The Ink Well Prompt Link
Prompt Phrase: "What if that loose floorboard was actually a hidden passageway?"
I used my shoulder to hold the phone up to my ear as I knelt down and lifted up the flower pot. “I don’t… see it,” I said.
“Try the one on the side porch,” said Mark, my cousin. “Sometimes she leaves it under a different one.”
“Why do these old farmhouses have two front doors?” I tried to entertain him with a random thought while he was waiting, as I walked on the gravel driveway to the side of the house. The sun was starting to set, but the hot weather and humidity was making me sweat. I lifted up a flower pot. “Nope,” I said. I lifted up one on the other side of the porch. “Okay, I found it.”
I pulled a cord switch to turn on the light to the attic stairs as I made my way up. This provided just enough nearby light for me to search around for the main attic light. I stood looking around the room among the unfinished slanting walls and up at the rafters for a light switch. I looked down to see a switch connected to a cord running along the bottom perimeter of the attic. I flipped the switch, only to hear the clink of something being released; as though something was popped open and pressure was being released. I kept looking around to see where the sound came from, but was distracted by another switch on the wall. I found the light and turned it on. Then I saw my cousin’s box of sports equipment he’d described, and walked over to grab it. As I was walking over, I tripped over something sticking up: the floorboard that had been unlatched by the first switch. I looked over at the other switch, and was able to make the connection. I observed the contrast between the nineteenth century farmhouse floorboard door and the sophisticated electronic lock that was installed to lock it. It must have been installed within the last twenty years or so.
I lifted the door up, expecting to see maybe a small hiding spot the size of a box; perhaps some extra storage space. Instead, there were wooden spiral stairs; walled in and wound so tight that you couldn’t see where they led.
I made my way down the stairs using the flashlight on my phone, only to come to a small landing spot followed by a tube slide. But how does one climb back up? That was one of many questions running through my mind. As I’m sliding down the slide, I’m trying to calculate which level of the house I’m going to be on. The first floor?
I slide down into a tiny windowless room about the size of a walk-in closet. The floors and walls are old and wooden, but someone has still managed to connect electricity to the room. It was more drafty than other parts of the house; despite having no windows or vents. I turn on the lamp on the tiny shelf that sits in the corner and see a space heater, unplugged, on the floor. An antique wing-back velvet armchair, with mahogany details sits near the shelf; its color reminding me of a penny. It’s paired with a Victorian Rococo leather ottoman. A large worn Persian rug stretches across the room, with the ends slightly curling up the walls. One corner sticks up in the air, since the room is an odd “L” shape. My aunt collects antiques, but then I realize this space was used by my uncle Cliff when I look over and see the mechanical engineering and physics books; an MIT pencil in the jar among the pens and highlighters. I pick up the printed out document that sits on the ottoman; inscribed with arrows, notes, and corrections.
“She called me Prancer, because I would always go for the prancer horses; the ones with two back feet on the ground and two up in the air. I called her Jumper, because she always went for the animals that had all their legs in the air and moved up and down. She was quiet and mysterious at first, but funny and spontaneous once you got to know her. I’ll never forget how I met her. I sat back in the elaborate carousel sleigh, grabbed a plum out of my satchel, and next thing you know, I was asleep. I woke to a beautiful, yet bewildered, soft oval face; cautiously advancing toward me. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. I was further awakened by her beaming smile; caused by her teeth being too large for her face. Of course, she was instantly recognizable by the two freckles on her upper left cheek.”
As I read this passage from the manuscript, my uncle Cliff’s funeral was immediately summoned to my mind: that blonde lady with the big teeth and freckles on her cheek. No one could figure out who she was or why she put a crown in the casket. It was a gold fiberglass crown, about the size of a mug, that looked like it had broken off of something. No one stopped her, or said a word to her. They just talked about her afterwards.
“Wasn’t that your aunt’s friend from high school that used to hang out with her and Cliff?” my mom said to me when I brought it up on the way home.
From the driver’s seat, my dad interrupted with a completely different connection before I could reply to my mom. “No, that’s that girl whose sorority would have events with his fraternity. They were close back in college.”
“Hmm…,” was all I said in reply to this, while staring out the window; not wanting to get into a disagreement.
I held the rough draft manuscript in my hands as I continued to look around the room. An antique wooden clock, displaying the wrong time, sat on the small shelf. Next to it an old brass key tray, filled with receipts and loose change; nothing interesting. I heard light scraping against the wall, as though wind was blowing branches. But it’s not windy today? I looked the wall where the sound was coming from and realized it wasn’t a wall; it was a door that looked like a wall. It was a wall with a tiny slot where you could push up a button and unlatch the door to slide it open.
I went to unlatch the door, but was met with resistance of something protruding into the sliding door track. As I peered through the small opening, I could see it was most likely overgrown shrubbery. I pushed the door harder and made just enough room to sneak out into the mysterious setting. I had stepped into the path of an overgrown hedge maze. Just by walking through it, I could tell it wasn’t maintained. There were many dead spots among the boxwood and patches of yellow, tan, and brown throughout. The maze was obviously losing its maze shape.
After multiple twists and turns on the pea gravel path, I came out to an open area scattered with some trees and a forest in the distance. Within the forest I could see an aged carousel with faded colors; parts of it shrouded in ivy that crept up through the middle and inched its way up throughout the years. It reached out and latched itself onto the circle lights surrounding the mirrors, engulfing the colorful Baroque wall sculptures and paintings of cherubs that alternated with the mirrors. As I got closer to the carousel, I could see that part of it looked collapsed. Then I was distracted by a tree whose leaves looked different than the others; some shriveled up plums still attached to the branches, but most had turned into prunes on the ground. It was the plum tree where the character from the manuscript had picked his plums and put them in his satchel.
I arrived to the carousel and walked slowly around it, looking up in wonder. I walked past the sleigh, which was now cracked and rotting. The purple paint was chipped and mold crept up one corner. I kept walking and finally came across a partial answer to a question I’d asked long ago; I found where the crown came from. It was broken off of the fiberglass frog that stood with two hind legs on the ground and two front legs up, as though it were leaping. Its saddle was shaped as a king’s coat; red with black and white spotted lining.
I started walking farther into the forest, but was stopped by a long thin layer of fog that gradually became thicker. It soon morphed into a large mirror resembling a fence that kept me from going any farther. I saw everything behind me; the carousel, the trees, the field, and the end of the hedge maze in the distance. Only, I didn’t see my reflection. I looked toward my right and saw a reflection of myself as though it were next to me, looking at itself in the mirror. It was like an out of body experience where I was watching myself. I realized that reflection must have been looking at a different reflection next to it, too; and so on. This sudden awareness of infinity created an unsettled feeling within me.
This was the end of uncle Cliffs unfinished story, and I needed to accept that. I would never find out the story behind the frog crown. The carousel was beyond my repair, and the beautiful setting he’d created was slowly crumbling. As I walked back to the hedge maze, I decided to focus on what I could do to preserve this. I walked back into the writing room and looked in the small closet that was near the door. Next to the wall ladder that would eventually help me out, was a basket on a shelf. I grabbed the basket, then stepped back outside, through the hedge maze, and over toward the plum tree. I picked the plums that were still on the tree, and maybe salvageable. Then, I pitted them and took the pits home to plant in a pot. Only two of the pits grew into plants. But once they were planted outside, the trees produced ripe plums that would offer more pits. Soon, I had an orchard and this infinite quality of nature gave me a sense of comfort that my uncle's story would live on.
