HE WORKED TO MAKE IT down into the belly. Cutting and crawling. Losing direction and then finding it again. Pulling vines and pushing limbs and then he was finally there. Colburn stared at the house and felt as if he had been transported into another realm. That he was caught in some black-and-white photograph that gave no inclination as to time or place.
Do you have any answers for me? he thought.
He moved across the porch. Leaned the machete against the doorframe and he walked into the hallway. He touched his fingers to the rough plaster walls and he was nearly to the end of the hallway when he felt the deep cut into the plaster. He stopped and stepped back and carved into the wall was a stick figure. On the floor beneath the stick figure was a scattered pile of chalky crumbles. The figure stood almost as tall as him. An eggshaped face. No eyes and no mouth. He moved his finger along each arm. Down the trunk. Along both legs.
Colburn looked down the hallway and to the open door. Making sure the machete was still there. And then he asked the house again. Do you have any answers for me? All I need is one answer. One something. You have been here for so long. You know what’s down here. Help me.
A storm was moving into the valley now and the rain had begun to fall and the wind sang down through the vines and he listened for what the house could say to him. So many had claimed that this valley spoke to them and maybe it has spoken to me too but I don’t need a maybe right now. I need an answer and I need to know if she is here somewhere. He kept asking his questions and hoping for answers and then the voices of the valley came in a chorus of wind and rain and he raised his hands and pressed them flat against the stick figure. Dropped his head and closed his eyes and the house spoke.
I’m like you, it said. I’ve been so lonely. Buried by time. So far away. There once were voices here. There once was laughter. I gave them fire in the winter and the smoke rose from my chimney and reached into the night, rising toward the stars and proving that I belonged. In the spring the footsteps of children knocked against my floors and wild roses grew next to me and gave rich pink blooms and when it rained they stood on the porch and held their hands under the runoff from the roof and splashed the water on one another and behaved like children are supposed to. Sometimes the children cried and sometimes the mother and father cried but it never lasted long and I held them and they held one another but one day they left and they did not come back. I waited and waited and I watched the years go by and I felt the rain and I felt the heat and the birds nested inside and the wolf dragged its prey onto my porch and I believed they would return. But no one returned and then as the years went on I began to watch the vines creeping across the hillside. Moving across the valley without discrimination and taking the land and taking the trees and the blooms and I knew it was coming for me. It moved so slowly but I never stopped watching and all I needed was one of them to return and see what was happening to the valley and to see what was going to happen to me. All I needed was one of them to come back and take out their blade and cut it back. I was going to disappear and I never took my eyes from the vines as they slithered right up next to me. Slid under me. And then began to crawl up my sides and through my floorboards and over my roof and no one came. Now I’m gone and I belong to the kudzu just like everything else here belongs to it and I knew there was evil in its growth and in its reach. How can you stop such evil?
Tell me, Colburn thought. Tell me all of it.
No matter how long it has been since I have felt the laughter and the pulse of life I know that what moves in and out of me now does not belong and in those nights when I’m afraid I pray for the earth to open up beneath me and swallow us all so that no one else has to feel what I feel inside and I want to close my doors and windows and hold it hostage like the vines that hold me hostage but my windows are broken and my doors are crippled. So there is only fear. They left me here. And no one told me it would be this way. I thought that being alive meant something else. Why did they make me? Only to leave me this way?
I don’t know, Colburn answered. I don’t have any answers for you. But do you have any answers for me. That is what you can do to feel alive again. You can give me an answer because I am like you and I wonder the same things. Why did they make me to leave me this way? But you are not as alone as you think because she talked about you. Can you feel that? Celia pointed out here and said you existed. Not everyone forgot you. And there are others who remember you. I bet those children remember you and remember the rain from your roof and the fires in your chimney. They remember their mother in your kitchen and their father putting them to bed. Those are things that cannot be taken away and those children and their mother and father are out there and remember you. You are inside of them like they were once inside of you and you are in their dreams. Does that make you feel alive?
I’m afraid. That’s how I know I am alive.
Colburn opened his eyes. Removed his hands from the wall. He stood still in the hallway and listened to the storm and then he repeated what the house had said to him. I’m afraid. That’s how I know I am alive. And he knew that if he moved from this spot he would see him. He knew that if he walked to the end of the hall and looked inside one of the rooms, any of the rooms, he would see his father swinging from the ceiling beam and his eyes would be open and pleading and resentful and broken all at once. The eyes he could never read and the eyes he always searched for tenderness and he knew his father was here and swinging and waiting to set his eyes on Colburn again. He stood still in the dull gray. In the black-and-white photograph that was fading and weathered and he did not want to see him and then he heard his mother call from another room. Her voice faint and trembling like a trickle and he pressed his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes closed and refused to listen to them or see them but he knew they were there. His mother calling and his father swaying and he doubled over and rocked and grunted and then the thunder rumbled and it came as the sound of the dog, the low growl as it stood with its head poked between the space in the fence, the low growl as it watched and waited and then changed them all, the living and those yet to be born. And the house said I told you so. I told you. There are things here that shouldn’t be here and now you feel it too. And then Colburn raised up and screamed back at the house. Shut up. Either help me or shut the hell up. I’m not looking for them because I’m looking for Celia and either goddamn help me or shut up.
I told you, it said again.
He was breathing hard now. Gasps of despair. He opened his palms and looked at the blisters and cuts and he tried to slow himself. To remember why he was down here. He then moved to the end of the hallway and looked into each of the back rooms. One was the kitchen. In the other room was a fireplace and a mound of leaves large enough for a man and the depression was covered with a blanket. Colburn reached down and pinched the corner of the blanket with his thumb and index finger and he lifted it from the nest. Once upon a time it had been skyblue but now it was faded and gave a putrid smell. He stretched out his arm and wrinkled his nose and as he dropped it back onto the nest he noticed that he was surrounded by more stick figures. The walls covered with them. Some of them tall and some of them like children. Some of them holding hands. And on the floor beneath the crowd of stick figures he recognized his own chisel and longhandle flathead screwdriver, surrounded by the crumbles of plaster like dirty fallen snow. In the far corner of the room was a pile of things that had belonged to Celia.
Colburn knelt at the odd gathering of souvenirs. Cocktail napkins from the bar covered in notes she had scribbled, a cigarette lighter, a pair of sunglasses. He thought he heard a footstep and he stood. Looked toward the doorway. And then he saw her dress, hanging from a nail on the wall. He stepped through the bed of leaves and snatched it from the nail. Held it up by the straps and it was filthy and torn but it belonged to her. There was no doubt and then he knew it was the boy and he saw it all. He saw the boy waiting outside the bar and following them out to the valley. He saw the boy hiding in the valley beneath the vines and watching Celia as she came down the pathway. He saw the boy using Colburn’s own stolen tools as weapons to do whatever he had done to her. He spun and looked around the room once more before tucking the dress under his arm and he had taken one step into the hallway when he heard the footstep and saw the shadow just as the back of the shovel blade clanged against his forehead and all went dark.