Oakheart

No one writes letters anymore. No one sane, anyway, even ransom notes just get sent over the internet, cold and formal. Maybe that’s why I chose to open it, when it landed on my front step that day. What could someone who writes letters have to say?

E.L. Andover. A name that didn’t belong to me, on a manila envelope that had been delivered to the wrong address. It was thick, too, filled with papers, photographs–I had to open it. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but I did my research. Google told me that there were only two guys named E.L. Andover across the whole eastern seaboard, and both of them were dead. I read their obits in the Times. Maybe the package got lost in the mail, I thought, but it didn’t look that old. Crumpled, sure, but the paper hadn’t faded one bit. It smelled new, too. Maybe it’s weird and maybe I’m crazy but new paper smells way different from old paper, though not worse. Just different.

So my guy was dead, and I couldn’t find a thing about the rest of his family. What was I supposed to do? Just a peek wouldn’t hurt.

Yeah, I’m rationalizing, I know. What I really should’ve done was burn it. Too late now. I guess this is my warning. It’s eating away at me, the things I read. I think I’m going crazy. Maybe it’s just me, and this is a case of false-att-ri-bu-tion, as Bomber Lewis would say. Maybe he wouldn’t, I don’t know. Anyways, I’m rambling. You’d think I’d want to hide the letter, keep it locked away in a trunk under concrete under a building, never to see the light of day again, but I need to write about it. Maybe I’m hoping that in doing so I’ll be able to process some of it, get back to the real world. I don’t know. I can try, anyway.

December 21st, 2006

Andover,

I can’t sleep at night without dreaming of fire. It’s like I’m back there, and Elia and the children are screaming for me once more. Everything here is falling apart. I can’t remember the last time I ate; even the thought of cooking a meal sends me into cold sweats. 

You asked about Oakheart. You should know: you ask about death. Sometimes it answers.

Here on the letter there was a note, scrawled in blue ink. It referenced another document, with a faded monochrome photograph attached to it. That document is presented here in full.

OAKHEART

SUBJECT: Andover family summer home. Dubbed “Oakheart” by Galen Andover, architect. Gifted to his daughter, Eileen Andover, on her wedding night. Final resting place of Eileen Andover, Elia Andover, Jon Andover, Galen Andover, Talia Desmond, and Talia’s unborn son.

EVENT: On March 3rd, 1995, an undisclosed incident caused the subject to erupt in flames. Within minutes, the entire 5000 square foot property was on fire. Later inquiries found that several emergency exits had been blocked, either by negligence or intentional sabotage. The fire took the lives of Galen Andover, both his children, and one of his daughter’s friends, who had joined the Andovers on holiday. Officially, Frederick “Freddy” Willar was the sole survivor, but rumours persist claiming that other guests had been invited to the Andover home that evening. No direct evidence of their existence has been found, but numerous clues exist. For one, the dining table was set with enough plates for 15 people, far more than official numbers would deem necessary. People in the area at the time also reported seeing the Andovers partying, with “many guests coming and going.” Despite the mystery surrounding the case, no charges were ever laid, and interest soon dried up concerning the house, besides the conspiracy theories that tend to hover around every major disaster. 

NOTES: I first visited Oakheart when Galen was building it back in ‘78. He was so full of life, back then, hope for the future. Mary was pregnant with their third child, and things were looking up. The home embodied that feeling, in a way. It was a work of art, of course – all Galen’s work was art. It wasn’t small by any means but it felt small, each room cleverly designed to hide the true size from those who walked inside. It was intimate. I was enchanted at once. Everyone was, those who saw it. Thinking of it makes me sad, to think of what it’s become now. A charred husk. Anyways, I hope the agency can make use of this. –Ed

There are a few odd things I wanted to point out here. First of all, Oakheart’s in the middle of nowhere. The closest neighbors are ten miles away, at least. Who were the “people in the area” Ed mentions? Even the closest road is obscured from view by trees. Second, Martha Andover never had a third kid, as far as I can tell. She had Eileen, the daughter, and a son named Jon, and that was it. Also, when I went to the library to check all this stuff, I could’ve sworn someone was following me. The lady at the desk seemed surprised as hell when I asked to check the archives, but she pointed me down the stairs anyways. They were kept in this dingy old basement where the lights only came off when someone moved, and I’m pretty sure no one had moved down there for a long long time. It creeped me out, to tell you the truth. I felt like I was in a crypt.

Anyways I explored the shelves for a while until I found what I was looking for, a roll of old microfilm that I had to put into a machine to read. It took a while, and at the end of that I found- well, you know what I found. Nothing. So I was taking everything back, when I noticed that one of the other machines was on, and I swore I hadn’t touched the damn thing. No one else came down while I was reading, either, and I know that ‘cause the stairs make an awful clanging noise as you come down, and I would’ve heard it. I was pretty shaken but I just turned off the machine and put the films back, and that’s when I noticed that someone had moved more boxes around, because the dust was gone off a shelf I hadn’t touched. You probably think I’m crazy paranoid, and maybe I am, but not about that. I went through the shelves one by one, and I am one hund-er-ed percent certain I didn’t touch that shelf. 

Or maybe I did. Maybe I turned on that machine, too, some other personality of mine, and then I forgot about it and thought someone else did it. I don’t know. I’ve given up on the truth.

My cousin came to visit, some years before the fire. She was really into tarot cards at the time, or, as Galen put it, “her star crystal nonsense.” It was fun at first, but that ended when she told Talia that the cards said her son was going to die. Eileen kicked her out, and I agreed with her. It was a sick kind of joke to play and even if they did say that she shouldn’t have told her. Some things should be kept to yourself. Even if it did come true.

