Crimson

by Ryan M. Parr

Pennsylvania was 50 miles down the road, with nothing in between the lengthy excursion through a wooded interstate. I was a traveling salesman making another trip to shake the hands of clientele, a path of regret for skipping Graduate School. It was just another day, and another venture through life, to expect the unexpected; another look -- another stare across an executives table -- only to relive the excitement of expecting it to end.

The sky was beginning to darken, shrouded in an overcast of rain, pelting the ground as it proliferates through the oily surface of the roads. A jeep pulls out from my side, revving its engine as it escapes along with a screech against the pavement. The tarp was pulled back, with bungee cords suspending moving boxes and a nightstand. Wooden boards, with nails protruding from their sides, dangle off the edge with the suspended load. The wheels pummel the ground, vibrating a nail from its sockets as the jeep hits against a bump in the road. The nail spins in confusion, lifting its point into the air, as I pull my car inexplicably with a resounding pop.

I swat the steering wheel in anger and pull the car to the side of the road. Stepping out of the car, I check the trunk for a clutch and a spare tire, unknowing that the rain was starting to soften the soil. I attempt to pull up onto the pavement, only that the car wouldn't start up again.

I look up towards my right where a dark-foreboding house appears, standing before me out of familiar reality. With gables on each corner, and a stone chimney, several drapes conceal the mysterious contents of this house, seemingly of listless age. A life-like image propels itself onto the curtains of a window, defined by what must have been a lit candle in the back of the room for it became difficult to make out the figure with there being such a shortage of light. The grim shade of the figure gave it an eerie appearance against the sun-bleached curtains. The thin frail image reminded of the appearance of death -- depraved of the blood that gave it life -- and the thinning of the body. The hair seemed easily visible along a shrunken head outline, and the time froze as the study continued onward into the night.

For why was it so grim that night? For it was difficult to understand why it was raining and for why the car had suddenly stopped. Being as I had no other choice but to seek shelter, I figured the night might only be an illusion when confronted with such odd an incidence as this. I walk up several stairs, sounding a cacophonous creak, as I slide my hand along the wooden railings. A sharp pain penetrates my hand as though an ominous warning not to continue onward. The blood refrained from seeping through the skin, so I subsided from worry, and still I make way towards a door to the house, only a few steps away. I hit the doorknocker a single knock at a time, for every second that my heart pounded up until the door opened. A frail woman glared straight into my soul as though to intimidate my welcome to the old home. I look back at her un-intimidated to deflect the sturdy glare so I could bring up the courage to ask as kindly as possible, "May I please take refuge?"

She softened her eyes and smiled like she hadn't since she was born, appearing as if all of life's burdens had been uplifted from her. She opened the door much wider and stepped back to let me into the dusty abode. Life was set back as I entered the house, with furnishings as old as the 19th century and nothing the least from the 20th. It amazed me to think how could it be? The women didn't appear more then 60 years old and I would figure that she might have bought at least one type of furniture in her lifetime. It dawned on me that the house could have been willed to her, though why would she give all her life's possessions away in her other home that she would have spent her earlier years in? I glance back towards the door where she was still standing and I wanted to ask, but instead simply said, "Where are your pillows?"

As though all my signs of appreciation seemed to be overcome by the weary night, I couldn't help but feel sorry for not adding signs of appreciation. She then strides over to a trunk layered with thick dust that she opens, pulling out a pillow along with a blanket, and closes it down to watch a swirl of dust like a working automaton wander endlessly in the room. She moves back to me and hands me a pillow with what appeared to be red stains and moth holes all over it.

"Is this blood?" I ask.

Not replying, she walked over to a lamp with a flickering of a flame deceived as an actual light bulb. She places a metal, somewhat of a coffee measurer that I've seen before, and sets it over the flame to let the smoke fly up and die out. Just as I thought that it was pitch black in the room, an oil lamp hinged to the wall along the stairs had been remaining, and so the old women walks up to the creaking stairs and up to the oil lamp. She turns slightly towards me, waiting for me to get ready for bed as though she had all the time in the world to see her last remaining company seeming to end for an eternity. The oil lamp had went out just as I lay down on the bare floor leaving me starring towards the ceiling, watching the darkness above me tunnel inward, as I decipher meaning to the cryptic images throughout the darkness.

I awaken to an empty room with tanned walls and nothing but bare curtains on the windows. I had still been lying on the ground with the bloodied pillow, along with the moth eaten blanket, as I realized that the house seemed different. It appeared older and less structured at that time. I noticed a black shaded spot against the curtain. Pulling the curtain aside; I realize that the house was boarded up. With a gust of air coming through the shattered glass, the house appeared vacant with no one living in it.

What had occurred last night could not have been a dream, but rather a real experience, suspended in time from another world that dwelt in the un-living. I pause for a while staring back up towards the mansion from the outside, deciding whether to turn around and slowly walk back towards my car were it reluctantly started up, so that I could move on.