by Michael Rowe
Also smoke-related had to be my imagining that I had seen the figure standing on the lawn. My eyes had been streaming with tears, my vision had been blurred. My brain had simply plucked another fantasy from my distraught state earlier that evening when I arrived at the house and replayed it. In both cases, what I thought I’d seen proved to be an illusion on second glance. There was no woman standing on the lawn of Wild Fell either this evening, or half an hour ago. I was alone on Blackmore Island and alone in the vast house.
Thank you, Herr Doktor Freud. Very comforting.
But I was not comforted, not at all.
I knew I hadn’t woken because of the smell of smoke; I had woken because of the sound of a man’s voice in my ear muttering obscene carnality and from the weight of my father, who, though more than four hundred kilometres away, was somehow on top of me, trying to fuck me. The sensation of the tongue in my ear had been so vivid that even remembering it caused me to reach inside with my index finger to dry it or to wipe it clean.
In particular, I was horrified by the memory of the voice I’d heard: it had been an educated man’s voice, but there was violence underlying the veneer of civility, even in addition to its liquor-cured coarseness. It had been the voice of a man whose rage was normally kept on a very short chain like a murderous animal, the voice of no man I had ever known, least of all my father. And I was quite sure it had been a real voice.
All of this I pushed away, as much for my own sanity as anything else.
It had to have been a nightmare, nothing more. It had nothing to do with me except for the fact that I had been the nightmare’s vessel. None of it had happened. I recalled Scrooge’s words in A Christmas Carol as he dismissed the appearance of Marley’s ghost as something imaginary: “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
I pulled the quilt around me and curled myself into a semi-foetal crouch, longing for daylight and for the sound of the city—any city—waking up and coming to life.
Sleep eluded me that night as I lay on a divan in front of the fireplace in the parlour, but I must have nodded off again at some point, because when I opened my eyes again, the sun was shining through the panels of stained glass above the shuttered windows along the wall opposite the hearth.
I went to the window and opened the shutters just a crack. The fresh air that blew in off the lake was soft and cool and magnificently clean after the rain. When I pushed them open all the way, light flooded in, utterly transforming the room. Whereas last night I had seen only shadows and smothered opulence in a Victorian mausoleum, this morning the room was gracious, even welcoming.
Further, I felt it welcoming me. Where the sunlight touched the ancient white paint, the old furniture, and the dark hardwood floors, there was now depth and dimension and the promise of actual beauty in the offing. And it was all mine.
What had that lunatic Fowler woman said? The house and everything in it.
This morning, in this sunlight, there was nothing sinister in her words. I had made an extraordinary real estate investment. For the first time since buying it under such unorthodox circumstances, I saw Wild Fell as a home—my home—not just a house or even a guest house; and certainly not the white elephant I had feared. I walked to the front door and opened it, letting the light into the front hallway. I felt the cool fresh breeze on my face from outside, smelled water, good fresh earth, and wildflowers. When the sun touched the rich mahogany, the grain seemed to pulse with a sumptuous crimson radiance all its own.
I put on my shoes and stepped onto the veranda, then down the great concrete steps to the gravel driveway. In the darkness of the storm last night, I had only seen the exterior of Wild Fell in flashes of lightning through the rain.
In the morning light, however, I saw that my house was more than just a house. It was a masterpiece of gothic revival architecture on par with any manor house I’d ever seen in books or magazines. The old stone exterior walls were shades of grey and taupe. They had acquired a patina over the decades, one that blended perfectly with the surrounding natural palette without challenging it. From where I stood on the driveway, I could clearly make out the complex silhouette of turrets rising from what could only be some sort of anterior wing. I walked the perimeter of the house, feeling ludicrously lordly as I surveyed it and the acres behind it, the wildly overgrown formal gardens that spread out across the acres to the place where the fields sheared downward and became the granite cliffs I had seen from the lake on arrival.
