You Will Never Sell This House
By Scott Alexander Hess
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2019 Scott Alexander Hess
ISBN 9781634868259
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
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All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
For The Ponies.
* * * *
You Will Never Sell This House
By Scott Alexander Hess
The house was three stories of gray stone, reachable only by a twisting dirt road that snaked four miles from the proper two-lane.
At the end of the road, around a final hairpin turn, it towered atop a massive mound of black dirt. Nothing grew on the black hill, which was damp and warm to the touch year round.
No one lived in the house. The windows were shuttered, the insides dark. Within the walls, though, there was a constant, restless stirring. And at times, an echo of a melody drifted room to room, floor to floor, stirring dust with its movement of memory. Something waited.
* * * *
The Fiat’s top was firmly snapped shut against the winter chill. Colm recklessly left the car’s front windows open for air as he faced a monotonous stretch of highway. He tried to quiet his chattering mind (this is a mistake!) by listening only to the sound of the ripping wind. He focused on the road, and that still blue sky ahead. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.
It was when he pulled off the highway at the Sheepskill exit and stopped to study a mapped-out route of hard turns on upstate New York roads, that he became nervous and disoriented. Staring at the map now, he knew it was his father’s long-ago cryptic demand that bothered him. “You will never sell this house.” He had accepted that edict for a long time.
But his father and mother had both died a decade ago, his lover Stan had passed two years back, and he desperately needed money, and a change in his life. He was done with grieving, with frugal living, and with the bland routine of a single adjunct professor at a small city university. This was a long overdue Christmas gift to himself, selling the old family place. He was meeting the realtor on December 26.
When he turned back to the road, the sky was slate. A dull flat gray. He stared for several moments, trying to imagine how the sweeps of blue had so quickly been devoured. A mist began which was a bother, since only one windshield wiper worked.
He pulled back out onto the empty road with his map balanced on the stick shift as the flat land made a slow incline. He was moving deeper into unfamiliar territory. He hadn’t been to the house since his father’s death, and he’d never driven himself. The road was bordered by fields on one side, woods and then jagged road-side cliffs on the other. He made a turn and faced a sudden wall of rain. He stopped to shut the windows.
Colm drove very slowly, unable to see very far into the storm. The car’s one wiper scraped back and forth desperately. The downpour fell in a straight and even way. He felt as if he were piercing a waterfall over and over. He switched on his bright headlights.
In the now illuminated deluge, he made out shapes and shadows cutting into the rain. Then came thunder and lightning and things became very bright in vibrant bursts. At one point, the entire wall of rain lit with a bold bolt of lightning and he shrieked, imagining a watery pair of white eyes.
At last, the road turned sharply west, climbing higher, and the rain let up, though the air became frigid. He nearly missed the final turn to the house, as it was marked only by a rotted wooden sign announcing Sakamore Drive. Near the sign was a huge, red sumac bush, its prickly stems blowing in the hard wind. The sumac was the sole living thing along a deadly stretch of the road, bordered by wasted earth and dried-up fields.
Sakamore Drive was dirt and gravel and crept slowly upward in constant turns. It was bordered by woods, which became thicker and closer to the road as he approached the house. He had hated visiting the place as a boy. It never felt like a summer retreat as his parents referred to it, always like a punishment, a dreary oppressive place.
Just as he began to seriously question the entire trip, wondering how he might turn around on the narrow road and make an excuse to the local realtor, he came upon a block in the road.
A large oak had fallen at the crest of another hill, the victim of a brutal strike of lightning.
He got out and approaching the tree he glimpsed the house around a hair pin turn, and gasped. He’d forgotten how immense it was against the stark landscape, balancing on that strange black hill of mud. It loomed large and quite alone.
A crumbling stone stairway was sunk into the center of the dirt mound, the only access to the house’s entrance. Hundreds of large square stones were jammed end to end and piled one atop the other chaotically, rising three stories. There was no pattern or design. It looked more like a decaying church or boarding school than a home. The far side of the house featured a cathedral-like tower that shot higher than the rest of the structure. The roof was spectacular in its own right, with multiple peaks, chimneys, and eaves. The windows were uniformly oblong and strangely thin, as if to keep sunlight out. It was a gray day, but somehow the house seemed to be darker than its surroundings, as if caught in a giant shadow. He couldn’t imagine what his father saw in the place. “You must never sell this house.”
Colm noticed a mass of new clouds moving in from the west at a rapid pace, sinking lower as they approached. It looked like snow this time. He went back to the car to fetch his bags.
* * * *
Colm was dozing across a large four-poster bed, under a heavy woolen blanket, facing a grand double window whose dusty green velvet drapes were drawn open. The bedroom was immense with a fireplace, a seating area, and a separate grand bathroom.
He was exhausted from the drive, and nervous being alone in the house, yet there was something sweeping gently over him, a comforting sense he hadn’t felt in a long time, a sense of abandon and child-like adventure. He’d become so dull after Stan died. Finally, he was doing something daring. He was selling the house. This grand ostentatious place that belonged to him.
