VI - A Storm Rises

It was actually 22 minutes, counting the time they'd spent sitting at a traffic accident towards the middle of the city.  Marie hadn't seen any of the people involved, just a swarm of police, some firefighters and what used to be a car.  The latter was bent lengthwise around a utility post near a coffee shop and cafe, flames licking the underside of the hood; numerous onlookers huddled beneath the 1940's building's overhang, hands to their mouths in collective shock as she assumed a body was lifted up into the waiting doors of an ambulance.  Traffic had been halted until the rescue vehicle was safely out of the way, screaming off to the city's hospital seven blocks away, and until the remains of one of the vehicles was removed from the right-of-way.  Marie guessed that neither driver, judging by the cars, had fared very well.

As they neared her destination, she counted the street numbers on Altenkirchstrasse, so far on the western end of the city she wasn't sure it was really in the city itself.  13, 14, 16 - there was no 15, for some reason - the properties here were far apart, often on large estates much like her own residence, with nearly a minute between, even at the fair clip at which the taxi moved.  The taxi driver slowed as they approached 17.  “Sind Sie dieses sind sicher, wo Sie stoppen möchten?  Are you certain this is where you want to stop?”  Marie nodded slowly, confused as to why the driver would ask.  She made a saluting motion with her right hand, and opened the car door to step out.  The rain continued unabated, though without the firm concrete of the city beneath her feet and on the walls around her, the thunderous roar was lessened to a pastoral sighing on the long Bavarian grass.

She paused on the far side of the road after shutting the door as the taxi cut a U-turn and drove away...the air smelled sharply of country rain here, and yet there was an acrid scent that she couldn’t quite place, much like the feeling she often experienced when waking only partially from a lucid dream – you sensed things at the edge of your consciousness, but if you tried to reach out and grasp them they disappeared.  Shaking it off, she walked with her head canted down slightly to avoid the rain’s angle, watching her black shoes making ripples in the standing water on the pathway with every step.

The tall, unadorned gates stood just before her.  The lanterns on either brown, stone postern had long since been unlit, their wicks decayed away with time unattended; on either side, a wrought-iron high fence ran for several meters before embedding into the sharp hills that surrounded the chateaû.  Not a whole lot of practical deterrent for would-be criminals, but not only was there little concern about this – her father had always joked that the houses closer to the city would load any burglars down long before they reached the Wagner residence – but the terrain actually made escaping much harder than getting in, which was rather convenient.

The property was unsecured, but for some orange reflecting tape wrapped tightly around the four innermost vertical rungs of the gate; Marie pushed stiffly on the right side, and due to her relative lack of stature managed to edge through without much effort.  The tape snapped back into place, the resultant ringing of iron on iron a welcome interruption to the weather’s ambience, and she continued onwards.  She looked up and ahead through the downpour, her once-home looking foreboding and dark in the light devoid of all colour; vines grew up the northeast corner, up and onto the shingles of the roof, twisting around the lightning rod that stood at attention despite the years.  

She felt uneasy for a moment, knowing that the house’s were not the only remains that lay here, but the graves and mausoleum of her ancestors lay shallowly beyond.  The front door stood ajar just enough that it hadn’t latched, and she pushed this open firmly, asserting herself over the apprehension, and walked inside.  Out of habit, she felt remorse for coming indoors when she was thoroughly soaked, but then realized that even if it did matter, she was the only owner remaining.  However, she did take the time to remove her bag, then coat as a matter of comfort, depositing it on the banister of the stairs to the right of the foyer, and briefly regretted not bringing some form of light.  She had a few matches in her bag, just in case – she was fairly pessimistic, and always thought of everything that could possibly go wrong on an outing (even if it had originally been just to church).

She drew the box forth from the side pocket, then slung the bag back over her shoulder, looking around for something reasonable to light.  It wouldn’t do much good to light any of the original lighting fixtures of the house, which were mainly oil lamps drilled into the wall too firmly to detach, and she doubted she’d be tall enough to pull them out of socket even if they weren’t.  Maybe there were candles still in the drawer of the writing room?  She went to the left, turning the old brass knob...apparently she didn’t need to, because the door gave almost at once.