As I came around the part of the house that I knew would lead me back to the veranda and the portico, I noticed that one of the clapboard-sided porticos had fallen into a state of complete dereliction. There had obviously been a fire there at some point. The intact timbers showed signs of having been charred. The other wall had been taken out completely and its burned boards had collapsed. There had been no structural damage to the wing to which it was attached. The porch had a sealed doorway to the rear of the house and its flanking walls were concrete. If the fire had spread, I would be looking at a ruin right now, so perhaps the house was blessed in some ways other than its apparent agelessness.
I allowed myself to imagine Wild Fell with additional furniture, modern furniture, and the all the amenities of a modern guest house, all of which I could afford. I saw new paint, new wallpaper, paintings bought or maybe discovered in the attic, new beds, the gardens restored—if not with the doomed Queen Mary’s black roses, then at least with the best rosebushes money could buy.
An adventure waiting to happen. The loathsome cliché be damned, my heart felt as though it could soar right up into the blue sky—my sky, over my house and my island.
Back inside, I opened the shutters in the library, as well. The effect was the same; the light transformed the room. There were more books than I had noticed last night. The shelves were deeper than I had first surmised and many of the volumes were pushed back against the farthest recesses of the shelving, which was why I hadn’t seen them in the gloom, thinking the bookcases more or less empty. I brought a handful of books closer to the edge of one of the shelves, aligning the spines. It turned out to be a five-volume 1825 leather bound set of The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, magnificent, if a little dusty.
On the shelf immediately adjacent, I noticed three or four rows of books that seemed far older than the works of literature I had perused on the first shelf. These were outsized, the bindings hand-tooled. I read the titles on the spines. Some appeared to be in Latin, but without any real proficiency in ancient languages, I could only guess.
Here then was what appeared to be an actual sixteenth century edition of Malleus maleficarum, maleficas, & earum haerisim, ut phramea potentissima conterens by Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger, the famous Hammer of Witches published in Cologne in 1520. I recognized the title from a paper I had written in my second year at university on the European witch burnings of the seventeenth century. Also here was Jean Bodin’s De la demonomanie des sorciers from 1586; Pierre Le Loyer’s A Treatise of specters or strange sights, visions and apparitions . . . also of witches, sorcerers, enchanters and such like; Daemonolatreiae libri tres by Nicholas Remy. It would have cost a fortune to assemble a collection of first edition antique books and folios of this calibre.
There were other titles here too—some in English, others in French and German, all of them apparently pertaining to the history and practice of witchcraft. While many appeared to be genuine first editions from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, others appeared to be from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, published in English, with titles like To Call the Ancients, Grimoire of the Nine Stars, The Eye of Horus, and Lore and Summoning of the Bridge-Builders of Time.
I frowned. In my newly minted role as proprietor of an ancient library, I took one of the newer volumes off the shelf to buff it gently against
my shirt to try to clean it.
As I did so, something fluttered out from its pages and landed lightly on the faded Oriental carpet at my feet. I laid the book on the trestle table and bent down to pick it up.
Holding it up to the sunlight from the window, I saw that it was a faded sepia-toned nineteenth-century photograph of an imperious-looking young woman. A rip in the emulsion ran halfway across the surface of the image, cutting across the woman’s mouth and neck. Oddly, the effect of the rip, which technically obscured the woman’s mouth, was to stretch her smile in a way that stopped just short of the grotesque without any compromise to her beauty.
Her hair was gathered in a loose knot behind her head, tendrils of which tumbled with contrived casualness down the back of her neck. The dress she wore was modest in design, the under-sleeves trimmed with lace, the bodice buttoned, and flaring out into a wide skirt. Though relatively plain, it was obviously the garment of a woman of significant wealth. From the way the photographer had highlighted the folds of the dress, I took it to be organza or some other expensive silk that caught the light and held it.
Her head was inclined slightly, as though barely deigning to acknowledge the camera—indeed she seemed not to acknowledge any imperative to be pleasing at all, though her beauty was such that she couldn’t be anything less.
