Two Houses: Part One

I am not here, for I am elsewhere with the trees.

Claudia was quickly realizing something. She’d assumed that the strange, rural area would have to grow on her but found, actually being immersed by the land, she already quite liked it. The fresh air was a nice change and while that same air had only been in her lungs for a little while and there was always a slight smell of some animal’s droppings tinging what she breathed in, it was immediately preferred to the air over Baltimore. And the impermanence, knowing that they were only here to look, sweetened everything that much more. It was easy to like something on first appearance, especially with the cover of it being so pleasant.

Such a strange thing, she thought, looking out over the open car window, I could swear it all seems familiar.

“Are you listening to this?”

Claudia glanced over at her mother now. She had always been taller than her eldest daughter but somehow when she drove, she seemed a shriveled sort of version of herself. It was probably because she always sat practically on the steering wheel, shoulders high and scrunched and that was exactly what she had done the entire trip through Pennsylvania. It usually made Claudia chuckle and she replied that she hadn’t even noticed the radio was on, but there was also something else blooming inside her with that short glance to her left. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was at first and just assumed it was general anxiety from traveling too long added to the abrupt jump from her comforting inner monologue. It had happened before a million times. The feeling most people would ignore because it was there one second, gone the next; like the quick jolt of being pricked with a needle.

Claudia turned back toward the view of the road, giving her head a small shake. Where had that come from?

She sat blinking for a while, trying to remove the image that had suddenly started to flash behind her eyelids as if it’d been shone before her almost damagingly bright, but only in the form of a memory or a daydream. An intrusive thought that wanted to cling: her mother sitting where she sat, paying no mind to the road but turning toward her daughter with the ugliest grin Claudia had ever seen.

She reached down for her bag and after a little bit of digging pulled out her pill case, checking the day and whether she’d forgotten again. She had. So that was it.

“Aida, look. Just up here is the turn off. Whoever owned the place before planted all these trees down the drive, but I don’t know if it’s closer to the house…or it’s probably overgrown now.”

Claudia sat up, looking straight ahead as her mother turned onto a gravel road that she wouldn’t have spotted herself. She pulled her glasses away, cleaning the massive thumb print she suddenly noticed had smeared before her, and was doubly blind for the moment.

“I like how I tell you to look and you immediately take your glasses off,” her mom laughed, exasperated.

“Well, you want me to really see it, don’t you? I can’t pay attention with smears all over the place on my good eye.”

She shrugged from the driver’s seat, “True.”

The two were in luck in a way. The drive was a long one and the trees her mother had spoken of wanting to see, while tied up with weeds and vines like she thought, were far down and only seconds from the actual houses. They flanked the road like weary, old soldiers unable to move from their posts and unwilling to go against orders if they could. So, nature had just taken over nature. A few of them had already succumbed and crumbled partway down their trunks.

“Oh, what a shame,” her mother sighed, upset by the tilting, half-dead giants.

“Some of them look still alive,” Claudia offered, staring up at the branches in awe and pity herself.  

“Yeah. It’ll take some professional help to get them healthy again though, if that’s even possible. Look at all that ivy. Geez.”

“When did you say people last lived here?”

“Um,” the car took a hard jolt downward dipping into a deep pothole and struggling up again before the back wheel did the same. “I think the site said sometime in the eighties, but I’m not sure.”

They came around a curve still staring up when her mother let out a sort of squeak. Claudia jumped and glared at her until she realized the reaction was due to the clearing in the road.

Ahead, literally straight at the end of the barely-existent, now dirt path was a large old building. The first impression was that it was rundown, forgotten, a place much beyond repair like the evergreens they’d just passed, but as they rumbled on to the very end and were parking into the grass the house seemed to say something different. In Claudia’s eyes, it looked like time was afraid to let the thick, wooden siding fade or the gutters to rust and fall to the ground. The house was an old man whose dark eyes said don’t come near me so clearly that even death had been skirting around him for years now.

“And there’s the newer house. I think it’s more livable.”

Her mother gestured to her left where a barn-like structure stood, only it was more like the lovechild of a barn and a bungalow rather than a whole version of either two.

“What do you mean by livable?”

