Woodland House - short story

The Woodland House (epub)
The Woodland House (mobi/Kindle)
The Woodland House (pdf)

Many summers would pass before Cynthia returned, the family retreat built by her grandfather. Her father used to bring her and a younger brother to this place which excited her especially so near to the end of a school year, and there she and her younger brother had felt so much the often quiet and isolated space that should seem personally their own. While the house except on rarer occasions should seem so dark among surrounding woodlands, at least now especially with her father so nearby, never frightening them in the least. Her father upon arrival would so much open all the windows of the house to 'breathe life' into the place as he would have claimed.

The woodland house pond were amongst the children's first destination. Walking the water's edge with clear access beyond the dense bullrush, they had especially at that age, loved turning any number of smaller moss ridden branches half buried in shoreline's muddy soils which uncovered a trove of insects for their find, but a decaying dock attracted the children most about the pond. If one of them were lucky enough to reach dock's edge, they could spy through a clearing across ed the water's edge, their woodland house. 

-2-

Cynthia held an urn with her father's ashes in hand. Only this time, she hadn't wanted to enter the woodland house. The summer retreat now bore so much growth around it, and she imagined so much a state of disarray inside the home. She hadn't returned in years to this place, not since when being older, her life had changed. She had so many friends in her adolescent years to think of. Then it should seem to juvenile and childish in a way coming here. Worst of all wireless reception was non existent. Now she felt defensive, she only meant to make the trip out here for another farewell. Only seeing the house in its present state suddenly brought a desire to clear the brush away, to make the house feel less abandoned in mind. Hours later she returned with pruning sheers, hedge trimmers, and new bedding. She had told a new boyfriend to 'Fuck off!” She needed space now. The front door were opened giving way to the darkness whose smell must have overwhelmed her senses. Taken aback, she almost stumbled backwards a few steps. A flashlight revealed the extent of damage, rodent droppings everywhere, but at least the furniture were still there covered in thick dusty white cloth sheets appearing intact.

She only disturbed her bed that evening in so far as removing any of protective furniture cover, but this were enough, her sinuses were swollen, eyes watering and teary. Damp evening air brought welcome relief from a nearby window. She thought of her father and brother, ruminating through old mental images she had in mind. Her father had picked her up and placed her so that she sat square on his shoulders. Seeing so much around in a nearby woodland path, a deer suddenly crashed through the woods while her brother were begging at her father's pant leg. The walk seemed in mind to take forever, but they eventually reached a series lying granite outcrops in the nearby hills would form in the earliest of summer now a series small cascades along granite walls with cool air all about a strange cavernous grotto with thick overgrowth overhead. A short walk inside the grotto's narrow passage on either side of this walls soon towered overhead. Another path were shown to their right which relative their own were dry and more obviously a trail. This trail appeared to wind its way down a steeper incline of rocks where they could see a body of water that her father then called a lake with surrounding natural rock walls. The woodland house pond even if having been truly more shallow had dense growth of hair thin slippery grasses which passed between her toes so often swimming there, one of her many phobias as she imagined more often being swallowed by its watery undergrowth. The snapping turtles were yet another problem. Only in this lake that she and her brother now found themselves swimming close to their father fearing its depths. She couldn't feel its bottom. Later that day, had she more selflessly played about a heavily cobbled shoreline. She and her brother made a game of stepping on the larger stones while avoiding the smaller ones. They would challenge themselves only going further into the water's depths while her father remained sitting upright writing or sketching something while often glancing up to check on the two of them. She thought then that her father must have been impressed with her game where between hops she would turn back to see if her father were watching her.

Cynthia's sleep were often met by alert waking spells that night. She hadn't dreamed of her father really, but a stranger appeared in mind this time. Someone she never met or knew. She were back in her childhood home this time which seemed real enough so much that when Cynthia awoke for a time from this dream, several seconds passed before she realized she were in the woodland house, not back in the old town that she grew up. She had lifted herself briefly only to be startled by the sharp rattle of an object in some nearby corner. However rational she felt then hadn't mattered though as in times past, she would be sleeping when she hadn't remembered that she were awake, and were too exhausted to remember much else.

