House With a Story

By Joan Sutcliffe

House with a Story

There was a face at the window white as Carrara marble, eyes brilliant as amber light emblazoned on burning desert sand simmering with fierce intensity of longing as though to step beyond the confines of destiny. 

Geraldo smiled as he came home, mounted the front steps and put his key into the lock. He was used to seeing the face in the window. He had lived with it ever since he had move into the little house on the lonely country lane. It was the ideal place for him. He was a poet and the setting was beautiful, away from the “madding crowds” surrounded by wild grasses, birch trees and black walnut that clunked their hard nutty shells on the roof top, a nature sound he cherished.

A spectacularly bright day in December, he had enjoyed the morning’s walk in the stimulating briskness of the cool air that aroused his creative instincts.

“Ageless and genderless,” he muttered, for the face was truly a puzzle to him. The innocence of childhood overwhelmed his perceptions constantly and touched his heart, while the gaunt high cheek bones spoke of masculine hardness, and there were many times when he felt a definite male influence asserting its presence in the ambience of the house.

As he paused to look again a fleeting shadow passed swiftly over, and the skin seemed to liquefy as though wavelets of energy were passing through, and then it became the silvery head of an older woman embossed in his vision only to vanish as sudden as the flight of a swallow.

Once inside he poured himself a glass of water, and drinking slowly looked through the window across to the unkempt woodland where squirrels were pursuing one another in the fierce competition of foraging for sustenance. Actually he was now standing in the very location where the owner of the mysterious face must have been just seconds ago. But of course, he was entirely alone and the house was empty. 

Perhaps a faint whiff of lavender was lingering? Or was it sandalwood incense? But no, that was just his imagination. The only discernible smell was the coffee he had brewed for breakfast earlier that day.

     Tomorrow becomes tomorrow
     as the pages turn
     my story unwritten
     my memory unspoken
     winds rip the fern

“Where did that come from?” he wonders as removing his coat he returns to the window to stare at the dark green of the cedars over the way. They were not the lines of the poem he was cogitating in his mind while walking by the frozen-over stream that morning.

As if in answer he becomes aware of a slight sensation at the back of his shirt, hanging loose over his jeans: then a gentle tugging as though a cat were jumping up to catch hold, but he didn’t have a cat, or any other animal. Involuntarily spinning round: as he already knew, there was just himself on his own musing by the window.

This was something new, although on many occasions previously he had sensed a movement on the periphery of his vision, or thought he caught a figure sliding by just beyond his view, and often a shadow without any conceivable source would fall on the floor in front of his steps. It was as though there were an invisible inhabitant sharing the house with him. He could just imagine his Irish grandmother shaking her head with a gleam in her eye and chuckling, “Bless you, ma boy, it’s the little people. Lucky as a leprechaun, ye be.” Then there had been the night when he heard the astral bells, such a sweet sound, “like the minstrel boy playing his harp on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day,” his granny would say.

There was nothing eerie about any of it, just a warm and friendly energy, and he did feel blessed. Although he had to admit there had been several unsettling experiences, such as when he had been suddenly awakened at midnight by a most horrendous scream that shattered his nerves and set his heart galloping like a wild horse. Then there was the thud of something falling, followed by the clomp of heavy footsteps outside his bedroom door. And any active response from him was totally prevented by a paralyzing weight on his chest that held him down a captive in his bed trembling in terror. Of course, in the soft light of dawn he had put it down merely to a bad dream. But it had occurred more than once.  

There were days too when he had been suddenly overtaken by an inexplicable sadness, as though the whole house were crying, and he would burst into fits of uncontrollable sobbing as if his heart would break. That was when he would produce his most tragic poems, though he had no idea where the inspiration came from. The creation just poured out of him like a cascade of tears.

However, on the whole there was a companionable atmosphere in the house, like the embracing arms of a parent. That was until…….. 

It was a couple of weeks later when Geraldo invited over several poets with whom he was acquainted for an evening of marathon poetry readings. They were a diverse group and all rich in artistic creativity: Heather an ardent feminist and political activist, Lillian famous for her rants against tyranny and social injustice, Manuel whose warm-hearted poetry sprang from the torment of mental suffering, Conrad who enjoyed the humour of sexuality, Reggie with an endless collection of Taoist myths, Elena with her colourful depictions of Caribbean life, Veronica with sonnets, haiku and an inexhaustible knowledge of poetic technique. Someone had brought along a stranger, a huge barrel of a man with a voice that boomed like a base drum alternately rising in pitch and volume into the piercing tones of a trumpet. It soon became clear that he was the dominant voice of the evening. 

Whenever the barrel performed there was a notable change in tempo and ambience. The general philosophical, amusing and mystical temperament of the evening turned somehow heavy, dark and even threatening. Geraldo tried to remember whose guest he was, and wanted to enquire about his background and his particular poetic persuasions, but something in his aggressive manner seemed to forbid any kind of questions.

