Priscilla

S5 ⭒ Episode Eight

"Paradise, he'll take me by the hand to
Paradise, we'll walk along the sand in..."
♪ Paradise • The Ronettes

FETISH

Halen is a liar. With how he described it, I thought his house was going to be a small, cozy, humble home in a distant and spread out community in The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, New York.

He said he was a recluse when he moved back here from California after his divorce. That it was lonely and dark, because he was in a dark place.

He neglected to mention the fact that it was a mansion. Twice the size of Crocket Manor. With land like pastures to match.

"Priscilla, what are you waiting for? Come inside, you'll catch hypothermia being out here any longer."

Shaking away my shock and awe, I tear my eyes from the trickling fountain in the center of his looping driveway.

Stone steps covered in thick, frozen, dried vines of ivy await me and they crunch beneath my heels like fall leaves. I love the sound.

They spread up onto the outside of the house, weaving like veins between the cobblestone and wrapping around the carved pillars guarding the front door.

They even wrap up and around the arch-top stained glass windows on the second floor, and I find it so fitting that Halen is allowing so much of his home to be reclaimed by nature. He has several bird feeders hanging from the eaves of his roof and the grass looks like it's never once been trimmed. The land around him is left to be and you'd think that'd make it look unkempt, or ugly, or messy, but it just looks beautiful.

"Uncle Batsy, where's the big book of teeth!?"

"I'll get it for you, petal." Halen takes off his coat and follows the intensely loud echo of Poppy's voice down the dark hallway in front of me.

I'm left in the empty entryway alone.

Dust glitters in the air and when I unbutton my coat, I struggle to find a spot on his nearby rack that's not coated in it.

I quickly blow to clean the space and reluctantly tuck the neck of my jacket onto the hook.

The lack of temperature difference coming inside of the house is harrowing, and as I walk farther inside, I can't help but wonder if I should've just kept it.

I make jokes about Halen being stoic and brooding like Frankenstein and being moody and enigmatic like a vampire, but this house is only proving my point and it's starting to seem less and less like a joke the more I learn about him.

This house is what I imagine living inside someone's skull would be like. People often say if a home's structure is good, it has good bones, but this house... it's just bones. The air is dry and cool, the walls high and dull shades of green damask.