by Noah Broyles
She examined the peeling railing of the second-floor porch and the cascades of wild grapevines falling from it. She fed a fresh piece of Wrigley’s spearmint into her mouth as they reached the porch stairs. With him close behind, she placed her foot on the bottom step. It squealed beneath her weight. Quick fingers reached for her fiancé’s shoulder and they chuckled together. The rest of the steps were spongy, too. Soft whines accompanied their climb.
At the top, behind the columns, a procession of listless rocking chairs ran to the far ends of the huge porch. What a social hub this place must have been. And how oddly they were arranged now: each one facing a slightly different direction.
At the door, she went through the keys. There were only three, but she made it seem a chore because his arms were around her, his breath on her neck. She turned into his embrace, and her shoulder blades thumped the dark wood.
The door moved.
“Huh?” Twisting again, her cheek near his, she slowly lifted her palm and pressed.
The door swung open. Air shifted around them, drawn in across the threshold. The hall was a dry throat and all the unseen rooms back through the old mansion were collapsed lungs, filling with fresh air after how many strangled years?
“Well . . .” She steadied herself on the doorframe. “And you’re sure this house is ours? It’s as secure as a tourist attraction.”
“That’s funny,” her fiancé said. “I left it locked.”
“Huh.” Staring across the threshold, she could have sworn for a moment that she’d discerned movement. A black silhouette standing in the dimness and beckoning with a long left hand. Welcoming.
Slowly, grayness bled into her vision and the vestibule of the house became visible.
No, there was nothing there. Silly girl.
The smile from earlier expanded, and it felt pure now. Our own house! Tugging away from him, she stepped across the threshold. And burst out laughing.
“What? What now?” He stepped in quickly after her.
“I just got the strangest feeling walking in here.”
“Really.”
“Like I stepped off a sidewalk without looking.”
“Well, the sheriff assured me the place is sound.”
She turned, frustrated. “Look, you aren’t bein’ romantic at all.” She walked back out onto the porch. “Get out here and carry me across this threshold. I don’t care if it is bad luck the second time.”
Shaking his head, he stepped out after her. “What way do you want to be carried?”
“Well, I suppose the normal way.”
He scooped her up before looking into her eyes in a way that made her giggle, and then he walked into the house. A couple of feet inside the vestibule, he stopped, and they both craned their necks back. As they breathed, silk-curtain stillness fell around them.
Across the expanse of ceiling, clouds of cobwebs clustered around dusty light fixtures.
The hall extended to the rear of the house where a curtain masked the light from the back door. The corridor between was paneled in dark oak up to about waist height, and then flowery wallpaper took over and climbed to the ceiling, where painted wooden vines twisted together with leaves and fruits, forming the intricate crown molding.
A murmur of admiration escaped her gaping mouth as her eyes adjusted and a huge cascade of steps appeared from the gloom, jutting through a rectangular gap in the ceiling like a mummified arm and sagging toward the floor along the left side of the hall. More carved vines wrapped around the rungs of the bannister, creating the illusion of movement.
“What do you think now?” he whispered.
“I’ve never been in a house with such high ceilings.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s so . . . ”
“Perfect?” He kissed her exposed throat. “For a perfect woman.”
“Your silly talk is sillier than most men’s.” She wriggled back onto her feet, shrieking as he tickled her. But even then she noticed how the sound of their laughter didn’t carry down the hall.
Regaining her breath, she tugged his arm. “Come on, let’s do the full tour.”
Now it was his turn to slip free. He backed toward the door. “I have to get my desk in.”
“Don’t you wanna look around with me?”
“Seen it already. The sheriff showed me.”
He seemed suddenly satisfied that she would fall in love with the place.
She sighed, scuffed her foot, and noticed the smeared tracks their shoes had left. “This place ain’t been lived in for years.”
“I’ll need help in a minute,” he called.
Perhaps he said something else, but he was outside now and sounds from outside had shifted out of focus, leaving a mournful whistle of air between her lips. She took a step deeper into the house. Yes, silence was nice. She would not have music playing in every room of her house like some people did in theirs. Especially not the horrible, noisy, thumping music that rattled your bones. No, there would be peace in their house.
Their house!
The floors would need a good cleaning, and that wallpaper would have to come down, but without too much work, it would be a place he would want to come home to. A place to stay.
The first task would be to take all the curtains down and get the house out of The Twilight Zone.
Two large doorways, framed by the same black oak, yawned on either side of her. She entered the door on her right, moving from hardwood to aged carpet. She’d have to get rid of that stuff, too—no carpet in her house to get stained and spilled on, smelling of mildew like the back rooms at the Club. The heels of her shoes went through it like lace underwear.
She dug around in her purse for a handkerchief, then went to the drapes that shrouded the front of the room. Holding the cloth to her face, she grabbed a handful of the heavy curtains and dragged backward, peeling the shadows away.
