The House

Based on a true story.

The House rose like a long lost lover’s ghost from the grave as I sped over the crest of the hill. My heart clenched at the sight of her sitting starkly in the field, in all her dilapidated glory. God, I’d missed her. My Canon Rebel film camera lifted slightly from the passenger seat, before gravity regained its hold. 

The House remained an enigma. The musty dust-motes dancing along sunlight-dappled hardwood floors, groaning like ancient sentinels beneath my careful feet. The sacred hush that swallowed me whole the moment I crossed the threshold. The air, thick with sanctity.

Though I’d memorized every square foot of the abandoned edifice, reiterated in the darkroom as spectral images emerging from the developer tray, she always managed to surprise me. Some hitherto unnoticed bit of marbled sky-blue hearth tile would find its way into my path, and then into my pocket. Pokeweed berries would find their way through a busted window as nature reclaimed her territory, and I’d startle a dining robin while peeking into the dining room. Less pleasantly, I’d recently discovered paintball splatters defiling her once-glorious, sprawling bedrooms—local kids running roughshod through my sanctuary. The sight of her desecrated doors ignited a rage within me. I was protective of the House, long forgotten by the world, who daily raced the two-lane country highway before her crooked front door.

This love affair was the most magical experience of my life. I’d stumbled upon her one day while taking the long way home from work, down winding back-country roads. My breath caught in my chest then, as it did now. Now that I’d taken the risk and climbed the fence, ignoring the ‘No Trespassing’ sign as any rebellious twenty-year-old would, I couldn’t stop. 

I’d find myself in my apartment, the 11 x 14 images I’d captured on recent visits splayed on the kitchen table—my attempt to preserve her many emptied rooms in grainy black and white. The mere sight of the photographs in my periphery as I milled about my home would haunt me. Like a lover I couldn’t say no to, she called to me. I had to return. I couldn’t stay away for long. I couldn’t say why, it just hurt to be far from the safety of her forgotten womb.

A murder of crows circled overhead, announcing my arrival with an ominous caw, hinting that today, too, would be shrouded in mystery. I clutched my Canon, slung around my neck by its branded safety strap, and reverently entered her.

The moment my boots kissed her oak floorboards, I gasped, choking down the swirling dust I’d stirred. Something was off in my sacred space. More than that, something had been stolen. Someone had been here, and they were destroying my House. 

The space before me was no longer the cozily enclosed, cobweb-rife parlor, but a deconstruction zone. I’d narrowly avoided sending myself a solid six feet through the open floor into the dirt cellar below. Some heartless, greedy soul had wielded iron crowbars and claws of hammers, ripping each rare, foot-wide floorboard from its home around the hearth.

Fury ignited wildfire behind my eyes.

“No!” My indignant cry echoed on the peeling lead paint of her 19th-century ceilings, thankfully still towering twelve feet above. “House, who did this to you? I’m so sor—”

The lamentation hitched in my throat as a jarring scrape of solid metal in the master bedroom directly above jolted me into high alert. I was not alone with my love. My body froze. My mind raced.

Was it paintball-slinging kids who, though I was but a skinny twenty year old gal, could likely be intimidated by my shaved head and fierce mouth? Was it the demolition crew/robbers themselves, with crowbars and biceps strong enough to have dragged out the heavy, ancient oak? 

Goddess, help! I silently prayed. Terror flooded my muscles with lead. No chance could I will them to spirit me away.

A creak on the staircase shattered the silence. From my vantage point, who or what was infiltrating my divine cavern remained hidden. 

Then came the humming. Curiosity arched my brows and relaxed my shoulders a smidge. Music filled the room, giving my tension a beat. I could run, but who was this intruder in my sanctuary? I had to confront them. This was my realm—deed holders be damned. I was the one cherishing the House. Others were merely plundering, stripping, and destroying it. 

I stood my ground.

Moments later, the mystery unraveled as a girl my age peeked around the corner, her dark, tight curls framing a face of genuine curiosity.

“Everything okay?” she asked gently, her northern lilt catching me off guard and heightening my investment in the mission. Not only was someone invading my space, they weren’t even local.

“Who the hell are you?” I spat, one hand gripping my Canon as I shoved off from the window ledge, shedding paralysis and accepting the challenge. I deftly advanced toward her in the dimly lit space, stepping cautiously around the gaping hole in the center of the room.

“Hey, hey, relax—I didn’t mean to scare you,” she held her palms toward me, displaying dark lines crossing the peachy skin tones that lived there. The patterns reminded me of a fortune teller’s dream, a future freely offered on display.  “I’m Feather… Do you come here often?”

“Feather?” The word was dipped in sarcasm. “Is that your given name?”

“I gave it to myself,” she said casually, peering at me with a look devoid of malice. She wasn’t taking the bait for the turf war I was intent upon. She was simply present with me, like I was meant to be present with the House, until she showed up.

