Tethered

Two || Haunted

{Temporary Home - Carrie Underwood}

...Windows in rooms that I'm passin' through, this is just a stop, on the way to where I'm going, I'm not afraid because I know this is my temporary home...

----

As we roll up to the ranch house, I am taken aback by the quiet air. It feels like I am disturbing the ambience with every footstep. It seems I am the only one who senses it, as Uncle Deacon has adjusted, unbothered by the silence. He is a part of it, and, it seems, I am now too.

     My room is rustic and simple as I take in its emptiness, soaked in waning sunlight.  Immediately I drop my cases on the crisply made bed and head towards the window, where cushions and throws lie on a thick window ledge. Aside from a dark wooden closet, and a dresser with a mirror facing the bed, there isn't much else to take in. I am left with white walls and memories, all of which leave me heavy. 

     I spend the next few hours settling in, unpacking and trying to remember just where everything is in the house, with Uncle Deacon leaving me to my own wanderings. 

     My mind is hazy with a rose-tinted memory mixing with the bright technicolour today, as figures pop out in my memory. My childhood feet running through this house, smiling and laughing into the arms of my aunt before she'd have me sit at her feet while she braided my long, auburn hair. 

     Now, there are no pictures of her hanging except in my mind. Her name is on the tip of my tongue, but I dare not speak it, for fear of creating a monsoon of tears in my Uncle's eyes. Even in the absence of her face, her presence, her memory, warms this empty house.

     She's nothing but a ghost now. I'm so used to being haunted that I barely catch the chill that passes every so often. 

----

     My earphones in my ears mute the world around me, instead filtrating music into my ears, the only comfort so far. I've tried settling in, but I feel like I'm walking over settled dust, disturbing an empty household I shouldn't be in. 

     Uncle Deacon had checked on me multiple times, asking 'are you okay, hun?' and I'd joined him for dinner. We sat in broken silence, sprinkled with intermittent awkward conversation which he didn't quite know how to sustain. I left him soon after to nurse the whiskey he was pouring as I climbed the large wooden steps back to the white-walled room. 

     There is the sound of the TV from downstairs, but with my earphones in my ears, I mute it all out. I am in my own little world, in this little room, on this little bed. 

     It's when I hear a slam of a door, and from the open window through my music, I return to the once quiet house, now echoing distinctive noise. I can hear hammering and the shouting of a man. 

     It sounds like Uncle Deacon. 

     My legs carry me to the window, where I sit on the cushions, tucking my knees to my chest. I pull the gently billowing curtain back a little, so I can see what is going on. Down below, the porch the light shines on the scene. 

     Uncle Deacon is standing at the fence where a man is hammering a sign to the front of the house. Uncle Deacon grapples with the wooden sign, turning it in the struggle until I see the words 'For Sale' present in thick black writing. He struggles with a young man who can't be more than a year or two older than me.

The stranger's features are chiselled; his build is strong. He looks kind, and except for him trying to plead with my Uncle, I wouldn't have thought that these two men would have crossed paths. They look like they're from different worlds. The man stands beyond the fence, dressed in smart jeans and a crisp shirt. I don't move. I simply sit and watch, leaning close to the glass of the window to hear their words better. 

  "I'm sorry, Mr Taylor," the man says pleadingly. "I'm just following Pop's orders."

  "Until I say so, this property is not up for sale, Harley."

  "You're three months behind on your payments, sir," I heard him reply. 

  "And I told your Paw I'd pay it back with three months more," Uncle Deacon snaps.

  "I'll tell him," Harley says, relenting, seeing that he's not going to get anywhere by continuing this conversation. "Sorry to have bothered you. G'night Sir."

     I watch him begin to turn away, but as I let myself breathe for a single second, hearing the door downstairs slam shut and the sound of clinking bottles indicating my uncle's return into the house. Yet the figure outside by the for sale sign lying on the ground had not walked very far before I catch him looking up at the window. Looking directly at me. 

     "G'night miss," he says, smiling up the window. I let my head nod in recognition before running back to the bed and under the covers. He's the first exciting thing I've seen thus far. 

     I hope he isn't the last. 

----