Crazy

They left me the manor when they died.  It’s been three months since I moved in, and I think it’s burying me alive.

The house holds a fresh memory of what it once was, with the keen knowledge it is that way no more.  It is not a good thing to live in a place that grieves its past.  It does not take kindly to change of ownership while it feels undone.

I didn’t touch the shadows, they creep over surfaces and claim their space with mournful hissing.  The neighbors watch me whenever I’m out, I can feel their assessment on my back.  They wonder if I’ll manage to fit in.  They haven’t seen it yet, but I don’t think I will.  I don’t think this manor house will accept my presence.

There are sheets covering nearly everything.  I didn’t bother to lift them, I didn’t need much in the way of furniture.  After a few weeks, they became ghosts that one shouldn’t upset.

I sleep in the guest suite.  The door to the master bedroom was closed when I arrived, and I have never opened it.  It would be an intrusion.  I’ve come to feel like a burglar in a house that I own.

Weeds close in along the drive, the entrance, the walls.  Curtains drape heavily over their windows.  There is no more air, no more sound, no more space in this enormous house.

Today, I cannot stand it.  Today, I wonder how much worse it could be.  Today, I cannot feel the fear over my suffocation.

I run through the shadows, throwing them into a tizzy as I fling the ghostly sheets off of furniture.  I’m sick of this haunted place, I’m sick of the silence it blankets over me.  Sheets rise and fall, shooting across the floor as if struggling to deny gravity and its inevitable pull.  Some swirl around my ankles, but I’m moving fast and they cannot catch hold of me.

They’ll think I’ve gone crazy.  Maybe I have.  They’ve seen this house, they’ve probably been waiting for the day it breaks me.

I throw open the windows and then run up the staircase.  I burst into the room that’s been closed since I came here, and I yell at the startled dust. “I live here now!  Get used to it!”

I slide down the banister and throw open the back door. It squeals in protest, slamming against the wall as I tromp outside.  The neighbors will probably stare.  I don’t care anymore.  Let them stare and shake their heads at me.

I’m pulling the weeds and nothing will make me stop.  I’m cutting down the tall grass and digging into the garden soil.  The wind that used to beat at my window every night now lifts my hair to cool my neck as I work.

It takes days, weeks, months, but I fill the manor with sound and air and light.  I sweep the whispers and groans and hissing into the floorboard cracks and stomp them down with dancing feet.  I trim back the bushes and pull out the weeds and bring back the flowers to their full bloom.  Butterflies fly through my open windows, pausing to flutter around my head on their way back out.

I fill the rooms with vases upon vases of lilacs.  Their scent fills the manor house, every corner and closet, until it settles into the very structure.

Some nights the house rages in protest.  Branches scratch against the windows in screeching harmony, the walls shift and groan like they’re going to drop the weight they hold, and the dark black shadows whisper terrible things.  I hide under my covers when it happens, coming up with poetry as I wait for it to pass.  And it does pass.  Much sooner than one might think.

I’m climbing the trees and the roof and the porch railing; just because I can, because no one can stop me, because doing so can’t scare me anymore.  I whistle back to birds and talk to the chipmunks and sing to my kitchen stove.

There is too much light to be found for me to get chased into some dark corner and stuck there.

They’ll say I’ve gone crazy.

I’ll tell them it was the best thing I’ve ever done.