In fact, a strange feeling of being watched brushes across my skin, as if someone were within looking out. I skate my fingers along my neck and watch my reflection mirror the motion, unsure why I feel seen. I drop my handandmy silly notions as I let out an exhale. If someone were on the other side, they must see how ridiculous I feel now.
Tucked between the stairs and the kitchen, there is a large black door. Upon opening it, a gust of wind nearly knocks me over as I look down into deep-set concrete steps. The gust brings with it a stench of damp earth and roots, drenching me immediately. It is definitely a basement, which seems odd for a state that is mostly below sea level. Looking deeper down sends chills that curl around my spine and travel up my neck. I slam the door shut without thinking.
It is then that I focus on the now closed door, and the markings engraved throughout its stained wood. Markings that spark something in me when I brush my hands over them. My fingertips brush over the varieties of trees with roots that all connect toward the bottom of the door. A door from my vision.
Never have my visions played out in real life, and never have I thought any of them had meant anything. I take a shaky step back and decide I will not go any further. My only thought now is to explore the less creepy parts of this mansion.
Everything about this house is old and ethereal, with touches of vintage charm and secret nooks everywhere. Even the walls seem to whisper of a time and place far away, when masquerade balls were a common occurrence and people dressed in gowns made from fabricsof silk and brocade. A time much different from now, but you can still feel its presence amongst the rooms of this estate. What secrets were kept behind its lush luxury?
I find it fascinating that parts of this house call to the comforts of my soul, while others seem to repel it. Or could the repulsion be fearful energy from moments occurring from the owners before?
My mother would often talk about a residual energy that can be felt by the body, but not seen by the eyes. She told me always to heed its warning. This week has been the first time I’ve ignored her advice.
I venture upstairs with my luggage. Dark brown wood makes up the steps leading to the top, and the banister has the same leaf and tree design deeply engraved into it as the mirror. In my explorations, I’ve found that there are six baths and seven rooms altogether. Way too much house for only one man. Who else walked these halls?
The three bedrooms upstairs are bright and welcoming. I pick the one with a view of the small pond connecting to the swampland. Looming cypress trees cover the swamp, hiding what lurks beneath. Carya would make a nice snack for whatever is out there. I cringe at the thought.
Looking out the window, I see what really lured me to this room. A willow. A strong, loving presence moves through it in the way its long wispy branches sweep across the surface of the pond. To me, its branches look like a warm blanket, and I am immediately set at ease.
This room comforts me, and I can’t help but be reminded of my mother. I see her now in my mind’s eye dipping her toes in a moonlit lagoon, toying with the leaves of a willow branch between her fingers, a warm but fractured smile on her lips.
Within the roots your answer lies,she whispers to me.
I blink and am brought back into the bright sunny bedroom, processing if I truly just heard my mother’s voice. Trying to regain my equilibrium, I sit on the edge of the bed. My flashesof ‘insight’ are at an all-time high, and I’m having a hard time sorting through all that they have to say.
My mother’s soft whisper within my subconscious reminds me of a time she had said something similar in her last days on this earth. Her unknown sickness made her weaker and weaker every day. In her liminal state, she would often tell me of her need to go back to her roots or that she would soon be there anyway. I didn’t know what to make of it, and it unsettled me tremendously.
The day she spoke those words, Lollie had told me to take the day off and offered to watch my mother, knowing that seeing her fade away was crushing my soul. But when I returned later that day, they were gone. It wasn’t until the evening set that they arrived back. My mother seemed more like herself, while I was a frantic mess wondering where they had been.
“Your mom just needed to get out, so I took her to the old willow she loves in Woodlawn Cemetery,” I remember Lollie saying nonchalantly.
I think that was the maddest I had ever been at Lollie, and I did not let her stay alone with my mom again. When she would visit her in her room, I could hear them whispering. In a manner unlike an adopted daughter and mother would have, but more like a sister she had known her whole life.
I would hear only snippets of their conversations before they would notice me lingering by her door. Fragments of phrases like “will protect her” and “in the next life” would flow to my ears, but I did not know what to make of them.
My mother passed just a week later, after her and Lollie’s day out. I couldn’t help but think the extra exhaustion her body went through that day caused her to pass more quickly. In the end, she was gifted another visit to Woodlawn Cemetery, but this time in the form of ashes mournfully spread along her favorite tree.
I wince as my heart folds into itself, remembering the hardest moment of my young life. I lie back against the bed, and a plushwhite duvet greets me. The bed cradles me like my mother’s touch used to, steady and distant all at once. Sinking in, I let my body relax. This bed doesn’t look as if it’s been used in decades, but it still holds a coziness that invites me to crawl in. So, I do.
I drift off in this cloud-like bed. My daydreaming does that to me sometimes. The pull of my mind to somewhere else I can’t explain makes me sleepy, and most of all confused, because I never seem to understand its meaning. As a child, I would have a few a year. As I’ve gotten older and especially after the passing of my mother, they’ve grown in number. These last two weeks, their frequency has gone exponential.
I lock what my mother’s voice said in the back of my mind, and give in to the bed’s dreamy calling. I hear Carya somewhere in the distance, feeling the comforter around me give way to soft footprints. Only then do I truly fall asleep, while thanking the Gods I brought my orange tabby with to keep me company in this unknown mind fuck of a house.
8
THE VISIT
RACINE 1978
I’ve spent the last few days looking through the rest of the house. My interest landed in a rickety attic, straight out of an old ghost movie, which seemed to be home to numerous boxes full of antiquities and old letters. I noticed it was also occupied by quite a few spiderwebs. I would have grabbed some boxes down, but the thought of spiders crawling through my hair prevented that outcome completely. So, the boxes stay up there for now, alone and unmoved.
I still haven’t ventured to the basement, and I’m not sure I plan to anytime soon. The feeling I felt from it the other day was one I’d rather not revisit. A strange, all-encompassing sensation full of despair is better left unfelt. Especially when I’m already overwhelmed with taking on a new home.
A knock sounds at the door. I quickly turn on the teakettle and make my way to the front room. I called the estate lawyer. You know the one. The one that hasn’t left my thoughts since our meeting in my little shop of horrors.
Him—looming above me as if he were going to save me and devour me at the same time. And me—sitting on the floor gazing upat this new stranger, dumbfounded in a pool of my own tears. I’m surprised he would even want to see me again, after such a glorious first impression. However, this is purely professional after all.
I found his number amidst the paperwork he left, along with the name Ry scribbled above it, which looked more like an accidental pen mark. I almost didn’t call, thinking perhaps it was not the right man, but the gravelly deep voice that greeted me when he answered the phone was one that is hard to forget.
