In front was the entrance to a wonderful place. A door that welcomed without words. A driveway that curved without being abrupt. Seclusion in the most quaint sense, shifting quietly below the thin, tall trunks of aching trees and tired hills.
What made it so surreal? What made this place so…different? We entered and ashes floated. Dust grew like moss on tables. The air reminded me of a year that disappeared into the annals of slowly melted memory. What more could you say? Did we see ghosts? The answer is yes.
All we saw were ghosts.
By the time we arrived, the red paint had faded to a sad color that felt more maroon. It was flaking off so slightly, the the ground around was etched in a thin bed of red snowflakes. The whole place had cocooned itself to some other dimension, where time washed over more gently, more elegantly.
The first ghost I met was the mother. Who opened the door, which did not creak, who ushered me in with a warm hand on the shoulder. She said, ahhh, with a mild, surprised tone, yet so pleasurable. It’s you, she said. Nice to meet you finally. And a smell that I could not remember filled my lungs. I breathed in, tilting my head back a few degrees. The mother noticed and said, oh yes, but are you smelling the brownies, or death?
I sat after hesitating. You know where? I peered out the window and saw deer in the distance. Clouds vanished, and reappeared as dusk. Tea, or coffee?
This family of ghosts—the dusty afterthoughts of a faded nucleus. The mother came up to me holding a cup of tea, and thus began—
—many years ago, and I was still young, fresh, taken aback by such a proposal. But these moments are but “just another second” until eighty years later, and looking back, bring up vague notions and emotions, and like a stone in your shoe, nagging, making you ask, “why?” or “what if—” But I said yes, of course I did, and we moved in here before I became a woman. Before I could wake up and declare what the day would be. One day, very soon after we moved into this house, I had trouble falling asleep. And I just laid there, and he was so deeply asleep. There were creaking sounds that seemed to be coming from downstairs, and that was the first time I felt frightened, and truly alone. A sensation that has been mostly dormant since, but have come back, tickling the back of my neck, as you are right now…
I moved slowly through the living room, sliding my hand across the dry sofa. One of the daughters, whose face looked tired, ran past me and turned left onto the staircase upstairs. It appeared to me that the room was very dark, filled with empty thoughts—everything so old, even the light—when the father walked in, came up quickly and magnanimously as if to embrace me like a son, before pulling back and offering instead a firm handshake. I hope you don’t mind the current state of affairs…I’m afraid certain things are…irreversible, he said with a slight twinkle.
The house was built in the first decade of the twentieth century. Young, perhaps, in comparison to the older, more rustic houses nearby, but its slow, understated presence gave it a sage-like aspect that came to grow, even as it was the home to a young, vibrant family. And it aged so wonderfully…like wine…like a healthy oak tree—casting down a cool shade, spreading life…
Their eldest son, looking in his early twenties, entered. He said: I thought you would come. I knew I would see you again. It was almost ten years ago—I don’t know if you remember, but we were in the city, walking around in the park, while it was raining slightly. You came up to me and offered me your hand. I took it, we walked, we danced underneath a grove of small trees, surrounded by a grove of steely skyscrapers, dancing to the rhythm of the afternoon traffic and the incomprehensible murmur of city life. The flickering of millions of lives, seeping through the autumn air through osmosis…
We went upstairs, to the master bedroom. See? A queen-sized bed, an elegant dark nightstand, a closet in the far corner. We won’t go inside, said the mother, passing through the wall. A picture hung next to where I was—a picture of paramount importance. It was black and white, an illustration of the entire family, stiff with forced smiles in front of the house. The moon glowed in the background. Ahh…that was taken in…
Shall we go outside?
A breeze softened the late summer heat. Deer floated far away, near the horizon. A garden, the source of life. Look at this tangle of…flowers. And the trees, which glowed with the living glare of liquid sunlight. The father pointed at one of the taller trees, about twenty feet in front. That is the oldest tree in town. See the black bit on its trunk, toward the ground? It’s been through several fires in its lifetime. It was here when angels and devils fought. This tree comes and goes with our thoughts on life. And as the leaves fall…could we not rake them into a pile, and pray?
Before leaving, the mother gave me a little gift, wrapped in rough, brown paper. Don’t open it yet…give it three days, at least. The road I took wandered away, and quickly the house of out of sight. As I rolled down the window, I could hear vague notions of whispers and the smell of the living room curling in. I breathed, wondering what the gift was, sitting in the passenger seat, illuminated by a red sunset.
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