Candle in the Attic Window(43)

It was not only that it was a spectacular build, mind you; it was that the house had established a history all its own. People claimed it was haunted (We had counted no ghosts) and that chains could be heard all hours of the night (Not one clink), and that sometimes, if you were very still, it would snow in the middle of the living room (That only happened once; I believe I was nine). Candlecliff was well-known for miles and miles; some famous photographer had even won an award for a photograph of the house, a photograph at which I now stared, for Aunt had received the first print.

The photograph hung in the uppermost hallway, which the photographer had taken as an insult, believing Aunt wanted to hide the image away. But no, Aunt had assured the woman, it wasn’t to hide it, but to allow the photograph to receive the best light it could. The lower floors were too dark, but upstairs, in this hall, there was a clever little window of leaded glass, which allowed just enough light in to illuminate the photograph as though it were in a gallery. Still, the photographer’s mood could not be assuaged and she had never spoken to Aunt again or come to her house. (So she claimed, for seven years later, I would have sworn that very photographer was crouched in the cornfield next door, camera in hand.)

This photograph was much like my own drawings, I came to realize as I looked at it the morning following the strange incident with the hand upon the window. Candlecliff had been captured in black-and-white, the house standing in stark contrast to the pale sky. Brambles and bushes tangled around the house, looking rather bonelike in certain instances. Though I was certain it was my imagination, I would have sworn there was a skeletal man amid them, holding a hand up as if to ward off the camera’s magic.

It made sense to me, then, I decided as I walked back to my bedroom. I had seen the photograph too many times to count and those images had imprinted themselves on my young mind. I had simply sketched the photograph, hadn’t I, pulling these strange images from it, rather than my own mind? It was comforting to believe that, if only for a little while. When I reached my room, I found the green-striped scarf resting on the foot of my bed. Louisa’s footsteps thundered down the wood stairs.

“Left that hideous thing for you!” she called.

Her voice and Mother’s floated upward as they worked on sorting other things. Aunt had many things – much of which would likely be sold at the estate sale – but we wanted a complete inventory before we jumped into that phase. I didn’t want to have the sale at all. I wished this house might stay forever ours, for what would we do without a place to dream?

I closed the door behind me and curled into bed, with the scarf held against me. Just a little nap, I told myself, and then I could join Mother and Louisa and pick through the remains of Aunt’s life. I didn’t want to. Didn’t want to.

Her scarf smelled like spearmint and tansy, and I thought of the small sachets she liked to make, to keep the moths away from all her most precious things. None of us knew where this scarf had come from, for she always seemed to have it. Not even Mother could place it. “But then, your father is that way, too, isn’t he? Just always been there ....” She would say it with a soft laugh, but you could tell she was partly serious. Her life before him had been a thing entirely different and now, she could not fathom him gone, so he had simply always been there.

The dream was different this time.

The windmill stood as it always had, a deep shadow beneath a moon that looked about to burst and send milky light everywhere. But this night, there was a soft wind which turned the sails; they creaked much like the glass beneath my hand had. If you listened long enough, it sounded like a low moan. This agony carried across the fields and seemed to saturate everything. Even the trees seemed to bend their bare branches low under this unhappy sound.

I waited for one sail to pass before I could step into the slight doorway and press against the door. But the door did not give and the next sail was rapidly approaching – surely, the sails did not reach to the ground, I told myself, but I could feel the wind that pushed it and so, too, the wind that the sail itself made as it hastened toward me. I gripped the doorknob, shaking it and crying out to be let in (for it never occurs to the sleeper to simply step backward and out of harm’s way, does it?), but still, the door did not open.

The sail caught my left shoulder, knocking into me hard enough to set me off balance. My other shoulder slammed into the door, just as it came open, and icy hands gathered me up before I might fall. My name was a whisper on his mouth then, dark and somehow full of secrets, as he bore me deeper into the windmill and the sails outside continued their anguished dance.

Over and over, he whispered my name, but did not draw me upward to the top room as he usually did. He pressed me back into one of the work tables, iced fingers sliding against my throat, where they started to melt. I could feel the trails of water running down into my blouse.

“This is the thing you must do,” he said.

His voice was its own agony, rising and falling with the sound of the sails. His face was clear before my own – I could have touched his cheek, but my fingers curled into the old table beneath me.

“Tell me what – what must –”

But before I could finish and before he could tell me, the windmill broke apart. The hideous sound shattered around us, as the sails broke free from the old mill and took the upper deck with them. Centuries of dust and wood and memories fell down upon us. The moonlight showed us how the sails toppled into the old fields, running, running, until at last, they gave a final breath, and fell still, shattering amid the corn.