Passage

The blizzard was blinding. 

Snow gusted in all directions, powdery in the air and icy underfoot. The kind of snow that caked deep in the treads of your shoes, and the kind of cold that left frost clinging to the tips of your eyelashes. At least, I think there would have been - between the snow and the starless night they were beyond my range vision. 

The carefully worn path to the woodpile was usually easy to find, even in the dead of night. Tonight, that path was covered. Even my own footprints seemed to have been covered in the time it took for me to pull a few logs from beneath the tarp. The return to the house in these conditions had been disorienting, and I was sure I’d been walking for far longer than it should have taken me to reach my cozy cabin.

In due time, my feet hit steps that shouldn’t be there, that lead to a familiar door that I didn’t expect. I paused, gazing back in the general area my cabin should have stood. It wasn’t even a quarter mile from here but I was fairly certain a trek back might mean no shelter at all for the night. So instead I turned, facing down the imposing door of my family home.

The door sagged on its hinges, and I knew I’d have to muscle it open if I chose to enter - But what choice did I have? I heaved the door open, relieved to at least find it unlocked, and crossed the threshold into the Gates Family Manor for the first time since a lawyer had stood on the porch and read my parents will. The theatrics had always confused me - there was nothing to leave, and no one to leave it to. I’d become the proprietor of this crumbling old house and all its contents. I’d become the person responsible with razing it, and the person who had abandoned it as thoroughly as the dearly departed.

 Stepping inside was a great relief to my wind-burned face, but the sub-zero temperatures had penetrated the thin walls of the house. My flashlight’s beam shook in my still-numb hands, strobing back and forth, exposing the vaporous clouds of breath that rose in front of me. They misted my eyes, clouding my vision as I surveyed the familiar area. Black and white checked tiles had grayed in the absence of busy feet. Tarnished silver frames adorned the wall, faded figures within sneering down in disdain. Once, these paintings had served as guardians as I made my way back upstairs with a midnight glass of water. Now they served as a counsel of elders, perched above the rail of a looming staircase, gazing down at a rotting foyer. Their fading faces sat ready - ready to pass judgment on an absent child.

The adjacent parlor was mostly untouched. Someone had been thoughtful enough to shroud the furniture in sheets to protect the overstuffed furniture from the dense layer of grime that had settled. Black sheets. They’d been mine in my teenage years when metal posters had plastered my walls. The matching decor had been my mothers show of support. She’d knocked on the door with the sheets and a 98% cacao bar of chocolate. “The most metal chocolate I could find,” she’d said. She’d spat it out when she tried it and won the first laugh I’d given her as a surly teenager. When I closed my eyes and breathed deeply I could still smell the bitter chocolate mixing with her floral perfume.

I found the locked corner of my mind that the memory had escaped. I tucked her back in as gently as I could manage, and returned my focus to the task at hand.

 A fire roared to life in the grate with little effort from my clumsy fingers. The window that had leaked so badly a decade ago was holding firm against the storm and the room warmed quickly, soothing my uneasy mind and casting light around the full room at last.

I stripped off my soaked shoes and frozen coat and hung them to dry. They reminded me of stockings at Christmas, the way the clothes silhouetted in front of the fire. The painting of my great grandmother sat above it all, glaring down, the flames casting her in a devilish glow. I was shocked by how beautiful I’d once found her, how peaceful. She looked so angry now. So sad. I turned from her, fully intending to avoid any more imposing paintings during my stay in the house. A voice in my head - that voice that meant survival - chimed in. “And make sure to avoid the stairs.”

I waved the thought away and stripped the couch. A careless flick of the shroud sent dust pluming throughout the room, irritating my lungs as I tried to settle in for a drafty, stormy night. A forgotten deck of cards was still tucked in the back of the bookshelf - one that I’d hidden there as a child learning magic tricks. I flipped through it, noting which cards were missing and which cards were noticeably damaged. I shuffled the deck, running through solo games I could play with the limited set.

Classic solitaire? Shuffle. 

Pyramid? Shuffle.

Free cell? Shuffle.

But my hands stopped at the realization that the house was not speaking to me. Though the wind howled outside, there were no shutters banging or walls groaning. My ears strained for the creaks of a foundation settling - my most constant lullaby growing up. All was silent.

I dealt distractedly, flicking the cards in a circle as if I was dealing to five people. The sound of each card pulling off the deck was too loud in the silent house. There were no mice in the walls, no banging of old pipes, no creaking of floorboards, no settling of the foundation… but perhaps even more disconcerting was the dissonant laugh that echoed from deep within that quiet house.

It couldn’t be her. But it was her.

I followed the sound through the house, opting to use the hidden corridor that stretched behind the stairway and connected to the kitchen. Once upon a time it had been a place where servants would rush back and forth, prepping different rooms for extravagant parties and delivering appetizers to ballrooms and sitting rooms. In my childhood it filled with tic-tac-toe games drawn on the wall in marker. It became my mothers favorite hiding spot in hide-and go seek, and my optimal base for snack-sneaking missions to the kitchen.