It started to occur after Elena’s portrayal of the luscious blooms in a tropical garden and Reggie had just finished a Sufi tale with the apt observance “the mind is the greatest mystery of all,” when the discordant boom of the stranger’s monotone dropped to a sibilant hiss rasping out mad streams of diabolical verse, which sounded like some ancient curse. From some other part of the house there came the sound of hysterical weeping, perhaps a woman or a child, then a noise like a cracking of a chair leg followed by the breaking of a mirror. Suddenly there was a power cut and all was plunged into blackness.

It was raining outside, and a storm broke with a furious wind violently shaking the trees and rattling the windows. The continuous low rumble of thunder rose to a crescendo, becoming a roar that tore through the house, while a blinding flash of lightning lit up for a second the horrified expression on an unknown woman’s featureless face. Geraldo could feel the fear rising. He had the sensation of a panicking hand grabbing for his throat and something pushing and pulling him. There was a crash as the window caved in, and the splintering of glass pooled in little shards around his feet. Amidst all the wildness of the furor came the plaintive and monotonous moaning of someone in pain.

Then Geraldo lost consciousness….all sense of time…..all indication of who he was…. 

In whichever cosmic space of awareness he awoke he became the witness of a scene playing out its destiny before his vision. 

The immediate sensation that flooded his perceptibility was extreme loneliness, that of a small child, and he saw a little girl whose lower limbs were clasped in leg irons, making her unable to walk with ease. She was sitting by the window watching the horse and carriages pass by in summer, the sleighs in winter, taking the children to the country school house, and he felt keenly her desperate longing to join them. Her only playmate was a little ginger cat, who would jump up to catch hold of her dress and pull himself onto her lap. As Geraldo’s awareness deepened he sensed the passing of years, long solitary years. Her kindly parents passed away and left her utterly alone. Still she sat at the window gazing out with a ferocity of yearning.

Suddenly Geraldo became aware of a change in the mood. A stranger came to the house, a gaunt looking pedlar selling wares whom she invited in for tea. Instantly Geraldo knew there was a love affair, an intensely happy interlude, for she was a woman now who loved with the fullness of a passionate heart, and he had the unequivocal certainty that it lasted many years. Until suddenly one day the high cheek-boned pedlar disappeared, vanished into thin air, with no explicable reason at all. Inconsolable with grief, she returned to the window day after day, searching the countryside with sad eyes and the panorama of her own psyche with a jealous intent of mind.

Then another mood swing, a violent upheaval this time. There was a wild thunderstorm outside, and an angry pounding at the door, the tumultuous force ripping it off its hinges as the massive bulk of a man burst inside. There was something familiar about him, but Geraldo couldn’t exactly put his finger on what it was. 

“Where the devil is he?” the mountainous figure roared, holding down the trembling woman in her bed. “He owes me thousands, the creeping rodent!”

After a vicious kick to the bed post shaking the springs, he continued to bellow, “I’ve searched for years, but I’ll find him if it kills me, and you too.”

In a demonic fury he paced round the house from room to room, knocking the furniture about, smashing windows, bashing down doors, trampling on everything in his way. Until obvious failure rewarded his savagery. Then cursing and swearing he raised his fist, driving it into the woman again and again until the breath ceased leaving her body lifeless.

Geraldo suddenly woke up, returning to his normal consciousness. He was standing outside in the rain, his poetry friends grouped around him watching him with consternation. All his belongings were in two large backpacks on the ground beside him. 

In total bewilderment he looked from one poet to the other, Manuel, Conrad, Elena etc. They were all there. 

Except…..conspicuous by his absence…..that great unknown hulk of a stranger! Just as a twinge of recognition was dawning, he heard Heather’s clear-cut accents announcing, “Now we are all here, let’s find somewhere to shelter from the rain so that we can start our poetry readings.”

“Sorry Geraldo, but we cannot meet in that decrepit old shack,” said Veronica.

“No, that place is no good at all, Geraldo,” agreed Conrad.

“You can’t possibly think of moving in there, Geraldo,” added Lillian, “it’s been empty and decaying for years by the look of it.” 

“But…..but…..but….” stammered Geraldo looking back to the house.

All that remained indeed was the skeleton of an empty house, no windows, no doors, every aperture boarded over.

Geraldo stared and stared in total incomprehension. Wherever did he think he had he been for the past few months?

He looked at Reggie and gasped, “Truly the mind is the greatest mystery of all!”

Bio


Originally from Yorkshire, growing up in the untamed countryside of the Bronte's where she enjoyed the romantic literature of that period, particularly that which gave voice to the restless spirit seeking the mysteries of its own source. This led her into the field of eastern philosophy and mysticism, and for many years she has been a keen student of Theosophy, as introduced to the West by H.P. Blavatsky.