by Byron Craft
As we came closer to the house we could see that lingering seasons had taken its toll on the ancient architecture. Stones had fallen from its foundation, and sections of wood framing were badly in need of paint. Vegetation threatened to strangle the steps and front porch and all the walks were crumbling and ill kept.
The gravel road that became the driveway to the old schloss was long and curved around towards the back. As we made the turn toward the rear of the structure, my eyes became fixed on the lead paned and pediment head window located in the south wall of the tower. An instant before I thought I had detected a movement from one of the curtains. At that moment I lunged violently forward, slamming my right shoulder against the dash board.
Startled more than hurt, I looked at Faren trying to understand why he had stopped suddenly. A wave of fear passed over Faren’s face and quickly gave way to anger. He stared straight ahead. If the car would have been an open convertible I would have left it at that moment startled and traveling straight up.
Standing in front of our car not two feet from the front bumper was an old man. He was tall, several inches over six feet and his frame was thick, slightly overweight, harkening to past days of a powerful youth. His face was partially masked by a mustache and full beard. The beard was a shockingly bright shade of silver, several inches in length terminating to a point. The man wore a vested tweed suit which was open at the waist and exposed a gold watch chain strung through the button hole. His appearance might have been comical, dressed as if he had stepped out of an old British film but his lack of any expression sent cold slivers of ice down my back. His complexion was pasty gray and his eyes, although set back behind a pair of wire rimmed spectacles glared at me. The elderly gentleman’s stare remained transfixed, not wavering for an instant while I felt his eyes weighing heavily upon some dark part of my soul, pinning me to the back of the car seat in fear.
The slam of the car door snapped me back to reality in time to observe Faren rounding the front fender, obviously not affected by the man’s stare. He questioned the old man harshly, demanding an explanation as to his presence.
Faren’s mirror lenses aviator sunglasses glistened in the hot afternoon sun making him appear menacing. He was always in the habit of wearing those damn glasses that glare back at you with your own reflection. I remember shortly after he came back from Nam, I asked him about them. I said that they were very intimidating and he replied “I know, that’s why I wear them.” Faren’s glasses didn’t seem to help at first, nor did his raised voice and harsh language get the old man’s attention. He simply kept glaring at me. Even Vesta, the name I had bestowed on our Labrador, seemed to cower in fear from his stare. Her head was draped across the rear of the car seat and she emitted a low growl.
Faren’s sunglasses did help in the outcome. The sun was high above the horizon and undisturbed by the absence of any clouds. The sun’s rays reflected off of his lenses and played a beam of light across the old man’s eyelids. As if released from a trance, he stepped backwards eying Faren up and down before he spoke. His voice low and accented sounded more British than German. Making a statement rather than a question, he said, “You are Faren Church.”
By this time, Faren was unnerved and I sat quivering head to toe. Our untimely welcome to the neighborhood left us both a bit dumbfounded. All Faren was able to do was mutter a few feeble introductions.
It was at this time that I realized that the three of us were not alone. A fourth stood back towards the rear of the house. Another elderly man, much older than the first, stood watching us. He was wearing coveralls, holding a shovel in one hand and a ring of keys in the other.
We soon learned that our welcoming committee was Dr. VonTassel, a close friend of my husband’s great uncle. The other man was Rudolph Hausman, the caretaker of the ancient schloss. Mr. Hausman, we were told, would occasionally drop in on the late Heinrich Todesfall to see if there was anything he needed and at times effect small repairs about the schloss for a modest fee.
The Doctor’s demeanor softened after awhile, but the old caretaker kept his distance and occasionally during the course of our conversation, would shoot us a long side wards glance that made me believe that he disapproved of us.
VonTassell eventually made several attempts at being congenial and suggested that we dine together some evening in the future. I could not suppress the sense of distrust that I felt towards the Doctor and his companion. Somehow I sensed that his presence there in order to welcome our arrival was only a pretense, covering up some other motive. What that motive was, I did not know, but I was relieved when Faren dismissed them all with a few cordialities. He informed Mr. Hausman that his services were no longer needed and that we were capable of taking care of the house ourselves.
The old caretaker was reluctant to give up the keys and wouldn’t part with them until Faren promised not to go into the summer house, an old run down shack at the rear of our property that had been boarded up. The old man had most of his tools stored there and wanted to keep them locked up until they could be moved. Faren agreed and we bid them goodbye.
We walked around the schloss several times before trying the back door. The old house was terribly run down, as I have said, but even under its neglected state, it seemed to bare a certain amount of grace and charm. It must have been a grand house in its day and possibly with a lot of work it could be once again. I began to take a fancy to the old framework with its ornately carved trim. The wood framed portions of the house were old but older still was the central structure which had been built of blocks of stone. The tower, entirely comprised of stone, except for its conventional casements, appeared to be the oldest. I was beginning to like the house and quite possibly I was learning to accept the fact that this was to be our home for the next year. I decided to make the best of it.
