I’d slept pretty soundly although halfway through my slumber, I thought I met a small boy called Timmy. The boy seemed innocent enough but there had been a certain eerie aspect to him. It was almost as if he was translucent.
By the time I’d woken up and realized it was just a dream about a spirit, it was two o’clock in the afternoon and my eyelids were just beginning to open to the afternoon sun hovering in the window. Despite my drowsy state of being, I noticed without full comprehension, the door creak halfway open. First a foot appeared on the soft blue carpet, then a hand on the molding on the door frame, and lastly a face appeared in the crevice between the wall and the partially opened door. I’d seen the face many times before; it had been many years since the face had been seen by my hazel eyes, so naturally, the corresponding name eluded me.
“Sruun? Are you awake?” The voice whispered quieter than the world’s smallest violin.
I mumbled something inaudible in reply, and rolled over under the comforter.
“What was that? I couldn’t quite hear. Are you awake?” she repeated the question, this time loud enough to still be considered soft.
I sighed, if ever there was a time when I didn’t want to get up, it was then. “Define awake.”
“You’re awake!” The person flung open the door and ran into the room. “Sruun! Do you remember me?”
“Ask me again when I’m awake.”
“I’m so glad you came here for Christmas! I’ve come every year but I’ve not seen you here since your father passed away.” She said this quite ecstatically.
“Yeah, about that,” I yawned to give myself a moment to find an answer. “I’m staying here indefinitely. Hubert is kicking me out of the house and has been ordered by the courts he has to pay for my residence.” It wasn’t a total lie; Hubert’s death forced me out of my father’s old house, and his money was paying for my food and utilities. I’d also fulfilled the obligation with the government; she didn’t discover what had happened in the previous twenty-four hours.
“Wow, you’re really lucky, aren’t you?” She seemed a little depressed about the topic. “I can only stay here for the holidays.”
I realized who she was at that moment. “Jade?”
“Yes?” She inquired.
“I didn’t know you came here for the holidays.” I lied.
“I’ve managed to convince each consecutive set of people I’ve lived with to let me stay here for Christmas but the orphanage says I can’t live here because our grandparents can’t afford to care for me.”
I thought for a moment before coming to a revelation. “Hubert can send money for you too.”
“How?”
“Didn’t my dad apply for custody of you, just before he died?” I asked.
“I don’t remember too specifically. I remember I received a notification of some kind at the orphanage that someone had adopted me but I didn’t bother asking who because I was sure it was just another idealistic young couple. Then a week later or so, was your father’s funeral.” Jade shrugged. I noticed she continually looked around the room. “Let’s get out of this room.” She thrust her hands out in front of her and shook them vigorously. “It’s not that I’m afraid or anything, I mean this is only the most haunted room in a century-old house. I just thought you’d be hungry.”
“If Jade had been anyone else, I probably would have pointed out her badly hidden superstitious fear but Jade was my only cousin and possibly my only friend.
I stood up, coming to the realization that I’d slept in my clothes and hence they were wrinkled and in desperate need of an iron. The shirt on my shoulders and the pants covering my chilled legs weren’t all that was awry. The floor of the room I’d slept in, which I predicted I could probably claim as my own, was adorned with a blue carpet yet for about two feet into the hallway beyond the established premise of my door, the floor was bare maple and then at the edge of that was carpet again. There didn’t seem to be any transition between the carpet and the rugged appearance of the wood in either circumstance. Opposite the pale hue of my floor the carpet was a cream colored weave. It might have been, at one point, a nice complement to the wallpapered walls, but due to poor maintenance, it was a filthy and grungy display of improper house cleaning.
