by S A Jacobs
She agreed, and we walked back to the truck. When we exited the woods, the bright light of the day hit us and, I immediately realized that I had yet another headache. The light shot right into my skull. I squinted as we got back to my truck.
After a few minutes of very cautious driving, we got the truck into the clearing and then drove slowly up to the front of the house. It was so dark on the path that the truck’s automatic headlamps turned on.
We slowly approached until we were about ten feet from the entrance. I parked the truck, and we got out. Now, close to the house, we could see it for what it truly was. The mammoth front face seemed to glare down on us. The stucco was merely the tattered remains of a once beautiful house. In some places, it had been overtaken by the ivy that hid anything underneath. In other places, the stucco had fallen from the face of the house leaving only the brick underlayer visible. The windows were secured with plywood that was far beyond its expected lifespan. In the center was a large granite entryway which appeared to be intact aside from the plywood covering the opening where a door should be.
Standing in the front of the house, even though sunlight was again forcing its way through, it felt dark. The cool breeze was chilling despite the heat of the day. As we crept towards the doorway, the ominous caw of a crow, sitting atop the entrance, echoed. I jumped. It sounded incredibly loud, and the booming sound sent a surge of pain through my head. A feeling of foreboding took over my body. Then, the crow took flight, leaving us alone at the doorstep of Villa Ortenberg.
I shook off the foreboding and turned to Kat. “Well, I knew it was a bit of a fixer-upper. I guess I have work to do.”
“I can’t believe the size of this place! I feel like this isn’t even real!”
“Oh, it’s real enough,” I said as I walked into the entryway. There I could see the plywood was set up as a door complete with hinges and a weathered Master lock keeping it secure.
“I never thought I would be walking into my first house using a padlock key, but I guess it’s my only option.”
I reached into my pocket to find the keys I’d gotten from the lawyer when I felt the sage Kat’s mother had given me. I had never been superstitious. Yet it felt like I should heed her advice. At the very least, it would be a considerate gesture.
I pulled it out of my pocket along with a lighter and looked at her.
“So how does this work?” I asked.
“Seriously?” She chuckled. “You don’t have to do that. Like I said, my mom can get a bit weird about stuff.”
“No, for real, it was important to her, so I figure maybe I should listen. Besides, it isn’t like it’ll do any harm.”
“I have never done anything like this before. All I know is what I’ve seen my mom doing.” She reached over and took it from my hand. She eyed it cautiously for a moment. “I remember she would light it on fire and then blow the flame out. It would start smoking kinda like a stick of incense. Then she would kinda wave the smoke around. That is really all I know. I always thought it was pretty silly.”
“I think she said I have to talk to the house too, which sounds really strange now standing here with you, but what the hell. Let’s give it a go.”
I took the sage back from her and lit the end of it. In a few moments, the flames started to die down and I blew them out. Immediately, a stream of smoke came from the top edge of it. I walked to the door and waved the smoke on it as if I was painting it, covering it in smoke.
“I come here in peace,” I said. “Please bless this home and watch over us as we come to restore this home and to right the wrongs of the past.”
The first time I said it I laughed and looked over at Kat. Then, I did it again. The second time, I forced myself to close my eyes and tried to focus my attention on the house. With each word I spoke, I felt the pain in my head subside. I grabbed her hand, and we slowly walked the perimeter of the house constantly waving the smoke and saying that we had come in peace. With every step we took, it started to feel warmer and warmer.
As we walked, I began to take in the enormity of the estate. The broken and overgrown lily pool on the south side of it was still impressive. The immense courtyard and terrace facing Lake Michigan on the Eastern side was nearly destroyed but still held beauty. Finally, as we turned toward the northern side of the house, we saw the vast outbuildings and garages. Eventually, we made it all the way back to the entrance. Directly in front of the entrance was a large crumbling planter. There, I extinguished the sage and placed the remainder of it in the planter.
I smiled at Kat. We had walked the perimeter in silence aside from my talking to the house, and now again. For a moment I realized how embarrassed I should have felt walking around telling the house that we come in peace like it was an alien in a movie. Yet, it wasn’t embarrassing, it just felt right.
“So, is it safe to walk inside now?” I asked.
She laughed. “Well, definitely as safe as it was an hour ago. There’s really only one way to find out.”
I walked up to the front door and unlocked the padlock. Once the lock was removed, the plywood door creaked open. Behind it was the massive original front door of the house. It was beaten up but still relatively solid. I started to panic for a moment as I did not have a key to this one. When I grabbed the handle, I realized it was unlocked. It didn’t move freely, and I had to put some weight behind it before it finally swung upon. Daylight crept into the estate for the first time in years. With the door open, I gingerly stepped inside, hearing the floor groan with each step.
It was dark aside from the triangle of light coming through the doorway. It was surprisingly cool and completely silent. I didn’t realize just how loud the wind and the forest were until I stepped into the house’s utter silence. I looked back at Kat as if to say, ‘I guess this is it’.
