The road has become a wild place, a place returning to nature. I was a young boy the last time I was here, when the pavement wasn't cracked by evading clumps of finger-grass and hydrangea bushes. The air is thick with the aromas of untended, blooming flowers wilting in the late summer sun, and moist earth in the shade and shadows of the vine-and-moss-smothered dying trees. Mosquitoes and gnats buzz around my head, escaping the frequent swats from my hands. We had climbed over the broken rail gate that blocked the entrance to this road and ignored the “No Trespassing” sign nailed to a post. My footsteps and Mark's footsteps are the only ones that have left imprints in the dirt here in a very long time. Mark is walking a few feet ahead of me. He swats at the insects with a palm frond that sounds like a hand clap each time it makes contact with the naked flesh of his arms and legs.
“I warned you about not putting on enough bug repellent,” I say to him. “You Northern boys know nothing about how insects will eat you alive down here if you let them.” He ignores me, walking on.
The long winding road is overgrown with weeds and bordered by trees dripping with gauzy strands of Spanish moss or choked by the ubiquitous kudzu. Other than the sound of dried blades of grass snapping beneath our shoes, sounding like small Fourth of July firecrackers, it's silent. When I was a young boy and walked this road, I could hear the cry of peacocks on the well-groomed grounds around the house. There were birds that darted in and out of their nests in the trees that line the road, chirping and singing like a welcome party, inviting everyone to a place of stunning visual beauty. The large marble birdbath with putti carved around the base and an angel with his wings spread wide stands as before, but now covered in vines that wind around it like a thousand garter snakes slinking from the ground up.
“The man who owned this property, Miller Hardwick, bought the birdbath while on a trip to Rome one summer,” I say to Mark, who is tearing vines from around the angel's wings. “Mother said the angel having a penis was indecent.”
“The penis has broken off,” Mark says, removing the vines from the angel’s body.
“That would please Mother,” I say.
Before we move on, we stand and look at the uncovered birdbath. There is still some sheen to the marble even after all these years. The bath itself, shaped like a half of a clam shell, is filled with dirt. Small blades of grass poke up through the soil like a miniature lawn.
Just beyond the birdbath, the road ends and the circular driveway leading to the house begins. We stop and, looking across the blue and green algae covered pond and the tall brown grass, we see Hardwick House stands like a castle built with gray stone blocks and transplanted from another era. Even in the glare of noonday sun, shadows darken the tall, layered spirals that point into the sky and creep out from under the flying buttresses. Pointed arches extend upward above windows of dark blue glass. Gargoyles, with their deformed upper bodies and heads with menacing faces, stretch out from the structure. I take Mark's hand in mine.
“I forgot just how spooky the whole thing is,” I say.
I look at Mark. He looks mesmerized, his crystal blue eyes wide open, his mouth agape. His only movement is the slow rise and fall of his chest. A shock of his blonde hair dripping with sweat is glued to his forehead. I reach over and push it back. At my touch he turns to me and. as if stunned, whispers, “I can't believe it's now yours.”
At the large bronze doors – an exact replica of Rodin's “The Gates of Hell” – I reach into my pocket and take out the large metal key I had been mailed when the will was finalized and the deed to Hardwick House was turned over to me. Mark is slowly and silently running his hands over the bronze figures along one side of the two doors. I slide the key into the lock, and slowly turn it and hear a click. I slowly open the doors, pulling both outward. Mark and I stand back and stare into the cavernous entrance hall lit gloomily in shades of blue by sunlight streaming through one of the large stained glass windows. A gust of air is exhaled from the house, like the soft brush of a gentle kiss on my skin. The scents of age and dust waft out. As my eyes adjust from the bright sunlight to the dim light of the interior of the house, I observe the dust-covered sheets that are draped over the throne-like chairs along the walls and the numerous large paintings in their huge, gilded frames. The memory of this entrance, of the chairs, and especially of the paintings, rushes over me.
“These are works of vile imaginations,” my mother said when I first saw the oil paintings of nude mythological heroes locked in combat. “Men from decent upbringings keep their clothes on at all times.”
Once inside we pull the doors closed behind us and momentarily stand breathlessly looking down the hallway, at the ornately carved, mahogany closed doors lining it between the paintings, at the curved marble staircases on each side leading up to the second floor. And then, like children let loose in a playground, we each take a separate flight of stairs up to the hallway. We uncover furniture and throw open doors, the sounds of our unbridled laughter echoing throughout the house. In a large bedroom with blue and white oriental vases standing in each corner, we fall onto the bed with a rose-colored canopy and take each other in our arms, becoming entwined like springtime bougainvillea.
