The old man’s house was left in ruins. After forty years, there isn’t much except for the peeling walls, piles of debris, and crippling memories.
Like a garden snake, the river slitters through the landscape between the cattail and the spikerush; modest and underwhelming. You could hear it burble sometimes if the air is still and the brush unruffled. A scene more common now, quiet and undisturbed.
The property is located ten minutes walk to the river’s edge, a trip rarely made even in its heyday. This is a place you want to get away from; east to the city or west to the coast. There was nothing here to hold anyone, except the old man, clinging to a memory, stubbornness or just fear.
The town and most of its residents were forced out before the mine opened. The peripheral properties stayed unaffected even though most of its residents cashed out and left.
This was nothing but a vacation spot for us. Our summers were spent here, old man always complaining about something; a wretched grump. The house itself was a two-story, split level though the attic was considered as a second floor and a strict no-go zone. We slept in the den on the main floor, next to the kitchen where most drama took place.
Nothing good ever came through in the morning. The house felt cold and damp, more so with the gawkish old man in the kitchen.
Occasionally, there were other guest staying in the house. These people, strangers to us, keep to themselves. Long and tired faces, years under the vice, reveal anguish and unrest; company most fitting the old man.
Arguments were common. Their presence was felt; ghost hunting the hallways, constantly arguing and fighting about the most miniscule and irrelevant matters. Echos of their voices, the extreme profanity ate at us late hours of the day.
A place you should never visit. We were dumped there for the last few weeks of the summer as the old man was related to our mother. To this day we question his relations as hes akin nothing to our liknes — demeanor unfamiliar and foreign.
Our last visit was cut short when the police showed up. It took them over an hour to find the place, it took them longer to clear the house. After that day, no one came back. The old man vanished, no trace. Rumors circulated that he got hitched and left for South America.
The house, abandoned, now part of nature. It’s contents ransacked and pillaged except for the couch that’s left on the driveway. To this day, it’s not a safe place to visit. Because of its isolation, the ghulls of the past, the strangers, make their pilgrimage there as if there was anything worth visiting then, there is even less now.
-
PRAIRIELAND
-
Undercover
-
Transition