The House

The house loomed large and imposing. It was odd, for a home, and it seemed to set her nerves on edge just looking at it. The windows were unimpressive, simple and set in the long straight rectangular face at regular intervals, more like an office building than a home. She mused that someone must have taken an old school building and renovated it.

She glanced around behind her at the courtyard and tall black wrought iron fence that enclosed it. The grounds were well-kept, but not immaculately so. It had a clean albeit haphazard look to it and she decided that it was not kept by a professional gardener, or even someone who cared overly much what statement it made.

Intrigued and pulled by a force she couldn’t understand, she walked up to the front door. The large columns contrasted little with the reddish brick of the walls. The only thing that jutted from the face of the multi-story building, it had a distinctly southern flavor.

She reached the door and paused. There was something distinctly odd about this house, a feeling she couldn’t shake. Had she been here before? She had, she knew she had, and often from the impression she was getting. Against her own better judgment, she didn’t knock or look for a doorbell, but instead turned the old and unimpressive handle and walked in.

She was immediately hit with a strange foreboding, as if something loomed in the not so distant future that she couldn’t change.

She looked around at the foyer, and noticed the same clean-but-well-lived-in look. The furniture was old, but taken care of. The wallpapered walls could use a good scrubbing. Nothing seemed unusual, nothing out of place. How she knew that she didn’t care to explore.

She climbed the gently curving stairs to the next floor. Her heart fluttered when she noticed the smoke wisping from the end of the hall and she ran down there.

Doorways lined each side of the hall, in regular intervals like the windows. Each door locked. She began to pound on the doors, looking for a way into the rooms, any room. She was looking for something. She paused almost imperceptibly as a strange thought hit her. What was she looking for? She didn’t know and wasn’t taking the time to explore it now.

She had to find it. Or them. She paused again. Was it a person she was looking for? Something tickled at the back of her brain, something she knew she would need to know but she didn’t.

Frustrated, she ran along the hall pounding on the endless line of doors as the smoke slowly filled the hall. She wasn’t worried about the smoke, it couldn’t hurt her. She paused yet again. The smoke couldn’t hurt her? What in the world was she thinking? She willed herself to turn and leave, to run out the door and through the gates before the house overcame her.

Yet her feet moved to the next door, deeper in the smoke, and her hands tried yet another handle. She needed to get in there, to check this room, to check all of the rooms. There was something here she was meant to find and she needed to find it now!

She moved to the next door and didn’t even bother to cover her face as the smoke swirled around her head.