The Locked Door

The Locked Door  

I don't know where the house is. It isn't a real house. It is a house in my mind. I own other houses there. I used to move among them with some frequency, but less so in recent years.  

This house seems to be in the country and appears to be old, judging from its fieldstone foundation and walls. My wife and I have lived here a little while. I believe this to be so, because I am frustrated with what we have not yet done about the place. Yes, we have made some progress. The dining room stands out, in particular. It needed painting. I think the original color was a dark blue. My wife and I have been painting the walls, painting them white. I don't think we're finished. When we look at our work each morning, the blue shines through, as if the paint we have been using is thin and watery. I think the stone walls absorb the paint. I'm disappointed this is taking so long. Perhaps we have tried to scrape off the blue paint. I believe we have. I think the floor is covered with flakes of blue paint.  

The house is large and oddly configured. It has been difficult to fix the purpose for some of the rooms. Is this to be a living room? Is it too narrow? Is it too far off the natural flow of the house? Where is it exactly?  

Well, in some respects, I may have mixed this house up with another one of mine.... I think I have.  

I'm sure of this, though. Just outside the house I am thinking of, now, to the south and east, there is a long barn. It is roofed, but open at the sides. The previous owner left a lot of stuff there, some on the floor, but much on a series of shelves suspended from the rafters. Perhaps many of these things may be of use – machinery, tools and the like, but other things, too. These things are intriguing, and I am glad to have them, though, to be honest, I don't really know how to describe them, perhaps because I really haven't quite got my head around them. I really do need to get to work out there to figure out what's what and what I can do with it.  

There is also a basement below the house, accessible from a door on the first floor that opens up to descending stairs. I haven't been down there often. The previous owners left a lot of things behind there, too. I've been wanting to sort through them all for some time, I'm sure. I like junk -- the promise it holds of something worthwhile, somewhere within it all. Almost always that's not the case, of course. I just haven't gotten around to exploring the basement. I do know there are many nooks down there, all so crammed with things it's hard to walk among them. What things, again, I couldn't tell you. I haven't spent the time to go through them as I should -- one by one, until I know them all, everything.  

But, to the point of all this. There is a door in the basement that is locked. At the bottom of the stairs, you turn immediately to the right and go about ten feet down a narrow passage between the stairway and a wall. There it is... a large door of unpainted vertical oaken panels, mounted on heavy iron penny-end hinges. There is a skeleton keyhole. Of course, we have no key. And there is no knob on the old door, either. I have the feeling this door may not have been opened for many decades. I'm not sure why... that is, why I think so.  

Now, at this point, I will stray from what I know. (I know and I have seen everything I've said until now. Please accept that.) I will now say things and make speculations that are not grounded in what I remember. I may not really be seeing what I may say I am seeing or be doing what I may say I am doing.... This part of what I am writing is my story. I'm not sure I'm going to get this part right. It's much harder to think this through and to make it true then to write what I remember. This is all I will have to say on this matter.  

So... I have taken a flashlight down to the basement and I have tried to see if I could shine some light into the room on the other side of the door. The truth is, I have not been able to maneuver the flashlight to the keyhole in a way that I could also, at the same time, look through it, without blocking the very light I need.... I should buy some glow sticks and push them through to the other side.  

Screw it. I'm going to take the door off. I'll remove the screws holding the hinges to the wall and just....  

Okay, that doesn't work. The door must be bolted or fixed shut from the inside. I should have a sledgehammer, though, probably somewhere in that open-sided barn. I do. That is, I find one. And I pound at the door, swinging the hammer like a bat, hoping to break whatever bolt holds the door, or otherwise smash apart the panels....  

