The House of Hidden Things

XII: Ink

Bridgeland Manor

I push the empty box out of the bathroom with my foot. Slowly, across the worn hardwood. Feeling easy resistance and uneven spaces in the oakwood. Slanted handwriting covers the other boxes, my own handwriting etched into the available spaces. Some of these boxes are new, pulled from the left over the stack of them in the drawing room, the other was slightly charred from the rooms I had found them in on the second floor. Packed before the fire with winter clothes and Agatha's leftover jewelry.

The ones at my feet, pushed into the hallway before the bathroom, are half organized (Nothing as organized as the leftover spaces under my feet – heirlooms and figurines – all tightly packed and covered from dust) but each was claimed entirely by a small ginger cat. Who's question mark tail is poking out of the few boxes lined before the melted grandfather clock.

Most of the rooms on the second floor were closed up, when I arrived, now their doors are eased open with bookends and doorstops. Sheets pulled over furniture in these rooms. But these aren't as crips are the others. They were greying, stained from dust and soot, and they smelled of old mothballs. Unworn clothes and molded window seal.

I lift the cardboard box, my bones are sore and aching. My mind tired. The grandfather cooks rests along the staircase landing, and the little cat takes up the rest of the stacking space, so I perch the box onto the top step instead. The wood wide enough to hold it and steady enough that it doesn't groan under the weight of it.

Bridgeland had been a slow riser in the drizzling cold. A thick mist had crawled across the rolling acres, touching each skeletal tree and crumbling tombstones at each side of the manor. But on the second floor of the house, under the third with it's melted brass handles and above the first with it's new wood and creaking floorboard, Bridgeland breathed deep and settled without disapproval.

Medora pounces out of her claimed kingdom. Her paws landing without sound before she walks between my feet. I bend down to twirl her tail once, twice. She stops when she feels my fingers and purrs under the warm touch.

"Working hard?" I ask her, watching her stretch forward in a long arch. She yawns into it catching her claws on the oakwood. "Moving all of those boxes must have been hard work, eh."

I step over her, shuffling into the bedroom at the front of the house – one of the many guest bedrooms but unlike the others this one can't be seen from the outside. It's windows are tucked behind an alcove and it had none of the grander of the other bedrooms. Which made it one of my favourites.

A single wireframe bed is pressed against the far wall. A stone fireplace built into the opposite wall. A garment bag hanging from the open standing armour . Empty of anything else. I pull the bag out of the hanging space, the cold metal digging into my palm. The cloth bag crinkled against my forearm as I fold it over once, twice. There were already a few in the cardboard boxes in the master bedroom, but I hadn't opened that door yet.

The hinges whine when I close the guest bedroom door. The trinket I used for a doorstop grates against the floorboards. Loud and sharp but there is another scrape of a sound – the scrape of something moving against stone.

"Medora," I call out to her, setting the garment bag into a box, pulling it shut, before checking behind a few boxes for a question mark tail. "Whatever your playing with it's not a toy."

I get an answer in the form of tiny graceful steps but instead of coming from the rooms up here, they come from below my feet, follow by a deep, ridged hiss. I lean over the side, into the banister. Scones lining the walls are fading, hands holding single pieces of string with bulbs attached at the bottom. High enough on the walls that I could reach and touch one, leaning out into the wide open space above the staircase but, low enough that, if she tried, Medora could knock one over.

Over the banister I could see the billiards room door and the double archway of the kitchen. From up here I could see the dark woods shining in the ends of foyer light. From here it was easy to see where the flame had reached and where the new woods caught the old textures. Side by side, there was a deep contrast with the ginger coat gleaming against the dark colours.

She's sitting in front of the Billiards room door, new but decorated the way old things are, the door is closed. A long tail curling behind her body, waiting. "What are you doing?"

The cats ear flicks back catching the sound of me coming down the stairs and only returning to match the other ear, when I'm behind her. She doesn't turn away from the door. She doesn't make a sound, she's simply listening to whatever on the other side. I reach out to grab the golden knob, intricate and unlocked, it eases open with a whine, the way all doors in the house do.

For a moment I think it's probably a mouse and cringe at the though of cleaning another off the floor. The ginger cat gets up and stalks into the room, head and tail down, alert. She pays me no mind disappearing under a chair before popping up against the mantel piece. Framed painting of long since dead family members watch with grime faces and dull eyes. Their portraits hanging above the largest of the fireplaces inside Bridgeland, eyes cast down with disapproval at the stonework that was once perfectly aligned.

Now the stone was twisted and loose just above where Medora is now above the fireplace. Her tail hanging over the side at the piece of asymmetrical stone. The pieces around the edges crumbling off in thumb sized chunks.

The stone work– the piece hanging off, were layered grey stone. The hearth had been blocked by two thick sheets of metal. A precaution. The billiard room hadn't been touched by the fire. It didn't have smoke damage, the black veins and split wood didn't reach this room. It was too far into the house. Too far removed. So why was the stone falling apart?

I pad across the room, moving around sheets of artwork and wrapped pieces of statues. Up close the mantel was in worse condition that I thought: the pieces of stone were cracking in chunks, the welded edges were loose but behind the exposed inside of the stone were was a smooth edge.

Smooth and smudged with– ink? I slide my thumb across it but whatever it was it's dry and weak pieces of stone was exposing more of it.