When I close my eyes, I am there. When I open them, I hear its echoes. I cut through the clearings, force past the forest foliage. The leaves shine with the southern sun’s light. I drink the dew of the humid air, its droplets drowning sensibility. There isn’t an insect in sight – I stride alone through the almost silent brush; all that accompanies me is the crumpling of leaves, the crushing of twigs, and the hushed tones of unforgotten voices.
I feel a symphony of sensations as my sight falls upon the Hallowed Ground. The forest opens up, parting for the placid plain around the manor. Its walls remain white, flat, and almost featureless, its idealised image uninterrupted. They encase the structure in a simple square shape, decorated with neither a dash of colour nor any sort of design. Grey bricks build its foundation; the cement sealing their connection and securing what once was inside. Though there is light both inside and out, the windows are too dark to discern what lies behind. My eyes wander over them, numbering three large and twelve small in size, just as I recalled. Similarly stern is the shingled roof, absorbing the warmth of the sun, and spotted with white set-in sediment that glimmers a glittering glow down on me. The hot wind blows by, bringing the smell of spring. This was home. It could still be. I mustn’t allow it to be.
I step up to the front door, finding no porch nor deck to denote it. There was one once, eleven years ago, and I remember a riveting evening I spent beneath its boards. I can see the amber glow of the autumn evening emerging from the slits between them. I can smell the scent of dirt and dust heavy in the air. I can hear her voice and mine. I feel her touch – and then it’s gone. I needn’t dive deeper. I don’t need to dredge up another night long lost. I shake my head. What am I doing reminiscing about a deck? Not a single splinter stands in its stead anymore. Not even the subtle circular slope in the soil survives. I grasp the golden handle of the antique door, my thumb pushing the latch down like a revolver, and clicking it open.
I push the entry open. I expect a wince, a whine, the sound of something that hasn’t seen a soul in years. Not a noise escapes. It opens just as it always has. This place is too perfect for such shortcomings. As I see the crimson carpet come into view, I expect some sort of smell. Sweat, mildew, mould, rot – something that shows how eons have eroded this once sacred space. Yet, I am again left with nothing. The air is clear and cool, and I can feel the difference between the summer sun streaking its warm hands down my back and the cold air clasping my front. I now know that nothing could put a crack in this place. Nothing could make it falter in its flawlessness, not until I perish, or put it out of its misery myself.
I step forward, approaching the grand staircase of the manor. I’ve been dealt a decision: ascend the staircase to what hides above, delve down one of the hallways drawing my eye on either side, or slip behind the stairs and enter the dining room. I know it matters little regardless, so I step around the stairwell. I drift down the hall, peering at the off-white plaster. It’s lit with luxurious lamps, their curling limbs looking as though they’d just been adopted from an antique store. As one would guess, they’re immaculate. No hum of electricity, no scratches in their sublime glass, no faltering flicker of dying bulbs. I shuffle down the stair-shaded hallway and approach the door, opening it in a single smooth swing.
A certain sombreness strikes me as I step into the space. The table’s so long yet so lonely. I count the twelve empty chairs. All that remains of delightful dinners and exuberant evenings is a broad table and barren seats. Echoes of what has come and gone. My first day in the manor all those years ago, now dim with the deluge of over a decade’s time. Discussions and debates about all sorts of stories, plots, and proposals, pushed ever deeper into the past. The smells of satisfying meals and delightful desserts sneak past me and escape into bygone days. A ravenous instinct instructs me to resurrect these days, to drag them back to the realm of the living. But I mustn’t. The seats must stay silent as a cemetery.
I turn to leave the dining room, then stop, pausing to picture the garden just beyond its window. The sky is a brilliant blue, the bushes boast a vibrant viridian, and the flowers form flashpoints of colour. Purple, pink, blue, and yellow catch my eye. I can almost see some of them tending to their respective plants. The warmth wades its way through the window and into my heart, and for a moment, I permit its presence. A slender shadow suddenly shrouds over the scene, and then it’s gone. He’s returning. He mustn’t. I must be better than that. I retreat from my recollections. I must leave now – else the seats find themselves occupied once again.
I lurch back through the door and drive it shut. It slams with enough force to forge a roar that races down the halls and returns as an echo in my ears. I mustn’t allow sentimentality to set in. I leave the hall with haste, rounding the stairwell. The front door forms in my sight, then falls away. Now’s the time to wash it away, all their affection and approval, my first morning at the manor, and my last. I tear up the stairs, my breath huffing as I hurry. I needn’t see them. I needn’t bring them back.
I’m not sure if I’m convinced.
Appearing atop the stairwell is another wide window. The light of day, the gleaming grass and canvas of a sky, all call to me to come closer, to stand and behold the beauty of the forest as I once did. I reject it, rushing instead toward the dormitories on my left. My goal has shifted. The being beyond the window, he is one of many. If he is slipping between the slits of the barricades built by my mind, then the others shall soon surely follow. First him, then the deluge.
I count the doors, dismissing them as I delve deeper into the long hall. The opaque lamps linger between each door, illuminating the space in a soft shimmer. The first door is a mentor’s, the second is hers, and then I find mine. Walnut wood greets me, as it would at any of the other eleven doors down the hall. The handle is but a bulb, and my fingers feel cool as they clamp down on it. I push the door open as I’d done so many times before, and I am struck by it.
Nostalgia. It is as I left it. The light leaps through the window, filling the room with a cheerful glow. The walls are still a deep green, undamaged by destruction or decay. As I step in, I see the full space. The armchair I hardly used sits in the corner where my protruding closet and bedroom wall meet. My bookcase, brought in for my arrival, remains rooted to its place beside the seat. My bed, spacious and snug, bears blue-and-green bedsheets that remain as neatly made as when I’d left. My desk is on the left of the room, opposite to all else, and it stands sturdy against age. Atop it is an old book I’d been reading; still spread open to the same page I’d left it on.
I walk over to the window and linger before it as I had so many times before. The view is just as it once was. The grounds’ well-groomed grass grows exactly to ankle height, spreading to the forest boundary before shooting up into shrubs and flowers. The thick trunks of trees build a wall to guard this bastion, to distinguish the difference between barbarism and civilisation; between the wild and orderly. Something sneaks through the window as I stand there: the caring caress of the sun. I collect its comforting glow. It sneaks past my shirt and saunters into the skin beneath. It’s warm and colourful and alive.
I know it must go. Just as soon as I’d stoked the sensation do I stifle it. I rip myself away from the window, stepping back into the ageless space. I can still see the sun’s rays cascading onto the grey carpeted floor, yet I reject its allure. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t want to kill it. I had to go; I had to kill it. The light looms there all the same. I close my eyes, tensing them tight so I leave this place.
The door wheezes. A cold breeze brushes my neck.
I turn around, and I see her. Her eyes hold the black of the boundless night sky. Within them are long nights of leaping and lunging across the forest floor, of evenings in my car staring up at the stars. Her skin is a canvas, white as empty paper. Yet it is only blank because the years hide beneath her skin. Every moment, from those first formative days during that distant summer, to the moot meander into mundane oblivion over the course of an icy, irritable winter. She says not a syllable, yet I envision essays emerging from her mouth.
I know what to do. I rip myself from remembrance, dash the dream that dragged me here. It all comes tumbling down, and it all returns to nothing. The manor is mere memory. The grass grows no more. The forest fades to ash. All that remains is me and my white ceiling. I count away the seconds of another dying day. I don’t know how long it takes to steal away into slumber. I find no peace in sleep.
Once again, I find myself at the forest’s fringe.