“You know,” she parked and started pulling her own seatbelt off, “the roof’s intact and they didn’t think any animals had gotten in and started living in the walls or anything. I think someone had to be coming here and keeping things up from the pictures, unless they’re photoshopped or something. At least the exteriors look pretty much the same.”

Her mother opened the door and crawled out ready to explore, but as soon as Claudia followed suit the familiarity she had been feeling was erased. Her foot hit the grass and she was aware in that fraction of a second that she was being welcomed into someone else’s home. A stranger being friendly because they had to, because she was a guest.

“Oh my gosh, Aida. Come look at that front door.”

She stepped fully out and shut the door behind her, doing as she was told. Her mother was already on the porch, peering into the dusty glass of the high windows. Claudia found, watching her mother’s figure, that she was making herself come nearer to the building. She didn’t understand it, this feeling like she was being forced to hug someone she didn’t know. Each step closer to the porch was more and more tentative. It was so strong that by the time the stone blocks of the front steps were inches from the toe of her shoe she felt it like a pulse, squeezing around her.

“I think I see pocket doors,” her mother exclaimed in a funny voice, but Claudia didn’t hear it.

She turned her good eye off to the other house, wishing they’d gone in there first or that maybe they could just leave. But that would be ridiculous. We just got here. Step up you ninny, the medicine will be kicking in soon anyway.

 It’s fine. It’s a house.

Claudia did it in the way she did most things - like pulling off a bandage - and took the steps in two big strides. Her mother noticed she’d finally joined her but not under what circumstances. Apparently, the only thing she felt about the structure was that it was exactly what she’d been looking for since she was a child and had to leave her first home, just as old and about as big.

“Here, look in this one. I’m gonna go around the side and see if I can find the kitchen. Or what’s left of it.”

Her boots were loud as she stomped to the edge of the wooden porch and plopped off, disappearing around the edge of the wall.

Claudia blinked and stepped too quickly up to the window, kicking the siding under the frame. She found herself almost apologizing and then moved on to cup her hands around her eyes so she could see in.

Something about the interior made it seem a little less abandoned. Perhaps it was how there wasn’t as much dust or grime as she expected to see. It looked like there should be furniture covered here and there in white sheets, like some family had left to their winter home a few years ago and never come back. The only thing to be seen, however, by the young woman with her face pressed up to the closed window was bare floors, a staircase, and walls whose plaster couldn’t possibly be forty years old.

The feeling has left me, Claudia stood back.

The strangeness is gone and I should probably see where mom went.

And that was true. The moment she could see into the house, every one of the uncomfortable sensations that had been filling or surrounding her had been swept away. She just chalked it up to her medication finally digesting in her gut.

But that was not true.

***

Claudia’s mother found her way into the old building easily only a minute or two after having left her daughter. The back door that led into the kitchen area was left wide open and therefore she took this as a sign that she should explore the place. Where the rest of the house had remained intact and closed off to nature’s dirtied hands, the wind had swept anything it saw fit into that particular room. Dried leaves scuttled about to hide in all the corners they could find and several sets of muddy foot prints had marched there way in but none of them got as far as the opposite door that led further into the house. At least, that is to say none of the one’s that were clearly paws and bird tracks. There was a lighter set that felt at home enough to venture in without their shoes. While Claudia’s mother found this odd, she wasn’t Claudia and the excitement of actually, maybe buying a place clouded what fear might have existed. And the tracks were dry, which meant the person was long gone. Only she didn’t stop to think about how they never led back out as she followed their trail up the stairs.

***

I’ve never been surrounded by so much wild. I wonder how quickly I would get lost in there. Claudia stared into the thick patch of woods that guarded the back of the property.

It was only about two in the afternoon but already it seemed evening, almost night, under the shroud of healthily leaved branches. There was a dense smell of wet plant decay floating over the grass toward her and she couldn’t decide if it was pleasant or not. She started strolling along the line where forest met yard, never taking her eyes away from where she’d decided not to step foot in just yet. It seemed to her like too much of a “turn you around” sort of place to go in alone. So, she would explore with her eyes. She would walk back and forth until either she found something interesting or her mother called her away. The two buildings behind her did not strike her curiosity in the same way they did her mother, but the trees seemed fascinating. There was nothing obviously remarkable about them, not in the way that they grew or the color of their leaves. Claudia thought to herself that it had to be the sheer mass of them and how, even so close together, they looked to be thriving. She was always assuming things like this. In her mind, every other sentence was finished with the words, “Yes. That has to be it.” Usually, that was the end of things.

