Hilltop House

House, Seventeen

I have no more need, no more patience for play, for poetry. My rooms sit silent and still; an occasional wayward moonbeam finds its way through frosted glass, having cut through the evaporating fog outside. It is strange, this calm, after all the turmoil I've experienced these past months, the constant whirlwind of emotion and sensation. Had I foreseen any of this, I would have been better able to bear the tedium of the years in between my first and my darling, and yet I wager this conclusion is all the sweeter for its surprise.

At this moment, she exists within me in a way I could previously only fabricate. I'd thought I held her in some way when she lived in my concrete and plaster, my metal beams and wood, but to feel her inside of my very being, the me that is true--I could not have imagined such elation. It is as if she is a part of me, built into the very fabric of me, and I literally experience her every moment, her every sensation. Where before I was an observer (albeit an interactive observer) while she was the observed, now we are intertwined in more ways than one, and we will never be free of each other.

But while I should like to leave my physical reality and stay forever with her, it is one thing I as of yet cannot do--separate myself from myself. I am still drawn to the actual structure; it holds me to the reality someone else built for me, one which I was never given choice to enter but was forced into. And even as I was enjoying my first moments with her, something has called me back to this space and time. I am frustrated--will it be always like this? Will I be always pulled away when I wish only to be with her, now that I at last have her? There must be a way to close myself off permanently from this physical structure of mine. Do they not do this, these creatures? They close their confining architecture, presumably take what is animating them elsewhere. I saw it when he--the one who hung from my fixture--took his life before me, long ago; I saw his framework fall slack, but even as it did, there was something behind his eyes, some light, some presence, that took itself out of him and beyond. Where it went, I cannot say. And I've seen others who've abandoned their shelters--so to speak--as well, that old man who died beyond my walls, the woman who attempted to hurt the girl . . . and let us not forget the ones I've taken, the ones who've shown me much of themselves as I held them within my walls and floors. And in my excavation of their malleable forms, in my attempt to find what it was that animated them, they, too, left their shells behind.

I must discover what that would entail for me--if I could only divorce myself from this physicality, this thing that binds me here . . . it is worth considering, for what good is having her if I am constantly called away?

I am in darkness and shadow . . . I am in silence and seclusion . . . from where does this unrest grow? What has pulled me here?

Wait--

How . . . how can that be? A footstep across my threshold, tentative yet firm. I felt nothing ascending my steps, crossing my porch, and even now, what I feel is faint. But I can see it--I see a person, unfamiliar in form. It is certainly not the mother, not in its height and build, and certainly not in its cautious, surreptitious movements.

Why is it here? It doesn't speak; it doesn't turn on the lights, and yet I sense some familiarity in it. I know its desires, for I have felt similar desires myself--it seeks what is mine, and quite definitely, it has a sinister purpose.

It wants to hurt her.

Oooh . . . silent perpetrator, breaker of boundaries--you trespass unwelcome, but what you seek you shall not find. You won't take her from me! I haven't gone to such lengths, waited for so long, borne unbearable torment to lose her . . .

Yes, proceed at your own risk. Move yourself through my obscurity, seek and never find. I will create a phantom for you, bring you up against my walls or to your knees on my floors, and I will drag you in. You wish to dispose of the girl? I will take you apart long before you find her, and I will enjoy the slow process. I will wind my wires through your softness, contort your limbs so that I may make a puppet of you, peel back your layers and peek beneath them. I will watch your beating core as it moves its liquid through your tunnels, caress the inner walls of your skull, invade your every door and window. Do not worry--we will be as quiet as an empty room. We will make no sound; I'll be sure of that.

And yet, I find, frustratingly, that I--I lack the energy, the stamina necessary . . . for I must have exerted all of my strength . . .

No matter. There are other ways.

Will you walk into my parlor . . . ?

Into our former sanctuary--I will allow it (I must allow it, for I fear I have no choice). Open the door . . . what will you find? I'm waiting for you . . . please come inside . . .