~ The Endless Place ~

by

W. J. Calabrese

When I first saw the house, it was against a backdrop of cheerless sky, which promised nothing except more of the chill rain that had marred my morning arrival on the bus from Boston. So this was what I had come so far to claim.

I stood by the massive iron gate, peering through the bars like a timid child on the first day at boarding school. What I saw was not encouraging. The grounds on which the house stood--several acres of tree-studded clearing surrounded by dripping forest--had obviously not seen grooming of any sort for a very long time. Fallen tree limbs were scattered about like skeletons. Mats of last year’s leaves lay on the ground in moldering clumps, repressing, for a time, the growth of the long grass and rank weeds that had once owned this plot and were now trying very hard to reclaim it. The bushes, mostly laurels and rhododendrons, loitered like vagrants along the front of the house. Badly overgrown, they thrust out errant branches in all directions.

But it was the house that daunted me the most. Set on a hill, it dominated the scene. Built of somber gray stone, three stories high and perhaps a hundred feet wide, it was bigger than a lot of museums and public buildings I had seen.

I supposed the old man had been too ill to care for the place near the end and hadn’t been willing to pay someone else to do it, but still the sight of all this neglect was depressing. Who knew how much more decay waited for my discovery within the house itself? I made a gloomy estimate of how much money it would take to get the place cleaned up enough to sell. A small fortune, probably, and I didn’t have a fortune of any size, only this rotting house that a crazy old man had left me.

Sell it? Who was I kidding? Nobody would buy this place. It was too big, for one thing--an enormous white elephant. Who would need all those rooms? Who would want such a huge, drafty, cost-a-million-to-heat-and-maintain place? Maybe some big company might be interested, but I knew I shouldn’t count on it.

I picked up my single small suitcase--I wasn’t planning to stay any longer than I had to, a couple of days at the most--and pushed at the big gate with my free hand. The ease with which the gate slid open belied its size and appearance of disuse. I closed the gate carefully behind me, for some reason hesitant to make any more noise than necessary. I hesitated again, looking at the house doubtfully. Then I began to make my way up the uneven flagstone path that wound up the hill. It was like negotiating an obstacle course. At one point a large tree limb had fallen across the path. I had to walk around it and, in the process, stepped into a hidden mud puddle that soaked my practically new cross-trainers and made me "say a swear," as my mother would have put it.

I hardly remembered my Uncle Joshua--had almost forgotten about the old man’s existence, in fact. That was understandable. I hadn’t seen him in almost two decades, not since I was seven. I vaguely remembered that occasion, a visit by my uncle to his sister and her husband--my parents. The visit had lasted perhaps a week, perhaps less. My recollection of those days was foggy, more like a dream than a memory. I remembered a tall, thin man with a hatchet-shaped face, a slit of a mouth that didn’t smile, and a set of eyes that seemed to look right through me. I had a picture in my mind of him seated at our kitchen table, holding a teacup as if he were afraid he was going to crush it. I remember he always wore a black suit with a tie. I wondered if he had more than one suit and if he slept fully dressed. I also recalled a feeling of indistinct dread when my uncle was nearby and an intense desire to be off and playing--somewhere where my uncle was not. It was my recollection that I fulfilled this desire every chance I got and I don’t remember my parents reprimanding me for it. That was all I remembered, and there had been nothing since to expand those scraps of memory. My father had apparently taken no pictures during the visit, at least none I had ever come across, and I did not remember my parents even discussing my uncle afterwards.

So I had been surprised--startled would be a better word--when the letter arrived from Sterns, Sterns, and Fowler, Attorneys at Law, to tell me that my Uncle Joshua had passed away and left the old house where he had lived alone for most of his life to me, a nephew who was for all intents and purposes a total stranger.

My first reaction to the news was one of elation. Maybe this was how my life, which had been wandering through dark valleys for so long, would start to climb the hill again. The place was sure to be worth money, maybe a lot of money. I could sell it and use the proceeds to get my life moving in the right direction again. Pay my doctor bills. Buy a condo. Buy a car--I didn’t even have one, not since my ‘89 Sentra had given up the ghost a couple of months before. I could go back to school. Maybe start a business. Yes, my expectations had been high, but they had begun to come back to earth as soon as the bus pulled into the gray little town of Hillsborough, with its scowling inhabitants and vacant storefronts. My prospects continued to deflate as the morning moved on. Now, as I drew closer to the house, I could see how thin my hopes really were. High, old-fashioned windows stared blankly back at me from the three-storied front of the house; several lacked their full compliment of glass. Surely there was water damage inside--and God only knew what else.

The front door confronted me. Made of dark wood studded with iron nails, it looked like it might be five or six inches thick. There was a large, green oxidized doorknocker set solidly in the middle. For some reason, I was glad I didn’t have to use it. I didn’t think I would care for the echoes it would summon.

I fumbled in my pocket for the key Attorney Fowler had sent me. Fowler was to meet me at the house at eleven. I looked at my watch. About twenty minutes to kill. I might as well go in. Find out if the place was haunted. With my luck, it would be--by the ghost of an axe murderer.

Like the gate, the big front door opened much more easily and quietly than it had appeared it would. I hesitated on the threshold, peering in through the doorway as if expecting a reception of some sort. Then I stepped inside, and found myself standing on the edge of a wide, slate-floored entrance hall that seemed to stretch away forever. The scant light that made its way through a few dusty windows revealed a double line of doorways standing like grim choices on either side of the hall. At the rear, a shadowy stairway led up into more shadows. Creepsville Central.