Rhayven House (2 page)

Born into superstition,

there is a broken mirror in my past;

And I have my suspicion,

my future will be full of shattered glass.

One

     ...He jerked awake and instinctively reached for the lamp on the nightstand beside the bed. Light drove back the dark. Sitting up, he threw the blankets off and wiped the sweat from his forehead. A bead trickled along his jawline and he wiped it away before it could slide down his neck.

     Yet he still felt the weight of the hand, its grasp.

     The dream didn't usually cause him to break out in a sweat and wake up with his heart racing. Putting his palm against his chest, he willed his heart to slow down and not burst through his rib cage.

     When he'd calmed, he checked the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw it was almost time for him to get up anyway. He swung his legs over, put his feet on the floor, and stood. Somewhere between his bed and the shower, he decided maybe it would be a good day to take a walk, get some fresh air, and just enjoy nature in all its glory.

~ ~ ~

     When he caught his first glimpse of the house, Dorian Harket, also known as Ian by his friends, was walking in the hills, a walk he had taken many times before with his beloved dog. Alex would run and bark her heart out on those walks. She’d passed away the previous June, days before his birthday, at the age of sixteen and a half. He’d rescued Alex from an owner who’d neglected the puppy during the first two months of her life; actually, he had stolen her and never regretted his action.

     Almost a year had passed since her death and he wanted to see if time had healed the loss of her enough for him to take that walk again and reminisce about the good times. Maybe he'd be able to enjoy his birthday this year.

     Ian missed her every day and still found himself thinking he needed to take Alex out for a walk before he went to bed each night. His first thought upon waking and as soon as his eyes opened, was he needed to get up and take her out. Each time he remembered she was gone and he mourned her, the grief squeezing his heart like a massive fist, tight enough to make him lose his breath.

     Memories of their time spent walking through the hills flooded his mind, and for a moment it overwhelmed him and he thought it might bring him to his knees. Everywhere he looked brought back memories of Alex bursting through the foliage or barking at a bird or squirrel. She thoroughly enjoyed the time they’d spent outside; if he closed his eyes and believed, he could convince himself he heard her barks echoing off the mountainside.

     Almost. But it wasn't the same.

     Communing with nature and memories like this, Ian suddenly felt as if he should be chanting or making an offering to the past. Swinging an incense scepter around and spreading the scent. Something more than just walking through the woods and reminiscing. It sounded like a bad song lyric, but that’s exactly what he came to do; walk and think and remember. Honor his little girl, because she wasn’t a pet to him. To Ian she'd been a child.

     After an hour or so he couldn’t take it any more and decided to turn back and head for home. It was a pleasant trip down memory lane, but he didn’t feel he was ready to explore those memories any further for the time being.

     Out of the corner of his eye. Ian caught a flash of light. Maybe a reflection of light off a shiny surface, and something inside him urged him to investigate.

     Taking a closer look, he cupped his hands around his eyes. He could hardly make it out. It was down there, whatever it was. He squinted and peered, willing his eyes to become more binocular-like.

     Nestled down in the valley, mostly buried by trees and other foliage, stood a building. Ian squinted to make sure. A house, he was pretty sure. He’d never realized there was anything down there but woods. But upon closer view, he made out an old, overgrown road leading from the house to…somewhere or nowhere.

     Ian decided he should investigate. He made his way carefully down the hillside and into the valley, not that it was a particularly long or treacherous journey. In less than ten minutes he stood staring at a stone wall taller than he was. It had to be more than six feet. He looked to his left and then to his right and once again to the right, figuring there would be an entrance at some point.

     Choosing right, he walked for a few more minutes and soon he found himself standing before a pair of ancient gates. Stone columns, the same stone as the wall flanking the gates. Atop each column standing sentry were what he assumed were bird statutes. Crows, maybe. Or ravens, had to be ravens. To him, they looked like almost the same thing. Nevertheless, it was creepy. Like discovering an ancient Egyptian relic, but it would have been a heck of a lot creepier if the statues had been vultures or something like that. Very antiquated but ornate lanterns, one on each column, waited to be lit again. Someone had once loved this house.

     The attention to detail on the entrance to the property was staggering. The intricate pattern of the gates alone made him pause long enough to trace his finger along some of the metal; he remembered reading an article about Stephen King’s house and the spider web gates he had on his front entrance. Ian loved the photo he saw online, and was a little jealous.

     While these gates weren’t exactly wide open to invite him in, one was slightly ajar. Peering through the wrought iron design, Ian glimpsed the house, cloistered as it was. He pushed; he grunted as he pushed again, but the gate was rusted in place and wouldn’t open further. He tested it to see how big the opening was—enough for him to shove his head through.

     Wide enough for me to squeeze through.

    
Hopefully he wouldn’t get scraped or punctured by the metal and end up needing a tetanus shot to stave off some kind of bizarre infection. That'd be the last thing he needed. But no risk, no payoff.

    
As he endeavored to push his way through, and in the process, he ripped some of the vines that had entwined the scrollwork and they snagged his shirt.

     Once inside, he surveyed his surroundings. Weeds dominated what apparently used to be a gravel or crushed stone driveway. Even a few trees had taken root and grown. It didn’t require a genius intellect to know no vehicle had traveled to this place for quite some time, decade upon decade. Even so, enough of the driveway remained for him to recognize it for what it was.

