It gets dark early during November in Michigan. The lights in the house were dim and the shadows long. Vic had turned on the two table lamps in her room, but it was quite dark. She opened the bathroom door and turned on the stark light inside. It helped, but only a little. Raindrops hit the window, the house creaking as a strong wind gust blew past. She sat at the writing desk, laptop open, food beside it. She ate while watching an antique show. A chill entered the air, a draft from somewhere. Old houses like these had lots of drafts. It was usually missing glazing on the windows. They were never that great to begin with and over time it dried up and flaked off. It’s hard to find original windows in old houses because of it. She got up and grabbed a blanket off the bed, wrapped it around herself, and sat back down. The program she watched had people who would come with antiques that were passed down in their families and historians would tell them what they had, if it was authentic, and what it was worth should they want to sell it. Some people discovered that they had a priceless artifact and others discovered that they had reproductions. Vic thought the show was like a game to her, where she got to test her skills and was excited when she was correct.
Lightning flashed, streaking across the sky, casting shadows distorted from what was. In the flash, Vic thought she saw a face in the window, but that was ridiculous since she was on the second floor and there was no balcony outside her window. She stood, walked to the window, and looked out. Rain poured from the sky, trees shook in the wind and their dead leaves were pulled from the branches. More lighting flashed, followed by rolling thunder. She turned and faced the room. The darkened corners seemed pregnant. It was as if the darkness was pushing back against the light. Vic returned to the desk and finished her meal and TV show without any more distractions.
She then stepped into the darkened hallway. Only one light illuminated her room in the east hallway, another was lit down the west hallway. She walked its length, her fingers trailing faded and peeling wallpaper. Strips of it were hanging down where the glue had come detached from the wall. A water-stain spread across the ceiling at the end of the hall. She turned around and walked in the other direction looking at the features of the house; the door trim, the pattern on the wallpaper, the carpet, lighting features, and how it must have looked in its heyday. She stopped at the railing overlooking the grand staircase. The stained glass window was beautiful. It depicted a scene in which a young woman in a white dress was sitting amongst flowers and reaching her hand out to touch a unicorn as white as her dress. It was surprising that it was still in good shape. In the darkness with the rain and lightning flashes it took on a more sinister tone. Instead of the woman reaching out innocently it seemed sinister instead. She couldn’t hear the other people in the house, only the sound of the storm. She continued down the hall and through the double doors at the end.
The balcony was small, but the view over the ballroom was grand. You could see the whole room and Vic imagined looking out from here during a masquerade ball. She imagined trying to find “the one”. She thought it romantic to fall in love at a masquerade ball. All the pretty girls wearing beautiful gowns faces hidden by masks, and the men, handsome, masked, and looking for dance partners and possible future wives. The past seemed much more alive and exciting to her. In this fantasy, there were handsome men and flowers everywhere, and musicians to play live music. In reality, the room was a vast empty darkness, intermittently interrupted by flashes of light. She felt as though she were standing in a void. She turned to leave before the void looked back at her. She went back to her room, showered, answered a few emails, and read for a bit before she crawled under the covers and went to sleep.
~
Vic was sitting at the kitchen table with her crayons. She wore a yellow dress with ribbons in her hair. On the paper in front of her, she had drawn a tree. At the top, she drew a picture of herself and wrote her name below it. Victoria. Beneath that, she drew her mom and dad. Under her father, she put his parents, but that’s as far as it went. Under her mother, she drew her grandmother, but she didn’t know her grandfather, and beneath her grandmother were two more grandmothers, grandfathers unknown.
“Mom, how come we don’t have any grandpas?” She looked so small sitting in the chair. “Did you know your grandpa? What about your dad? Did you know him?”
Her mother was washing dishes. She turned from the sink, dried her hands, and walked over to stand beside her. She knelt down to Vic’s level. “It’s something we don’t like to talk about in our family.” She took Vic's hands in her own. “Don’t ever think that you’re unloved because your dad isn’t here anymore. Your dad loved you more than anything in this world, but he got sick and the doctors couldn’t fix him.”
“Did your daddy get sick and go away too?” Vic had been so sweet and innocent at this age.
“No, my daddy didn’t get sick. He and my mom fought a lot. They fought like people who didn’t like each other. After a while, it was only me and my mom.” She strained to hold back tears.
“Did you miss him? I miss Daddy.” Her little face wrinkled up, tears welling in her eyes.
“I did miss him at first, but after a while with just my mom, I didn’t anymore. He was angry and yelled all the time which made me scared. I wasn’t scared anymore. So it was just me and my mom, like it’s just you and me. It was the same thing with my grandma and her mom. But we don’t ever talk about it.” She let her hands go and stood up.
“Why not? Where’d all the daddies go?” Vic’s face was all red and scrunched up like a wrinkled prune.
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Her mother stroked her hair. “I don’t know honey. I don’t know, but we turned out okay.”
Vic gets up from the chair and walks down the hall, Linoleum changed to carpet, the walls closed in around her, and the sunlit kitchen faded to the past. The dim hallway stretched in front of her. She walked past old, worn wallpaper that she didn’t remember in her childhood home. She opened the door at the end and stepped through it. Another hallway, like before, but darker and more foreboding. Black mold riddled the walls here, so black that you couldn’t see the pattern anymore. Missing plaster showed the slats like the bones of a skeleton. She saw a man in a black suit and top hat turn a corner. She thought she heard a voice whisper “Follow me.” She hurried after the man in the hat. “Wait,” she called. When she turned the corner she saw him enter and shut a door behind him. It was dark and eerie, but she could still see somehow. She strode to the door and opened it. Beyond was a nursery, decayed and moldy. A baby cried. The room held a wooden bassinet. There was no baby in it, but she could hear it.
