Widow Manor

Brief mentions of death & murder (non graphic)

The rickety black car jostled with every bump. I had taken the train into the little village of Pine Grove last week after the news broke that Widow Manor would be open to the public for the next month or so. Eloise Wayner was seen on TV for the first time in years, her once long red hair cut just below her jaw and deep green eyes held a timeless sorrow.

“I know my home has been of great curiosity.” She smiled at the camera, her eyes crinkled and her nose scrunched in a way that made her smile seem too big for her delicate face. It was charming and beautiful all the same, “Who am I to deny the people what they want?”

And I had wanted nothing more than to step foot inside that tall Manor house and the sprawling gardens. I loaded my camera into a small black bag and purchased a train ticket for that same night the feature aired. Gus, my cab driver, wore a rusty red cap with a little yellow pin and his beard came in patches.

“You're the third reporter I've brought up this week.” He mused easily, a laugh echoed through his deep voice, “Surely there is nothing new to report?”

“I'm to meet with Ms. Eloise Wayner.” My heart squeezed in my chest with childlike excitement, “She agreed to a brief interview and a picture for my magazine.”

Gus snorted, “And why yours and no one else's?”

“I often find I want things more than everyone else around me.” I stated stiffly, “I am not embarrassed to be that way. I just am.”

Gus laughed, a deep rumbling sound that echoed up through my bones like the quiet mumbling of a crowd before disaster, “So you badgered the poor woman, then?”

“I merely wrote her a letter.”

Gus hummed in acknowledgement, his eyes just barely visible in his crooked rear view mirror but amused nonetheless. The car shuddered and shook with a newfound determination as we passed over a large stone bridge. Beneath us a cold swirling river raged with early spring rain and late winter snow. Deep green moss had made itself a home in the cracks, determined and steady against the wind.

“Are you from around here, Gus?” Persistent had been the only word my teacher used to describe me when they sat down with my father at the end of each grade. A waisted trait in a young girl.

He made a soft sound at the back of his throat, “No. Not really anyway, not anymore. Old towns like this one have a way of moving on without you. Buildings collapse and people die and suddenly you don't fit the way you used to.”

His voice was firm but it pitched with the pain of a nearly healed scab, I nodded and looked back out my window, “I understand.”

Old towering pine trees gave way to younger brighter spruces that still allowed their branches to rest on the cold earth. We turned down a gravel road that was washed away in some parts and freshly grated in others as if the town had tried to fix it once or twice but spring had come in with different plans. At the end, Widow Manor stood proudly, an elegant explosion of bright green plants swirled along the front path.

“Well, Ms. Adaline,” Gus sighed a big heavy sound, “Here you are.”

I stared for just a moment longer as if the outside was a reality separate from my own. An anxiousness swirled in my stomach like the beginnings of a storm. There was a beauty and a haunting sadness that clung to every inch of the Widow Manor and for a moment it quelled the excitement that burned like fire in my veins, only for a moment.

“Thank you.” I hurried from the back seat, my bag slung over my shoulder, “I'll be done before four, just as promised.”

Gus nodded, “I'll be here.”

His car rumbled to life again and I watched as it bounced back down the road. His back tire sagged and protested with every turn, oblivious to its owner's whims. The grounds in the front of the estate were beautiful with early blooming flowers and sleepy bumble bees that had only just begun to work for the season. They fell clumsily from flower to flower, their legs sticky with pollen. A weeping willow kissed the earth with a gentle sway in the wind and birds sang off key in its branches. It was beautiful in a way I could never describe even if I had spent my whole life trying. I stopped at the intricate front doors of Widow Manor, each panel of wood was carved with a different bursting flower. I didn't have the time to admire them as the heavy doors slid open and there before me was Eloise Wayner.

“Oh, Ms. Wayner.” My face filled with a flustered heat, “Hello.”

“You must be Ms. Adaline Wells.” Her eyes crinkled in that familiar way when she smiled, the scrunch of her nose intoxicatingly gorgeous, “Please, call me Eloise.”

“It's so nice to meet you.” I shuffled my bag further onto my shoulder so I could shake her hand. Her palms were soft and cold against my own.

“The pleasure is mine, please come in.”

