Building 9 “Vines Cover the Windows”
“Most days, I try desperately to forget my childhood. There are tiny, nagging things that have settled just within the back of my mind, and no matter how hard I try, they will not relent. Most of it is related to my original home, the one I was raised in. I pass it quite a bit, and though it is vacant more often than not, it is the exterior, choked by vines, that continues to keep it where it stands. It has become part of the landscape. But for me it will simply be my former home. I don't think many people live to see their homes turn into legends, but for me there is little I have gained from this. If anything, people who know the history of the place choose to avoid me when they can. To the rest, I can at least be some semblance of normal
My father and I lived in the home nearly twenty years ago. My dad got it cheaply, shortly after my mother passed away. I was born at the local hospital, and though I had plenty of friends. I spent most of my time in my room on the bottom floor. Even back then the vines were thick on the home, and I can recall my room being bathed in green light even during the brightest days. I would hole myself up in my room for what felt like weeks, and during the summer that was likely the case. All that time I would spend just trying to stay out of the way of my father.
I kept my door closed most of the time, but it didn't always help. Late at night I would lay awake in my bed, the streetlamps lighting up the leaves of the vines. In the other room I would hear my father talking to someone, though there was never anyone there. It was never anything clear, but it was certainly his voice with breaks in conversation for someone else to speak. This would continue late into the night, and if I was lucky I would be asleep before he started crying.
I was not ashamed of my father, and I didn't think poorly of myself for him being like that. He would still take me to movies, to plays, and would even on occasion take me out to the woods for camping. The camping trips were the thing I most looked forward to. The house seemed to have a bad influence on him, and it was only when we were outside and far away from that building that he seemed to be himself. At times like that he could talk about my mom freely, and though some might think that as morbid, it was actually comforting. I loved my father, and losing him is something I have really never worked through.
As the years passed, he continued to get worse. At dinner he would insist that I set an extra place setting. The few times I refused he sent me to bed without dinner, though he would ultimately show up later with a small plate. Often we would just have a normal dinner, but sometimes my dad would suddenly get quiet, and the conversation would stop. He would just mumble the whole time, and I would have to grab his rapidly cooling plate and put it away so he could have it for lunch the next day.
My last night in the house, I had again been sent to bed without dinner. But the hours passed, and my dad did not come. I began to get worried, especially when I noticed that the house was silent. Moving as quietly as I could, I opened the door and looked out, noticing that the lights in the living room were still on. I headed towards the end of the hall and looked around the corner. My dad was in his chair, mumbling to himself. Ignoring my growing anxiety, I started towards him, only to notice that he had stopped talking altogether. Out of the periphery of my eye I saw someone very tall was standing in the corner.
She had dark, sunken eyes. She had no hair, and her lips were set thin. She smelled like the streets, though her dress looked new. She looked like a ghost, like something my dad would relate in one of those stories he would tell around the fire. Slowly she turned and looked at me, and in long steps she raised her hand...raised the knife in her hand, and came after me. I remember screaming, heading back to my room and slamming the door. I pushed my dresser against it and quickly headed to the window. I pried it open, but the vines slowed me down.
I could hear her slamming against the door, the sharp slicing of the knife on the wood. I screamed for help, trying to pull the vines apart. But it was a tangled maze, and I could not find my way through. From the light of the street I could see a man and his dog quickly heading my way. He could not know what was going on, but I felt him reach for me through the green. Behind me, the door finally shifted as she cleared the distance from the door to me in a few steps. By the time the man pulled me out, she had put the knife in me twice. The vines broke, and I tumbled out of the window as the man began to pull me away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her move away from the window and head back into the dark.
I found out later that I nearly bled out on the way to the hospital. As fate would have it, if I would call it that, the man had the same blood type as me. The police picked up the woman at my home. They said that they found her in the same corner where I first saw her, just sitting. She didn't even put up a fight when they arrested her. My dad was dead by the time they got there though. He had been stabbed twenty-six times. The woman had been homeless for some time. Apparently he had confused her for my dead mom. Looking back, I can see how he could have thought that.
I moved in with the man who saved my life. His wife is very different from the way I imagined a mom would be, but somehow it worked out. As soon as I was done with college I moved away, though I still often visit my adopted family. But every time I go to Wellington Street, I have to contend with the stares
Some think I might be like my dad, but the doctors assure me that I am not. They say this, but always make sure to remind me that though I don't hear things or see things, that I am still my father's son. And when I tell them how scared that makes me, they remind me that I don't ever have to be ashamed of that.”
The woman turns out to have been a former patient at the local hospital. Her insurance ran out nearly a year before, and she had burned through her assets for treatment. She had no known family, though had many friends from her time there. For many, her transformation since her time in the hospital was shocking, and few were satisfied when she was sent to the local asylum. The woman died some years later, and it is still unknown what reason she had for taking the man's life. The home has continued to have a line of interested parties, and recently has finally managed to find an owner.