When I looked closer, I made a discovery that astonished and delighted me.
The woman had been posed regally, at a three-quarter angle with her hand on the back of an elaborately carved chair in the classic Victorian style, but I saw that the image was a clever optical illusion.
While she was indeed posed against a photographer’s seamless backdrop, the photograph wasn’t of a woman in front of a backdrop; it was a photograph of the reflection of a woman standing in front of a backdrop, as recorded in the glass of an ornate mirror, the frame of which I could see at the frayed edge of the photograph.
I turned the photo over. There was writing there in violet-coloured ink, now long faded: To my dearest brother Malcolm from his best-beloved only true love, Rosa, Wild Fell, Alvina, autumn 1872.
I reached for the book on the trestle table and opened it. Inside the cover was another of the floral bookplates I’d found yesterday in the small book of Wordsworth’s poetry, Ex Libris Rosa Blackmore. I felt a thrill of proprietary detective excitement. The woman in the photograph was Rosa Blackmore, daughter of Alexander Blackmore, the man who had built Wild Fell. I looked closer at the bookplate. There was a diamond-shaped lozenge in the lower centre of the design. Inside the lozenge was a heraldic griffin holding what appeared to be a Scottish thistle.
I carried the book out into the hallway and retraced my steps backwards from my arrival last night. I looked up at the archway at the carved coat of arms. The shield was the same as the design inside the lozenge on the bookplate.
The coat of arms on the archway was clearly that of Alexander Blackmore. As his daughter, Rosa would use her father’s arms in a lozenge, as befitted a lady born into the antiquated traditions that Alexander Blackmore had clearly intended to perpetuate here in what must have been rough, rude country.
“Well, my lady,” I said out loud. “It appears we’ve found each other.”
The sound of my own voice startled me in the stillness, and I realized that I had already grown accustomed to the general silence that lay over Wild Fell, the same silence that had doubtless blanketed it during the entirety of its lonely untenanted century. I was struck yet again by the house’s bizarre apparent agelessness, especially as I knew that it had lain vacant and shuttered for so many decades in a raw northern environment. This had been one of the selling points of the house, and I counted myself surreally fortunate that it fell into my hands under these circumstances, but I was still baffled by the how. There was no trace of mice, let alone birds or raccoons or any other of the wild fauna that made nests for themselves in old abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere. Aside from the dust that had obviously accumulated between the last departure of the cleaning crews and my arrival last night, there was nothing to indicate that the house was uninhabited.
It occurred to me that I was exhibiting a pathetic case of insecurity, a form of reverse narcissism that made it impossible for me to picture myself as extraordinary—even lucky—ergo there must be some sort of “catch,” some sort of downside to my good fortune. I could probably trace that insecurity back to my childhood—to the bullying I had endured as a frail child, to my mother’s disassociation and emotional distance—but I had always resisted that sort of pop psychiatry, finding it unbearably maudlin. I had been able to bury it by becoming useful: an athlete, a friend, a lover, and eventually a caregiver. Still, the existence of the exact insecurities I was feeling now as a property owner were undeniably entrenched. They hadn’t come from nowhere.
When I’d asked Mrs. Fowler about a “catch,” she had been offended, pointing out that the house had been inspected and been found structurally sound, even of superior condition. If the inspector had shared my questions about the how the structural integrity had been maintained, he hadn’t shared them in his report. Too, I reminded myself that the house had not come cheap. Not only had I never written a cheque of that size, I’d never dared to imagine having that amount of money in my bank account in my lifetime.
And now the house was mine, and I was a lucky man. It was that simple. It was time I made friends with that notion and moved on. If the house was extraordinary, then perhaps it had chosen me; perhaps becoming one with Wild Fell would make me extraordinary, too.
In any event, there would be a great deal of work to do to get the house ready for next year’s guests at the Happy Ghosts Bed and Breakfast. Mrs. Fowler might be half a bubble off of plumb, but that was a damn good name for a B&B. Maybe I’d use it after all.