Claudia turned around for no real reason other than it being too long looking into the darkness. The back of the house appeared about the same as the front; sturdy and coated in a layer of fine dirt. She wondered why of all colors the previous owner had chosen dark grey for the paint. It might’ve been considered modern in some other place but here it was only a foreboding shade. The house looked twice it’s actually size because of it and each time she turned her back it was almost like there was someone looming over her, arching their back to look down at the crown of her head. She took a few more steps forward and put her hand against the planks. They were smooth as driftwood and the color she’d thought had been painted on was clearly a natural process of some kind. 

“Aida!”

She dropped her hand and raised her chin to shout back, “Yeah?”

“Come in here, the door’s open in the back.”

She took the few steps over to the kitchen entrance already grumbling about how she knew it wasn’t closed off, how she’d been right there the whole time, but the building was now silent. There were no creaky footfalls to guide her to where her mother’s voice had come from and after a moment, she saw that they weren’t going to come. Clearly, she was the only one inside unless her mother was being uncharacteristically odd and hiding somewhere.

“Mom?”

Claudia was not her mother, and where she had first noticed the dirt and the footsteps, her daughter’s eyes were led a little bit higher up to something more striking. A line of objects that were not naturally a part of the house but sat up along the frame of the door so that it would be difficult to remove them. She’d never seen anything like them before, these small, wooden carvings all roughly in the shape of a man and didn’t care much that they were there.

It’s creepy, but to be fair it’s not my house, she decided and took the step up out of the kitchen into the hall.

“Hellooo, Mom? You called for me, remember?”

She was still alone, so she wandered. First, she roamed about the rest of the downstairs, seeing that the air was just as dusty as it should be even if it refused to settle like everything else, and when she was tired of that emptiness, she moved slowly up the creaking stairs to see what those rooms had to show her. Only when she reached the landing did she notice her mother’s figure at the far end staring down over the entrance of the home through the window there.

“Excuse me, lady. It’s rude to call for someone and then not answer,” Claudia joked.

Almost immediately, she knew she’d spoken with the wrong sort of tone. Her light set of words fell on deaf ears and it wasn’t as if the walls were about to chuckle and reply, but still her mother would not speak to ease her growing anxiety.

Claudia took the last step, looking down to keep her balance, and finally saw the crusted shapes of toeprints that had guided her mother earlier. She followed their trail around the banister and right down the hall, past two of the empty bedrooms, until they stopped exactly under her mother’s boots.

The feeling was back again, the same intrusiveness that she had in the car ride up. She did not want to look up and see the horrible grin that may or may not actually be spread across the face at the end because it did not belong there. It did not and would never suit her mother’s features to be so horrible. But obviously, she would have to see. She could feel the eyes on her.

Claudia’s gaze grazed up from the unclean floorboards over the place where shoelaces met jeans and where jeans met the blue blouse that buttoned up the front and reminded her of the sky. It continued across the stitch and crease just under a right shoulder and came reluctantly to rest with the true expression on her mother’s face. While it wasn’t wicked, it wasn’t a relief either.

Her mother looked like a child who’d been caught setting fire to an ant hill and was about to run away from the chance of being punished for it. A smirk was light on her lips, her chin resting on the same shoulder to stare mockingly at Claudia. And before her daughter had a real moment to think about why the wrongness of that child-like expression sent a chill running through her, she swiftly took two strides into the last bedroom and disappeared there.

“Mom,” Claudia shouted, making chase into the empty room.

She knew she’d seen her go in there. It wasn’t as if there was another hall or furniture to block her view, some way that she could have snuck off on another course. Her mother had stepped directly in, right before her eyes and just as suddenly vanished.

Am I having a nervous break?

She started to believe that many of things seen so far on the property were only visions. That the dolls standing across the doorcase were just another part in delusions brought on by stress. Her doctor had warned her about that, given how lightly she had taken what happened to her and moved on several years down the road with nothing but every day calm.

Claudia scanned the room once more, making sure it wasn’t just a blind eye and a halfway decent one blocking her from seeing the truth. Not entirely satisfied, she poked her head back out into the hall.