The Manor was warmly lit with deep yellow candelabras and a spiral staircase wrapped around a crystal chandelier that nearly touched the ground. I couldn't see how far it went up, couldn't imagine the weight of it hanging in that old home.

“Wow.” My voice ripped free from my lips without my permission, “It's so damn beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Eloise laughed softly as she crossed her arms across her chest and shrugged, “I'll be sad to finally let it go.”

“Are you intending to sell it?” My curious fingers brushed against the hand Carteret beauty of the stairwell banister.

Eloise sighed, longing and distant, “No I won't sell it. My mother owned this estate before me, I just have never wanted to stay in one place for so long. Perhaps I'll buy a little home somewhere new.”

“I understand.” a gentle hum left my throat unsure of what else to say, “Do you mind if I have a tour while we talk?”

“No, of course not.” She smiled, her long arm looped with mine, cold against me even through the tight knit of my sweater, “Let's go then.”

Grand marvelous paintings hung on every wall, some depictions of beautiful glade and reaching mountains. Others resembled a life lived simply and wilted vases of wildflowers. We turned down toward the bed chambers and along both sides of the hall hung painted portraits of beautiful women, their eyes all wet with tears and dressed in black. Perpetually locked in mourning, immortal in art.

“Is this you?” I stopped at the last in the row to my left, her wild red hair had been braided away from her face, but unlike the other women even though she cried she held a delicate smile on her pink lips.

"Yes, from so long ago now.” She touched the gold frame fondly. “This was painted when I inherited the estate."

"It's beautiful."

"you're too kind, Adaline."

"You haven't aged a day.” I breathed softly an embarrassment warm in my cheeks as she smiled again, her eyes all squished shut and her nose scrunched.

“You flatter me.” Eloise grinned and for a moment I believe I would have done anything to see that smile again. It was childish and fond and nothing like the others I'd seen.

I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, “Tell me about this place.”

“I'm not sure what you wish to know, Widow's Estate has always been owned by a woman. Thus its name.” Eloise shrugged and I nodded in gentle encouragement, “My mother moved me here after the death of my father.”

Eloise picked at a hair on her dress, a silence stretched over us as I waited for the words I could see so clearly wrestling to be said, "She was quick to pass after him and thus my inheritance.”

"I'm sorry for your loss" My heart ached in a familiar way, “Truly."

"I've had time to sit with my guilt, the loss doesn't seem so big now.” She tugged me along past the paintings.

“May I ask something rather sensitive?” There was so much to see in the Manor but it was hard to focus on anything but Eloise.

Softly, “You may.”

“Have you been wed?" I asked after a brief while, curiosity had burned a hole through my manners.

"No." She signed almost wistfully, “I find this town too small for love I hope to be one day. Are you?"

“No. Not anymore.” A sharp pain lanced through my chest and down my finger tips, "My husband died in an automobile accident last winter.”

"I'm sorry." Eloise whispered, she grasped both my hands and her face crumpled with a sadness so deep and profound, “Truly. I am.”

"Thank you." I nodded, desperate not to cry.

We strolled side by side through her gardens. My grief had begun to bubble up inside me but she didn't let us fall into silence. Eloise spoke of many things as we walked. The women before her, the stretch of time the Estate was shut off from the world and the grief that seemed to almost

live in the walls.

“Despite it all, it's comforting in a way.” Eloise whispered to me, “To know that so many before me have had a home to shelter them when everything was lost.”

“I hadn't thought of it that way.” I hummed softly, “It almost makes it seem more hopeful than sad.”

“Exactly. A place of new beginning.”

Our path ended at a large gnarled and

twisted tree. Its long branches swayed against the ground and a little stone bench was perched an perfectly in the middle of it all. Eloise’s dress blew in the wind a few steps before me, her short red hair danced across the tops of her shoulders and she was so beautiful it nearly hurt.

“Can I take your photo here?”

"Here?" She wrinkled her nose slightly, “I suppose we could if you'd like.”

“I would love nothing more."

"Very well, where should I be?”

Eloise sat softly on the old stone bench and smiled at me. It was different from the one when we first met, and different from the grin that had set fire to my heart, this one held a deep sadness I didn't understand and her eyes were distant. The breeze blew gently full of the warm promise of summer and I worked quietly to set up my camera.

"Adaline?” She called to me softly, timid and different from before.

