Trying to Get Her to Care

I walked up the rickety, creaky front porch stairs, each step a groaning sound reserved only for stairs so old they would have to actually make a sound for them to prove themselves rickety and creaky. Anyway, I grabbed the brass doorknob and turned it, it whining and squeaking. Any second now, I almost pulled my light blue bracelet hand away—it would probably come off its connection to the huge brown wooden door if I turned it any more. This house, so-called a Gothic manor house for historical purposes, was so intriguing and worth searching that I just had to see what was inside. I mean, I was a high school senior. What was the harm?

Once I stepped onto the hardwood floor, I pulled a string hanging from a dusty cylinder with light bulbs dangling from it. Let’s just say this place wasn’t kept up, as I peered closely at the cobwebbed staircase. They looked like they hadn’t been renovated in ages, and maybe a mouse or a rat had scurried in and out of its hole dozens of times, taking moldy, soggy cheese with it so it could at least have something to gnaw on to satiate its ravenous hunger. But I didn’t check to see if there were any black dots around the wooden set. Instead, I looked towards the right and had to search for another dangling duo of lightbulbs—I was in the dark. Literally.

I finally managed to find an electric switch (probably installed a couple of months ago), for it lit up the cough-causing, sneeze-instigating filthy mess of a dust-filled room. I mean, the stuff just seemed to pile after first settling itself onto the white marble coffee room and pure-white cushioned seats so neatly placed around the table. As I rolled up my loose sleeves and got to work sweeping all the dust from the table and then pushing even dust from the chairs, I coughed, gagging a little as I inhaled dust-speckled moments of air I instantly brought into my lungs as a result of my coughing fit. But I kept going, thinking I’d be known for doing such a kind deed for the person who ran this manor house. Or a tourist coming to provide a history of this place.

Or maybe me for getting her to care. I mean, I tried to get my older sister, Amory, to ditch the stupid boyfriend books for this place (or something else of investment). But she would have nothing to do with it; instead, she insisted on painting her toenails (in my opinion a puke green color) and spraying on enough perfume, before her boyfriend came to pick her up, to sell at a beauty salon. I mean, I could smell it all the way from one end of the house to the other, and we did not live in a big house. I’d rather remove dust and inhale some of it so I couldn’t breathe in her stupid Lavender Mint Blast and get the perfume particles logged in my lungs forever.

I got all the dust away.

Hey—where did these things come from? I thought I was here to—

I switched to the front door. Maybe I didn’t close it. I went to shut it, but it was extremely hard to do so. I dared to step down on to the front porch, and almost had a heart attack as I widened my eyes and dropped my jaw.

I was staring right at… I blinked and pinched my face. What was I staring at?

“Hey, lady.”

I whipped my russet braided head over. An elderly man dressed in a beige, 30’s trench coat and hat was squinting, and he pointed his wobbly index finger at me. “What are you looking at?”

“Uh…” I looked back, my jaw and cheeks turning hot. “Nothing.” I blurted out.   

He pursed his lips and kept walking, obviously thinking I was a nutcase for even looking behind the door. Strolling by me along the autumn leaf-strewn sidewalk while cars whizzed past me in both directions, the man shook his head and then looked forward as he continued his walk. I turned right around. But I couldn’t pass up the feeling I was being watched or had seen something. Or something was trying to get my attention.

Besides, the door was really hard to pull. I mean, as if someone else was pulling it open while I tried to close it. I thought about it but looked out the dining room’s big squared window. Nothing was there. Then I felt something touch my shoulder. I whirled around, my mouth having glossed my teeth with an icy terror.

But nothing was there, either. I was really scared, my eyes bulging as I had them widened, and my feet felt like mush. But it was daylight. But at the same time, I felt it was night or close to getting dark. I didn’t know why it felt so spooky during the daytime. The sun was out, it had shone on the man’s profile as he stared at me. I don’t know what the fear was coming from, or why I was so sensitive to something so…

So what? I couldn’t name it. It wasn’t even there. So what was going on?

Was this place haunted? Was it my imagination? Or my fear playing tricks on me?

I didn’t know. I kept going, though, through this manor house, and famous writers’ names came to mind. Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley. More flooded through my mind—Wordsworth, Dickens, Stevenson, Carlyle—but I only really knew the second and third ones. I could look up the others online, but I wasn’t really literary at heart. Actually, I preferred canines and dog breeding. Not books and written words on pages or journals. But as I searched the colossal castle of a house, creeping into closets that sent a cough-inducing whiff of smoke (wherever that came from), I started to realize something.

