy and indisicnt.



There was no clear view inside.  Although the room, if it was a room, was not dark, there seemed no clear definition beyond the glass. Nothing stirred, no reflection, impression of life.



The top vent had been opened.  It was a new action, breaking through the mire of years, severing webs as a knife slashes flesh.  The dirt had been broken, like a crust around the edge, tatters of web wavered in the breeze, set free for the first time in years.



What could the window tell us about that action?  Who had been peering through the accumulated dirt at the world outside?  Had they a secret to keep, a story to tell?  What else could have opened a window other than a human hand?



The bus arrived.  As I was carried away, an indistinct, fearful face appeared behind the glass...



Work that day was interspersed with Internet searches to find out more about the building and what it had been.  It appeared on six agents sites, stating that there were 4,800 square feet of space on three floors with immediate occupation available. It had originally been built as a knitware factory, but had shut down after a girl got pulled into one of the machines and was horribly killed.  Then there had been a series of small firms sub-letting who had all failed over several years.



Further probing during lunch led to information about the demise of a hard-sell insurance company which had occupied the space until a whistle-blower had caused a scandal by revealing the mal-practices that went on.  They were the latest tenants recorded for the buidling, which by now was beginning to seem quite unlucky.



What had been the fate of that whistle-blower?  My mind fizzed with improbable ideas, especially after the girl who had been mangled by a machine in the same place...  Whatever had happened, it was clear I needed to go back and take a look in the evening to satisfy my own curiosity.



****

Getting off the bus at the end of my long and frustrating day, I immediately felt the buzz of adrenaline and a nticipation as I walked carefully around the back of the building and studied the window again. 



It was shut.



I could see the breaks in the dirt and spiders webs where it had been open, but now it was definitely shut.



Taking a deep breath, I wondered whether to try breaknig in to see if there was someone trapped inside.  My courage failing me, I picked up a stone from the littered car park surroundings and lobbed it towards the pane.  Perhaps someone would hear it and come to the window?  It skittered across the surface, then fell to the ground.  Nothing.



Then a voice... 'Hey! What do you think you are doing?'



I started and tried hard not to flee immediately.



A burly security guard looked down at me from the dirty panes.



'That's all I need, some nosey fellah trying to break the place up just as we have let it out!  Not to mention the swarm of wasps I had to evict this morning...got stung as well!'



Word count 646