Light gushed in and flowed over the floor, churning around a table and six empty chairs, piling up against a huge sofa and coffee table, then splashing against yellow walls and sinking into alcoves where ancient books and antique vases rested. It drained into an empty fireplace near the back of the room and dripped off a strangely textured mantel.
Missy squinted. The mantel looked . . . flayed, almost. She crossed the room and gingerly touched the ledge of the mantel. It prickled. Dozens of tiny scratches had been cut into the wood, made with the tiniest blade. The accumulated dust in the cracks stuck to her fingers and she withdrew them after a moment, rubbing them together. The crumbly stuff clung to her skin.
Returning to the hall, she stood in the fresh air current from the open door and scrubbed her fingertips with the handkerchief. The powder seemed magnetic. She laughed to clear her throat, then stopped when she saw the arms.
The handkerchief floated from her grasp.
They were frail little things, reaching out from the dark wedge of floor behind the front door.
Missy approached and bent down. The lacy arms rose in her fingertips. Behind them, a dress unfolded. She stood and stepped back into the full light; she held the little arms wide and examined the garment.
It was silky and white. The arms would come to her elbows if she wore it, and the hem would trail behind her a bit. But it clearly wasn’t for formal occasions. The sleeves were see-through, and the body wasn’t much more substantial. This dress was sensual. Her fingers hardened.
Something for costume nights at the Club. Something the Boss would toss at her. Hey, put this on.
That almost made her throw it away. But as she lowered it, the filmy fabric felt so delicious on her hands that she gave it another glance. It wasn’t really a Club dress after all. It was far more elegant. The embroidery work was exquisite, and the yellowing of age and smell of dust lent it a sense of sacredness. Something a great lady would wear. Perhaps this was the mistres
s’s gown.
Missy pulled it closer. Who would leave something like this lying before the front door, to be pushed aside whenever it was opened next? She folded the dress across her arm and crossed the hall to the opposite doorway.
There were more curtains along the front of this room, but she forgot them as she looked across the dusty white expanse of floor. The room was huge, and the vastness drew her feet. Sixty feet long, at least, and thirty wide. A ceiling she couldn’t reach if she was twice as tall. She remembered the dingy little Nashville flat they had vacated just that morning and tried to imagine how many times it would fit in this space. How many of its little windows would make one of the big windows that processed down the outer wall to her left.
All the room’s furnishings were pushed against that outer wall, packed into cardboard boxes and draped in sheets. It was ghostly to have them lined up that way, swathed, still. The effect was amplified as her footsteps echoed off the peeling white wall opposite. Still, she liked the openness. She liked the chandelier hanging above the middle of the hall. She could feel it trying to sparkle through all that dust. She liked—
A shadowy form moved at the edge of her vision.
Missy stopped and turned her head.
A wide fireplace was set in the outer wall. A huge mirror hung over the mantel. It was angled down in such a way as to give her the impression of staring down on herself when she looked up.
Slowly, she smiled at her reflection. The smile split her face and stretched her eyes and she froze, staring at the hideous thing she’d become.
Something was wrong with the mirror. Something was distorting it. Hesitantly, she approached. The glass was grimy, but at its center a series of convex lines was discernible, forming a shape. As she moved, her reflection split and rippled, moving like ink through the warped glass.
She stopped beneath the mirror. A human form was at the center of the symbol. A ring formed the outer edge. Between the human form and the circle stretched six arms. It reminded her of something. A sketch in one of the encyclopedia volumes she’d read—Leonardo da Vinci’s demonstration of movement. Perhaps the shape on the mirror was waving its arms.
“Dancing,” she said suddenly. “This was a dance hall.”
Eager to keep that thought, she turned and dropped her purse and spun out across the empty floor, spreading her arms and holding the dress so that it flapped softly. She imagined a piano played beneath one of those white sheets, dripping notes into the air that matched the click of her shoes. Dust rose from the boards, awakened by her tapping feet, and twirled up into the dress to form a phantom partner.
Her heart was racing. Yes, this was a dance hall. A place of music and people. She would clean these floors until they gleamed. She would invite dozens of people from the area and they would watch as she danced with her husband on endless summer nights. They would be envious of her house, and her husband, and her. No more hiding away. No more shame.
“There are lights, you know.”
With a click, yellow radiance glared down from the chandelier. She dropped her arms and turned. The dress flopped to the floor. Through wobbly vision, she saw her fiancé standing at the front of the hall.
“Aw, don’t turn on the lights.” She took a tottering step. “It’s not real in the light.”
“What have you got there?”
“Just an old rag I found.”
It’s not a rag.
“Really?”
Why would you call it that, Missy?
“Look here.” She picked up the dress and swayed toward the fireplace, pointing up. “What’s this?”
He came over, placing one hand on her back. “Huh. There’s one of those on the front door. Must be a family symbol.”
“Like a coat of arms? That’s medieval stuff.”
“Maybe the people who lived here had an ancient bloodline.” He gazed at her with those murky eyes. “Come on. I need your help with the desk.”
Missy tossed the dress onto a box and followed.
