Ignis Exponentia

Welcome Back

Chapter 1: Welcome Back

Returning to Algus was not something I was looking forward to, but it was something that sooner or later I would have had to do. I didn’t tell any of my family, or what’s left of it, that I was coming back, although knowing my grandmother it would not be weird if she already knew, it’s kind of her thing as she calls it. Not an instinct kind of thing, but a magic thing.

You would thing coming back home after four years would make me feel anxious, only it doesn’t. Once there was a kid, a normal kid, as normal as one could be in my family, who would feel anxious about normal things, the first day of school after the summer, the results of a test or the long wait for something. But I am not that kid anymore, anxiety doesn’t get me the way it used to, not since months after the accident, when I got to see everything from a new perspective and realized some things are just out of our control.

Driving through the deserted streets of this town was calming. Now, that is something I was not expecting, I expected to feel like a foreign, a tourist visiting a new place, but no, I was feeling extremely calm, like I was finally on the place where I was supposed to be. Only I didn’t want to be here.

When I reached the intersection I had to make a choice, going to the house I grew up in, or going to my grand-mother’s house. The first was going to be empty, not a single person was going to bother me there, nor I would be attacked with a million questions, but at the same time I had no idea of the conditions of the house after four years. It could be a mess on the outside and inside, it would probably have so much dust that we could make people from it. My second option would have at least three people on it, two of which would harass me to know everything I’ve done in the last year since I last saw them. Although the time might help me tonight, it was almost midnight so they would probably be asleep by now. The pros of this option are the food and the clean bed to sleep in tonight.

Yeah, grandma’s house it is. I would take care of the other house when the sun helps me see everything, I don’t think the car lights would help me much if they stop paying the electricity bills.

I turned left and drive four blocks, turning right when I reached Norman St., I continued to the end of that street until I reached the corner of Norman and Millford, and there it was, exactly as I remember it, Clarissa Rosspell’s house.

I parked the car at the curb across the house, not wanting to make more noise than the necessary. Turning out the engine I stared at the faint yellow house that holds so many of my memories. Stepping out of the car I crossed the street without even looking at the sides, I haven’t seen a single moving car tonight since I entered the town, which I find weird, even though the hour.

Now the hour would be a problem, since there is no noise on the street, every little sound I make entering the house could be hear by my grandmother. I’ve always wondered if she took something or casted a spell to develop her hearing sense, sometimes I felt like it was not normal to heard some of the things she heard, let alone for a woman her age to have such good hearing.

I walked to the backyard through the grass, thinking that doing it through the wrap-around porch would cause more noise than walking on the grass, I reached it and walked up the five steps of the back porch. Putting my keys on the lock, I hold them so they wouldn’t make the clicking sound, and silently unlocked the door, opening it carefully. Once inside I closed the door and locked it again.

The house was in complete silence as I expected but the silence was even worse than outside, it was a deafening silence, I couldn’t hear my own heart beating but I had no doubt my grandmother would say she could if she was closer.

I looked around the kitchen and it looked the same, after all how much and old house would change in four years? Is not like Clarissa would go to Wal-Mart or Ikea to buy new furniture. Over her dead body she would say.

Now, time for mission impossible: part 2, I thought to myself. It was time to go upstairs trying to make the less noise possible, I just hoped the wooden stairs wouldn’t creak under feet.

I walked out of the kitchen and into the dining room, following the familiar path to the stairs. When I reached them I started to make my way up them. The moment I got to the second floor I sent a grateful prayer out to the universe, Thank you for not making the stairs creak! I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, and if my grandmother woke up so would my aunt and probably Charlotte after that.

When I reached the door to my mother’s old room which then became mine for a few years, I stepped inside and felt overwhelmed all of the sudden. I hadn’t being in here for years and it was exactly like I left it. But it was not only that, there was something else I couldn’t pinpoint at first. I was definitely the only person in the room but it just didn’t feel that way. I looked to the bed again to make sure there was no one sleeping there, not that grandma would aloud that.

With the strange feeling still there I walked to the bed and sat down, staring at the bookshelf that stood in front of the bed, next to the old desk which was also full of books. I’ve read so many of them already, most were my mother’s, including five that I brought with me when I moved to this house after the accident. I guess I forgot to take them back to the other house before I left.

Leaning back on the mattress with my feet still touching the floor, I felt the weariness of the day washing over me and closed my eyes for a moment. I’ve being driving for a few days now, sleeping on an uncomfortable motel bed and on the back seat of my car, this bed definitely felt good for a change. I opened my eyes again and stared at the ceiling, thinking that I should change and try to sleep. It was then that I remember I left my bag on the car, shoot!

I sat up to take off my shoes. Just as I left the second shoe on the floor and stood up to take off my jeans, something on the bookshelf moved. I looked at the shelves but they all looked the same and it was then than a book started moving forward. One of my mom’s books, I recognized it immediately because it was one of the books I haven’t read yet, not because I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t opened it. It was halfway out of the shelf when I took a step forward to reach for it, but before I could complete my move, it started floating towards me and I dropped my hand at my side. It stopped moving in my direction when it was within reaching range from me and raising my hand again I took it.

Staring at the book in my hands I felt a little anxious for the first time in nine years. Could I finally look inside a book I spend years trying to open? I felt the embossed leather surface with the fingers of my right hand and caress the belt that hold the book close with my thump. I tried to loosen the strap that prevented me from reading it for so many years, and to my surprise it did come loose. I was staring at it, preparing to finally see what was on all those pages when the book opened and the pages began turning until they stopped at a blank page that hold a folded piece of paper separated from the book. I took it and unfolded it to see what it said and what I read paralyzed me for a few seconds.

                                        “Welcome back Igni”

It was a note for me, on a book that hasn’t being opened in at least 10 years, but what caused me to paralyze was the handwriting, it was my mother’s, my dead mother's handwriting.

A rush of energy made me came off my trance causing the book on my hand to close itself and the ones that had begun floating on the desk without me realizing fell to the desk and some to the floor with loud thumps. In that moment the only thing I could think of while looking back at the piece of paper on my hand was “There goes my effort to be quiet."