* * *
I awake and the room is dark with the exception of a lit candle on a dresser that casts flickering shadows on the walls. Mark isn't in the bed. I sit up on the edge and see our luggage sitting in front of a large armoire. I step into my jeans and pull them up and walk barefoot out into the hallway. I hear the sounds of Mark's shoes coming from the first floor, his distinctive footsteps carefully placed, like a dancer. I look over the railing, and see a dozen lit candles in the hallway and Mark pacing slowly back and forth in front of the paintings.
“I see you brought our luggage in from the car,” I say and get no response.
I walk down the stairs, the stone and marble cool and slick beneath the soles of my feet. At the bottom, I stand watching him.
“Those paintings are worth millions,” I say.
Mark stops in front of a large portrait of a man dressed in slacks and a white shirt. The man is sitting on a large rock with a landscape of Romanesque ruins in the background. I go to Mark's side and look at the painting. The man is staring forward, as if looking out from the painting, his hands firmly placed on the rocks at his sides. Beneath his black curly hair, large eyes glistening with flecks of green and gray are both playful and yet sad.
“He looks a lot like you,” Mark says staring at his eyes.
* * *
When night has fallen, moonlight from a glowing white moon shines in through every window, bathing the hallway and rooms in shades of blue. We sit at a long oak table in the dining hall, me seated at one end, Mark at the other.
“I feel like royalty,” he says, and I agree. What few foodstuffs we brought in a cooler to last a couple of days has been portioned out. We're having a late dinner of cold cuts, raw baby carrots, fresh kale, and bottled water. Though it's not needed because the room glows with moonlight, a candelabra with six lit candles sits in the middle of the table. With night comes the sounds of frogs croaking from the pond and the less distinct sounds coming from within the house; the settling of wood in the cooler air of night and the rustling of drapes teased by infrequent winds.
“No matter how many times you've told me, I'm still not clear why he left all this to you,” Mark says as he sits back in his chair and looks around the room. Signed paintings by Bouchis, Rubens, and Fragonard adorn the walls.
“I have no idea either. I only met him those few times when I was a boy and he and my mother were, as she liked to say, acquaintances with little in common other than good breeding.”
Mark rises from his chair, I imagine, to clear the table of our few dishes. Instead, he goes to the window and stares up at the moon, as if hypnotized by it.
* * *
In the light of the full moon, I stand in the open doorway of Rodin's “Gates of Hell” and listen to the night sounds; the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the occasional hooting of an owl. The scene in front of me is a tangle of trees and shadows with moonlight reflecting dimly off the dark water of the pond. Mark has gone to bed and here, alone in the constant warm breeze, I imagine the swaying of the dead grass to be waves and I feel somewhat adrift in this place I have returned to. A lone errant cloud passes briefly in front of the moon and, for that moment, everything is cast in darkness. From the interior of the house, I hear a whisper. I turn and hear it again. It is my name being spoken.
“Mark?” I ask. “I thought you went to bed?”
There is no answer. I go in and close the doors and look around the hall. With the candles blown out, the chairs, with sheets still over them and awash in moonlight, laughingly appear too much like the ghosts from tales of haunted houses. Yet, the scene is still unsettling. I climb the stairs quickly and go into the bedroom. Mark is standing at the window, the drapes apart, looking out. His face is aglow with moonlight.
“Were you calling me?” I ask. He turns and says as if surprised to see me.
“Back already?”
“I've been up for a while,” I say.
“I was sure you were just standing by the bed only minutes ago and then left,” he says.
* * *
Mark had tossed fitfully in his sleep all night, which kept me awake for most of it. At sunrise, with the first light of day beaming through the open window, I get out of the bed and wander through the house. In the downstairs hallway, I stop in front of the painting of the man that Mark said looked like me. I look for a signature or a mark of some kind that might tell me who painted it, but find nothing. I don't recall the painting from when I was young. Looking into the subject's eyes unsettles meg, like looking at my reflection in a mirror yet also like looking into the eyes of a complete stranger.
“You must know who created a work of art just by looking at it,” Mother always said. “It's what people of class and culture do better than anyone else.”