I suddenly realized that I was famished. I remembered the protein bars in my suitcase upstairs in the yellow bedroom. Involuntarily, I felt my stomach contract at the thought of going back up there. Moving from room to room downstairs this morning had buoyed my spirits immensely but the memory of that terrible dream came back to me in a wave. I shoved the memory away, annoyed with myself for lapsing back into self-indulgent melodrama so soon after deciding that I would no longer yield to such things. As the sun had risen outside, the wood inside the house had begun to warm, releasing its particular perfume into the air. I was standing in a shaft of dazzling jewel-toned sunlight from one of the two stained glass windows in the hallway, and it was beautiful. More, it was mine. Again, I felt Wild Fell gather me in its century-old embrace, and this time I yielded to it willingly.
There was nothing for me to be afraid of anywhere in this house, my house. I would sleep wherever I chose, or walk wherever I chose. That decided, I mounted the stairs to the upper hallway. In the soft morning light, the Oriental carpet runner on the staircase revealed its rich patterns of burgundy, navy blue, and gold. It, too, would have been there for at least as long as the house had remained empty, if not longer. But like so much of the rest of the house, it had somehow retained its integrity. Though worn in places, the weave was tight and lush, the colours still vibrant, if low-burning, like the finest examples of carpeting of its type.
I proceeded down the hallway and stopped outside the yellow room. The door was closed, exactly as I had left it last night. I sighed with exasperation at my own reluctance to open it, then turned the handle and stepped across the threshold. I took the room’s measure.
Everything was exactly as I’d left it: the mess of sheets on the floor, the suitcases, the t-shirt I had been wearing under the flannel shirt when I went to bed, the t-shirt I hadn’t put back on when I went downstairs after the nightmare. I still smelled the smoke from the fireplace, but I was delighted to see that there was no ash on the floor, nor had the smoke blackened the room’s walls.
The windows. I stood very, very still. The windows were closed.
Last night I had left them open to air the room out an
d now they were closed. More than that, they weren’t closed the way the wind might have blown them shut; rather they were closed with the latch in place, something that could only be accomplished deliberately, from inside the room. I closed my eyes tightly, then opened them. I repeated it, blinking quickly, trying to clear my head.
Had I closed them before I went downstairs and simply forgotten? It was late. I was disoriented and terrified from the nightmare. There had been smoke everywhere and visibility was reduced to the moonlight outside and only that much once I’d been able to throw the shutters open and let in the cold night air. But I was sure I hadn’t closed them. I could have sworn to it in a church, or in a court of law.
And yet there they were, shut tightly, the latch in its place.
I walked over to the windows and tapped the glass lightly, half expecting to feel someone, or something, tap back. Nothing did, of course.
I felt no fear. There was no sense at all that I was anything but alone in the old house, even with having thought I’d seen the human figure on the lawn yesterday. I’d dismissed it as the result of last night’s nervous fantods. There was only one possible explanation, the same explanation I had used to dismiss the nightmare: all of the stresses leading up to my arrival on Blackmore Island were causing my mind to play tricks.
I heaved my suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it, rummaging around the interior for the protein bars I had tucked away just in case. I found them there among the socks and t-shirts. Ravenous, I tore the wrapper off one of them and devoured it in three quick bites. The chocolate taste of it stimulated my hunger and I ate a second one, only slightly more slowly than I had the first.
When I had swallowed the last bite, I wadded up the wrappers in my hand and automatically looked around the room for a wastepaper basket of some kind. It was a reflexive thought, one that people who live in normal houses have several times a day. It didn’t occur to me that there was no reason for there to be waste, or somewhere to put it, in a room that had not been slept in for over a hundred years. And yet, there it was, on the ground next to the white ash vanity table, a small wastepaper basket covered in embroidered fabric. Again, the pattern was roses and violets of the kind that had been enwreathed on the bookplates belonging to Rosa Blackmore.