Cynthia made a list of simple chores for the next day. She would focus on tidying the inside of the house. Carefully removing one sheet while attempting to disturb little of the dust that were otherwise inundating the cloth. Clothes lines made up to hang any coverings or drapery. In a corner of the house she found piles of broken nut shell husks piled and scattered about. Long since anything of the shells outer husk having decomposed into a staining fluid that now marked the house's floor. While an old well existed on the property, still functioning and having provided a source of water for the house, internally the house hadn't any formal plumbing, or electricity. Although Cynthia brought flashlights. Later in the day, having found an old broom, she swept out the bottom floor, and then with mop and bucket cleaned the floors. With the window's open, the house hadn't felt so stale. The nearby woodland pond still couldn't be seen from any of the house's windows. Fortunately, it seems her father upon last using the wood stove in the area that they as kids thought of as kitchen hadn't appeared caked with soot. Cynthia managed to grab from a now ancient stash, smaller pieces of chopped wood under the house's front porch. Soon hot water from a nearby solitary old pan would provide for her a meal of hot noodles while she also drank a cup of well water alone sitting outdoors on the woodland house's front porch. An old candle from one of the house's cupboards furnished soft flickering light.  Wrapping herself in a light blanket, legs curled up on the seat of the porch glider, Cynthia rested.

She thought of her father so much that she were convinced he were nearby. She imagined him standing before her. Only he appeared to her as she remembered him as a child, certainly less frail, withered, and human then she last remembered. He hadn't spoken or said anything, and she might have said something about her condition now, but she hadn't need to, if only this couldn't be more obvious, and what should he say or do then what he could possibly do which were consoling a living daughter. He hadn't said anything, not like letting the house go, or moving on in life. Only as she thought she were imagining, it were as if his eyes were saying, 'Its okay, do what you must do.' She must have had something in mind in any event, but now she felt him embracing her now, eyes flooding and receding back, there she felt again as she were so much younger, so many defenses built up over the years receding.

The next day Cynthia set about clearing brush and growth around the house. Larger branches of an old tree stood in the way of the house's view of the pond. The pruning sheer hardly made a dent. However, wandering the property. Cynthia found an old pruning saw. While having been exposed, and the blade having shown years of rust, the jagged and sharp teeth of the saw at least appeared functioning well enough. Soon a cut nearest the trunks base brought a crashing branch to nearby ground. Even from Cynthia's vantage, ten years seemed vanished in shorter order, the pond could be seen now. Growth of newer trees on occasion appeared in some places that she hadn't remembered. A red tipped crow perched on the narrower end of one particular blade of thrush stared cautiously back at Cynthia.

Several hours were spent chopping fallen growth where eventually Cynthia made a pile of yard debris in the house's old refuse pit. While dragging parts of the tree which swept across the pit, some smaller portion of soil were moved. The pit's now disheveled surface revealed a glinting object. This appeared to be nothing more then a smoke stained and discolored tin, label long since having vanished, but near to it were something else. Using her hands, Cynthia managed to free from gray compacted soil beneath, a metallic fragment which hadn't resembled any tin that she could think of. Slightly warped by heat and massively discolored in arrays of purple hues, the fragment appeared dangerously jagged as if torn or blown apart. Another regular edge described, however, some other machined order, both straight and following a persistent curvature at times. Cynthia swept her hand over the surface, and something else could be discerned, some regular surface impression. A letter? Part of an old license plate, she thought. Strange. She were too tired, however, to investigate more so at the moment, but she cataloged the metal fragment in mind. She swept piles of newly added brush away into another place nearby leaving only original growth and any other more ancient burnt trash, soot, and ash, exposed now. She thought she would be back, but the fragment at the moment given all other things were more passing curiosity, and anyways she were already tired. Days of sun and partial clouds since her having arrived up until now had given way to winds shaking nearby tree, skies had grown darker, heavier rains begun to fall, and more so the age of the old woodland house were showing. Wood boils on the house's interior floors in places revealed the source of incoming water. A few new places managed to surface that hadn't existed prior that hadn't a pail in store for collection. Aside from any inkling at times in checking the collection of buckets having littered sections of the house's floor, the rain at least this time were comforting. While she remembered an occasional leak here or there when she were younger. She sadly realized her dad must have taken less interest in the place. She wondered if it were because of her mother, her brother, or her?