The bedroom was strangely alive. Beautiful, ornate and well kept, thanks to good old Mrs. Finch. The house had been in Colm’s family for a century, and the Finches (who lived in town) had been taking care of it for just as long. Before the current Mrs. Finch (who had to be near seventy) her mother, Madeline Finch, had kept the place up, and her mother before her. His father had left a retainer in his will for the Finches to maintain the house, making sure it wasn’t vandalized, and checking that the old pipes didn’t freeze up. Mrs. Finch had whipped the place into shape for Colm’s visi
t.
As he nodded off, he imagined he was on a dazzling holiday (like the ones he read about in glossy travel magazines, those trips he and Stan vowed to take before they got too old.) He would wake to chic, sophisticated guests at breakfast and a burly games keeper suggesting a hike into a deep and fragrant woods.
Then there came the distant sound of hooves.
Colm sat up. The rhythmic pounding continued. He went across the room to the long tall window which faced a great back lawn. It was snowing. The lawn, which swept for a long stretch toward a forest, was pure white. He noticed near the edge of the forest a red building, the old stable. The trees at the fringe of the forest were swaying, all white now with the storm, branches pale and icy. Then bursting through the trees came a horse, galloping.
The horse stopped abruptly, reared dramatically, then landed squarely on its front hooves. It faced the house, staring at him. Even in the distance, Colm could see it was a fine, sturdy animal. A mighty thing. A white Arabian. As a boy, he’d seen one with his father during one isolated trip to the race track, and they’d together stood close to it, his father taking his small hand in his large hand and running it over the animal’s head and arched neck, gently touching its wide high forehead and the space around its massive nostrils. Colm had found it thrilling and secretly erotic. It was not the type of animal to be roaming a forest, Colm thought.
The horse stood still, so brightly white that it appeared untouched by the snow, as if the flakes blew away from it, not able to touch that lean sinewy muscle shining in moonlight. Colm pushed at the window to open it and get a better look. It would not budge, and he saw no lock or mechanism. The horse reared its head back again, then turned away and galloped back into the dark forest, swallowed.
Leaning into the cold window, Colm was acutely aware of his nakedness. He was alone in the house, there was no one living for miles, yet in the long narrow window, now rattling with an increasing wind, he felt watched, felt the eyes of the Arabian taking him in. Beckoning him to ride. He stared at the bank of trees but there were only glittery iced branches, cloaking what lay beyond. He waited, to see if the Arabian might reappear. But there was nothing.
* * * *
Colm woke to the sound of pounding, and a deadly ache in his head. At first, he thought there was something bashing against the door to his room. Maybe the strange white horse had burst through the front door. It was a slow constant hammering. As he sat up, he saw first blood on his pillow, then a hard cast of ice on the window and realized the only sound was that of a harsh wind and a tree limb smacking the side of the house.
He was naked still and cold. He’d bit his lip in his sleep. A fine thread of blood was dried on his pillow. The fire had died and the blanket was lying in a heap on the floor. He could not recall his dreams, but he must have flailed and kicked. Colm went to the window, recalling the phantom horse, but could see nothing through the heavy film of ice.
He had not unpacked his suitcase. He grabbed the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around his shoulders, heading downstairs. As he reached the landing, the howl of the wind increased. Looking down, he saw the front door was wide open. Colm paused. He had shut, but not locked it. Lifting the blanket to his knees, he made his way gingerly down, feeling a bit grand and ridiculous. At the door, he glanced out. The landscape had gone arctic overnight. Nothing but piles of snow and blinding white. His Fiat was buried, only bits of red shining through where the wind had blown snow away. He hoped that flimsy Italian roof would hold up.
Oddly, the black mound of earth, with its sunken stone staircase leading to the house, was untouched by the snow. The hill was completely black without a flake on it, as if the earth were hot. He wanted to step out and grab a fist of earth, to solve the puzzle, but the freeze deterred him.
Colm shut the door and turned to face the empty house. The expanse of the bright white-marble entryway floor was like an extension of the snowy grounds out front. The floor stretched pristinely for a good hundred feet, before meeting the dark wood stairs. Clutching the bedding close, he wandered in his bare feet cold on the marble, marveling at the strange color of the walls. They were a dark wood, but there was a deeper red tone then he remembered from his boyhood visits. Like a bloody mahogany.
The kitchen was down a narrow hallway past the staircase. A series of mirrors lined the hallway walls on both sides. Walking through, Colm felt part of a threesome, his two other halves forever to the left and right. He glimpsed duplicates of his shoulders, wild tufts of sleep swept hair and a pattern of purple flowers on the edge of the blanket. At last in the kitchen, he took a seat at a long, red wood table.