I took in her exposed carny-esque tattoos, black ink blooming against charcoal skin like midnight flowers. I had no colored tattoos either, my olive skin a canvas of classic styles from a bygone era. My gaze drifted to the hunk of black metal in her hand: a Nikon, the expensive, rival-brand to my loyal Canon.

“Are you takin’ photos?” I asked, partly out of curiosity, partly due to possessiveness.

“Yeah, how could I resist?” Her eyes flashed with reverence for this holy abandoned place. “I’m majoring in photography at Transy. Do you, like, own this place?”

“No, I uh…” My eyes sank below the floorboards, studying invisible spiders several feet beneath us. “I’m actually majoring in photography too, at UK. Darkroom.”

“No way! Sweet,” she said. Her clear, dark eyes flickered in the dappled shade, shifting something in me. “I’m doing digital—it’s kinda hard, but it’s worth it.”

“Ugh, digital!” I exhaled, relaxing into the space. “It’s so not the same. People wanna think it is, but it’s like… apples and oranges! Film is so magical, so… organic! Digital is just… what you see is kinda what you get. And it is hard, I don’t wanna take another digital class ever again.”

“What’s your name?” She was inching closer to me. The sweet scent of vanilla and patchouli kissed my nostrils.

“Uh… Mallory,” I fumbled, reaching out awkwardly to shake her hand. The touch of her cool, smooth flesh was a welcome relief from the muggy summer air drifting through the open windows from the forest.

“You’re beautiful is what you are,” she purred. Who was this woman?

My face flushed hot, eyes roving over the exposed earth again. 

Is this fucking happening to me today? Wow… I wondered, marveling at the House’s never-ending enchantment. I had sensed the vortex of synchronicities she was capable of producing from the first time I’d laid eyes on her, billowing tattered curtains spilling from the windows in the Victorian-era spire. Clearly, I wasn’t wrong. 

“Will you just hold still so I can take your portrait real quick? The light in here’s so faint, I’m gonna need a long exposure.” She didn’t wait for my answer, uncapping the lens on her hulking, expensive camera and raising it to her nearly perfectly symmetrical face. 

This girl could be a model. Who was I to pose for her? 

She squinted into the murky space between us.

Instinctively, I raised a hand to cover my face, shielding my eyes and turning away. 

“Oh, don’t be like that! Hey, I’m sorry—I know, I kinda disrupted your day. Did I scare you? Shit, I kinda scared myself! When I heard you come in I fell right into the desk upstairs. I’m okay though… are you?”

My shoulders dropped a little. “Yeah, it’s okay. I just didn’t expect anyone to be here. And I thought you might be a robber or… a guy… with a hammer.”

*Click*

She’d smoothly seized the breath I’d taken. I ignored the sound of her shutter going off.

“Thank god I wasn’t, right? Ha!” she laughed. The sound was melodic, like tinkling wind chimes on this late summer day.

“What the hell is going on here, anyway? Why is someone stealing the floorboards?” I asked my curious new companion.

“Shit, I don’t know, but it’s not just the floor—have you checked upstairs lately?”

“No…” I confessed, dread rekindling in the pit of my belly.

“The doorknobs are gone too.”

“What? Like, all of them? That gorgeous porcelain…? No!” I nearly crumpled as she nodded in confirmation. I pushed past her, balancing delicately on the edge of the pit in the center of the room, then sped up the wooden staircase, two at a time. My Canon swung wildly from my neck, punching my stomach on repeat as I ran.

Feather was right. The antique white door knobs had all been stolen. The bathroom, the bedrooms, the little door to the spooky attic. 

“Damn those thieves!” I cursed, my heart shattering at another violation of the House, committed by a world who refused her sovereignty, a world immune to her beauty. She was repeatedly treated like the “Giving Tree” in the Shel Silverstein book that promoted toxic codependency. 

My hands shot up to hide my grief-stricken face as Feather’s soft steps echoed on the stairs. Tears carved paths down my dusty cheeks. 

“Hey, hey… it’s gonna be okay,” Feather cooed, joining me in the tiny bathroom.

“It’s not right!” I growled, grief morphing mercifully for a moment to my old friend, rage.

She slipped in beside me, between the crumbling chips of paint on the pale green wall, and slid down to crouch at my feet. A sprinkle of paint bits released from their hundred-year-old homes hit the floor with a soft pattering.

My tirade boiled over.

“I’m gonna kill those folks if I ever catch them in here. They’re taking everything! How can they just get away with this? …I’ll call the cops!”

“Mallory,” Feather coaxed, drawing me back to the present. My name had never sounded like such honey in another’s mouth. “We’re trespassing, too.”

“But all I’m takin’ are photos!” I cried. “...Okay, an’ sometimes little mementos… like… broken hearth tiles. But nothin’ that would be missed.”

