The Winslow Estate

Hart Winslow had always resented her father. She felt as if the distance between them spanned larger than the thousands of kilometers separating New York City from Louisiana. This distance transcended universes, as one harbored peace and an adolescent woman, while the other crawled with rough beasts, daemon’s allegedly hell-bent on casting spells of misery on one sick individual. The first universe lost a member to the latter’s consumption of the dying mind of Theodore Winslow. Hart had watched this sickness consume her father from the inside out until only a sack of flesh remained, the blood left pumping by the delusion that plagued his rotted brain. This is what brewed the resentment Hart felt, resentment towards the creature her father had become. 

She moved to New York City, leaving her father to rot in the old estate. At the time, her guilt was beat back by the anguish she felt when sharing a house with a madman, but when her fingers gripped the edges of a condolence letter years later, they began to tremble, as a twisted form of grief gripped her chest. Only a madman cared not for the death of their father, a death partially faulted to them. 

The return trip to the estate was a particularly tedious one. Unable to drive Hart rode the train. She busied herself with attempts to conjure up positive recollections of her father, eventually abandoning the endeavor when her mind became plagued with unfocused pupils and trembling hands. She turned to the swamps of Louisiana, finding comfort in the flat murkiness that was exactly as it appeared to be. 

It was at the station that Hart met Lovely. Lovely was a frail, impossibly pale woman. Brittle, white hair framed her petite form much like a halo, strands of it kept from her face by silver glasses hiding wide red eyes. Please meet me at the Schriever train station at four p.m on Sunday to receive a key to the estate, - Mr Winslow’s caretaker.  The end of the condolence letter said, this small woman must be the caretaker. 

“You m-must be Hart,” A polite yet coy smile.

“I am,” 

“I’m L-Lovely,” She must have invented that name. 

The two shook hands and Hart noted the cadence in which Lovely held herself. It was as if a stray gust of wind would startle her immensely before apologizing profusely for disturbing her. 

The estate was a two-hour drive from the station. Lovely led Hart through the tangled backroads of Louisiana to a white Lexus she had tucked down the street. Hart struggled to keep up with Lovely as she carved through the streets of her childhood with shocking ease both on foot and behind the wheel of the luxury car. 

“Y-your father was a wonderful m-man,” Lovely chided. 

Hart focused on the droplets of water on the windshield rather than attempting to reply to Lovely’s shocking comment. 

Her father a lovely man? 

Her father was insane, plagued by imaginary daemons treating him as a flesh and bones puppet.

“We’ve s-suffered a terrible l-loss,” She continued, her tone taking a somber note, heavy with distant memory. 

We?  

She was the one who had lost her father. 

The car groaned as its wheels rolled over the gravel driveway. Hart’s contemplation was quickly overtaken by the decaying mansion looming ahead. The building seemed to be begging for a quick death, the planks pushing outside the foundation as if an inside force was attempting to force its way through the ancient boundary but succeeded in only bending the sour wood. A wave of familiarity struck her at the onyx roof. Peeking from under it was a singular frosted window, the room that it belonged to harbored a queen-sized mattress, an oak desk, and tracks worn into the floor by her anxious pacing. When her father's screams and rapid footsteps kept her from her slumber, she found comfort in pacing along the path her feet had carved into the floor. A part of her longed to trace the footsteps with her finger, to sit on her childhood bed, to apologize. 

“T-Theo would be s-so please that y-your’re here to v-visit the h-house,” 

Hart was suddenly reminded of why she had returned in the first place. She was here to sell the house, an interest that she had already expressed to Lovely in their correspondences. 

The walk to the door caused her anxiety to rise. Her heartbeat filled her ears, the thick pounding of blood drowning out the rattle of keys as Lovely sorted through countless of them, humming to herself. She remembered how her father used to change the locks weekly. When the door swung open she felt immediately consumed by the estate. It took several moments for her to collect herself, and to tune out the whispers she swore she could hear as the house breathed. 

Hart, you mustn’t go outside. 

They told me it is not safe out there. 

Who? She had screamed back at him There is no one there.

The only threat had been looking her in the eye, muttering about ‘The voices’. 

