THE HOUSE INSIDE ME

by Camelia Wheatley

  Mark Addington was the dark horse. He was a stallion breed of man, oozing charisma and charm. Girls drooled and went google-eyed around him. He had long legs towering him above the crowd, well seen and he liked it. His dark mane of hair was like a finely groomed horse, slick and straight. Square face, perfect nose, ink eyes, the kind that spill out and stain you, mark you as his. And he did mark me. I felt it like an arrow filled with poison. Every time I looked at him, I would fall off a cliff, falling—falling—falling as if I didn’t care if I hit the ground in a million splats and splintered bones. He was the only one in the group I kept my distance from. He had shark eyes, dark and mysterious. He was a fish exploring the deeper places in me with his eyes and it made me a nervous wreck. I had heard through the school grapevine of gossip, Mark Addington always got what he wanted. Knowing this scared me and thrilled me at the same time.

  The other guys in the group were Todd Swain, a short blond with chubby cheeks and a permanent smile, and then there was Pepper, who smoked more weed than all of the 1960s hippies combined. His nickname came from being the only pepper in a sea of salt. He had a towering afro and he talked real, real slow, and dramatic. We were always like, "C'mon Pepper, for God's sake, spit it out already!" He was older than all of us and the only one with a driver’s license and a 1969 four-door Cadillac Deville. Caddy was our ticket to trouble. The other was Robert Tipton, aka Tip. They say he came out of his mother’s womb drinking a beer. He was loud and rambunctious, risky as hell and always doing dares. We were quite a bunch of rowdy rule breakers. We got together on the weekends as far away from the population as we could get. While everyone else was at football games and preppy parties, we were in the woods around a campfire.

  I had managed to keep a safe distance from Mark for a long time, but one night I glanced up and he was next to me. I guzzled a beer and lit a cigarette. My heart was pounding. We were at the river a half mile from my house, a shortcut out through the woods from my backyard. Meg and I found it when we were little, this jewel of a swimming hole. A pooled-up cavern of water from a river run-off and natural spring. It was our secret place, until we were older and I took the guys there. Once they saw the seclusion, the beauty of it, it became our gathering place. Our hangout. Plus, it was close to our house. I could sneak out anytime. I never told Meg I shared the location, until she caught me red-handed one night, crawling out the window. She blackmailed me to let her go or she was going to sing like a canary to the parents. I let her go, but I was not happy about it. Before I headed to the cooler to get a beer, I introduced her to everyone.

  “I got this, Cass. You just have fun. Do what you normally do,” Meg said, walking to the fire. I rolled my eyes. She started talking to Snuff, who gave me a side-eyed glance as if he didn’t know what to say. I shrugged my shoulders and smirked. My hands to my mouth, I mimicked smoking a joint. And then I found one. Where there’s smoke there’s weed. Where there’s weed, there’s Pepper.

  “What’s up, guys?” I downed my beer and intercepted the joint. I toked a double hit.

  “Got a tagalong,” Mark said.

  “Yeah. Harmless.” I laughed, coughed and blew out puffs of smoke. The rest of the night went like normal. Terry stayed at the fire entertaining Meg, but he watched me with a keen eye as he usually did. I lay back on the hood of Caddy in a stoner daze and watched the night stars twinkle and blink and tell me things. The band Journey played a ballad of loving, touching, squeezing. Words I sang in a whisper as I lost myself in an anthem of teenage lust and a dreamboat who had joined me. I swore I saw two stars align as if it was a sign. This time, for whatever reason, I did not turn away. I accepted his advances. I acknowledged his presence. When the evening drew to a close, Snuff had grown irritated and took me to the side. “Smokes, you know he can only be trouble for you. Be a friend but don’t fall for him, I know, Smokes—I’ve seen him work girls before, and it’s exactly what he did with you tonight. If he touches you, Cass, I will beat the shine off his teeth. I will.”

