talonkarrde | Uphill, both ways, barefoot (Reply)

I stand in the open doorway of an old Victorian house, a multi-story antique with peeling floral wallpaper and wooden floors. There are closed doors on both sides of the hall every few feet, and portraits hang between them. I do not see the dust I expect from an abandoned house; the gilded frames shine dimly, the doorknobs are smooth to the touch. After a few tries, I find that all the doors are locked; my only choice is to proceed forward.

The floorboards creak as I walk past the portraits, feeling their heavy stares fall upon me. When I look at them more closely, I find that the subjects depicted — mostly young men and women, though there were a few families — are all faceless. The poses are natural, some sitting against a sofa, others standing together in a family portrait, but their faces are all pale blank slates, devoid of any features, as if God had set up the easel and then refused to draw on it. It makes me uneasy, and I walk faster.

As I make my way down the hall, each scrape of my shoes is magnified, and I feel the portraits' anger and disapproval growing with each creak and whine I cause. Dreams have their own logic, and I take off my shoes and socks, placing them neatly under the blank faces of a family of four. I look upon the empty faces and imagine my family, and it is easier than I expected — almost too easy.

The house is quiet as I continue, gingerly testing each board, silently passing the rows of gilded frames and the empty faces immortalized in them. As I near the end, I start feeling eyes upon the back of my head again; when I pass the final portrait, I turn around and understand why.

The photographs have faces now, young and old, male and female, with high, proud cheekbones and long, thin lips… but they do not have eyes, only blackened pits. They smile, but when I look closely at the closest one, a young mother carrying her her infant, I see a trail of black flowing from where their eyes should be — they are crying, their smiles grimaces of pain.

I let out a low moan that is twisted by the acoustics of the hallway, and in response, I imagine clicks as doorknobs are turned. I turn and run, no longer brave enough to remain in the house, and my bare feet slap against the wooden floor hollowly as I flee for the door that stands at the end of the hallway, the exit.

It is freedom from this madness, and it is only twenty steps away.

But with each step I take I feel something calling me back. Though it has no voice, it is a feeling that I have left something important behind, a feeling that saps the strength from my legs and brings sweat to my brow as I slow to a jog, and then to a walk. Too late now I wonder if the ancients were right about homophones and what I was leaving behind was my soul, but I continue forward with a desperate hope in logic.

Fourteen steps later the door suddenly looms much taller; the muted lilies and poppies in the wallpaper extend far above my head, and the floorboards are closer than I remember. I have fallen to my knees, though I do not remember doing so. I try shuffling forward on all fours and the world spins – I grasp for something, anything, and find nothing.

When I come to, I am lying on my side, and my nose is noticeably swollen. My fingers come away dark and wet, and when I look at the floorboards, I find that there are small pools of blood. When I notice that they are closer to the door, as if I had rolled back towards the center of the house after passing out, I curl up in a ball, rocking back and forth. I am a prisoner.

-

After a bit, I stop shaking: I understand now that I can not leave a part of me behind.

And so I retrace my steps, heading back for those carefully placed shoes, steeling myself to resist the stares. As I pass the first portrait, though, it is not their glares that fall upon me, but rather their screams. I hear the cry of the infant and the keening wail of the mother. A young man's agonized sob joins in from my right, begging for escape, and with each step, the cacophony increases in volume. Before I am halfway there, it is deafening, and I bring my hands up to my ears; with only three more steps left, I feel wetness seep between my fingers and the world spins again.

When I come to, I see again through the trail of blood left on the floor that I have fallen back four, maybe five steps. I lie there, listening to the whispers and wails in my head, and look at my shoes, neatly placed and an infinite distance away. Horrified, I watch as the blood seeps into cracks between the floorboards, until there is no sign that it was there in the first place. I sob, and the tears disappear as they hit the floor.

I crawl back to the midway point, wiping my tears on my sleeve in a futile act of resistance. The floor is pulling me down, inviting me to rest and sleep as the house consumes me. I waver, looking around for for hope - a window, another exit, anything at all but portraits. I frantically try the doors, every one, and find them locked. Locked. Locked...

Then I see the portrait. A gilded frame with a young man standing, barefoot, dressed in a blue dress-shirt and slacks. He smiles, like all the others, and his eyes are black pits. It is a pretty reflection of who I am, clean where I am bloodied, standing straight where I am bowed over, and I back away as the screams begin again, this time my own.

//

A/N: Halloween inspired darker rendition of the topic.