There were indeed candles – two of them, none too pretty at that – lying in the centre drawer of the desk, and Marie put one in her bag just in case, refraining from lighting the other until she could find something to carry it in – she hadn’t learned from experience, but hot wax probably wasn’t the best to have dripping on one’s hand.  Digging around in the other drawers eventually proved fruitful when she discovered a candleholder – not one with the thumb-ring like were always in the movies, but just a straight and tall one meant for a dining table.  She shrugged to herself; it would work, and style was certainly not an issue here.  She went back into the foyer, turning left again to get into the main room of the house.

There was virtually no light here; the sole skylight in the middle of the ceiling two floors up provided little in the storm, which from the sound of it now hurled ice earthwards, and the overhanging loft around three sides of the room (there was a simple staircase on the fourth) blocked all of it from reaching the walls beneath.  The dining table had been removed, whether by thieves or by those auctioning off her parents’ estate, she didn’t care; so, too, had been the paintings and various photographs that had hung framed around the walls.  Marie knelt and struck a match against the stone floor, being careful not to let any sparks fall on the carpet that covered all but the outer meter of the room, and lit the candle.  It took a moment to catch, and although when it finally did, it provided plenty of light, she couldn’t help but notice that though she could see, the darkness persisted.

Marie spun around at the sound of feathered wings rustling behind her, only to see a raven soar gracefully over her head and in the direction of the entrance...the idea that an avian should have taken up residence in the old place, probably with some windows left open, hardly surprised her; but the silence that had so suddenly given way to the noise had startled her, and the sudden movement made her feel giddy and pained once more from the incident en-route.  She blinked in place a few times, letting her heartbeat slow to a reasonable pace before moving towards the stairs, with the intent on visiting her room, perhaps the rest of the house, and then out to her parents’ final resting place, what she had come here for.  

The carpet as she crossed the room felt miserably rigid beneath her feet, probably from years of disuse and the poor atmosphere, and the stairs creaked and cracked in an unnerving manner beneath her feet; anyone else would have made a remark about their weight, but Marie was often on the edge of underweight, and the thought only crossed her mind in a haphazard, joking manner.  The second floor’s loft felt much more stable, in a way, though she still uncertainly stayed close to the outside walls of stone.  A few of the old tapestries adorned them, hanging dead in the cold, damp breeze that rose and fell from the open space below; some were gold on black, some gold on green and red, clearly one of the few remaining artefacts of her old life.

She sighed deeply, pausing to wipe her glasses of moisture on the underside of her shirt.  Replacing them, she continued onwards around to the left, twice, three times; at the very end of the loft’s extension on this side was the door to her bedroom, which – like the front – sat opened but a few centimetres.  A firm draft tore through the crack, which faded away into a general breeze as she opened it further.  She was most certainly going to freeze to death, she thought to herself as the cold air passed through her soaked clothing...well, she’d been through far worse weather than this, Marie told herself, and if there was time before the train back to school maybe she could find a way to relight one of the fireplaces.

Her room was mostly how she’d left it – the drawers hung all open on the wall to her right, as though expecting someone to fill them with clothes again someday; her bed was the only thing gone, as a German soccer pennant hung over the far wall next to the window, and a few posters of bands and films she’s been obsessed with, sodden from the moisture, adorned the rest of the space that had surrounded where she’d slept.  The closet door was open, completely devoid of anything at all except a few bare hangers – she’d never had a terrible amount of a wardrobe to begin with, or a terrible amount of anything, but seeing the emptiness here was saddening.

She crossed the room to the window, styled as though in a castle straight out of a Dracula movie, pointed at its uppermost jointer.  She blew the candle out incompletely at first, sending up a plume of smoke, then pinched it out and set it down in the sill; the glass was dusty, though it didn’t noticeably detract from the already-gloomy light filtering through, and she looked out over the front lawn back towards the gate.  She felt as though she might cry; her chest tightened up, and her eyes watered slightly, but she shook them off, sitting sideways on the windowsill, watching the rain.

She realized that she hadn’t closed the door behind her, and for a brief moment paranoia struck her – the feeling that someone was standing in the frame, watching her, suddenly weighed heavily on her mind.  She spun around, thankful that there was no-one there, but somehow she felt even more uncomfortable.  Marie cautiously crossed the room once more, quietly, as though she wasn’t supposed to be there...as she was about to close the door, she felt something out of place.

 

Something very wrong.