A note from Mrs. Finch lay open before him. It explained that the heat and electricity worked pretty well, but there was fire wood, lots of extra wool blankets, and a stocked refrigerator including a fig pudding for Christmas. A P.S. mentioned the still “marvelous” wine cellar. Her signature was a flourish of high twists and sharp turns.
The claw footed stove looked like a challenge, but he decided to make eggs. He was no cook. Since Stan died, he’d gotten in the habit of ordering take-out. He found butter and fried two eggs, then made coffee, abandoning the bulky blanket fearing it would catch fire and he’d burn the place to the ground.
Mrs. Finch had left a series of notes on items. Chicory scrawled on a post it atop the yellow can of coffee, Organic on the eggs, Strong on a hunk of cheddar cheese. There were several long black sausages tied together with string, with no note.
“Nothing to say Mrs. Finch,” he said aloud.
A deep chill ran across the floor. He peered down the hall. The front door was open again. Snow had already started to blow in, dying on the bright white marble. He went to the door and shut it. He would need to get the key to turn the lock.
Back in the kitchen, naked and eating, the bedding in a pile near his feet, he wondered what he would do for Christmas Eve. He hadn’t even brought a book. There was a large window looking out to the back of the house, but it was iced over. He would need to get dressed, then wander the big house and discover something.
* * * *
The cellar ran the length of the house. The moment Colm opened the door, facing a ridiculously narrow staircase dipping steeply into utter darkness, he shuddered. He was claustrophobic, and had never liked basements or cellars, plagued by the fear that the house above could collapse and bury him at any moment. He did not want to descend alone into this dark place. It smelled ancient and fetid. His mother had always been deathly afraid of the ill health effects of mold and germs, things that thrived in dank places. The cellar had been a forbidden area during his summer visits. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Finch’s second note (left oddly in the pantry) encouraging him not to forget the Impeccable and Expensive champagnes down under, he would have turned back. A good bubbly could be his savior. He worried less when he drank. A farewell toast to the old place.
Colm started, but on the second step, heard a deep cracking noise, and tumbled. Sliding and bumping down the stairs to the cold concrete floor below, he kept his arms in front of him batting at the air. At the bottom, he took a breath and ran his hands over his body in mild panic. The light from the kitchen shone down on the ladder-like stairway, and he saw the derelict step, cracked in half, dust still rising in the shaft of light, light which faded completely by the middle of the stairs. He had landed on his shoulder. He felt well enough and stood, then winced in pain. He’d twisted his left ankle. Balancing on his right foot, he turned into the darkness, hoping he could see a swinging bit of something and bring a light bulb to life. There was something swaying through the murkiness, but he couldn’t quite make it out. It did not look like a pull cord, though it seemed to be thin and long. He took another step as a creaking noise began, and the cellar door swung shut.
He stood still for a moment in blackness, waiting, as if the door would swing back open. In the darkness, the creaking noise continued. He turned quickly on his bad foot and screamed in pain. The creaking continued,
but more slowly. It was a sad sound. His eyes were not adjusting to the blackness. Colm had a terrible sense that someone else was there, someone watching him. He realized that he hated this house and was eager to be rid of it. That steady creak suddenly rose in volume and the floor felt hot, as if something were brewing beneath him.
He hobbled back toward the staircase. Clutching the wall next to the stairs to steady himself, his hand struck a bony bit of something jutting out and he shrieked. He pressed his hand against it and the cellar filled with light. It was a switch, and in the center of the room was a large chandelier, made from white deer antlers with a dozen teardrop bulbs. The creaking had stopped.
The fixture hung low, shedding light in a narrow stream from end to end. The walls were stone. At the eastern side of the cellar was a series of tall shelves with circular holes, corked eyes shining. The famed wine. Sighing, he made his way to the stock, took two dusty bottles. As he made his way back up the stairs, he decided he would leave the cellar light on for the rest of his trip. And he would start drinking right away.
* * * *
Colm was pleasantly drunk in front of a sad little fire, wearing his cheerful red flannel Christmas pajamas and thick wool socks. Mrs. Finch had left a large brass bucket filled with hunks of fire wood, and long wood stick matches, but no note. Having never made a fire, Colm struggled to keep it lit. He’d rummaged through several upstairs rooms, including a library to find paper to get the thing going, but found nothing but books and ancient family photo albums. He tore pages out of his own journal, but after a high-flame start, the fat logs fell into smoldering despair. Fortunately, the champagne was, as promised, stellar. And the photo albums, filled with strange and faded strangers, helped pass the time.
There were no identifying markings in the hefty, yellowing albums, only frayed black and white images. He’d claimed a rose-colored overstuffed chair and moved a table close to prop his feet. A large wedge of gnawed-on cheese lay on the table, near the wine bottle. The house’s front room was lavish and busy, lots of dark ox-blood colored wood, floral patterned furniture, a velvet fainting couch, too many vases and antiques. His mother had added modern bits and pieces to the décor through the years, though much of the furniture dated back to the turn of the century. The idea of selling it all was daunting, but he would get it all done.
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