You’re probably wishing I’d get to the point already and I will, but I’m tired and sad and I think I’m entitled to some meandering. The tarot cards were the first sign of something different about Oakheart that I can remember, but of course I didn’t attribute it to the house at that time. 

You probably heard of what happened during its construction, but I’ll lay it out in full. Galen spent most of his career designing homes, cookie cutter things that only allowed the barest artistic expression. He never complained, but I knew it was crushing him. Oakheart was his chance to change that, to create something he really wanted. Work started in 1969 and was expected to finish in ‘71, but things went wrong nearly from the start. The land was too marshy to work on, and digging went slow because holes kept filling up with water as they were being dug. Galen refused to change locations, though. It drew him in with that indelible charm it has, and he was caught alright, hook line and sinker. He and Martha had a pretty big spat about it, as I recall, and later on tensions about Oakheart would end in their separation, but back then it was just an argument; one that Galen won. It’s funny. Thinking back on it, Galen never seemed to notice his relationship falling apart, even while the rest of us had to deal with the awkward fallout of their fights. I would ask him about Martha, and he’d smile and ask me what there was to say. “We’re still in love,” he told me, “and that’s it.”

Anyhow digging continued and soon they were laying the foundations, never mind that the project budget was discreetly blossoming in the background. Every step of the way, problems arised, almost as if the land was fighting back against the construction. Galen threw himself into that fight headfirst, and I don’t think he would’ve answered to any bell. By the Christmas of 1971 they were almost ready to start building the actual thing, but then Galen fired everybody and shut the property down. There it sat, vacant and abandoned, for two long years.

Galen never explained why. Sometimes he’d get excited about something, only to give it up a day later, and I assumed the same thing had happened here. But those were always little things– he’d try to take up painting, or remodel the house, or sell all his old stuff. By the next day his paintings would be in the trash, rooms would be back in their usual arrangements, and he’d cancel all the deals he’d made. But this was his passion project; his life’s work. It never sat right with me that he’d give it up so easily. Whatever the reason, in ‘74 he started everything back up again. That was when Martha had just gotten pregnant with Jon, and it seems to me he realized he was getting old (old for a man who still thought he was young, anyway) and this was his last chance to make something of his life. Maybe it was also partially for Jon, which is ironic seeing as he ended up giving it to Eileen. 

So the land that had been untouched for two years was suddenly resurrected, and this time Galen was determined to complete it. Two years passed, and Oakheart grew steadily, the land no longer fighting its presence. Maybe it knew that doom was already on its way. All it had to do was wait. 

I don’t know if you ever got to see Oakheart before the disaster, but it was beautiful. Galen’s work was always constrained, so he learned to be subtle with his artistic instinct. He learned it very well. With Oakheart, there was always a chance that the lack of limitations (besides money, of which he had plenty) would result in a design that was more vulgar than artistic, a mess of ideas that had no purpose existing besides the fact that they could, a path most mansions end up taking these days, to their detriment. Galen managed to avoid that trap. His house felt like magic to walk through, but you could never point at something and say “that makes it special.” It was all of it, together, and to take away one bit would leave the rest feeling lesser.

It was finished in ‘76. They held a housewarming party, and for nineteen years, there was peace. Then came Eileen’s wedding, and the fire, and since then…well, you know that part. 

The party was fine. The trouble started later in the night. We were all drunk, of course, and Eileen dragged us into the basement for games. I don’t remember who brought out the cards, but Eileen didn’t say anything when she saw them. But then it happened again, the cards foretelling some awful tragedy, and Eileen flipped out. I think that’s what the house wanted, though, because while we were screaming at each other, it was changing. And when Eileen accidentally smacked the deck off the table, into the fireplace, sending burning cards all over the floor, setting the place alight before we even processed what was happening– well that’s when we found out the exits were no longer there.

I won’t trouble you with the details. You know how everyone died, it was in all the papers. I thought I’d died too, but I woke up the next morning, charred but alive, fifty miles away, by the side of the road. I managed to hitchhike back to Oakheart in a beat up Dodge owned by a kid named Billy Graves. He told me I looked like hell, which was funny, because his teeth were yellow and his face was sunken, but I don’t doubt he was right.

For a decade I’ve been reminiscing on that night, wondering if it all meant anything. The investigators said the reason I ended up so far away was because of an underground cave system. Apparently a sinkhole opened up underneath the house that night and I fell in. A current dragged my unconscious body to safety. But there was no mention of any caves in the area when they were laying foundations. Did the cave grow under the house, twisting and changing like the house itself did that night? The more I think about it the more I’m certain that if Oakheart wanted me dead, I would be dead. Galen never won the war. Oakheart belongs to the wild.

I know you’re thinking of going back there. Don’t. That’s my only advice.

Take care of yourself,

– F. Willar

So that’s it. I never found out who Andover was, maybe Martha’s third kid. But I can’t get the letter out of my head. Every night I dream of Oakheart, even though the only picture I’ve ever seen of it was faded and blurry. In my dreams it’s full again, and it’s calling out to me. I know I have to go to it. My bus leaves in the morning. I should burn this, all of this that I’ve written along with the letters too, but I can’t bring myself to. All I’ve got to say is that if you read this and feel the draw like I do, I hope you find what you’re looking for. I don’t know what I hope to find but I know I have to try and find it. Maybe it’s the human spirit, always hungry to challenge fate. Or maybe it’s just the same flaw in my character that made me open a letter addressed to someone else, just to see what was in it. Just a peek won’t hurt, right?