The silence made her ears throb. She wondered why such an old building was able to block out even the sound of wind blowing harshly against the trees and the siding. Her head turned then, just in time to catch her mother marching out from the adjacent bedroom and down the staircase. Claudia’s heart was now beating like a jackhammer. Anxiety attack or not, this was not the ideal place to be caught hallucinating. Now, she was quite a bit more reluctant to follow those footsteps. She didn’t want to know what might be looking up at her from down below and thought that perhaps she could sneak out some way, out a window or down a drain pipe and hide in the car until her mother had calmed down.

But what if she doesn’t? I could be waiting there until dark, no idea where I am or what she’s doing. I can’t leave her here.

Evie came to her mind then. She knew she was safe with her father back in Baltimore and for that she was glad. Her sister was always afraid of even the tiniest things. She couldn’t imagine her handling whatever this was. That was exactly what Claudia had to do though: handle it. Unless she felt like spending the night in the middle of the Pennsylvanian woods with nothing but herself. Claudia hoped that this was real, that she wasn’t actually rocking in one of these corners with drool down her chin, and walked up to the railing.

Her mother was at the foot of the stairs on her hands and knees like she’d fallen there. She could see her chest rising and falling heavily but slowly, her ribs swelling under the fabric of her shirt. And, after a moment of what looked like gathering herself, she finally tilted her head to the side with one quick move, listening above. Claudia felt her body tense wanting to jerk away from being seen.

“Claudia!”

She let herself jump this time. It may have been the name given to her at birth but rarely did she hear it cross her mother’s lips. The sound of it was a bad note on an untuned piano, not to mention it was shouted up to her from the floor below.

Her mother was crawling to her feet and brushing the dust off her knees. For some reason, she seemed to be looking about her for some sign of her daughter and not toward the second floor where they both had just been. What the hell is going on?

Claudia gave it a moment and called down, “I’m up here,” somewhat quieter than she intended.

“How’d you do that? I came in before you.”

Her mother’s voice was convincingly confused as were her eyes under a scrunched-up brow.

“Um…”

“Come down here real quick, I wanted to show you something. I’ve been calling for you for forever. What were you even doing up there?”

Claudia came around the banister and started her way down the stairs, never taking her eye off the figure that played well at being familiar. Was it truly her mother when only moments ago she’d practically been possessed? Should she even mention it or would it only make both of them worry about Claudia’s state of health?

How did I get up these steps? As she thought about it, she found that it was hard to recall what had happened between her staring into the forest and finding her mother above. Though she probably couldn’t forget the fact that her mother had shifted through an intact wall from one room to the next if she tried, everything else was just so conveniently foggy from its own insignificance.

She was face to face with the stranger wearing her mother’s face. “What did you want to show me?”

The person grabbed her wrist, not tightly or commanding, but also not something that was welcome in any way.

“There’s a crawl space under the stairs. I think someone drew in there but I can’t read it. Oh! There’s that flashlight in the trunk from when we got the flat tire in Harrisburg. I’ll go get it-”

“Actually, is it okay if we head out now? I’m not feeling…great.”

She paused mid-stride and looked back at Claudia concerned. “You brought your medication, right?”

This question was indeed something she was used to, a mixture of comforting and irritating. At twenty-seven years old it was about time to stop hearing it, Claudia always thought once it’d been uttered for the million-and-somethingth time. It made it worse knowing that she’d seen her take it in the car.

Claudia only nodded and took the chance to try to appear ill in some way. It seemed to work on her mother even if she gazed around at the old house as if she was being pulled apart forever from a cherished friend.

They stepped out together the same way they’d come, leaving the kitchen door wide open as it had been. They got in the car silently, all the while Claudia worrying that whoever had replaced her mother would stick with the property as they drove away. She didn’t think she could handle several hours of looking over her shoulder.

But then again, as their Honda rambled on making the dirt drive turn back into gravel and the gravel eventually into pavement, they both began to forget. Or, really, not so much forget as their thoughts about the place became part of a pick and choose game. What was left after that sort of dulled, stretching out to fill the empty spaces and made not to seem so out of the ordinary. Claudia was no longer afraid; she was indifferent and full of excuses.

“I think I might actually look into buying this one,” her mother sprang on her, pumping gas only an hour into their trip back home.

And Claudia agreed, “You did seem to like it more than the others.”