The man walked through another door. “Follow me,” the voice said. She couldn’t be sure if it was the man’s voice that called to her, or somebody else. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The door led to a short corridor that was falling in upon itself. Footsteps echoed on a winding staircase that descended into darkness below. She followed. She had to catch up to the man. Who was he? Why did he want her to follow him? Or was it somebody else that wanted her to follow him?
At the bottom of the staircase, she found herself at the end of a hall. Many doors sat along it with multiple passageways connecting. Dreary green wallpaper adorned the walls. She walked along looking for signs of the man in the top hat. Behind her, in the darkness, she could hear something large. She turned and looked, but could not see anything. She continued searching. When she reached one corridor she saw the man turning the corner into another. She ran after, trying to catch up, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t reach him. He was always barely at the edge of his vision. Carpet soon turned to stone and the walls fell away. Statues and bushes loomed up around her and she could hear the nails of a large beast clacking on the stone tiles behind her. She looked behind her again. It sounded like it was right behind her. She imagined a large, fiend-like beast with a hungry maw, ready to tear her flesh. Fear rushed up from her stomach and threatened to overwhelm her. She ran, not following after the man any longer. After the maze of hallways the garden felt like another. Flower beds and bushes kept her on the path and she found nowhere to flee, or escape this beast. She knew that if she stopped it would be on her. She passed through a doorway and found herself in an overgrown cemetery. Dense fog clung to the ground and swirled as if it had a life of its own. The clouds barely covered a full moon. She ran between tombstones that were wide and skinny. The names were worn off long ago. A mausoleum loomed up out of the darkness and she ran for it. The Beast right on her heels. An owl hooted in the distance. She slammed into the back of the stone building and felt her way along it to the front where she tugged on the doors stuck tight. Locked. Safety ripped away from her. She felt the beast behind her, the death blow coming.
Vic awoke with a start, she could still feel the looming presence of the beast. Her breath caught in her chest, and she breathed shallowly. Cold crept in and chilled her to the bone. It was cold, and a breeze colder still caressed her skin. It was pitch black, a vast emptiness around her. She stood barefoot on cold stone. Where was she? Did she sleepwalk? She hadn’t done so since she was a teenager. Her mother found her out on the lawn multiple times. Once she was halfway down the street. The problem was so bad that her mother took to locking her in her room at night. She had been scared. She didn’t know why she sleepwalked, or where she was going. They went to the doctor but he told them it was quite normal and to just make sure they kept all the doors locked at night. The condition stopped when she went away to college. She did not want it coming back. This was a nightmare.
Terrified and barely breathing she reached out trying to find a wall. She must be in the house somewhere. Her feet ached with cold, her toes numb with it. She must be in the basement. The rest of the house had wood floors, carpet, and tile. Only the basement had a stone floor. Reaching forward, her feet scuffed along the floor until her fingers touched wood. She spread her hands along it, identifying it as a shelf. Various unknown things lay on it. She slowly shuffled along the wall trying to find a light switch, if one existed. Her heart wanted to explode from her chest in fear. The silence in her ears was deafening. She inched her way along, one excruciating step after another. She felt like she was being watched, but she knew she was alone. The supernatural did not exist. But even so, it took all she had to keep moving and not crawl up into a ball and wait for morning. And then she heard it. A scrabbling of claws on stone. Her heart leaped into her throat and she moved faster. A loud crash sent her running forward into another shelf. She felt her way against that wall and came to a door. She searched the wall around the door, looking for a light switch. Just when she thought she could bear it any longer her fingers touched upon a switch. Flipping it, the light blinded her as the bare bulb came to life. She spun around to see what was in the room with her. When she saw it, she choked out a laugh.
Just the cat. It must have gotten shut in the room with her. Looking around she recognized it as one of the cellars. The one that held the electrical panel. The cat sat licking her paw next to a few jars that it had knocked over. “Come on kitty, let’s go back upstairs.” She opened the door and the cat followed. There had to be a window propped open somewhere, but she and Michael had not found one when they were down here earlier. They will have to search for it.
The hallway was dark, not a single light was on. Trying to get her bearings she grabbed a block and propped the door open. The stark, white light shone into the hall. It didn’t stretch very far, but It was just beyond where the light ended. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but if they were she knew this house would be haunted. If she thought the basement was creepy during the day, it was ten-fold in the dark. The cat followed her as she strode down the hall. She heard nothing but her breathing. She could not hear the storm from earlier. It was gone, or she couldn’t hear it from here. At the edge of the light, she hesitated and then stepped into the darkness. She misjudged the distance. Looking back, the pool of light from the cellar was smaller than she initially thought. The darkness crept in around her. She had the itch to flee. She ran to the door, to the stairwell and flipped a switch outside which cast too dim light in the hall. It wasn’t enough. She pulled open the door and flipped the switch she found inside. The bare bulb lit the stairwell from up above. She ran up the stairs, the cat hot on her heels as she fled up through the house.
Exiting into the great hall on the first floor, the patter of rain hit her ears. She ran down the hall to the grand stairs and hurried up them. They creaked as she ascended. The cat followed her back to her room, where she turned on all the lights and crawled into her bed. Kitty jumped on her bed, and let Vic stroke her fur. She kneaded the blankets with her paws, turned in three circles, and curled up.