Last night, I discovered there were rooms in my parents’ house I had never been in before. When I arrived at the house around eight o’clock, the sky turned an eerie shade of milky orange-gray, the dust particles suspended in mid-air becoming visible and thickening the atmosphere so that the house appeared to loom somewhere far off in the distance. I stood for a moment on the concrete driveway, once familiar, that had become almost luminescent, its newfound aura repelling any traces of dirt or gasoline or leaves. My Nissan looked strangely out of place parked next to it, like a Coca-Cola can in the ruins of Machu Picchu. But I remembered a time not so many years before when I had just turned sixteen and my old Volkswagen Rabbit, a hand-me-down from my parents, had leaked oil all over it. The spot had been distinctive, shaped roughly like a cloud, and I had joked with my parents that I could read the oil stains like tea leaves. They had smiled indulgently.
As I headed up toward their door, I began to feel clairvoyant, suspecting no one was home. Still, I rang the bell and flashed the peace sign, our universal greeting used since I was four years old. If they were home, they would see me on the camera. And even if they weren’t, they could see me on the app. I hadn’t told them I was coming for a visit; I had wanted to surprise them, something that wasn’t easy today in the world of constant contact. When they didn’t answer, I whipped out my phone and checked my social media, finding no new messages from them, no status updates, no indication of where they were or what they might be doing. I messaged Mom: hey, I’m here. Right outside. On your doorstep. When she didn’t reply, I added, I brought a cake, thinking that would remind her in case she had forgotten. It was a special day, the anniversary of when they came over here from Germany when I was only two years old. I didn’t remember the trip, but they did, and they always referred to this date as though it were a minor holiday, rather like a birthday that should be celebrated. They had said nothing about it this year, which was unusual, so I had decided to pick up the slack, to take the initiative, and plan a little party, wondering if this was what they had always wanted, maybe even expected me to do.
When my mother didn’t comment or reply, I tried my father. R U eating out somewhere?, I started, then went back and spelled out the first two words. My father was a stickler for proper English. And for German chocolate cake. He would be thrilled when I told him, and also that it wasn’t some store-bought thing, but homemade, entirely from scratch. But he didn’t reply immediately either.
I tried the front door out of some impulse I couldn’t have explained, and I wasn’t surprised at all when I found it opened. If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have thought something must be very wrong. I went inside and set the cake down in the kitchen, then wandered upstairs, up to my old bedroom, and found it no longer looked like my room at all. The walls opened up, expanded, into a series of winding rooms, not square, but L-shaped with nooks and closets opening off of still more doors. The rooms were furnished, but all the furniture was pushed up against the walls, leaving broad pathways through the middle. The furniture all looked old, antique, vaguely European, hand-carved wooden frames on the chairs and bedsteads, upholstered with rich brocades and velvet. The walls were papered with old-fashioned damask wallpaper, heavily flocked and textured, in jewel-like shades of burgundy and emerald. But there was a certain emptiness about the place, no pictures on the walls, no knickknacks on the dressers. In the closets, I discovered stuffed bears two times my adult size, and an astonishing array of violins and zithers all handmade by the children, I immediately surmised, the children who must have lived here, who perhaps lived here still.
I never did catch a glimpse of them, the children, but I felt certain they were there, hiding, watching me just around the corner, always ducking out of sight whenever I was close enough to see them.
“Hello?” I called to them. “Where are you?”
Sometimes, I thought I heard their lilting voices, and if I ever caught them, I was certain they would speak some other language and be dressed in stiff Victorian clothes.
I kept turning corners, looking for them, circling the maze-like rooms, until finally I was frantic, almost running.
Then I heard a noise, the front door opening, and I heard my mother’s voice.
“Gretchen?” she called out. “Is everything OK?”
The closet door I opened led me back inside my bedroom.
“Yeah, I’m up here,” I called. “I’ll be down in just a minute.”
I took one more look at the strange furnishings in my room, the mahogany and the walnut, the lack of posters, before I headed back downstairs.
“I’m cutting the cake,” my mother said as I walked in. “It looks delicious.”
“What did you do to my room?” I asked.
She looked confused and puzzled. “Nothing.”
“But where did that furniture come from?”
“What furniture?”
“You know, the antiques.”
I caught her throw a harsh glance over at my father, who seemed to wince.
“I don’t know what you mean. There’s nothing new up there.”
“But . . . “
My father interrupted me. “Why didn’t you park in the driveway?”
“The driveway?” For a moment, I was confused. Then I remembered the strange iridescence that had been there when I arrived. “Did you notice anything about the light outside?”
“The light?”
“At dusk.”
“The sun set three hours ago.”
Strange, I hadn’t noticed.
Jennifer Handy’s fiction has been published in The Examined Life Journal, Great River Review, The Windhover, and elsewhere.
Coming home is often spooky. Thanks for the excellent piece.
Very well done!