Maybe not strangers. How about…

I scampered downstairs (horrifying as it sounds), retrieving a flashlight from the coffee table before I whisked away on my adventure. The spotlight being maneuvered everywhere, I bumbled into a door, sounding as creaky as the front, maybe not. Anyway, I lighted upon a cardboard box. Pausing to ensure nothing would jump out at me or scrabble across the stacked wooden crates lined up against the grey wall, I inched forward, pushing myself to take the risk and—

An empty box.

Hmph. I kicked it. Figures. Nothing new. Nothing exciting. Like my home life, with my sister’s ramblings about her superb dates with her flamboyant boyfriend. I couldn’t even talk to an excitable kid, let alone hear the renditions of a college girl’s dream escalate from girlfriend to wife.  

Whatever. I’d rather be dusting. Because I’d get sicker hearing her worthless stories than from the dust itself!

I know, I know. It was mean. Nasty thought. But I just felt…trapped in that house. Maybe I’ll get a payable job (not that I don’t have one) and buy this place. Turn it into a livable place with a friend or two to keep me company. Shannon from Chemistry, or Tammy from P.E.

Or, I reconsidered as I rummaged through a couple more boxes after switching the flashlight’s light with bulb light from the ceiling, Travis—as a next-door neighbor or apartment above or below me. He was a dog walker, trainer and skydiver. He didn’t mix well with the popular party, but he wouldn’t be caught dead reading a class textbook. He was like me—sweet and talkative.

Maybe we’d date—

That feeling again! Like someone was watching me! Maybe… I stood up. It was the darkness from the rooms, or the dark rooms. I mean, it was bright as a smile outside. So…duh. Some of the rooms, like this big one in the basement, didn’t have windows! I almost smacked my flashlight against my forehead. I couldn’t have been more oblivious.

However, I knew Travis would be more oblivious skydiving. He even laughed about breaking a bone or two when landing. Said it was the best day of his life—until it was shattered by a splint in the shin or a crack in the knee. Let’s hope he can still laugh when his neck is ripped from its connecting joints.

But anyway, I scavenged through the rest of the boxes, collecting and bringing up to see in the light what I had found. I still felt that sense around me. But as I hiked up the stairs, I felt like it was telling me to beware of anyone stealing anything.

I wasn’t a thief, but maybe, as I turned to close the whiny door, I was warned as if the house itself didn’t trust me. But I dashed over to the coffee table in the living room behind me and spilled out my treasure. A coffee pot dated back to, let’s see, 1873, a small medal clock somewhere around that time period, a funny-looking puzzle set connecting to each other, and…

I looked at the puzzle set. Very interesting. It looked like it could be the setup to a Victorian castle. However, as I collected more pieces from the treasure chest I found within the cobwebs of the basement, I began to see that it could end up as this house. This Gothic manor house in which I stood and put it together. Literally.

I felt a cold chill. What if this house told me to solve the puzzle? Was I to fix what had once been wronged? Could I be the next puzzle solver?

I solved the puzzle in a few moments’ time and then looked at the clock (modern, yes!) on the grey wall. It read 2:15 pm—the rehearsal dinner. My sister’s rehearsal dinner tonight with her boyfriend. That’s what she called a date she just flew into a fury readying herself for. Well, I pursed my lips and continued looking over the puzzle while fleeting thoughts of the date were going to have to fade away into my almost full memory of desirably unwanted date stories. Because I wasn’t there with Travis, exuding joy at his hand in my life to take me away to…

I smirked. What if I brought Travis here? Before college plans became a reality, I could’ve brought him here, and we would see how this puzzle has to do with this real manor house. Could it bring us back in time to meet such people as those who have popped in my mind? Could it transform this place into a livable area with Travis as my husband and me as his wife sharing the rooms, especially the living room’s eye-wateringly smoky fireplace breathing dust right from its mouth of a furnace? Could this place be something I could ever own? Especially with other people like Travis, or just him alone?

I was tempted to tuck my shoulders and elbows into myself at that absurdly impossible thought. Me owning something like this to eventually use as a home and then sell to tourists or a historian who would describe this once-lived-in home to be an abandoned creak house? But I kept myself straight, my shoulders leaning forward and my neck stretched up high. I would make this pictorial event come true. I would see visionary become reality.

I actually smiled—thankfully, no one was there outside the window to gawk at me except the light streaming in to give this noxiously foreboding place a whiff of happiness. As I looked over the puzzle again, I pictured the front door and front porch and then looked down at the pieces boasting of a greyish-blue color going from one rotting balcony ledge to the other one. The same creaky-looking door with the jutting brass doorknob made me nod my head. Yep. It was this house, all puzzled.

