Ears for Secrets

Some people think it started with the whispers of a wailing, naked girl in the front yard.  The reports are always of a white sheet trailing like a half-forgotten thought behind her, modesty discarded in desperation.  Other people think it started with the pale face staring out of the third story window, dark eyes round with solemn fright.  The keepers, the visitors. . . everyone has seen flashes, ripples on the walls like a great beast breathing.  And like any half sane person, they make themselves believe that their imagination has developed a sudden penchant for pranking. They don't want to believe that the whispered threats to scratch images on the insides of their eyelids are real.

Three floors, eighteen rooms, twelve hallways and a seductive number of square feet for any and every hopeful owner.  That is what it breaks down to on paper for the fiscally-motivated.

The halls of the old house have always creaked, a quiet sigh of settling in for a long journey through time.  Wood is often like that, planed into exacting lines but relaxing into more suitable ones for a site, worn in by the pounding of uncounted pairs of feet up and down the halls, across the rooms, through the doors.  It’s true that the imagination has a way of tricking you, but the sound of small feet pounding up and down hallways above your head, faint music from elsewhere in the building, of muted conversations through the wall are all quite real.

I would certainly know all about that.

I have seen that woman stagger through the halls a thousand times, clutching the sheets to herself as she makes her way towards the broad front doors.  I have seen the little boy’s pale face stare out of the dark shadows in the corner of that room that he huddles in.  Then there are the uncertain looks from people who have felt that breath of unnaturally cold air across their cheeks, a phantom kiss from something begging to be acknowledged.  I have seen misty faces contorted in rage, I have seen them on the cusp of that crucial moment when their passion pulls the trigger on their gun.  Blood cannot be scrubbed clean from unwaxed wooden floors; it can only be covered with ornate rugs.  Forgetting is the harshest insult to them and in this place, they will not let you forget.

"The walls have ears" is possibly the largest comfort. At least something will listen to their secret confessions though there is no priest present at the time of their passing.  The floorboards, the walls. . . these things absorb the laughter and the blood and the rage, hold them inside themselves.

People say that being full of rage leaves you empty, that anger and sadness can eat you from the inside.  I am not empty, not in the least.  I am filled with the tread of feet, the creak of settling wood, the sighing echoes that drift from my water-stained walls.

I am Linden Manor.