At the entrance to the hallway, was a sort of upstairs foyer, a landing I guess is the word, with a potted plant claiming a corner as its own. I glanced down the side of the banister to see a few dust bunnies at the beneath me on the first floor. Both the width and length of the stairs were narrow and skinny. At the bottom of the staircase was a single ninety degree turn which was especially difficult to descend; that might’ve been due to the various objects littering the steps. Adorning the walls above the wainscoting were several framed still photographs and muted motion pictures on LCD screens; both varieties of decoration depicted family members, particularly my father, Jade’s mother, Jade, and I at various stages of growth and development.
I wasn’t surprised by the framed LCD screens but U was fascinated by the iages of my father; there were collections of pictures of every family member, each which deserved to be studied. I’d seen all of these photos before but not since before my father had died. Seeing my father sit at a desk writing, exhumed memories that had been buried deep in my subconscious. My fingertips moved to my sleeve where my many wounds were.
I followed Jade from the bottom of the stairs to the kitchen. As I entered the kitchen, my grandfather exited the kitchen. I stepped aside so he could pass, being confined to a wheelchair because his left led was nearly non existent; it had been removed a few inches above his knee.
As I moved from the path of his electric wheelchair, he snapped a hasty order. “You better get out of my way or I’ll kick you!” He teased, waving his stump up and down in a kicking motion. I smiled in reply.
My grandmother was in the kitchen reading a magazine when she whisked me to the general store to buy hordes of all the food I’d ever consider eating. She gathered handfuls of everything I touched. Without her knowing, I covertly slipped everything she picked up, with the exception of a bag of overly-waxed chocolate donuts back onto the shelves. She was too impoverished to buy me extras of things I barely needed.
The general store was one of the few stores that was a five minute drive from any house in the region, and it just so happened to be near to my grandparents’ home rather than anyone else’s. Because of the proximity to my grandmother’s house, I was soon sitting on the floral couch downstairs next to Jade with my laptop resting on a pillow next to me. Jade was the daughter of my father’s younger sister. She was three months older than me even though her mother had been nearly twelve years younger than my father. Jade had spent most of her life in orphanages and foster homes because when she was born, her mother was only fifteen and without a job or husband. Rather than have an abortion, Jade’s mother left the child in the care of the hospital with only a signature and a name. The hospital then moved the baby to one of their homes.
My father was so infuriated at his sister discarding his niece that he refused to speak to her for years. My father had tried to adopt Jade but his financial situation wouldn’t allow it. He was in hid last year of college, had just bought a house, and was going to be a father in three months. The best he could do, with his wife emptying his bank account on trivial things, until the year of his death was send payments to wherever Jade happened to reside. Two weeks before his death, he’d filed for custody of his niece but tragically the grim reaper forced Jade to stay in foster care.
In spite of, or perhaps because of her unique history, Jade had altered her appearance to match her lifestyle. She had naturally red hair, a trait given by her mother, but it was died black with blue highlights. She wore it short; about halfway between her chin and shoulders. Her eyes were a calm shade of blue. She and I were alike in that we were both five feet five inches tall and approximately a hundred and twenty pounds. I noticed from where I was sitting a small tattoo on the back of her neck. It was a few characters in either Japanese or Chinese, I couldn’t tell.
“What do the characters on the back of your neck mean?” I inquired.
“It’s Japanese for ‘elegant’.” Jade answered.
Christmas eve came the following day. The drab country home with the high ceilings was soon consumed in the spirit of the season. Jade and my grandmother had traveled to the edge of the seven-acres to chop one of the thousands of naturally growing trees on the border of their land. Lights weren’t draped off the house but LEDs were string on the tree. In order to further decorate the fresh-cut tree, hand blown glass ornaments laced the sturdy branches. The aroma of baked goods wafted through the open halls of the humble abode. I’d not had a Christmas this warm in years, at least not since my father had passed away.
I sat down on the couch after helping my grandfather baste the turkey. There was a sliding glass door in the corner of the room that led to a small patio. For some reason unknown to me, after just sitting down, I was enticed to step outside into the brisk frosty air.
Even without my coat to warm me, I stood in the sub-freezing temperatures. As I stood, hundreds of barely visible luminescent diamonds floated from the heavens to blanket all beneath it in a substance that made me want a blanket of my own.