  “Dang, Snuff, take it easy. The marriage isn’t till next month.” I pressed his chest with my fingers and laughed. “Calm down. It isn’t what you think. Geesh…what’s all the hate for?”

  “Cass, I’m telling you.”

  “Okay, Daddy Snuff.” I rolled my eyes. Todd left on his motorcycle while the rest of us loaded up in Caddy. Mark slipped in beside me and then Snuff on the other side. Awkward. Meg sat in front between Pepper and Tip. In the darkness of the backseat a hand grazed the top of my thigh. Mark's skin sent electricity up my spine. I gulped so hard I thought I might choke. Pepper cranked up the stereo. Cheap Trick sang out from the speakers, a song of wanting, needing and loving, a song of desperation that I could only feel deep in my gut. I felt comfortable yet conflicted. Thrilled and scared. A little voice whispered I could have him. Another voice whispered it would be at a high cost.

  PART III - 1988

  PRESENT DAY - CASSIDY THE ADULT

  “Some of the most comforting words in the universe are ‘me too.’ That moment when you find out that your struggle is also someone else’s struggle, that you’re not alone, and that others have been down the same road.”

  ~Unknown

  22

  The Great Sadness

  Repetition compulsion; we unconsciously seek out people, events, situations that duplicate our core trauma, in the hope of eventually triumphing over the situation that wounded us.

  ~ Freud

  I walk inside Doc’s office. She greets me with a smile from her high throne chair. I usually look forward to visits but something is off today and I can’t pinpoint it. I turn to sit on the couch and feel the instant attack. The vision splits my soul wide open and leaks a torment of voices, whispering, screaming and crying. Sitting inside the bay window is a Mason jar of wild white roses. Doc always has flowers in the window, but this is different. This feels like a part of me, as if my heart sits soaking in water. A vile taste rises in my throat while a palpable resistance enters the air around me. My vision is altered, skewed. Sweat excretes from my pores. Is this some kind of reverse psychotherapy Doc is using on me? She knows about the Petal People. My fears, the old stories, and Maw Sue. She knows about the Seventh Tribe, the long-held beliefs my grandmother had, the truth behind the words. Doc knows all my secrets. Why would she do this, knowing how it would affect me?

  I sit quietly on the couch, unable to speak, just staring into the folds of the Petal People standing in the jar as if they want to speak and tell me their stories. Outside the window are overcast clouds, mist and fog. The jar draws me to it like a snake charmer. I hear a rumble inside me. The house awakens with fears. The Petal People rise up and whisper. “Cass,” they say. “Come to us. Immortelles. Everlasting. Death is the only way out.”

  “Cass, are you okay?” they say one after another.

  “No…no, I’m not okay,” I reply. “I’m not okay. I’m not okay.” And then I realize it’s not the Petal People talking. It’s Doc.

  “Cass,” she says, concerned. “What is it? Do you need some water?”

  “No. No—thank you,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead and gathering my wits about me.

  “Just try and relax. Why don’t you lie back on the couch and close your eyes for a minute?”

  “Okay,” I say as the cushion pulls me in. I inhale deeply. I close my eyes. Instantly a fragrance captures me and I am helpless to fight against it. It permeates my nose and fills me like the waves of many oceans. In my vision is the House of Seven, the house that built me, drives me, sustains me, and makes me crazy simultaneously. Around it I see the large cascading trees with the drooping moss tree creatures and their spirit eyes, hanging upside down and eerily staring through me, knowing me, wanting something from me. And then I hear the familiar clatter of bones. A rumble unsettles the ground beneath my feet, the earth splitting, crumbling. Beneath the soil I hear them, coming out from the graves in the Hush cemetery where the little girls buried them. Laid to rest, yet never asleep.
Forever tossing and turning in the grave and in my mind. Each headstone has a Mason jar with its own Petal People at the base and a small lit candle burning with a creepy glow while the wax drips with a black sludge.