I do. My hammering splits several of the panels of the door, enough that I find myself in the room in short order. The room is surprisingly well lit from the afternoon sunlight entering in through smoke-filmed paned windows on the far side. There is a door there, too, to the outside. I did not appreciate until now how steeply the western side of the house -- the rear of the house -- slopes off so that the basement opens up to the outside on that frontage. There is much I don't know about this house. But I have an explanation for you. At some point long ago, the owners of the house at that time erected a porch along the entire western side of the house, which, of course, obstructed any view to the windows and the door to this obscure room. Well, you will ask how those owners, themselves, did not think to open the door, before they erected the porch. Here's what I now think about that: those owners, a wealthy couple from the city with two children, had only briefly visited the house, which they intended to use as a weekend and holiday cabin; they fell in love with the setting, without having given the house much more than a quick appraisal and nod of approval. They instructed a local carpenter to construct the porch, before they next returned. And, so, this poor room disappeared from history until just now, when I chose to bash in that long-locked door in the basement. And, why is there light now streaming through those windows? Well, here's the thing: it must be that my wife and I recently chose to have that porch removed and that work has recently been completed.  

I am fascinated by this exposure to the outside. I go to the door, open it -- easily, as it happens -- and walk out upon a small terrace of flagstone. I spend a while admiring the view, as the sun descends behind a stand of white pine, black walnut, even a giant American elm that I had never noticed.  

I remember.... I have not yet explored the room, itself. I go back in, now. The room is about ten feet by twenty feet. It's dim, in the fading light from the grimy windows. Why are they so dirty? Well, I see now, on the northern wall of the room, there is an enormous fireplace with a stone mantel over it. I notice, also, there is a large walnut library table in the middle of the room. Along the southern wall, there are a series of floor-to-ceiling bookcases. They are tightly crammed with books, and there are many books laying atop those books. I take out my flashlight and I go to one of the bookcases. I blow away the dust from some of the spines. There is a lot of dust. I sneeze repeatedly. The titles confirm my impression that no one has been in this room for many decades: the volumes are leatherbound -- the collected Shakespeare occupies an entire shelf; there is a translation of Don Quixote by John Ormsby; several of Dickens' novels; Milton's works.... I turn my light to the northern wall again, and for the first time I see that in the northeast corner there is a reading desk and further back, in that dark corner, there is a chair and in that chair there is a body. I stumble backward at this discovery. I trip against the table and the flashlight clatters to the stone floor. The batteries spill out and with nervous and awkward fingers I root around, collecting the batteries and replacing them, first with the wrong polarity and then with the correct one, in the battery compartment. With the flashlight now operating again, before I rise I notice that the floor is strewn with the desiccated corpses of many mice -- generations of mice. I surmise that somewhere in this room there is a deposit of arsenic. Perhaps that explains why there is still a body in that chair. I get back to my feet. My heart is beating rapidly as I now creep slowly closer to the corner where the body sits. The chair is wing-backed, brown leather. The body has shrunk into the center of it. It, too, is now brown leather, its skin enclosing and disclosing the skull and the skeleton beneath. There is a side table to the right of the chair, with a double-oil desk lamp with two green glass shades, and next to the lamp, closer to the chair, there is a bottle of King William IV Scotch whiskey and a glass. The writing table is set to a tilt toward the body. I am now standing on the other side of the writing table from the body. I notice that the body is wearing no clothes, but that there are two leather boots on its feet and there is a red-checked cotton comforter around its shoulders. The body is male.  

There is an open leather notebook with lined paper on the writing table. A fountain pen lies in the center of the notebook, and there is an ink bottle just to the right of it. From where I stand, I see that there is writing on the open pages.  

I think: Okay, a man's got to die, after all, and maybe this wouldn't have been a bad way... in the midst of all of these books, with a bottle of scotch at hand, writing..... The notion of writing particularly appeals to me. I've got a lot to do right now -- the practice occupies me six days a week, and otherwise there is work in the house — the scraping and the painting, the endless painting. But.... And, of course there's all the stuff in the open barn and in the basement to sort through. That's going to take a while. But, I'm close to retirement, now. I'd like to spend time in a room like this... maybe this very one -- of course, after it's cleaned up and, of course, the body's been removed. And I'd like to read books like these, too. And, as I say, I'd like to write some, as well. I've thought about this. It'd be nice to leave something behind, attached to my name, so somebody will remember me a long time from now. Sure, there are the kids. Of course, they'll be here, and maybe their kids, too, when I'm gone. And they'll remember me. But maybe not always for the best. Rod and I haven't spoken for months. For all kinds of reasons. The truth is: I don't much like my son. To put it bluntly, he's a bit of a dick. Roxy drops by from time to time. She visited the new house — this house — just last week. She's a good daughter, a kind woman, and though she is very bright -- far smarter than I -- she doesn't seem to care about much other than clothes and boyfriends. We don't talk about anything but her frustrations at work -- she's a lawyer, too --- and her frustrations with whoever the new boyfriend may be — nothing that sparks any passion in me. I'd even like to get into an argument with her... about something. At least, my wife and I argue about the important things, from time to time, still.  

