Imbroglio

A flurry of feathers broke the quiet of the overcast day, followed by a secure thud. Wounded leaves fluttered to the ground like butterflies anticipating wasps. Fifty years have perished since he became what he is. Fifty years since the grandfather’s clock consummated its countdown, on that queer evening that juxtaposed sultriness against cold autumnal front, and bequeathed the bars of misfortune on him. Perched on white oak, the defiant white crow pirouetted, as if in front of a mirror, observing its elongating and shortening shadows, barely discernible like its existence. Everyday since then, he had combated the unforgiving knowledge mauling at him like it was scratching the face off a photograph.

Rotting stench assaulted his heightened senses and swamp air latched onto his tongue. He couldn’t tell if it was from stale buns or fish guts or human remains, and he longed to find out. There was no possibility of dining today, however. Taking off at a start, he spread his wings, stretched cavernous and grey across the sky, falling like a protective veil as Louise closed her eyes.

A flurry of feathers broke the quiet of the velvety night, followed by a secure thud. And another. A couple more in quick succession,a solitary sickening crunch, before silence overtook again. Desperation emanated from the beady eyes peering into her own; it simultaneously calmed her and rattled her. Her eyelids clamped down, ripping her gaze away, as she slammed resolutely into the window one more time. Her teeth clamped down on her lips, ripping a wretched sob from her gut as she dully slid down the glass. Lucidity tried to claw past the fog in her head, clutching at anything that would reveal what lay past the confines of the window or why she was struggling to get past. Not knowing whether she was seeking release or refuge, amplified her unrest.

Sudden voluminous chimes pervaded the air, thrusting Louise into consciousness with a stuttering gasp. The same dream third night in a row, her mind registered, while she sat up, reaching for the nightstand. Upon finding nothing but thin air, her first reaction was one of mounting unease, so much had she been hounded. Couple discordant chimes, with a note of finality, dismantled the tumultuous trance her brain had been plunged into, and she recalled her recent bequest and the subsequent splurge, the Victorian house she currently inhabited being one of them. She had yet to tuck her millennial requirements into antediluvian structure and mentally noted to make the nightstand the first of those endeavors.

Wading her way to the kitchen with a furrowed brow and faltering steps, she jerkily grabbed a brimming tumbler and drowned it in a couple gulps. The little wet spots being sewn onto her shirt going unnoticed among the huge patches of sweat. Back in the colossal bedroom, she began to pace back and forth as if it were her very mind, letting the late past creep upon her like a sulfurous breeze. Just as she was starting to believe fortune had lost her location, her bequest of 20,000 dollars had come as a welcome surprise and the bargain she nabbed on the house, an even bigger one. Even the personified evil that her eating disorder was, had appeared less formidable. A deep unsettling longing to drift back in time swarmed within her. The house clearly disliked her, the nightmarish welcome she had received betrayed that while the grandfather clock positively screeched at her presence. Whether as a threatening foe or a warning savior, she had yet to decide.

What before was trepidation, had, with her feet planted firmly in the inscrutable reality, brewed into an uncomfortable anticipation, despite the nightmares looming in her mind. As if the house had replaced the petrification within her with something that was instructing her to explore its source, warping her sense of safety. That the nightmares were increasing in length and unfolding more each passing day, hadn’t slipped her notice but her steadily putrefying instincts remained ineffective in warning her away.

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He wondered if she could feel his gaze stalk her like a shadow, forceful and unblinking in its scrutiny. Despite witnessing the sight countless times, his gaze burnt brilliantly in redolence as she retraced the steps he took fifty years ago. The past had sewn itself into his very being, clinging like an anxious child.

Dubious of the tricks his mind was playing on him, his senses had adjudged the world slow to a crawl around him, the bits of him lingering in the air far longer than he had ever thought possible. He had picked at his skin some more, dissolving adagio into the brisk wind while his breath had sat deep and bated in his lungs. Presently, the plaguing memories resurrected the stale longing within him to plough into the dark, unheeding and feel the motion of protective forgetfulness brush against him.

An infernal gust shoved the crow off the arthritic branches, roaring remorselessly. It suffered a plummet of a few feet before its white gaunt wings regained momentum and carried it over as grey shadows creeped noiselessly over the threshold of the sun’s lingering memory.

She wondered if it could feel her gaze stalk it like a shadow, urgent and rapacious in its scan. Steeling herself to strike against the window once more, she willed the bird she saw reflected in the pane to stir, anything to sense she wasn’t alone. Agitation busted floorboards of patience to circle her embarrassingly sprinting heart, sending her hurtling against the glass. At the very moment, the bird rose into flight as if suddenly awakened, stilling just as quick as if to mirror her actions. Lifting one hand to stroke her bruised temple and safety, she stared in horror as the bird did the same. More frenzied movements followed that the bird in the pane echoed diligently. Saccades passed before the creature in the dusty pane cracked its mouth open, but there was only silence.

The soft mattress pressed against Louise’s back, barely helping her unsurety of whether in bed or still in dream as she slowly pried her eyes open. Minute misty rays gleaned through the layers of blinds that blocked most else, casting an eerie glow. Within seconds, the wrenchingly strange events caught up to her, leaving hurriedly flung off covers, and fumbling fingers reaching for the light in their wake. Wary she’ll find tufts of feathers supplanting her flesh, Louise perfunctorily examined her body, sucking in wheezes of air upon being proven wrong. Content, her fingers latched on to the escaping strands of skin on her calves and peeled them off as she serenely balanced herself on one feet. She marveled at how thin she had started to look after assuming occupancy of the house. Brusquely observing the flesh sew themselves on to the upholstery, her mind flitted back to the day she bought the house. They fit in right, next to the rest of the skin she had shed. She thought of the astonishing bargain, that should have been downright suspicious, and the broker’s desperation to sell the house. It was difficult to tell her flesh apart from the house now. She mused how fortuitous it was that she dismissed his smarmy demeanor without question.

The grandfather clock blared through the house’s foundations, like it would shake it apart and swallow its contents whole. Unfazed, Louise’s emaciated figure marched off to the attic to retrieve the charred book she had located the day before. To say she stumbled upon it would be wrong, she had found it without intending to; yet she had very much been looking for something and the house had guided her to the attic in a macabre climactic manner. A book of handwritten stories, that is how she had mentally assessed it ensuing her first browse. It was still there, wedged behind the gnarled, silver grey trunk as if for safekeeping, unsurprising given its undisguised history of arson. The original ruby red coloring of the blackened book peeked at the frayed edges. For a brief moment, her now depraved senses mulled if it was blood artistically glued to the original casing.

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Space and time had lost their continuity. The singed journal laid open to a blank yellowed page, its secrets engraved in Louise’s mind; like her mind laid open to the house’s spirit that fed on its deficiencies. A book of incomplete stories, how she would appraise it now. Despondence, death and doom seeped through the sodden pages as the house heaved, alive, breathing and plotting. The book echoed urgency in neat lettering, and scribbles whispering defeat.

She finally understood the house but not its quest for human essence to thrive. Gnawing away at and abusing its residents frailest psychological state, corrupting their instincts and stretching their to its limits, the house lured them to be their toxic metamorphosis. The ones that struggled had incomplete stories, were destined to get trapped in corvine forms. In moments of haunting prolepsis, a deafening lurch heralded the house’s ascent to slaughter. In an unprecedented move, succumbing to her fate, and letting the house lead her to an unmarked grave she began writing, My name is...