When I opened the nondescript door this time, I didn’t see a basement-like hall stuffed with happy remnants of my childhood. Instead a dark corridor yawned before me, gaping maw threatening to chew me up with cobweb fangs and swallow me into the blackness within. I’d been afraid of the dark in this tunnel when I was very small, but her perfume always lingered after our games, making the room feel safe and small. I sniffed the air delicately, pungent mold and grainy dust assaulting my nose, but underneath it all I could swear I smelled something light and floral. White tea and lilac. The smell that made her, her.

I pushed through the cobwebs and as I reached the middle of the corridor a groan finally emitted from the house. I sighed in relief, happy to hear my creaky old friend waking up from his apparent nap. But the groan was followed by a crack, and a splinter. I pushed forward in alarm, my heart rate picking up at the unfamiliar sound. I clawed at the cobwebs, paying no heed to how they stuck in my hair and coated my frame. I pulled them aside, tears welling into my eyes at their unbelievable density as they sliced my hands. The groans became the bending of iron, the cracking became the total demolition of wood. Plaster began to fall. I pushed forward still. My vision blurred. I gasped as plaster dust filled my lungs. I ran - had this tunnel always been quite this long? - and still the house crumpled like a house of cards, stopping only when I burst into the kitchen on the other side.

The rubble rumbled into a pile behind me, and outside the storm reached its peak. The wind roared with a tenacity I’d never heard. I covered my ears and sank to my knees, only removing my hands to reach for something, anything that I could burn in the old-fashioned kitchen hearth. My fingers were numb already from having been so far from my parlor fire. 

Even amongst the dust and dark the smell of lilacs reached my nose.

A harmony sounded with the thunder booming outside. A gentle, persistent harmony, that lulled me to drop my hands. My mothers voice came, emerging from the storm.

“Hi, my baby” she said, hands flowing through my hair, in the way she did when I was very small.

“Hi, my mom” I responded in the call-response we’d always loved. She’d been my person when I was that small - the only person who mattered in my whole world. “What are you doing here? You’ve been… gone.” I wasn’t sure if she knew. Did spirits know that they died? Or how they died? I paused. Did I know how she died? I’d been at her funeral. I knew once, how this beautiful woman died.

“I know baby. I’m just visiting for a moment. It’s a special storm.”

“I wrecked the house, mom.”

“Did you, baby?”

I looked back at the pile of rubble, but it was gone. Only dust remained, without a single footprint or mark. A memory battered to break free from that chamber deep in my mind that I’d locked so long ago. I reached for it - reached for her. “Mom, how did you -“

“You know, baby.”

My eyes closed one more time. Emotions battered against that locked door, and I allowed it to crack open. Rubble poured out. Rubble? But that hadn’t been real. But… it had been real once. I opened my eyes again the house was as it had been when I was 16 years old. The ceiling had collapsed. The rubble was back before me, flooding the hallway, exposing the sky raging with an angry storm above. A single pale hand extended from the wreckage - Slender and limp, with nails painted the most vivid red. My mothers hand. Trapped in her favorite hiding spot.

I sobbed, the cry welling from my chest before I could stop it. “This isn’t real, mom.”

“No, it’s not baby.”

Tears burned hot against my ice-cold cheeks. “Then what have I been doing all this time, mama?”

Ghostly fingers fluttered through my hair again, lightly dancing against my cheek. “You’ve been living, baby. Just look.”

I turned my head to the storm raging outside the kitchen window. As I stared my eyes focused, and the kitchen around me faded into nothingness. The dark of the night swept through the house and over me, and in the clearing sky I could see the beginnings of a mess of stars. My puffy coat and boots lay crumpled next to me soaked through and frozen stiff, the ghost of my mothers’ fireplace long since vanished. I lay in the snow, a mountain peak - one that I had come just shy of reaching - looming over me. 

“I’ve been surviving, mama.” My voice passed my cracked lips in little more than a whisper. The metallic taste of blood sat heavily on my tongue.

She said nothing in response, but when I listened closely I was sure I could still hear my companions calling my name, searching for me after we’d been separated. My water bottle was empty. My mind latched on to what may be my last thought: “It’s time to go home.”

But I was too far from my cozy cabin, and my fire, and my wood pile. A moment of fear flooded my bones, only to turn to peace at the whisper of my mothers voice in my ears. So I took one final look at that peak, at those stars, and closed my eyes one last time.

Warmth flooded back into my body and the sound of a crackling fire filled my ears. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the kitchen. It was warm and glowing, and decorated for Christmas. The fire was roaring and the cookies were left next to the hearth, with a promise from Dad that he would extinguish the fire before Santa Clause could get there. The snow outside the window was drifting slowly, the ground shimmering in the light of a full moon.

Grandmother had been furiously knitting, claiming that I’d need her gift tomorrow when we went sledding. There were adventures to be had ahead, and she’d be damned if I wasn’t warm during them. I could still hear her from the other side of the house, her rocking chair gliding back and forth and her needles click-clacking her yarn into a thick hat.

My cheeks hurt from smiling. My heart was content.

A voice from upstairs called. Her voice. The only voice I’d wanted to hear since she’d fallen to that careless old house. “It’s time for sleep, baby. I’ll tuck you in. Come upstairs."

So I did.