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Limbs pound against the hardwood.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Three. Two. One.
I snap awake.
Kicking myself backwards sends me flying into the couch behind me, just as before, my skull cracking against the unyielding wood.
The room sharpens into focus, still lit by the fire crackling beside me. Scanning the room shows nothing. No shadows. No ghostly female figure.
The tea still half full in the mug.
“Just a dream,” I mutter on a shaky breath, and rub my trembling hand across my brow. “Just another goddamn dream.”
From the side table, I reach for the bottle of pills I forgot to take before falling asleep and pop four of the bastards into my mouth. As I swallow past the dryness in my throat, I rest my forehead against the palm of my hand, focusing on taking long, deep breaths through my nose. These dreams are so vivid sometimes, sapping the energy right out of me. They feel so real, it’s hard to tell they aren’t, until I manage to snap out of them.
Reaching down inside my shirt, I lift the key out and stare at it, my brain searching the short album of snapshots for any moment I would’ve seen my father use it for something. All that returns in thought is blackness. A broken reel of moments that could be nothing more than past dreams. A void. One that begs to be cracked open and explored. This key could invariably provide countless answers, regardless of what Russ always said about snooping about.
I glance around the suffocating, lonely little cabin that, in just a couple weeks, will no longer be mine. I’ll be homeless and living on the streets. I could, I realise, take what’s left of the donated cash and head south. Back to Louisiana. Back home. A bit of frugality could buy me a few days there, maybe more, if I can hunt some dinners.
It’s possible there’s nothing there for me, and going would be a complete waste of time and money.
Or maybe this key unlocks more than I realize.
8
Céleste
Russ’s old truck chugs along highway 90 toward Terrebonne Parish. The interior still smells like him—like metal and cigarettes—and although I should be grossed out by that, it’s oddly comforting, having his memory along for the long drive down. In an effort to hang onto as much cash as possible, I’ve slept a couple times in the truck. One time was at a rest stop while passing through a short stretch of Missouri--an act that would’ve had Tammy, the overprotective motherly type, lecturing me until my eyes glazed over.
About the only thing I’ll miss in that northerly town is her and Roy. Having to say goodbye to them hit me with the same punch to the chest as watching the first shovel of dirt fall onto Russ’s casket.
In the last two weeks that I was able to keep a roof over my head, I managed to track down the old estate where I grew up, and learned that it’s basically been sitting abandoned for the last ten years. Two families passed through it in the early part of the decade, but never stayed longer than a couple months. Probably didn’t help that a few hundred yards behind the house is the Charpentier Cemetery, where generations of the Charpentier family had been buried over the course of a century. Although I remember playing there as a child, hiding behind the gravestones and talking to ‘friends’, even back then, it was a somewhat creepy place. One of the families even reported sightings of ghosts, while the other expressed a feeling of unrest inside the walls. They were the only two, as far as I read, and it’s gone unoccupied ever since.
Over time, the house began to sort of decompose, with neglect and vandalism. Even those images--as unsettling as they were, with the house in disrepair, overgrown with so much vegetation it looked like a lost ancient civilization--didn’t trigger any memories or emotions. Perhaps it just didn’t look like the house I recall from my childhood, with well-kempt gardens against a backdrop of sunny afternoons. This house was dreary and worn, weighed down by the burden of neglect.
From what I was able to Google, I found that the neighbors petitioned to have the house torn down, believing it to be haunted and cursed, an eyesore to the community, but the request never went through. I’ve no idea who owns it now, if it might be part of an unknown inheritance my father might’ve left behind for me, or if it’s become property of the state. Either way, I doubt anyone will be troubled, if I camp there for a few nights.
According to a legal site I researched, most trusts are forfeited, if a reasonable attempt is made to contact the beneficiary to no avail. Unfortunately, my father had no records, or evidence, aside from some grainy shots caught on security camera, of having had a child, for reasons I’m hoping to understand better on this little excursion. Therefore, since nobody knew I even existed, I’m guessing I fit the forfeiture criteria. Which means, if it had been left to me in a will, and I actually wanted the house, I likely no longer have any claim to it, not without some kind of legal representation. And I surely can’t afford that.
This trip could be a complete waste of time, but it’s not as if I have anything better to do, and who knows, maybe returning will be cathartic. Maybe the reign of nightmares and sleepwalking, and daytime hallucinations of things I know aren’t real, will come to an end.
The goals are simple: To figure out who my mother was, what happened to her, what the hell this key belongs to, why my father kept me a secret, and get on with my life.
Okay, so maybe not quite so simple.
An overcast afternoon sky greets me as I enter Terrebonne parish, parish being what they basically call counties back in Michigan. Objects sit off the side of the road, and as I drive up on them, I notice three crosses of varying sizes.
A few miles down the road is a propped sign that reads Prepare to meet thy God, and I smirk, shaking my head. There was no religion growing up with Russ. The only significant thing about Sundays was football, and the only prayers that took place were the ones he quietly muttered to himself when his team happened to be winning. I don’t recall my real father ever taking me to church in the before life, either.
Or maybe he did, and I just don’t remember it.
Another sign greets me a few miles down from the first. All sinners beware.
Even if I was born in this place, and lived here a good chunk of my life, I already feel like a foreigner. An outcast.
It’s weird being a drifter, where everywhere and nowhere is home. For a short time, I might’ve felt a small sense of belonging in that cramped cabin in the woods, but I’ve found over the years that home is a fleeting thing. As temporary as the people who come and go in our lives.