“R-right this way,” The house echoed the two sets of footsteps over the mahogany flooring as they weaved through the junk littering the walls. Lovely strode forward with ease, it was obvious that this was a path she had taken every day, and relished in it. Hart’s bloodstream roared, the walls leaned over her, breathing down her neck. The towers of trinkets on each side of her reached out and wrenched her into her past. She remembered when the empty bottles lining the walls were full. She remembered the mutilated prior occupants of jars, the bloody masses of tissue and gnarled organs, the vials of blood and shards of bone. 

All to appease the voices.

They told me I need this. 

None of that remained, the jars existed only as vacant cells vanishing with the last living member of the house, a sickening reflection of the mental status of Theodore Winslow. 

Or, Hart stared at Lovely, resentment brewing at the obvious familiarity she displayed with her childhood, the second to last member. 

The tour consisted of walking from the front door to the kitchen which was some way into the house. For this Hart was grateful, the idea of walking any further was unbearable. 

Lovely’s chapped lips began to open-

“I’m selling it,” Hart snarled. Lovely flinched, and if Hart was not plagued by the mental image of having any ties to this hell-house, she would feel guilty for causing her harm. 

“V-very well,”

It wasn’t until she was safely wrapped in hotel covers, sorting through the day's interactions that she began to notice how peculiar Lovely was. Her father Theo’s alleged caretaker, who had such a tie to her house, to her life. 

And a lisp. 

A lisp that she soon realized was more than just a speech impediment. Her stutter was attributed to her constant and aggressive trembling, her form vibrating like a hummingbird, a creature who existed in a continual near-death state. 

What was going on in that house? Years later Hart still had no clue. The double-edged sword of death kept his shrieks and secrets to himself. All that remained were whispered questions with no answers.

What were ‘they’ telling my father to do? 

Maybe it was the mystery that brought her to that mahogany door, to that compact hallway. Maybe it was her guilt, gnawing hungrily through the rational sections of her mind, the holes filling with a dark desire to delve into what she never dared to before. 

Or maybe the voices were getting to her too. 

The taxi exited the driveway, the driver unnerved by the peculiarity of the situation. He wondered passively what that stone-faced woman he’d driven wanted with the owner of the Lexus he spotted tucked next to the old house.

The anger rushing through her like blood beat back her nerves. Doors that Hart hadn’t dared to open before were ripped open as she stormed through the house. How dare she be robbed of a father? She hated him, and she hated his house. Empty jars came crashing to the ground, shattering against the floors that were hers now. No one could stand between her anymore, no one except…Her mind flooded with long white hair, polite red eyes, and how they fit like the piece missing from Hart’s childhood, Lovely. Oh, she hated- 

“Lovely?!” 

Hart was frozen. Horror leeching from her throat in the form of a mangled scream. In her rage she had gone to the only room considered off-limits in the estate, her father’s study, and heaved the door open. 

There on the floor, she was Lovely, in a puddle of gore. The smell of iron lathered Hart’s tongue 

as she beheld the scene in front of her. Her white hair was stained in a deep red as she sat in a pool of her own blood. No longer quivering, her head lolled due to the morphine leaking into her system from an IV stand, drugging her as her blood was pulled from her veins, through a tube, and into-

It was Hart’s second screech that ripped Lovely from her medically-induced slumber. 

On the floor connected to Lovely was a mangled figure, a mass of tissue and organ heaved together and messily sewn into some semblance of a human. 

Hart lurched forward, some part of her humanity remaining as she yanked the IV from Lovely’s forearm, fighting the waves of nausea forcing their way up her throat. 

“No!” Lovely shrieked, suddenly very conscious she lunged for the fresh IV, still dripping blood.

A sick, deformed version of laughter bubbled in Hart’s throat as she wrestled with what could possibly be happening. 

“They need this!” 

Hart backed away from the scene, “What?”

“Theo always said you would come back if I finished their project and he was right!” 

Project?! Hart forced her eyes to focus on the mass. It was grotesque, the blood Lovely was pumping into this lifeless being was pooling onto the floor around it, matting in its dark hair. It was clear to Hart that this was the work of two insane people, who believed they could contort tissue and bone into animation. 

Hart couldn’t bear to look into its features. Under the dark hair was a pair of familiar dead eyes. A pale blue, similar to her own, but older. 

Her fathers.

Lovely had constructed this mess from the dead body of her father, and he had wanted her to do so.