-3-

Two year up until present, Cynthia's life begun changing. If it weren't the fact that her mother had gotten re married, moved to another town, and Cynthia having refused to go with her mother, staying in the town that she had grown up in, but she were already a teenager then. She had the choice to stay with her father. Her father weren't as critical or demanding of her anyways. As her father had grown more ill, however, she still refused to go live with her mother. Her father were insistent staying there in the same house that both Cynthia and her little brother Carsten were raised, and Cynthia became, aside from all other help and medical assistance that rotated inside and outside the home, yet another care taker, but this happened suddenly when her father's health really deteriorated. Cynthia only became more withdrawn, spent less time in previous social circles. As to the house, since the divorce, gradually the house must have been abandoned as she figured now. As far as she knew no one came here.

She still hadn't wanted to leave after her father had passed away, and she were still technically too young to be out in the world on her own. Her mother refused to let her live in her father's old house, expecting her to move to a new city, remake her life yet again. Cynthia refused. She lived for awhile bouncing between the house of old friend's while trying to keep a low profile from parents of the household. At least the one's whom seemed to keep more notice then other. Inevitably she got turned in by some parents, found herself being shipped off to her mother and a new family which she felt she weren't prepared to deal with. When she were seventeen, and after so many run away attempts, her father in law must have told her mother to quit pursuing her, let her be on her own. She didn't hear as much from her mother in pressing, Cynthia got better dodging authorities, mixing in with older crowds of young adults. She hadn't a chance to finish high school formally, but managed to grab her GED. Her father left her some money though, and when she turned eighteen she could better manage things on her own. She applied for a short time in a two year college, even moved into a four year college. There she got more restless, dating, bringing home someone she hardly knew more often, or at times waking up in a stupor and neither having remembered how exactly she had gotten there. She only felt more claustrophobic.

She lived for awhile with some boyfriend but felt afraid to commit herself more. In some short years, she had been burned by others that could have cared less about her anyways, and those that were nicest to her, she weren't exactly sure what to do, and sometimes, then only recently she had sometimes a meaner streak surfacing in her where she dumped some of the nicest to the side as quickly as possible. Maybe it born of the resentment of her previous conditions in life and the seeming unfairness of it, and now. Now she were in her mid twenties. She were temperamental, missing something, still undecided. Maybe it were friends that gradually disappeared from sight, having vanished into new lives. A once friend of hers told her to figure out what she needed to fix and move on, stop dwelling. Was she being resistant? And this place, the woodland house. What were she really expecting here? She intended to put her father's ashes here. This is where she best thought of him. That's why she came here.

-4-

Rains had diminished to a mist throughout the day. Cynthia hadn't really wanted to work or slog outside, muddying herself more. She hadn't really brought a change of clothes, and she would likely spend sometime cleaning these up. The pond, however faintly could be made out from a nearby window, a blue heron were grazing in the shallower parts lifting its long spindly legs gently with each carefully choreographed step, perching its beak with a long gaze focused towards the water below. While Cynthia managed to find any number of now useless pens, an old graphite pencil, alongside now aged brittle parchment. An old dusty book of A Sand County Almanac remained situated and alone near a window shelf. She read a few passages here and there, especially where her father must have underscored. On the couch, that she were resting, Cynthia fell asleep.

Cynthia laid in a brightly lit room, and as suddenly she awoke and the clarity of her house came back into focus. The house had grown darker, and she lost track in mind of where the flashlights might be alongside any candle. The bedroom, yes. But they weren't there, and she thought to search the front porch. Again nothing. She disliked being alone in the dark without a source of light. However, primal this feeling were. She continued searching, nothing. Only something of a visible flash appeared in the corner of her eye, scanning a windowsill nearest by in the front living room of the house, she spotted, flashlights neatly arranged on the sill, alongside candle and matches. She hadn't placed these there she thought. Why would she do that? At least she recalled, and having moved to the window, she notices something else. The same dark and unseen figure from her childhood situated about the old decrepit dock, neither moving but only still. The figure hadn't moved as had Cynthia until she decided at once to light a candle for that evening's use. Between this and the time spent re focusing on the old dock, the figure had vanished.

