Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER TWELVE lux ᴏᴄᴛ. 18ᴛʜ, 10ᴀᴍ
OCTOBER WAS THE month of ghosts and it had began to rain. The clouds pressed low towards the earth like desperate hands reaching out to feel something real. October, unlike any other month, was a sharp in-betweenness of reality and otherness, all the while trying to make itself larger than what it was— a quiet vagueness between September's emptying summer and November's bleeding winter. It was a harsh middle-ground where almost anything was noticeably strange, or simply just not quite right.
Rosefield Street likened to staring into a white mirror. The street was one house copy and pasted until a long road was printed with the same design. The Blanchard's had a willow tree which differed from the rest, but the houses were all chiefly the same.
Spencer pulled the door closed to number 76, staring at the empty windows weeping back at him. The driveway was absent and the police tape was rattling in the low winds. Perhaps he was wrong, and the street wasn't one house replicated onto the next. 76 Rosefield Street was a grand and imposing mausoleum. A tomb of secrets, a house of Death. Quietly— Silently, five ghosts walks among the hallways forever, trying to escape from their suicides.
Unearthly feelings settled in Morgan's stomach. He checked the road, even though the road was empty, and crossed onto the house opposite— 73 Rosefield Street. Bernadette's case was a terrible one because he didn't have a solid foundation to stand on with whether or not he believed her to be guilty. Ordinarily, he could tell. Ordinarily, he knew what was going on. This was not ordinary, he learned. This, a perplexing mystery that was never going in one straight direction, frightened him.
House 73 stretched up into the sky and owned a poised steadiness. Spencer thought it looked like the sort of house that would make its inhabitants descend into insanity. Blank walls, empty halls, elongated windows like hanging mouths, large doors that never saw joy, perfect rose bushes on the outside lawn. It was all so one-dimensional. So simple and—
"Sad."
"Huh?"
Spencer cleared his throat. "This street is so sad."
Morgan laughed, "What? You don't fancy being wealthy enough to live in a street like this? Big house, big money?"
Spencer made a face at the floor. His eyes pinched at the corners and his heart tugged in all sorts of places. There was no homeliness to the houses, no history. They were all the same like graves, all only slightly differing depending on what flower was planted on their front lawns like the varying names on headstones. Either way, Spencer saw sadness in the street. Big homes to dissuade the watcher from noticing that really there was no heart sleeping inside.
