Untitled

by Ryan Morini

The dust owned the air in the mansion, and its fiefdoms extended onto the carpeting, the books, the desks. Not the floors. Where the bare stone was exposed, or even hardwood, it was dustless. But the carpets emitted small clouds of dust with every footfall, invisible without the sunlight but still pungent and tangible.

It was this that the man studied as he walked about the room. He'd been attracted to this one particularly because he thought there was a window with sunlight coming through. In fact, it turned out to be a window into another room he'd not yet gained access to, and there was a bizarre fire of some kind burning there. Through the grimy windowpane, which might have been tinted to begin with, it was difficult to discern anything more than that. Especially with the glare from the torchlight.

And he was loath to put his eyes to that window. To anything that would confine them to one direction, or leave him undefended for the least instant.

The curtains on the window were of some abhorrent stuff that in ways resembled a smooth and cold version of maroon crushed velvet. He recognized the color, at least, and the curtains felt somehow endearing if only for that. Still, he shuddered and drew them across the window.

"One - " he started, before cutting himself off. He didn't wish to speak. No telling what might be listening.

One never knows what might be watching, he finished in his mind. One never knows.

Other than the window, there was nothing of interest in the room. He'd learned already to avoid the books in any bookshelf here, and he feared to touch anything else. He shuffled back to the door and closed it, pulling it shut by the wood as far as he could. Like many of the other doors, the knob was shattered glass.

*****

The doctor sat in his chair, and the man was draped across the couch.

"Why don't you leave it? When do you leave it? How do you get here?"

The man shook his head. "I don't know."

"You just stay there because...?"

"No, no. No." The man brushed at his brow. "No, I don't leave because I can't."

Long pause.

"You can't because...?"

"Because the mansion is unending."

Shorter pause.

"So... H-hm..." the doctor paused some more. "How can the mansion be so interminable? So, ah,'Œunending'? It must end somewhere. All things have their bounds, even the earth itself."

"Not all things. What about the Heavens, or infinity, or... or the human imagination?"

The doctor frowned. "No, can't these be argued to have their own limitations? You're right, they are special cases, but... But what I'd like to know is how the mansion is unending."

"I don't know."

"Hm. Hmmm." The doctor scratched at his chin. "Well, then how do you get here, if you can't get out?"

"I don't know."

"You... don't know?"

"No."

"Does a relative drive you here? A sister, perhaps? Your mother? A friend?"

"I don't know."

"Why are you here?"

*****

The middle hallways were not the worst, but he didn't welcome them. As the house seemed infinite to him, he classified it as best he could. The basement, which he shuddered to think of, was a labyrinthine catacomb of sorts, all of dank, dark stone. The lower halls were also stone, and some rotten and mouldy wood. The middle halls were thickly carpeted and lavishly furnished. The "attic" was all wood, and the dustiest. And the gardens were nothing but dead plants and trees, and the occasional animal. At least, they were most pleasant when only the dead things were there. The gardens indoors had real soil but still had a solid roof overhead.

The carpets coughed up clouds of dust at him as he walked. Everything was faintly orange-yellow in the light of the torch, the flame twitching constantly as it burned. Its smoke wreathed about his head mostly, which hardly helped him see through the murk of his flambeau, much less beyond it into the blackness.

In the silence, even his shoes sinking into the soft carpet seemed to herald his approach. Or worse, his location.

The hallway stretched far beyond what the torch could illuminate. The walls, where they were visible, were punctuated by myriad doors. He picked one at random and walked up to it.

The handle was intact. He didn't touch it. Didn't want to make any noise yet. Instead, he stood before the door for several long minutes, all the while straining his senses to detect anything. Anything at all. He even opened his mouth to taste the air, in case it might help in some way. It was the vigil and wait of indecision, of mortal fear. Every move seemed to be one step closer in the direction of death, and yet not moving was somehow the more terrifying thought. He would have to sit down or lie down if he did, and nothing made him more fearful than touching the place. Most of his anatomy would be considered bartering tender if someone were to approach and offer him the capacity to float, and thus separate his feet from the floor. Of course, if someone were to approach, he would not stay to listen to their offers. If they had any.

At length, he opened the door. The knob was colder than ice, and his hand almost stuck to it. It burned just to touch it, but he seized it and turned it, quickly but not without what stealth he could manage.

He pulled it toward him, and two legs swung out and almost knocked the torch from his hand. He fell to the ground, his feet flat on the ground and one arm behind him for support, as the hanged body swung back into the darkness of the room, invisible, before emerging once more. The head was bloated, purple and green, and the face was occluded by long hair which was frosted grey but beneath it some darker color. As it swung, a mostly-bitten off tongue, obese with rotting blood, fell to the floor.

Noise! It's making noise and on the floor and rotting body and its tongue fell almost dropped the torch what else is in the room oh fuck jesusfuck jesus saves jesus save me now I'm done I've had enough please save me now...

*****

"Call me Sarah." She smiled, a pretty smile, and held out a hand. Her hair was draped down her back, with some rogue locks hanging loosely against her face.

"All right." He took the hand and gave it what he thought was a gentlemanly squeeze.