Rains more heavily fell that night leaving keeping Cynthia. She felt as though she were shoring the water from an old ship at times. When rains dissipated into the early hours of the morning she felt relief. Only without warning, this time she a felt a strong jolt like someone were attempting to wake her. The candle hadn't gone out. Only this time had she felt the sense of something about the house now that disturbed and alarmed her. She recalled at some point gathering her belongings. The dark figure seemed to take up this role in mind of the unseen entity that she imagined. She remembers throwing everything into the car, driving past the entrance signpost. She were driving along what she thought she remembered were a dirt road leading back to the main highway entrance only something were wrong. She remembers panicking, thinking she were hopelessly lost. The roads had become a confusion. Then suddenly she is awake again, back in the same house. Only instead of feeling terrified or panicked as with the continuity of her dream, Cynthia instead felt an intense wave of calmness.

The event seemed a nightmare. Maybe she imagined the figure near the lake, and then rationally she thought about her situation, she hadn't been alone for awhile. Maybe she did need social company after all. Always when she felt stressed, she would work in attempting to clear her mind of previous events. She were clearing more overgrowth. Her thoughts, however, begun dwelling on the old refuse pit and the fragment of a license plate found. She wanted to get her memorial over and done with now. Maybe this were her wake up call. Don't take too long moving on in life, she thought. For the first time she felt a bit of resentment towards her deceased father. As if beyond the grave, he weren't allowing her to get too comfortable in life, and who it were for him to judge her dysfunctions anyways, so much that she were yelling, 'Dad, I really gotta go. I wanted to make this house look so much better. I thought about coming back here on occasion, but this will probably be the last time I come here!' Then her anger turns into tears. Nothing of a response appears to immediate come. Cynthia soon finds herself standing up, still angry. She runs into the house grabs her father's urn. She dashed for the pond. She could hardly keep balance, but managed to reach the dock's end. Ashes tumbled into the water. Light from the sky suddenly seemed to vanish quickly, or she weren't sure if dark clouds overhead came in passing.

Cynthia felt an uncontrollable urge, the sensation that she should immediately investigate the refuse pit, her thoughts almost seem inconsolable on this point. Her body moved towards the pit. She were frantically digging. Another fragment found, another, and another. On and on until all assembled, forming a complete plate.  She could only Sense to decipher what she seem like an enigmatic code of plate fragments until they resemble all but the missing fragment that were in store to the house, but some presence in mind seems to communicate something otherwise...her car, yes, belonging once to her car. She walked to the front of the house. Her car were vanished. The whole of the house's front yard is burning in what appear a large blaze, and there parts of what should seem her car's wreckage lay scattered throughout. Cynthia no longer holding the plate fragments instead saw these burning alongside the other debris that once appeared to be her car. Cynthia remains transfixed in mind with the burning wreckage, can't move, and what once were remain there her lifeless body burning. She wandered back into the house. She were tired now. She only wanted to sleep.

-5-

Voices are calling her. She can see little in the bright room that she is situated. The stranger appears in her car again. They are driving this time where fewer lights are shining. A country road? She doesn't know the man. She doesn't know where they are heading. She thinks this is another road trip, some place off in oblivion. Some place where she can be and feel new again. Cynthia thinks to wake up, and she imagines herself waking up, only she feels that something isn't right, and she imagines waking up, and she does, but again the same thing. Until she feels the water of the pond lapping at her feet, until she feels the green undergrowth beneath her feet. She is giggling because she feels this, yet she is in the house not near or in the pond. She would have felt her eyes having shifted so much that the house has dissolved and she is where she imagined her feet which were standing in the water's edge. Voices are calling her again. She is in the bright room again. She can't see wall, but she hears the voices of others. One sounds more familiar to her. The pond is gray with ash now. The surrounding countryside is charred. Her left hand dissolves into fragments of burning embers while the other attempts to shape something like clay. A shape like her father appears formed by the mixture, only he isn't alive. Cynthia remains there weeping.

-6-

A nurse enters a room where Cynthia is upright now, more cognizant. Her mother, and step father are near to her side. She is informed Carsten is on his way over especially since she has regained consciousness. Her mother informs her that her father hadn't survived the crash. Their vehicle had skidded off the road and veered into an oncoming tree. The car burst into flames. She were lucky to have survived. Cynthia were subsequently told after asking that the crash and subsequent wreckage hadn't happened anywhere near the woodland house retreat.