When she saw the desk, she emptied her lungs. It was an heirloom piece, supposedly. Something his daddy had given him ’cause he’d made him proud. Probably, Daddy had planned on papers lying on the desk, not someone like her, legs apart, beckoning to his boy.
He’d managed to get the old thing through the door and to the foot of the steps. A piece of soft foam had been attached by loops of rope to the top of the desk. They would flip it over and slide it up, he explained. At least she got to be on the uphill end.
Heaving it from the lip of one step to the next, they inched upward. Their breath was loud in the silent house. The steps groaned. The dust was slick beneath Missy’s shoes. She paused halfway up to take them off and throw them over the bannister. As her wrists brushed the top of the bannister a familiar prickle danced through them. She froze.
“What is it?” her fiancé huffed.
“Someone went wild with a razor blade in this house.”
“What?”
“Look at the scratches. All down the railing.”
He frowned at the delicate marks, then shrugged. “Nothing a little sandpaper won’t fix.”
Her legs were shaking when the top stair came beneath her wavering foot. She slumped back and looked down the dim corridor. Light came from a curtained window at the end of the hall—the front of the house—and it struck her that something had been moving around up here just before they came into view on the stairs; she could see dust dancing beneath the window.
“Hey!” her fiancé called, still trapped in the stairwell by the desk. “Come on, Missy, let’s get it over with.”
Grunting, she climbed to her feet and dragged the desk into the hall. The ceiling was much lower up here, and the old wallpaper was a pleasant green-and-white stripe. They pushed the desk down the hall toward the window. At the end, he told her to kick open the door to the right. It swung easily open, and the air brightened as they wrestled the desk inside.
Once it was properly in place, Missy straightened, panting, and looked around the room. At the front, light came through two great windows shrouded by yellow curtains. Between the windows, a door led out onto the second-floor porch. A few strands of ivy clawed in through the crumbled seal along the threshold. Inside, books perched like abandoned cicada husks along shelves built into the entire right-side wall. The thick volumes, as well as the stacks of pamphlets and pocket-sized publications, were faded, almost from another time.
She crossed toward the yellow curtains, examining the titles as she went. None jumped out at her. Some were even in foreign languages. “My encyclopedias will look good on these shelves,” she mentioned. “The next volume should be coming soon.”
“Coming here?” It was spoken with that strained tone he’d used when they first met.
“Of course.” She brushed the spine of a red-bound book, tracing the tarnished gold lettering: The Daemonologie of King James. “Nothing settles you into a home like havin’ a package delivered there.”
He breathed for a bit. “So, the old place is salvageable? The property shouldn’t be condemned?”
“It’s had a rough time.” Missy pushed the curtain away from one of the cloudy windows, then pushed her hair away from her face. “But condemned? I’ll find something grand under all this dirt.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Breath on her ear.
She stiffened, just a bit, as his finger came out of nowhere and followed a bead of sweat from her jaw down toward the base of her neck. His finger continued beneath her collar.
Missy turned to him quickly. “Which means I better get started! You bring the rest of our stuff inside”—she gave him a plentiful kiss—“and I’ll start clearing out some of the rooms. How does chicken salad sound for dinner?”
He frowned, and she smiled at him and slipped from his arms. As she descended the creaking stairs, scra
ping the perspiration from her face with the back of her hand, it suddenly occurred to her that this wasn’t the Nashville apartment in more ways than one. No one lived within earshot of the house. The only other people in the area were two humid miles of forest away, and they were strangers.
She shoved the thought away. They would all be her friends when she threw that dazzling party. Yes! She tried to recapture the magic of that thought as she reentered the dance hall.
The dust was still settling from her dancing. When she dragged the drapes off the windows, a fresh flurry of motes filled the air. She turned to examine the shrouded items along the wall, and something out in the middle of the floor caught her eye. It glimmered in the new light. A spot of yellow.
Missy approached. Her smile fractured as the thing emerged from the haze. A bright, fresh yellow daffodil. It stuck from a crevasse between the boards where she had danced, almost as if it had sprouted there.
The floor felt swishy. Unstable.
Leaning down, she plucked the flower. She held it at arm’s length for a moment, until the delicate smell of its perfume entered her nostrils.
And with it the smell of rot. Her rot. Her own filthiness. It had followed her here.
She folded the daffodil into her fingers and crushed it.
5
The house’s layout was fairly simple. Both floors were split down the middle by high-ceilinged hallways. Rooms opened off these halls, ribs branching from a spine. On the first floor, as you crossed the threshold, the doorway to the dance hall stood to the left and the parlor to the right.
Down the first-floor hall, the staircase, ornately carved, rose like a cornucopia toward the second floor. Past that, doorways let off to the wide kitchen and the dining room, the latter of which connected back to the dance hall.
Upstairs, a bathroom and three quiet bedrooms lined the western wing. The master bedroom and connecting master bathroom sprawled with royal abandon down the eastern side, capped near the front of the residence by a musty study and library. I set up base here, in the companionship of such titles as The Coming Race, Justine, and Éloa.