She nods in understanding. “Some things are just fucked up. Nothing lasts forever.”

I sniffed, rubbing my face hard with the back of a dirty hand. 

“I gotta get back to work. This is my senior thesis, ya know. I’ve been takin’ photos here for a year… I wonder why I never ran into you before,” I search her face for signs of familiarity—could I have caught a glimpse of her in the distant field? I shake my head. “I wouldn’t forget a presence like yours.”

It’s her turn to blush now.

“Cool, yeah… I’ve only come a couple times, but there’s definitely something compelling about this place.”

“The synchronicities today are blowing my damn mind,” I exhale, gripping the edge of the heavy wooden bathroom door to steady myself. “Can I, uh, get your number or somethin’? Would be cool to meet up again if, like, I need a stand-in model. I usually shoot portraits here with a friend, but sometimes I can’t convince anyone to come—they’re all pretty scared of this place.”

Her chuckle is easy and brings me back to my center. 

“You got it, girl. I’m not afraid of anything.”

A week later, longing has reached a fever pitch. It never takes long, but now that the House has revealed its very own secret artsy fairy, the pull is stronger than ever. 

The phone rouses me from a dream—Feather and I have merged to become a vicious phantom, roaming secret rooms hidden behind the crumbling walls of the House, and keeping intruders at bay. 

It’s Feather. I answer on the second ring.

“Mallory, it’s… oh, my god! I heard a rumor it was being torn down to build a fucking subdivision but I didn’t believe it. But they did. They fucking bulldozed it. It’s gone!”

“What?!” I cry, my voice trembling with panic. “They couldn’t have! What are you talking about?”

“Just get over here, quick,” she begs.

She doesn’t have to tell me twice.

I lose myself in the dark, moody album that religiously accompanies the journey to the House. I’m praying that somehow Feather was wrong. The House has stood there, empty and untouched for decades. How could it be gone?

My heart plummets like a stone flung into the abyss as I crest the hill, my brakes screeching to a halt. I’m fully confused. I must be losing my mind. Must be in the wrong place. How did I make a wrong turn? This plot of land is unrecognizable. 

Where is the field? Where is the forest? Where is the House?!

My tires sling gravel, skidding to a halt before the locked gate. I’m weeping, blubbering like a lost child. Pain tears through me like the bulldozer tore through a century of history here. 

Heavy machinery has carved deep scars, the tracks like grotesque tattoos criss-crossing the scraped-clean ground. Nothing remains. A Caterpillar sits motionless, feigning innocence, but the audible popping of its recently-moving parts give it away. An industrial-sized dumpster stands witness atop barren, ugly brown dirt, where once stood someone’s home, the House.  

They’ve killed her. My House.

“No!” My cries dissolve in the warm, silent air. 

No crows caw in the forest—the forest is gone. No ragged curtains billow in her spire windows—the spire is gone. 

I delicately lift myself over the metal gate, vacillating between rage and grief. My breath comes in feeble, scuttling growls. I want to demolish the rest of the god damn world, just to prove to them all what it’s worth.

Solemnly I cross the hallowed ground. My Holga camera, loaded with medium format film, hangs limp at my side. 

The House gifts me one final relic: a shard of window pane torn from her world as I lay an hour away, sleeping, unaware. I gingerly bend to release it from the earth. Hold it to the sun. I’ve never felt so awkward with a camera. It feels like taking photos of the dead at a crime scene. Weakly, I raise my Holga and click. All that’s left of her is here. All that’s left will be immortalized on color film.

The breeze brings a sudden sweetness, vanilla and hippies—Feather has found me in the ruins. I didn’t even hear her pull up. Her presence recalls some of the essence of the House, a whisper of that fateful day just last week when we stood safe inside her hollow bones. Standing here in this veritable twilight zone, it feels like lifetimes ago.

“Oh, Mallory…” she begins painfully, her gaze scanning the devastation, then turning to me for familiarity, for a semblance of comfort amid the madness. 

“How could they?” I wonder aloud, not expecting an answer. Some things are just fucked up.

Her eyes are deep pools of saltwater when they meet mine. The effect is electric. Our waves of grief crest and fall, twin tides swelling and sighing in a symphony of synchronized breath. A breeze from some far-off, forgotten land brushes our very molecules, shifts the light that dances across our frothy peaks. Something in me churns.

Feather’s dark ringlets glint in the sun as she leans closer. 

“Nothing lasts forever,” she breathes, the rhythm of her words intoxicating in my grief-altered state. 

“Nothing?” I ask, using the minimal space between us to capture her glorious face on film. She smiles lightly at the soft plastic ‘click’ of my Holga. She reaches for me, fingers tracing the ribbons of stubble running along my scalp. I allow myself to sigh.

I’ve lost so much. 

But what has been gained? 

The House is gone, reduced to dust and echoes of memories, but with Feather, I just might have found my home.