The snow continued to fall as the day progressed. Before long, a white Christmas was more than just a mere song, it was a reality. It was just like the ones I used to know-I mean when my father was alive.
This would be yet another Christmas without him sipping hot coffee in an armchair while I tore through the many gifts. I remember sitting in his lap with a small mug of my own to share his coffee. He would let me add my own cream and sugar but it always tasted so much better when he did it for me.
Before long, January had arrived and with it, the return to school. During the week that followed, Jade and I had registered to attend a small school six miles away. Most of the classes Jade signed up for, I signed up for as well. Many of them, I’d already had a year or two earlier but I held myself back for two reasons. The first was because I hoped to have the majority of my classes with Jade, and the second was an extreme doubt that I’d be able to have my records transferred from my old school to prove I’d taken them. It would be a tad difficult to get the paperwork with the government out to get me.
Having had all of the classes before and passed them with a better than perfect score, I was mostly left to my own devices at school. Before long, life became a routine for Jade and I. Every morning the bus would pick us up at the end of the narrow winding country road. After picking up three other students, the bus began a nearly hour long drive. Jade and I sat through history, math, English, and science, or rather, I sat through them while Jade snoozed.
On one of those uneventful days, Jade and I were walking home from the bus stop. The bitter cold sting of winter had long since passed with spring creeping into the leaves of the trees. I followed Jade up the grassy slope to where the house was. Before Hade could open the screen door, a matted black mutt called Moe moseyed up to Jade and I with his tail twirling in wide arcs. I gave his ear a gentle rub which caused his already jubilant tail to swish faster.
Jade and I walked into the house, past a living room with a large throw rug on the floor, through the hallway and into the study. I smiled when I walked by my grandparents’ room because hung on the door was a bullet-scarred metal sign reading “No Trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.”
It wasn’t long before both Jade and I finished our homework. Thankfully, none of our teachers gave much homework because most of our classmates were needed to help on the various farms.
Having completed our homework, Jade and I ventured outside to enjoy the warmth and beauty of the encroaching season.
The house was situated on a small hill, that although the hill was small, it was steep. Less than twenty feet from the eastern corner of the house was a large patch of wild bamboo. Many of the stalks were nearly as tall as the house itself.
Behind the bamboo was an old decrepit barn made from the timbers from the surrounding trees. The wood itself was still in good condition despite being well over one hundred years old. I wasn’t sure how the large hand carved planks had survived for generations with minimal deterioration. There were two other barns further back from the largest; each of them was just as weathered and gracefully decayed. One of them was just large enough to shelter a car or in this case, a rusted tractor. The last barn was hardly a barn at all. I’m sure at one point, it had been the smallest barn, but now it was a heap of salvageable wood.
In the center of the triangle formed by the house, and the first and second barns was a small vineyard. Like everything else around, the vineyard was over a century old. Now the vineyard was inaccessible. It was overgrown with the wild offspring of the original vines and thorny red roses dancing across the ancient wires.
In a straight path back from both the vineyard and house was a large field consumed by meter high stalks of golden-yellow grass.
Jade and I wandered the outskirts of the grassy field. The mud wasn’t drenched with water but it was moist enough our feet sunk in a sufficient depth to leave the pattern of our shoe’s soles. It was like trying to walk through bread dough.
In the dense mud, I saw several different animal tracks embellishing the ground. The largest of these paw prints was about the size of my palm. I assumed it was the footprint of a mountain lion but I wasn’t worried; according to my grandmother, the local mountain lion had become docile since my grandmother had nurtured it as a cub.
As Jade and I walked by an old smoke shack in the middle of the woods, Jade said something I totally wasn’t anticipating.
“Sruun, is it weird that I want to meet my parents? I mean they abandoned me and I don’t even know what my father looks like. I just want to find them and ask them a few questions.”
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