I laughed to myself. Good thing I didn’t tell these lame puns to anyone in the audience. Then cold sweat would have broken out and covered me like dust had over the table and chairs. For me to stand up and make people laugh was like trying to tell the dust to stay away by simply blowing on it and then literally ordering it to back off. I didn’t know a pun from a real joke. But I could make Travis roar his head off with every syllable of a word I tried pronouncing from the Oxford English Dictionary.

But I wasn’t a reader. Or a comedian. Oh well. At least Travis thought it was funny. He was my only real good friend for a reason.

I soon left that house, walking back to my car and then driving the hour back home. But it was all worth it, having been in that place all alone and sensing someone was there when they weren’t and the sunlight was lighting up every windowed room. But as I got up from the hardwood floor (my knees screaming with pain), I decided to investigate more of this house. I creaked up the stairs, opened never-before-handled doors, looked around in awe of each bedroom with their king and queen size beds and beautifully crafted stone dressers and drawers. I felt like I was actually in a Gothic manor house. Like I went back in time to the Victorian period without even pressing a button on the time machine.

I smelled the rooms, put my freckly nose to the bedspreads, breathed in the ancientness of the place. It was weird, like an old lemon scent. Or something like that. But it made me feel like I could close my eyes and just drift off, whisk me away to a world in which my dream self would wake up announcing our new home with Travis’ gleaming smile and wide arms hardly waiting to embrace his new bride in a bear hug.

When I opened my eyes and found myself smiling, I immediately stared, tight-faced, as two elderly people were just staring, their eyebrows furrowed. Dark looks heated my assumedly already reddened face. I jerked a hand up and down and proceeded to escape their pointy glares. But the care towards others’ thoughts of me being a weirdo wore off, and I was myself again. Maybe I could just go hunker down in the basement and dream away without any interruptions slicing my imagination to shreds. But, I thought, was the use of imagining really worth it if I could just text Travis right now?

I grabbed my phone from my purse I just remembered bringing into the house, and told him to venture to a world where no one had been before. He wrote he’d be there in a few minutes. I said that he didn’t have to actually come; he could just imagine the place.

Imagine it with me.

He wrote back, I’m here!

No, I dashed to the window and groaned inwardly. Indeed, a tall guy with a red ball cap turned backward sauntered from his car to the front porch. I freaked out, every muscle screaming to go outside and go ballistic in front of him. But gesticulating that he didn’t listen would do as much as telling a cat to bark. He was here, and he wouldn’t turn around. Even for steak and mashed potatoes.

I sighed, dropping my shoulders heavily. Reluctantly letting him in, I stepped back and murmured that he shouldn’t be here.

“What?” He stood, large hands jammed in his torn jeans’ pockets. “Can’t see you?”

“No, no!” I managed, squeezing a grin. “I mean… never mind.”

But he was already looking all around, squinting upwards and then raising his bushy eyebrows at the living room and closet door behind me. “Is that a puzzle?”

He sauntered over there and knelt down, investigating it. “Hey, Courtney. Get over here. It’s a manor. No—” he breathed, whipping his head back. “It’s this house!”

I resisted a “Yeah—are you blind?” and nodded after turning around and joining him, knees knelt and head over the puzzle again. “Yeah—I made it. Do you want to have a tour of the place?”

He made a face. “Nah.” He then got up. “Well, looks like I’ll be late for my next job. See ya!” He sauntered out of the house, down the steps and back into the driver’s seat of his slick blue Cadillac. He then texted me. Here early. So why are you at the house? Is it our wedding pick of the year?

I almost laughed. We’ve been engaged a month. We’re getting married in a year but hadn’t decided on the place to say ‘I do’ yet. Maybe…

I hesitated. Don’t know if I should spell it all out to him now. Or wait a few months or…

Next year.

Should I surprise him?

Or should I continue seeing whether this house was magical?

I thought, looking forward. How should I proceed?

I then silenced my phone and grabbed my purse, making headway to leave this area. Maybe I’ll surprise him.

But he didn’t like magic. So…

The fiancé or the house. Magic or wedding. Both were good.

I smiled. So I’d settle with both. Travis would just have to make some adjustments.

But, I knew, he didn’t like adjustments. So…

Give him the place of his dreams, or settle for something worthwhile? Anything he’d pick would be boring or stupid.

Magical places were enthralling.

Maybe. But, I also knew, maybe not.   

I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to give in to him. But I wanted what I thought would work.

But…

This house would have to do. Regardless.

Or…

I squeezed my eyes. I didn’t know! I calmed down.

I’ll do what we would want.