  Suddenly a change in the air. The mossy-haired spirit damsels start dripping what looks to be tree sap, raw and oozing, sticky and thick. It runs down their tree people faces and trickles through their thick moss hair and drips slow and morbidly to the ground, and creates a river flowing toward me. A thick fog moves in and the whole landscape begins to change, growing creepy and eerily spooky, but then a voice perks my ears. It comes from inside the house of seven a few steps away. I quickly walk up the cobblestone path and face the sizzling carved seven in the door. The broken doorknob rattles and turns. A thousand fears rack my bones. I am hesitant to go inside; I may never come out. Trapped. Forever. I can turn around and run. Right now. Go back. Live the lie. Never see the truth. Or….

  I tremble. My lips twitch. My shaky hand reaches for the knob and before I can touch it, the door opens. I enter and come face-to-face with her. I am frozen in my tracks. Finally, after all this time, she shows herself and I know exactly who she is. Or maybe I just allow my eyes to see her for the first time, really see her. She seems so incredibly lifelike standing in front of me. I reach out to touch her, feel her, and make sure she is actually flesh and blood. One touch leaves me winded and taken aback.

  It is me. The child me. The truest form of who I was. An embodiment of sacred rituals, trust, story and words, crowns and crackles, love and mystery, innocence and spirit. Of want and wonder, of passion and fury. She is the little girl I was but always thought I couldn’t be.

  “Cass. Take my hand,” she says. “You are grit and courage. Blood and tears. Stars and moon dust. Faith and hope. You are a beautiful cluster. A constellation of hope.”

  “Go on,” she says as I move forward under her trance. My legs are wobbly. I take her hand and we conjoin. Our mannerisms combine. Everything about us is in sync, eye blinks, smiles, nods, shrugs, turns, everything—all is one. Twins of self. Together we walk the hallway of the house inside, bare feet, pure Southern sap, queens of the pine curtain.

  “I have to show you something, Cass,” she says mysteriously. “It will not be easy to see, but you must confront to move forward.” I hesitate. She seems to read my thoughts.

  “Look. You trusted Maw Sue, right?”

  “Yes, of course,” I say, pinching my lips together, remembering. “That was a long time ago.”

  “No buts, Cass, do you trust me?” I look at her for what seems like hours, but only a few seconds’ pass.

  “Okay,” I say, anxious and relieved at the same time. Suddenly with our thoughts converging on dark things, those things we both know, but keep hidden—the shadows slip out. They seep out under the doors and out of the cracks in the wall. Inside the house I see them differently, as they truly are. In the outside world they are just a thick oppressive spirit, but here they are in bodily form, like fallen angels, burnt black with large feathers materializing and then vanishing, coming to life then disappearing in black smudges. We stop in front of a door. The letters on the nameplate read, NATDODING.

  They scramble. GAINTODND. I look at her, puzzled.

  “Touch the doorknob, Cass.” Her eyes make me wary and cause a knot to swell in my throat. “I can’t do this for you. You must do this all alone.”

  “Do what?”

  “I can’t say.” She sniffles.

  I turn away to face the door. I touch the knob and feel a pulse of dark energy. I flinch. The nameplate scrambles the letters. My teeth chatter. I watch the letters form a word. Terror sinks inside my skin and my whole-body trembles as I remember.

  ADDINGTON.

  The door opens violently and I am thrust inside. I haven’t thought about Mark Addington in years. Why now? Why him? He’s just a guy I had a crush on. What’s the big deal? I glance at the little girl for answers, since she reads my thoughts.