When we had first learned of our inheritance we had imagined a stately manor luxuriously decorated and in good condition. The employ of Mr. Hausman by Faren’s Great Uncle was a good indicator that the interior of the old schloss had been under continual upkeep. No such luck. We were very disappointed when we entered the house for the first time. Such filth in one place I have never seen in my life and hope to never see again.
The carpets and rugs had been ruined by a leak in the roof and the entire house reeked of mildew. The kitchen was comprised of a large walk-in pantry and a long hardwood sink board which was covered with a thick layer of dirt and grease.
There were six large bedrooms upstairs, the largest of which must have been used once as a nursery. At one end of the room was a king-size four poster bed and in a corner stood a dusty old baby crib. The walls of the bedroom were covered in a light blue wall paper adorned with prints of small children happily cavorting through a meadow bearing baskets of flowers. The paper was faded badly except in spots where there must have been framed paintings. In fact, these silhouetted areas left un-faded by the sun’s rays circled the room in a peculiar fashion. All around the chamber on every wall, the outlines of where the pictures had once hung were spaced exactly the same distance apart. The outlines consisted of only two sizes and shapes alternating with one another; one long rectangle, and then one oval configuration of equal length, then another rectangle and so on, encircling the room.
The nature of the paintings and where they are now can only be guessed at. Although Faren’s great uncle left no money to speak of, he did leave nothing owing on the house with the taxes paid several years in advance. Faren and I theorized that if there were any paintings at all, they were probably sold by his uncle to pay taxes and debts.
The room must have been used by the old man, because all the other bedrooms had been sealed off years before and were void of any furnishings. He must have sold their contents as well to pay his bills.
We accepted this rationalization for the lack of a better one and decided to convert it to the master bedroom. Its large terrace afforded a nice view of the summer house and the surrounding grounds with one of the smaller bedrooms
doing nicely in the future as a nursery.
I did wonder why the largest room upstairs had been used as a nursery, and I couldn’t help thinking it a bit weird that someone would adorn the walls of a child’s room with so many paintings. They may have been of Nursery Rhyme characters popular in the period when the old man was a child. Possibly he had been spoiled as a child, lavished with expensive surroundings, given the largest bedroom, maybe the crib was a nostalgic reminder to him of days long gone.
Besides the sleeping quarters, there were two other rooms upstairs. One was the bathroom made evident by a crude set of plumbing, the other a locked door leading probably to the tower above. We went through the ring of keys given to us by the caretaker but found none that would fit the lock. Faren suggested that the key might have been lost and when he had the time he’d remove the hinges and we would have a look at what was up there.
The cellar of the house was cold and damp. It was an appalling hodgepodge of old lumber, broken glass, and strewn pottery. Heinrich Todesfall must have used it as a work shop, because in a corner there was a rough oak bench littered with many pieces of glass, bits of wire and several badly worn tools. At one end of a large stone wall stood about a dozen wine casks, the wooden sides of which were all caved in from centuries of rot exposing their bare interiors. While at the other end, adjacent to the work areas, was a massive five-sided archway that had been bricked up. The basement must have been larger at one time and later probably sealed off some of the older, more dangerous parts of the antique foundation. Running straight across the room, the full length of the cellar floor and disappearing behind the sealed arch was a narrow crack in the stone floor, in all probability the cause of the extreme dampness.
I found very little use for the musty cellar considering the spacious house above, besides, to all appearances; it was probably a harboring place for rats. Faren, however, thought it could be put to good service some day with future plans in mind to make it into a workshop for himself.
When Faren started to clean the cellar a few days later, he discovered a ledger. It appeared to be his great uncle’s journal. It was in the old man’s own hand and to our surprise, written in English. Faren and I only glanced through the pages and put it aside making a point to read it at a later date when time prevailed and we weren’t so rushed with getting the house in shape. When it did come time to read it, the journal was nowhere to be found, it had disappeared.
Our work was definitely cut out for us. Faren got busy that afternoon and patched the hole in the roof, while I took a chisel and a scouring pad to the sink board in the kitchen and scraped away years of neglect. In the days that followed, before Faren had to start his new job, we tore out all the old carpets and drapes downstairs, scrubbed everything in sight, patched plaster and painted the kitchen, parlor and dining room, not to mention all the floors we repaired and varnished. I kept Faren busy traveling back and forth to town picking up supplies while I made curtains with the aid of an old treadle-operated sewing machine I found in the hall closet.
Beside our tremendous tasks of cleaning and remodeling, the house was terribly antiquated when it came to modern conveniences. Much to my disappointment, the house was almost void of any electricity with the exception of a single line that had an outlet in the parlor and our bedroom. To the former, Faren hooked up our television, but not without some difficulty; something about converting the set from AC to DC or DC to AC or some such thing.
Our stereo was useless and the refrigerator was powered by a heavy duty extension cord that ran from the parlor to the kitchen. Every time I ran the vacuum downstairs I was forced to unplug the fridge, connect the vacuum cord and alternate the procedure when done.