She stepped in behind me and lightly placed her hand on my shoulder. We didn’t walk any deeper into the house. We just stood there. I was trying to take it all in. It was hard to really make everything out in the darkness, but the enormity of the foyer was hard to grasp. Against the walls was furniture draped in dusty white sheets, giving it a true haunted house feel. The ceiling was adorned with a crystal chandelier, surrounded by wood. Dust particles drifted in the sunlight shining in. It appeared to drape everything in a sheet of twinkling lights. I noticed something on the floor. It was dusty and dirty, but it was there… the large ‘M’ monogram that was on my envelope inlaid into the marble floor.
“We can’t see a whole lot with the windows blocked,” I said, breaking the silence. “Why don’t we grab some lights from the truck, so we can really see this place.”
We went to the truck, and grabbed some water and my bag of lights. As we stepped into the house again, I turned on a lantern and set it on the center of the floor. The stark white light lit the entire room. It was immense and beautiful. The intricate woodwork throughout the foyer, though worn, was incredible. There were open doorways to both the left and right and a double door leading to the main hall directly in front of us.
We ambled into the main hallway. As our lights bounced around the interior, I noticed the ceiling was made of glass. The entire hall ceiling was a skylight. Now plywood covered it from the outside and much of the glass was broken. Clearly, the plywood protecting this was less than adequate as the flooring and walls clearly suffered from water damage.
Slowly we prodded along, feeling the floor sink slightly under our weight. My light caught the double doorway on my left, and we entered cautiously through it. It was a room unlike anything I’d ever seen. In sharp contrast to the dark wood in the rest of the house, this room was bright. The wooden flooring transitioned to white marble. The room was large and long with Roman-style columns framing the space. On the far end stood a shallow marble pool with what I could only assume was a statue or fountain in the center, now draped in a sheet. The far wall was rows and rows of windows with a double door in the center.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I
asked in awe.
“Not in real life. It looks like a museum or some monument from Washington.”
The mood lightened entirely in this room. We both let go of the silent caution we had before and began to explore with more abandon. I walked up to the shallow pool and yanked the sheet off. A cloud of dust erupted, causing me to cough. Beneath the sheet was a three-tiered fountain, which looked like it belonged in some Italian park. I put my hand on it, feeling the cool marble. Then something caught my eye.
In the pool area, at the base of the fountain, I saw something shiny reflecting the light from the lantern in my hand. I knelt to look at it and saw it was a coin. I reached for it and picked it up. It was a penny, a silver penny. It was immaculate like it just came from the mint.
“Kat! Come take a look at this!” I handed her the penny. “It was in the fountain like a kid threw it in, thinking it was a wishing well.”
“Oh my God!” She gasped as she looked at it.
“What… what is it?” I asked.
“It’s a penny… a 1943 penny; they made them from aluminum to save copper for the war. But…” She trailed off staring at the coin.
“But what?” I asked, concerned.
“It’s silly. Don’t worry about it.” She handed it back to me.
I put my hand on her shoulder, gently brushing her hair back.
“No, what is it?” I asked.
She let out a sigh and put her hand in her pocket, pulling her keys out.
“It’s just strange.” She held up her keychain for me to see.
There, on her keychain, was a pendant of sorts. As I looked at it, I realized there was an aluminum penny mounted into the pendant.
“Wow, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one of these. Now two in one day.”
“Well, yeah. They’re kinda rare…but that isn’t it!” She shook her head and looked me in the eyes.
“That penny on my keychain was my great-great-grandfather’s. He had it put into this pendant and it has been passed down in our family. I remember my mother giving it to me, telling me that as long as I had this, I would always know who I really was.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was an odd coincidence, yes. But I didn’t really know that it could have been anything else.
“My great-great-grandfather,” she said finally. “The one who worked here.”
I looked at her and then back at the penny. The date on the penny stood out to me now. 1943.
“And that penny was minted long after the estate was abandoned except for the staff,” I said looking at her. “So, he left this here.”
“Like I said it’s silly. But the penny feels different. When I touched it, I felt connected to it if that makes any sense.” She paused. “Wait! Put it back. Back in the fountain.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Why do people put coins in a fountain? They make a wish. What if this was his wish? We need to leave that there for now.”
I nodded my head and knelt to put the coin back where I found it.
“You know, I think you’ve watched the Goonies a few too many times.” I smiled as I stood up next to her.
“Stop!” She smiled and punched my shoulder playfully. “I told you it was silly. Why can’t you just follow along?”
“I’m always game to follow along.” I smirked at her.
She lifted her head and she looked up at me.
“What if I do this?” She stepped closer to me and put her arms around me. “You still going to follow along?” She stared into my eyes.
“How could I not?” I pulled her body into mine.
A moment later with our eyes still locked on one another, we kissed.
