The Caged Room

I’m not the kind of person who jumps at shadows. Growing up in Perth, I’d heard every ghost story my mates could muster, and none of them ever kept me up at night. So when we moved into that old Federation house in Fremantle, I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. But that house had a strange history, and my room, in particular, had a secret.

The house was built in 1912, a two-story red brick place with a rusty iron fence. The previous owner, a man named Arthur, had been a recluse, a hermit who boarded up his windows and rarely left the property. He died alone in the attic, where he’d spent most of his time, and the house sat vacant for a year before we bought it. The real estate agent was vague about Arthur’s life, just said he was ‘eccentric.’ But the neighbors had stories.

My room was on the second floor, at the end of a narrow hallway. It had a small window that looked out onto the back garden, but it was covered with a heavy iron grate, like a cage, and the glass was frosted. The rest of the house had tall, airy windows, but mine felt like a prison. My dad joked it was ‘the secure room,’ but I didn’t find it funny. The first night I slept there, I had a dream that I was trapped in a room full of cages, each one holding a bird that sang a song I couldn’t understand. When I woke, I heard a faint scratching from the walls.

At first, I thought it was rats. But the scratching came at odd times, never at night, and always from the corner near the window. I’d press my ear to the wall, but the sound would stop, as if something was waiting for me to give up. My mum said I was being dramatic, that old houses make noises. But one afternoon, I was sitting on my bed reading, and I heard a voice, a soft, gravelly whisper, say my name. I spun around, but the room was empty. I checked under the bed and in the wardrobe, and there was no one. But the feeling of being watched was so strong I had to leave the room.

I started doing research on the house. I found old newspaper articles from the 1920s, about a man named Arthur who built the house and then disappeared. There was a photo of him standing in front of the house, and his face was terribly scarred, as if he’d been burned. The article said he’d suffered from ‘shell shock’ after the war, and had become a recluse. He had a son, also named Arthur, who lived with him until his death. The son was never seen outside the house, and neighbors described him as ‘strange’ and ‘withdrawn.’

I realized the ‘cage’ on my window might have been there for a reason. I found a hidden panel in the wall behind my wardrobe, and behind it, a small room. The room was empty, but the walls were covered in scratches, dozens of thin lines, as if something had been clawing to get out. There was a old diary, bound in leather, on the floor. It was Arthur’s (the son’s) diary. He wrote about his father’s obsession with birds, how he kept hundreds of them in cages in the attic, and how he would spend hours listening to their songs. But as the years passed, the father grew more paranoid, and he started keeping Arthur in the room with the grated window, saying it was for his protection. Arthur wrote about feeling trapped, about hearing whispers in the walls, about seeing shapes in the dark.

The last entry was dated the day Arthur died. He wrote: ‘I can hear the birds again, but they’re not singing, they’re screaming. They want out, and I think I’ll let them out. But I’m afraid she’ll follow them.’ The diary ended there.

I felt a cold draft, and the scratching started again, louder this time. I looked at the wall, and I saw a crack forming in the plaster, spreading like a spider web. A thin, sharp-edged piece of metal began to push through, then another. The ceiling creaked, and I heard a sound like a thousand tiny wings flapping. The room grew darker, and the whispers returned, calling my name. I tried to run, but the door slammed shut, and the iron grate on my window started to rattle as if something was shaking it from outside.

The birds. They were in the walls, in the ceiling, all around me. I saw their eyes in the shadows, glinting, and their beaks pecking through the gaps. I managed to force the door open, and I ran down the stairs, burst through the front door, and didn’t stop until I was on the street.

I never went back to that room. We moved out a few weeks later. But sometimes, at night, I hear a faint fluttering in my new house, and I see a shadow of a bird against the window. I’ve tried to explain it away, but I know the truth. The birds were never the prisoners. They were the jailers. And they’re still watching.