No, I'd like to make something that total strangers will read years from now, and say, “Aha. He got it. He found the words to say what I always meant, but didn't know how to say it....” Maybe I can also bring in an easel and a watercolor set. The views out the back are spectacular. In fact, it occurs to me just now, an artist's work lives even longer than a writer's, in a way. Someone's got to open a book to find a writer's work. A drawing, a painting... well, it’s always on a wall, somewhere, and sometime, maybe only once a year or every other year, someone notices it and sees the name, and then, you're remembered.  

Okay, I have spent quite a while in this reverie. It's night, now, and very dark in this room, and a little creepy, with the body just there. I'm amazed that I haven't treated this matter with more urgency, that I didn't immediately run upstairs to tell my wife, call the authorities, do the things that should be done in these circumstances. I'll do that now.  

I pick up the notebook, first, though, because I want to see what this man wrote here. I close it gently over the fountain pen that marked the place of his last words and tuck it under my arm.  

I go back up. I tell my wife. She does not want to see the body. It's late now. I'll call the Sheriff's office tomorrow morning.  

Finally, I take the notebook to my office, which I find is located on the second floor of the house. I put it on my desk -- a large mahogany desk of a sort that I've always wished to have -- and I take some damp tissues to wipe off the dust. I open the notebook to the place where the fountain pen rests against the last words of the man. The words are in the form of a poem. The handwriting is elegant and legible. The poem has no title. The words are these...  

Yet again, we need to speak of this.  

A sad time, this, I know it is.  

And you are right, I know,  

To take up pen and write.  

Our dear friend, one more, by war laid low --  

Eyes now closed to day and night.  

Yet I am sorry I must be the one  

To have to ask it so:  

Do you write for him?  

Be honest, now,  

Or for some little share of fame?  

(A noble aim, I grant, no cause for shame.)  

But here's the truth: in time to come,  

There will be no one. No one  

To read the words you think so true.  

(Oh, perhaps there'll be a few...  

Far more than words of mine,  

I'm sure -- mine so rhymed by wine!)  

But, if there were such ones,  

It would be only for a while,  

Perhaps his daughters' sons,  

Perhaps a friend of his might smile.  

As brilliant as we know you are --  

A light to us in this dark time -- a star,  

You are not that one --  

That poet, the immortal one.  

So, is this enough for you?  

Will your song bring him back again?  

(Or... do you mean to bring just you?  

Ah, that's it! It's that you mean to gain?)  

I believe: he is dead, and we will die.  

We will not rise,  

And any who tell you otherwise,  

My friend -- my mentor -- they lie.  

This, this, is the end of lies.  

My heart aches now.  

I mean the organ in my chest.  

I'm glad I could write you, though,  

A little, before I rest.  

I sit back a while. What does this even mean...? My true feelings dawn on me... slowly: I am a little angry... or, not so much angry, as disappointed. I had expected inspiration, a little bit of a kick start for my own ambitions, some lofty words, some wit, a door - yes, a door! – into a way of life I might emulate. This man lived in this very house -- the house I made, after all, as you know by now -- in that ancient room below. That should count for something -- that he and I share this place, however many years separate us. Was this all he could say -- these last bitter words -- after all he had read in those many books? It's very late, now. Tomorrow, I am going to give more thought to all those things in the barn and the basement. For all that I am skeptical, I still believe I will find something fresh and useful there. And, yes: after I clean that room up, I'll light a fire down there, drink some scotch (I wonder if there is any left in his bottle?), and I hope to read some of those books. And more, I hope.