After a breakfast of bagels toasted in the fireplace, cantaloupe, and fresh squeezed orange juice, we go out the back kitchen door and follow an overgrown, and almost impassable winding path toward what looks to be a circle of trees. We step into a clearing surrounded by gnarled trees dripping with moss. The grass is short as if it had been recently mowed. Also arranged in a circle just inside the ring of trees are marble statues on columnar pedestals. Vines snake around the lower half of the columns. The statues are gray and weathered, but who the statues represent are easily recognizable. We slowly go from one statue to the next, observing the carved details of each statue, identifying who or what it is. The shield and spear held by Mars. The thunderbolt carried by Zeus. A branch of laurel around the head of Apollo. On and on, twelve in all.
“Until now I thought I had just dreamed it,” I say to Mark. “But I remember getting lost out here, once, and Miller Hardwick finding me and carrying me back to the house, me crying in his arms. I thought I had gotten lost in a cemetery and would never get out.”
Mother said more than once, “The entire place is like a New Orleans mausoleum. It's not a fit place for the living.”
* * *
Mark has been up in the bedroom for some time. I wander into the library on the main floor. It's a large room, two stories high, with shelves lined with books from floor to ceiling. In the middle of the ceiling is a skylight of crimson glass which bathes the entire room in shades of moonlit red. I light a candle and carry it as I walk around the room, gently touching the embossed gold titles on the leather bound books. They are here, all the classics, plus many, many more. On a pedestal in the middle of the room is a large, very old Bible. I thumb through it slowly, looking at the red and black ink images peppered throughout it. At the back of the book is the genealogy chart of the Hardwick family. I trace it from the top of the first page, starting in the 17th century, and flip page by page until ending on the bottom of the last page. There, I see Miller Hardwick's name with that of my mother's connected by a single line. At the bottom of the page, the last entry is my name below a line extending down from theirs. I felt faint. It leaves so many questions unanswered except why I had been willed this house and all its contents.
In the distance, a noise comes from upstairs, a door opening and closing. I go out into the hallway and, in the light of the full moon shining through the window, I I see that the man who I look like is no longer in the painting: only the rock and landscape remain. Then, The Gates of Hell open and I am flung by an invisible force out into a patch of dead grass. The doors slam closed.
The moonlight that is pouring into the house through the windows seems as if it is also being reflected out from inside. Every window is aglow. I'm instantly on my feet. I try to pull the doors open, but, unsuccessful, I pound on them with both fists while shouting for Mark. Around me all other sounds – frogs, the owl, even insects – stop, as if night and noise are not compatible. Looking for a way to climb up into the house, I see the gargoyles along the spirals stare down at me with their gaping, toothless grins. In this moment I recall that while going through the house earlier I had found the lock on the back door broken. I run around the house, my feet pricked by thistles along the path, and fling the door open and rush inside. Going through the downstairs hallway, I see the man from the painting is still not in his frame and I rush up the stairs into the bedroom. Mark is on the bed. The man from the painting – my father – is standing by it. Moonlight coming in through the open window covers them both with brilliant, ghostly incandescence.
“You brought me this beautiful gift, my son,” my father says and bares two long, pointed fangs.
I lunge onto the bed to take Mark by an arm and pull him from it. We both land on the floor. Without thinking, I help Mark to his feet and take his hand, pull him out of the room and down the stairs. I shove open the Gates of Hell and push Mark out. I turn back to the hallway. Miller Hardwick is coming down the stairs. His body is alight with hues the color of a raging fire. Guessing how to destroy him, I pull the painting from the wall, carry it out the doors and throw it out into the moonlit grass. As it spontaneously ignites into flames, I hear the voice of Miller Hardwick screaming out in agony from the burning canvas.
I go to Mark and take him in my arms and kiss him. As if awaking from a dream, he looks up at the house illuminated in the light of the moon and asks, “What happened? Aren't we going to go in the house?”
It is at this moment I'm drawn to the all-encompassing beauty of Mark's neck, a feast of sinewy muscle and arteries waiting to feed a long suppressed hunger. I feel, for the first time, my two front upper cuspids begin to grow into fangs.
Steve Carr (he/him), who lives in Richmond, Virginia, has had over 320 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals and anthologies since June, 2016. Four collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, and The Tales of Talker Knock, have been published. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice.
His Twitter is @carrsteven960
His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com/
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