All the water was piped from a well by something that was called a gravity pump and at times it would back up flooding the kitchen floor. The furnace burned coal, but luckily it was in operating condition, and coal was still in plentiful supply in the region.
The cast iron cooking stove in the kitchen was my biggest challenge. Although converted to kerosene at one time, the old gentleman still used it to burn wood, leaving all the burners fused shut and useless. Faren spent a good deal of his time repairing and replacing the copper tubing and valves. The stove must have held a raging fire within its cast iron shell because most of the original kerosene conversion parts were reduced to a molten pool by a steady and hot log fire. The replacement of the stove was virtually impossible. No gas or oil was piped out this far from Valsback and our small single source of electrical current was too weak to carry the heavy load of an electric range. We had to stay with the kerosene method which meant storing the fuel in several five gallon containers on the back porch, which in turn had to be carted into town from time to time for refilling. It took Faren a week to get the old relic in working order and about the same amount of time for me to grow accustomed to its cooking surface.
Our furnishings didn’t arrive until the second day. The delivery men worked incredibly fast as if they could spare no time in getting our belongings unloaded and themselves back on the road. We had to spend our first night in the sleeping bags we brought until they came. I wasn’t about to sleep in the old man’s bed. Besides our bedroom set we didn’t need much of our old furniture. The house, except for the five out of the six bedrooms upstairs was well furnished with several antiques many of which would fetch a good price back in the states.
Most of the furniture I guessed was made by hand and probably from the Black Forest region. Carved from the great oaks and walnuts that are plentiful in this area, some of these pieces must have dated back a couple hundred years.
My fascination for the craftsmanship was overcome by the eerie feeling I had when we first removed the dust covers that protected them. The workmanship was surprisingly fine in detail and the subject matter was by far unlike anything I had ever seen in any art appreciation class that I had in college.
There were demon headed arm rests and snake-like spindle work that reminded me of certain books I had seen picturing gargoyles and serpentine figures chiseled in the stone walls of many cathedrals from around the world but there the similarity ended. Everything else in the carvings was alien to any art form I had studied. Strange angles, the unusual curvilinear structure to all the backs of the chairs and the fantastic animated-like appearance of the designs that gave the illusion of movement when stared at for long periods of time. Hauntingly, some of the pieces reminded me of the snake shaped roots of the trees on our property.
I was captivated by the carvings displayed within each and every piece. There was another reason for my attraction to the works though but it’s as elusive to me as the identity of the unknown artisan. It is a gnawing feeling that tugs at me. As if the intricate patterns chiseled into the hardwood had mesmerized me into submission, much like the Doctor’s eyes that had an unsettling effect upon me.
One piece in particular was a high back chair upholstered in crushed velvet. It looked like a throne. Its back reached a good six feet in height while the arms of the great thing were immense in proportion compared to the rest of the furnishings in the room. The arm rests terminated in two large talon shaped hands with its claws curled downward.
The portion of the chair that was the most frightful was the head. A serpentine sculpture in appearance at first, but upon closer examination it took on an octopod form with bat shaped wings and a collection of eyes. An assemblage of biological parts perched like a crown over the head of anyone who sat in the great chair. The hard slick black walnut surface shone with signs of excellent care which was counter to anything else in the house. Faren’s great uncle must have used it constantly, because its good condition was only marred by the appearance of the heavily worn velvet in the seat. The chair when we found it was facing the fireplace with many of Heinrich Todesfall’s books and papers piled high around it.
The old man’s chair above all else aroused a sense of curiosity in me. The carvings, although repulsive, conveyed a hidden meaning. The answer to which a
t that moment was unknown. I was determined to know more.
Later, I made a special trip into town with Faren to locate information on the carvings in hopes of learning more of their history and subsequent development as an art form. Although the local library was abundant with information on the subject, very little of it was printed in English. Nevertheless, I left the library with an armload of books on early German Wood Carvings with intentions of making a bilingual acquaintance either through some of the local townspeople or by way of Faren’s co-workers.
It was at this time that I met Ilsedore Hulse and first came face to face with what I called a shunned indifference by everyone I met in Valsbach. As soon as the town’s people found out that my husband and I lived at Schloss Todesfall or that our last name was Church, they would avoid us like the plague. Ilsedore Hulse, on the other hand, used to relish our little meetings. I perceived in her a psychological attitude akin to a pleasure sometimes derived by people who enjoy a hazardous brush with danger. Maybe she was a little unbalanced. The old gal was an unsavory sort but she was the only one in Valsbach that would talk to me.
It was around about then that I first noticed a prevalent and almost compulsive mispronunciation of my married name by the local residents. My legal name is Church but the body of the villagers no matter how many times I complained would invariably say “Kirch.” Even Ilsedore appeared to gain an apparent gratification from pronouncing the family name incorrectly.
Ultimately I learned that “kirch” was the German translation for the English word “church.” I couldn’t make a direct correlation between the two, however, because I wasn’t pronouncing it with a hard German “K” sound, rather the conventional “ch” of the English version and the spellings were dissimilar.
