by Elsa Graus
it would be so.
I had been walking for hours, my stomach was asking me for food and I didn’t have any idea of how I could get out of that maze. There was no one I could talk to and when I took my phone to make a call I saw the battery indicator was at its last.
My feet were aching and although it was not the best of my ideas I decided to sit down for a while in one of those broken porch steps. The whole place laid in darkness. There was not a light to be seen. That part was as dead as death itself. Surely I was afraid of speaking out loud for fear of waking up some evil creatures hidden in the dark. My imagination playing an important role due to the huge amount of horror movies I’ve seen since I was a kid.
The miracle came in form of a light. Not far away I saw one of the buildings – from where I was sitting I could not exactly tell what it was – was being lit. It might as well have been the answer to a non-believer silent prayer. I didn’t know it then and I’m still in that haven of obscurity – doubts would be always pervading part of my mind – but there was the possibility, slight as thought it might be, of someone noticing me and wanting to attract my attention. If that was their purpose, they certainly could say they succeeded. The light was so intense that even if that place was otherwise fully lit that building could still be discernible.
Still with my aching feet – besides I was pretty sure they were both covered in blisters – I made my way to the steady light calling me at the other end of the street. In my somewhat ailing condition I managed to get there with the added difficulty the limp on my both feet was causing me.
Before I reached the unhinged door my phone gave the last warning and went completely dead. At that time you could have said I was completely on my own and at the mercy of whatever soul might choose to do with me.
I opened the door and the squeaking noise it made startled even me. The building was huge. The first thing I thought was that that mansion – for, certainly, if it wasn’t at least it looked as if indeed it had been - could have enjoyed the merriment of the good old times.
Thick layers of dust covered most of the furniture and the spider webs hanged from the ceiling as if they were white curtains. The room was vast. On a closer look I could pay more attention to how many yellow keys the old piano was missing. But what really caught my deepest attention were the flames flickering in the fireplace. Whoever lit those burning logs was either a lunatic or perhaps wanted to give a home-looking appearance to that abandoned house. I surely called them lunatic because outside thermometers could very well have been reaching 85ºF. But somehow the fire didn’t rise up the temperature on the inside. My eyes couldn’t stop staring at the fire and as I approached towards it the logs were not being consumed by the powerful flames. The rocking chair next to where I was standing began to rock backwards and forwards and I couldn’t help making a jump. I certainly wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t recall having seen it when I entered the room.
“The moon is about to complete its circle.” A hoarse voice with a rancid smell made way through my nose. One of my guesses was that if death could have a smell it was probably that one in particular. But what I found it strange was whom that voice came from.
Were I blind my instincts would have told me the owner to be a man in his late sixties or early seventies? But to my astonishment it wasn’t so for when I looked at my interlocutor in the face a man of no more than twenty years old was lost in the movement of the flames as I had been a moment before.
“Excuse me?” The beginning of his speech had baffled me.
He motioned for me to sit in the chair in front of him and the next thing I remember was a mishmash of ideas about the orbit of the moon and its influence on life on planet Earth, human beings included. There were a lot of questions I would have liked to ask him but in that conversation I was merely an appendix, a simple listener to a one-speaker soliloquy. A fly on the wall.
He suddenly cut his speech and touched his pockets searching for a cigar. After I declined when he offered me one he changed the subject of his conversation.
“Well,” he told me. “Want to hear a good story?”
In spite of his appearance – I’ve already said he didn’t look past his early twenties – he was gifted with a wisdom that didn’t resemble his younger years or his boyish looks to that effect. Nonetheless, I felt a certain kind of intrigue growing up on me as I was eager to hear what he was going to talk to be about. An affirmative motion of my head was all that he needed to begin his story. A story that, maybe due to cause in me some dramatic effects or maybe not, was paused from time to time when he felt another impulse to puff his cigar was coming.
I reclined against the back and so he began.
“You know the carnival festivities were not always as merry as they seem to be nowadays? One year the joy was stained with blood. That was reason enough for the authorities to suppress the festivities and to summon the city for mourning for a whole month. However, that was not enough and the Mardi Gras parade was banned for some years.
“We were deeply affected for the strange happenings – the murders as some people have called them, although I personally think they were mistaken when their fingers accused the wrong person.”
Wow! That was really a good beginning for a story – the best I have ever heard. What later got the itch of me was what he was meaning with ‘we’. I never heard of some murders happening over here for some years and when I was back in my dorm I googled it, the only story that appeared on the screen of my laptop related to the events my interlocutor told me dated more than two hundred years ago.
“Her name was Rachel. She was the most beautiful girl in town. She won three times in a row the local beauty contest. No other woman could equal her delicate and fine features. She had the fairest complexion I’ve ever seen and her eyes were as blue as a perfect summer sky. Needless to say, almost all men fell for her. Single and married equally. There was no distinction. As it was no distinction among the ages too.
“She raised the envy of many women and the object of the disputes and arguments in many couples. Yes, her beauty didn’t leave anyone indifferent. An endless line of suitors appeared at her door first hour in the morning and they didn’t leave until quite late in the night. But she wasn’t much in favor of getting married at that earlier age. She was only sixteen years old. There was hardly any man that could raise her interest in him. Besides, she felt a strong devotion towards her father who was a widow. Her mother died the day she was born.
“The news of her beauty reached the neighbor cities and villages. It even crossed the frontiers of the bordering states. And as it happens quite frequently with most things, her beauty only brought misery to herself and to those who ever loved her.
“In her sixteenth birthday the town welcomed a new dweller. A man in his forties was he; tall and strong. He came from the north but we never knew nothing about him other than he was extremely rich and that he answered to the name of Frank Norris or Mr. Norris as most people used to call him. He established here and made himself build the hugest mansion ever created. He also bought thousands of acres and used it as a cotton plantation. Suffice it to say half the city worked for him one way or the other and even people from the neighboring towns.
“During one of his long walks the presence of Rachel didn’t go unnoticed by him. But although he knew about the exact number of proposals she had turned down he considered himself lucky as he had what most of her suitors wouldn’t be able to get in a hundred years. His wealth made him sticking out higher above the rest. And he was determined to make everything he could to get her to marry him.
“Presents arrived at her father’s house every single day of the week. Colorful flowers, beautiful silk dresses, elegant shoes and even sparkling jewels were returned to its sender without being unwrapped.
“However, and as everything happens for a reason, Rachel had her own motives to reject her new suitor as well as the old ones. Her secret motive was – no more no less – an attractive young man four years her ol
der. His name was Joshua and he was working in the plantation of Mr. Norris.
“It turned out the love Rachel felt for Joshua was requited and they together decided to keep it a secret until her coming-of-age. The law prohibited marriages of the underage although they had the approval of their tutors.
“What would it be of a place without rumors? Well, no one knew who spread those rumors but the next day they reached Mr. Norris ears. His servants related how he became instantly jealousy furious. He couldn’t understand why Rachel preferred a man who had nothing when she could have had everything, more money than she could have spent. Some say he couldn’t believe it so one day he decided to spy on them.
“One day he decided to follow Joshua. It was late at night and the sky was sparkling with stars. It was a perfect night for a perfect love story but nobody could anticipate so much beauty and perfection would end up in so much tragedy.
“Some say he was so jealous that he lost his mind. Attending no reasons he threw himself upon Joshua. Frank Norris was fighting with all his might while poor Joshua was only trying to defend himself. He didn’t understand what caused his sudden behavior. Rachel’s shouts for help were listened by deaf ears for no one could hear her and when