We spent the rest of the morning going through the rooms on the first floor. The house was immense. There was another room around every corner. I was amazed at how intact everything was. It was dirty and needed some help, but most everything seemed to be solid or at least structurally sound. It was clear that someone took great care in trying to preserve everything that was there. Every large fixture or piece of furniture was covered and thus remained in remarkable condition. One thing that bothered me a bit was that there were no items outside of the furniture. In the library, the furniture was there, the ornate bookcases were there, but there wasn’t a single book. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to everything. Despite everything being in better condition than I expected, the lack of these items made it feel terribly cold and vacant.
Having Kat with me for this turned out to be better than I anticipated. There was the obvious mutual attraction, but there was something else. It was like she was my best friend from childhood or something. We laughed and joked. We paraded around the house like it was a clubhouse. We pretended to be aristocrats prancing into each room as if we were invited to a ball. I simply couldn’t think of another time in my life when I was so relaxed and free.
When we finished exploring the first floor, we decided to get something to eat. We stepped out the front door and were immediately blinded by the sunlight. We sat down on the steps to the entrance and let our eyes adjust. After a minute or two, I stood up and walked to my truck. I opened the cooler in the back and grabbed two beers, a couple sandwiches, and a bag of chips. I sat down next to her and handed her an opened beer.
“Well, now this tops it off,” she said eyeing the stubby bottle of Coors Banquet. “If someone told me that one day I would spend my Saturday sitting on the steps of an abandoned turn-of-the-century mansion, drinking a Coors, I would have sworn they were nuts.”
“Well, if someone told me that one day I would inherit an abandoned turn-of-the-century mansion, I would have said they were nuts,” I said taking a sip from the bottle.
“Yeah, I guess this isn’t a typical situation,” she agreed. “So, what’s your take on all this?”
“I dunno, what do you mean?” I said.
“I guess, we haven’t really talked about it aside from the general ‘this is strange’ thing. I don’t know, I mean this has got to be crazy for you. One day you are just living your life and the next you’re meeting a lawyer for the strangest meeting ever, meeting my insane mom, and then this is your new reality on the steps of this house, your house.”
I sat there for a moment staring off into the overgrown courtyard, thinking about the question.
“Wow, I guess I haven’t fully processed it yet.” I looked at her. “I mean, this last week, I have kinda been on autopilot, I suppose.”
I took another sip of beer as I got up and walked towards my truck.
“You know what? I haven’t thought about it. I haven’t reacted to it at all really. Before I met the lawyer, I was totally into figuring out what this was all about. From that point on, I have just been obsessed with trying to understand the story behind the house.”
I looked at her sitting there in the sunlight. She smiled at me.
“Well…I guess there is one other thing that has occupied my mind,” I said.
She got a mischievous smirk on her face and stood up. She walked towards me with conviction. She stood there for a moment staring at me with those clear blue eyes. She pushed me back against my truck and grabbed my arms, pinning them against the truck. Her motions were forceful but playful at the same time.
“And what would that be?” she finally asked softly.
Without another word, she leaned in and kissed me. Her hands still held my arms against the truck. It was like we were melting together. Every touch between us contained an aura of magic. It was consuming. For that moment, nothing existed except the two of us.
6
We stayed there for what felt like an hour, just holding and kissing each other. She started to move away from me at one point and I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her back so that my head was resting on her shoulder.
“So, was it that obvious that I was interested in you?” I asked.
She turned to face me, grabbed my hand, and started leading me back to the steps.
; “No my dear, you are far from obvious,” she said.
“It’s kinda like… if I try to think about you, about what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, I am clueless. But then, when I don’t think, we just seem to be in sync.”
We sat down, and I thought about that for a moment. I realized that was exactly how I felt. Yet, something seemed wrong. I mean this was my house, yet she was here following along with everything like we were partners.
“Why are you here, Kat?” I asked. “Surely we could have seen each other elsewhere. Gone on dates like normal people do. But, you are here with me.”
“I guess you’re right.” She rose and walked towards the door, stopping in front of it. “Maybe there is more to it for me than just seeing you.” She turned to face me. “Think about it. Here I am, thrown an opportunity to really understand my own history, the story of my family and why we were obsessed with ensuring this house went to you and that we delivered that sacred letter. So, hell yes, I am drawn here. It certainly doesn’t hurt that coming here means spending time with the one person who hasn’t left my thoughts since he awkwardly walked into my family’s lawyer’s office. Is that wrong?” She sounded hurt.
I walked to her and wrapped my arms around her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, holding her.
She looked up at me. For the first time ever, I saw apprehension in her eyes. She looked vulnerable.
“Jim, look. There is a lot going on here. I like you a lot. In a way that is so different than anyone I’ve ever met. And honestly, I’m scared. I just want to make sure that you take care of this place. I don’t know how to explain it. I mean I have never been here, but I feel like I need to make sure it’s taken care of. I didn’t really think about it at all. I just really wanted to be with you. Then, when you found that penny, it was like I just felt this panic.”
“Okay, let's step back a minute. You’re right. There is a lot going on, and none of it needs to be figured out today. Let’s just forget about it for now and enjoy the day together.”