My mind was spinning with something I could have done wrong to spoil this moment, “Yes?”

“Thank you for coming."

"Of course.”

A steadied myself behind my camera and Eloise whipped her eyes of quiet tears. She smiled softly, reminiscent of her painting and my shutter went off.

“We can look at the negative inside if you'd like.” I smiled softly, hoping to ease the pain she so clearly felt.

“I'd like that.”

We walked back through the sprawling gardens only now it was my turn to talk of things so the other didn't have to sit alone with their thoughts. I talked of what life had been like with my husband, his curly brown hair and toothy grin. I talked of his laugh and his love for dogs despite his allergy to them.

“He sounds lovely.” Eloise mumbled, her steps uneven and slow.

I stopped to steady her just as we walked back into the Manor, “Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just nauseous. Wait here a moment won't you?”

I sank into the plush couch near one of several fireplaces and allowed myself to wait while she went to the washroom to freshen up. Carefully, I slid the roll of film from my camera and peered into the amber brown negatives before me. Time felt funny at that moment, like I had just stepped from the cab and also like I had been in this Manor since the beginning of time. There was the deep brown square of the gnarled old tree and the little stone bench, only instead of Eloise, I was perched there. Dressed in a black dress and tear stained cheeks. Eloise had smiled and yet there my lips were pinched into a sorrowful straight line as I stared directly into the camera's lense.

“What?” I whispered to myself, nearly frantic, “That's impossible.”

There was a stillness to the air, like the suffocating moment on hot summer days before the thunderstorm above releases its rain and lightning. Eloise’s footsteps were the crack of thunder that marked the beginning of a storm. She had a little blue bag in her hand, it matched the shade of the dress she wore.

“Eloise?”

She smiled again, “That's me.”

“What's going on?” Panic surged through my throat, sour with bile. I couldn't catch my breath and a white hot fear was burning through my veins.

Eloise set her bag down next to her feet and stepped closer to me. I pressed myself smaller into the couch and she stopped, “This is Widow Manor. It needs a fresh Widow to thrive.”

She said it so plainly, so matter of fact, “What are you talking about?”

“There is a curse on this village, on its women as old as time itself.” Eloise Wayner had been a formidable woman before her disappearance and now before me she was still the same, “I watched my mother be driven mad by this place and I will not meet the same fate.”

“I don't understand.” I could feel the hot burn of tears on my cheeks.

“With time, all things become clear.” Eloise's face crumpled in a delicate sympathy, tears welled in her eyes and her voice shuddered, “I killed my husband to set my mother free. And with you I spare each woman in my village from this fate. An eternity of nothing but this house and its ghosts.”

My mind was racing and Eloise wiped at her pretty green eyes, “If there was another way then I would have done it. You don't deserve this, none of us did.”

The sound of my cab, of Gus, racing about the gravel road was almost deafening, “Don't leave me here.”

It ripped from my throat, raw and jagged and afraid. I hadn't felt this way since I crawled from our flipped automobile and was alone in the dark rain. I had screamed until I lost my voice and then until I couldn't breathe. Eloise didn't meet my eyes as she reached back to pick up her bag.

“You can't leave me.” I sobbed, desperate and consumed by my grief still fresh as the melted snow, “You can't.”

“I'm so sorry Adaline.”

My clumsy feet dragged me to the door but she didn't stop and I couldn't force my body back through the threshold. The heavy wooden doors closed behind her. And once again I was utterly and completely alone.

For weeks I tried to escape, I pushed past the searing pain of trying to leave the property but no matter how hard I pushed the wall wouldn't give way. Some nights I slept, others I paced endlessly through the Manor. Time evaded me, days turned to weeks into months into years and I could only recall the seasons in flashes of color. With time my anger and grief subsided and shifted, a desperation and a hunger for something more took over. With a shuddering breath I nailed my negative to the hallway of women before me and I wrote a letter.

__

“Oh, Ms. Wells.” She was pretty and young, she hadn't even taken off her ring yet, hadn't accepted that he was gone.

I smiled too big for my face. I could feel it stretch at the corners of my lips, “You must be Miss Leona. Call me Adaline.”

“It's so nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” The words felt bitter in my tongue but for the first time in a century my heart fluttered with hope, a new beginning just within reach.