     During the couple minutes it took for him to reach the house, he’d figured out what story he would tell if in fact he stumbled upon someone living there. He needn’t have bothered. When he came close enough to the house, he knew immediately it had been abandoned years before.

     Strong white block architecture mixed here and there with what could be Victorian and Second Empire, Italianate, and quite a few other elements he didn’t recognize right off. Dilapidated and in dire need of patient doctoring, it still possessed enough of its former elegance to entice him. Most of the windows were long gone and the gaps stood out like missing teeth in the weathered face of a former silver screen siren. A handsome
porte
-
cochère
had been added at some point at the side entrance and Ian envisioned a fantastic chandelier hanging overhead to illuminate the guests who’d arrived for a dinner party. A work of art, a masterpiece.

     He half-expected a few specters to be leering at him through the remaining windows, their phantom faces a mix of sunlight and shadow, as they watched him and wondered what the hell he wanted with their house. Their sanctuary. And even if those specters weren’t there, a creative writer such as himself could spin a tale about a house like this and populate it with a legion of lost souls; some lusting for vengeance because they’d been wronged in some way or another; others wiling away their afterlife in the place they’d loved the most and been the happiest.

     Walking up to the main entry, he knocked and waited just in case. Beautiful double doors with what could only be sidelights and a transom window above that had been boarded up; hopefully the original glass was still intact behind the boards. When no one came to answer the door, he tried the handle. Locked or rusted in place, it refused to budge. Then Ian noticed the padlock; he wasn’t deterred. He walked around the house and saw each door was padlocked.

     He felt like Hiram Bingham III must have felt upon discovering the
Quechua
citadel of Machu Picchu high up in the Andes Mountains back in 1911.

     Looking up, he was pretty sure the roof certainly would need replacing. But the bare bones of the place seemed to be intact from what he could tell from his vantage point and with his limited knowledge from watching rehab shows on the home improvement channels. Hell, he’d even kicked the foundation walls just like the dude with the blue hair in the one home improvement show he watched awhile back.

     He grinned.

     A home could be built upon these bones.

     Restored, rather. Plucked right from the ravages of neglect and decay, out of the hands of time, and resurrected to glory.

     Yeah, he liked the look of the place. An overall serene feeling—despite the somewhat eldritch tones that created a pall around the place—came over him as he stood there and took it all in.

     Nearly locked in a trance-like state, Ian circled the house again and again, his head swimming with images of himself resurrecting the old majestic place from this dilapidated state, restoring it to the glory it remembered and deserved.

     His thought,
I wonder who owns her
, was followed by,
I gotta have her
. He stroked one of the porte-cochere’s columns and watched the blistered paint remnants fall like snow in a storm. A lost gem amongst the weeds.

     Around the other side of the house, he admired the big window jutting out from the building up on the second floor. Not just a bay window because it was actually an expansion of the room. What was the name of that? He remembered seeing on one of the home improvement shows. It was on the tip of his tongue. An Austrian-German word. Erker? Ärker? Couldn’t quite get it. Something along those lines. Beautiful. He wanted to get inside and check it out so bad, but the sour thought of getting arrested for trespassing was a deterring thought.

     Not usually spontaneous, because he lived by a routine damned near etched in stone, he surprised himself by that last thought. Over the course of the last year, after the loss of Alex, he’d toyed with the idea of moving from his townhouse, selling it and making a fresh start. After all, his book sales had gained momentum, and after the publication of his fourth, he was making enough money to live off his writing, and living pretty good. He’d often thought of pulling up stakes and moving out west to be closer to his sister and her family.

     But then he’d stumbled across this and Fate seemed to have other plans for his future.

     Ian’s mind began calculating and contemplating all the ways in which he could totally pull this off.

     He owned the townhouse free and clear, had a nice nest egg in the bank, and then there was the offer from the Japanese film company to write two more movie scripts to go with the one he'd already written for them and form a trilogy. That was enough to convince him he could do it.

     Providing someone was willing to sell.

     Coventon, Maryland, was a beautiful old town—technically a city, but he preferred to think of it as a town. However, living in town couldn’t really compare to living out here where the fall would turn the foliage a variety of reds, yellows, and oranges. He bet when light streamed down the mountain, it looked like the mountain was in flames.

     A plan formulated in his head; a trip to City Hall and the records office would tell him soon enough whose name was on the deed to the property and he could go from there. The worst answer he could get to any inquiry of whether or not the property was for sale was “No.”

     It wouldn't kill him to try.

     Not being completely devoid of brain cells, he realized he needed to have an inside look at the house before he ever bought it, and have professional opinions on the structure. Nobody wanted to move into a house that could collapse like a hastily dug mine.

     If, as he suspected, the bones were indeed good, most renovation and repair could be done in a few months. Professionals abounded in any area, and there were even honest ones who wanted work. And it would be both very cool and creepy to live in the valley so close to the mystical and mysterious Gold Church. That would surely spur his creativity and there might be a novel in it—not that his mind needed any help coming up with creepy stuff.

     Ian closed his eyes and imagined himself atop the tower in the room encased in glass with candles lit all around him writing his books late at night. Creating by flickering candlelight those gothic tales for which he was known—or at least garnering a cult following.

     Four stories up, he could be above the tops of many of the trees. In fact, it must have been the sun shining on the tower glass that caught his attention in the first place. Kismet, Fate, Destiny, whatever you wanted to call it, Ian felt attached to the house already. It was nothing short of a miracle to find the place now, after all the times he’d walked the mountainside with Alex.