  “You’ll see soon enough, Cass,” the little girl says. Suddenly the room transforms like a picture screen, except it’s all around me as if I’m out of my body, and there seeing it in real time. My past unfolds before my eyes. It’s nightfall. The stars are bright in the sky, the moon blinks halfway between the pines. Creature’s chirp, buzz and croak. Water laps against a creek bed at the river of our old hideout, our gathering place. I see a light coming from the trail at the woods edge. Holding the flashlight is me, a fourteen-year-old Cass. It’s strange watching myself in the past at this age. Standing face-to-face with a teenage me is kin to staring in the mirror and not knowing who you are, not trusting what you see is real. Was I this girl, really? Not knowing who you are separates yourself from your own identity, as if everything you should know, is tied up in someone who looks like you, yet, is foreign to you. I feel tormented to look at her, or rather, look at me. Hormones and icky feelings gurgle up and make me uncomfortable. She senses my anxiety. The little girl stands beside me and assures me with a glance that this is what I need to see, so I continue to watch in wonder as events unfold around me. In my mind, I’m figuring the guys or Meg will show up any minute. I wait. I watch. I wonder. I feel a familiar terror in the woods at being alone. Then and now. I watch the teenage Cass make a fire in our old fire pit. Sounds rise up above the flames crackling. A red Plymouth veers around the corner in a dust storm with bright headlights and loudspeakers blaring. The car engine kills. I hear laughter and a deep voice. For some reason my breathing intensifies, I’m almost hyperventilating, and I don’t know why. The little girl grabs my hand and I subside to calm, yet my mind is raging. My body seems to feel an epic variety of feelings that are of another time and place. I feel the teenage hormones, the love sap giddiness of hope and expectation. Dear God. I feel all of it NOW. Everything the teenage Cass felt then—I feel it now, as I watch in astonishment this event I can’t recall in memory, and I don’t know why. But as the emotions fill me, it comes, flush after flush.

  I am fifteen and crazy about Mark Addington. Despite all the warnings Terry gave me to stay away—I didn’t listen. Despite all the rumors at school, I was stubborn. If truth be told, I was desperate for someone to love me. Pay attention to me. Talk to me. Resolve my life. Forgive my trespasses. Save me from my own internal damnation.

  We planned it earlier without anyone knowing. He asked me to meet him there long after everyone else had left. I grabbed my handy flashlight, rolled some watermelon gloss on my lips and climbed out my window. Walking the dark trail of the pine woods, I imagined this would be the night my life would change, for the better. He’d give me his bracelet, the leather one with his name carved in it. The girls at school would be so jealous. He would be mine. He would kiss me by the firelight, tell me he liked me from the beginning. Me. Little Cass would fall in love.

  I feel weirdly out of place even if Mark is here. I’ve always had the protection of the other guys around me, but now my shield is gone. I feel vulnerable. Terry had always been my safety net. He isn’t here. I am all alone with Mark.

  He removes his shirt. “What are we waiting for? You want to go skinny-dipping?” He winks. “I’ve had a six-pack already. Grab a beer, young lady. You need to catch up.” He points to the little cooler he brought.

  “Dang, Mark. Slow down. You just got here. No…I don’t want to go swimming.” I laugh as if he’s kidding. Is he kidding?

  “I didn’t say swimming.” He winks. I was hoping he was joking.

  “You chicken?” He starts squawking and flapping his arms. “Here I go!” His body is tanned and muscled. My body quickens. I yearn to touch him.

  “I tell you what,” he says, taking off his shoes, then his pants, then his underwear. My eyes widen with disbelief. His penis springs out and flops down on his thigh. I cover my eyes, embarrassed, but underneath my eyelids I see the black bars and hear my mother scream, “Sexpot!”

  “I’m waiting, Cass,” Mark screams. I open my eyes to catch him running butt naked, hooting and
hollering and leaping into the swimming hole.

  “Oh my God, Mark, you are crazy.” His head pops up from the water as a darkened silhouette. I am smiling so hard my mouth hurts.

  “Well, are you coming or not?” He dives underwater, shoots up like a porpoise and then under again. I am shy about the no clothes part, but I like him so much that a part of me doesn’t care. A part of me tells me this is the way it should be. A union of man and woman.