"You can order for yourself if you like, but I already ordered a plate of pasta, and at this place, between the pasta and the bread and the salad..." she swayed her head from side to side with each mention of food, "well, I think it's a meal for two, you know?"

"That sounds fine."

"Good." She smiled again. "So, what do you do?"

"Um..."

"Housebreaker?"

"What?"

"You said you were stuck in that house."

"Oh. Um, yeah."

"So that's what you do? You break out of the house?"

"I... don't know. Do I?"

"You tell me."

He shuffled in his chair. "Well, I...guess. I mean... Yeah, I guess."

"There are worse things to do."

"Are there?"

She smiled. "I doubt it. It sounds awful."

"Did I... Did I already tell you?"

"Why don't you now?"

"Um... what do you want to know?"

"Is that the question?" She interrupted his antiphonal stammers. "Well, how did you get there?"

"I woke up."

"That's all?"

"Uh..." He wrinkled his brow. "No. No, there was something else! I drove there."

"Why?"

"Um..."

"Nevermind." She reached for her water. "So what was it like?" He stared at the tablecloth.

"Huge wrought-iron gates in the front. Huge. And there are huge stone walls that extend from them, all the way around the place. Or," he corrected, "I don't know that. But it seemed that way. The walls were kind of obstructed at the ends by the surrounding woods."

"How big is 'huge'? The gates and walls, I mean." She took another sip of iced tea. He stared curiously at it before continuing.

"Um, the gates. They... They were big. Or, I'm sorry." He shook his head vigorously. "Maybe... thirty feet high?"

"That's really big," she said, her eyes wide and her brows twisted. "You sure?"

"Thirty at least. Where the trees were thin enough in front of the walls that I could see both clearly, the stones were as high as some of the 'younger' grown trees."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"So then...?" His confusion was evident, so she continued, "And after you got through the gates? And," she said, cutting him short, "how did you get through the gates?"

"Well, that's the weird part. They... I slipped through because they were pretty far apart."

"Oh. I see."

"But then, when I tried to slip back through to go to my car and get some of my stuff, they were too tight. Is there any way that the bars could have been designed that way?"

"Were they angled or something?"

"No. Round. Twisted rods, basically, you know - 'wrought iron'."

"Then, no. I'm pretty sure that makes no sense."

He nodded plaintively. "Yeah."

"And so what happened then?"

"Oh. Um, so I went up to the door. I thought it was abandoned, but I wanted to check it out. It looked beautiful, you see. And I guess I could have returned to my car at any time, once I found some way out. I think I thought there might be a key or something in the house..."

"Just a pretext to get you inside, huh?"

He looked at her, surprised, as the ice cubes clinked against each other while she sipped her water. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was, wasn't it?"

"Seems that way, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"So...?"

"Um, so I walked up to the door."

"What was around it?"

He stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed, scouring her face for some sign of malignance. Then he eased off. "Oh. You mean, what did it look like?"

She screwed her face up with mirth. "Yeah, of course. So...?"

"So it was just a porch. Well no, I guess not... See, the house was obviously huge, even from the outside, but the porch was just old wood and stuff. Like a really wide wooden staircase to the door. I think there was a chair or two there. But when I got there... "

"Oh!" She seemed fascinated. "So there was something around the door?" When he didn't answer, she added, "Was there?"

"Yeah."

"What was it?"

"A giant's skull. Crushed."

"A... giant?"

"Huge head. Would've been three feet high, or - okay, I wouldn't know, but fucking huge. Or, I'm sorry - "

She waved him off and smiled. "It's okay. I'm a big girl."

"Oh, right. Right. Well, so it was just crushed to bits, guts or brains or whatever fucking everywhere."

"How do you know it was a giant's skull, and not just a bunch of regular skulls? Animal skulls, even?"

"Because the fragments were too big. Shaped too big. Too much blood. And... The eyes were still there."

"In the skull?"

"No, no. Rolling around the porch."

She laughed. "Rolling around?"

"Yeah. They were like huge balls from Spencer's Gifts or something." He blushed. "That is, pool balls - billiard balls. Or big white bowling balls or something, except they didn't roll all that straight."

She laughed again. He did too.

*****

Preserved in their death throes, gnarled trees threw their leafless branches in all directions, as if they'd clawed frantically for help as they suffocated. Not one of them touched the ceiling, which he estimated was perhaps twelve feet high. Some of them had withered fruits, dried to brown husks. It seemed unnatural. The bushes were the same, right down to their dried brown berries. That everything was the same lacklustre grey-brown suggested the image of a more literal Midas touch, where everything browned and died at the touch. Thin, reedlike stems of some kind also protruded from the soil, and brown flower remains had curled up as if left too long in an oven.

Desiccated insect shells were scattered about on the ground, and skeletal songbirds sang silently of their demise. Bits of greasy feather and sere flesh remained on the bones, discolored but still more colorful than the rest of the scene.

It was very cold in the garden, even if he couldn't see his breath.

A snake, missing not only most of its flesh but a number of bones, slithered up a tree. The birds began to sing audibly, hollowly, as if their voices in life were reflected from the ethereal plane and cast over bottle tops before they escaped to the living ear. The insects righted themselves and began to rustle, a mortal version of crickets' chirping.