The Wellsley House
The house used to be beautiful. Its white paint gleamed in the Oklahoma sunlight, and its porch was home to a well-loved bench. Its windows were full of laughing children. The corn fields grew fat and luscious with each fall harvest. The Wellsleys had owned the property for as far back as anyone could remember. Their farm stretched for miles, so that their house was protected from the prying eyes of their neighbors. The children would pile onto the wagon every Sunday and ride down to Church, getting a glimpse of the world outside. Their shrieks of delight could be heard ringing through the town. That was a long time ago. All those children are dead. They died on the farm.
Now, the house is faded. Its paint has mostly chipped off, revealing the bare wood underneath that has grown green with moss and fungi. Of course, the sun still shines, but there is no one to appreciate the light. The bench is thread-bare and can barely support the weight of a child, let alone Old Man Wellsley himself. It really ought to have been made into kindling long ago, especially since all the rest of the furniture was burned in the backyard many years before. The windows are shuttered, except for the one in the attic, where the Old farmer sleeps. A yellowish light streams out of the cracked pane and projects itself onto the ground far below. And that ground has long since lost its vitality. The corn grew weak and sickly and eventually stopped growing all together about the same time the children stopped living there. The place died. Now, his house stands out like a sore thumb, visible for miles around as the only thing still grasping onto life in that farm. In the dusk, it stands out like a shadow against the horizon. But he doesn’t need privacy; none of us townsfolk check on him, and he returns the favor. All that thrives there now is shrubbery and dust that, when kicked up, creates a fog so extreme, that you’d think we were heading into another dust bowl.
It was on one of those foggy, dusty, suffocating days that our Mr. Wellesley was stopped in his normal routine. He woke up with the sun, and, since it was fall, he trudged out to collect the few remaining strands of corn that still held onto life in the far corners of the land. Without seeming to gasp or cough or struggle against the dust, he trekked to the edge of his property, nervous to be out of sight of the house. He saw a thick, black bird flying overhead; without a second thought, he brought his rifle up to shoot it. He always carried a rifle and shot with a blank stare.
Dragging the bird behind him, he mutely returned home and finished up the chores. He wasn’t particularly neat, but he had to make his own food and darn his own socks, being as he was without a wife. He filled the teapot with the silty, colored water that dripped out of his faucet and put it to boil on the stove. He planned on skinning the bird and cooking it for dinner, once he’d done his work for the day. The farmer was firm in his request that no one should enter his home and so took to doing an annual deep cleaning. That day, he was set to wipe off the bacon fat and grease that had collected on his walls from his daily feast. That would take a very long time.
As the water boiled, he opened the door and looked outside. He couldn’t see out to the road that passed his property, which made him feel safer. He sighed aloud, breaking the silence that filled the house. The world felt so still, he thought with a slight smile. He tried not to remember the time when the house overflowed with running children and yelling mothers—messy people who tracked mud on these nice wooden floors. He’d taken care to keep them clean and reverently keep the solitude of his farm.
His lips—the small, puckered kind that rarely smiled—could barely be seen through his tangled white hairs. Real men don’t shave, his mother had told him long ago. She had been so lovely and so hardworking. She never bent, she never broke. No woman had been able to match her charm, wit, and vitality. She was the lifeblood on the farm, shining like a shuck of corn on a burning hot day. He didn’t mourn anyone else because no one’s presence was like hers.
Breaking his lonesome memories, the whistle from the copper pot brought him to attention. He had just taken it off of the stove when a knock came from the door.
He had just been watching the overgrown path to his house, so he should have seen someone coming. Still, he reasoned, concerned neighbors ventured into his den every few years to make sure he hadn’t died.
When he opened the door he felt an emotion he hadn’t felt in a decade—shock. He thought about slamming the door on the kid’s face, but before he could make up his mind, the boy spoke.
“Hello,” said the young boy, “My name’s Jamison, and I was wonderin’ if you would consider signin’ a petition.”
“A petition? What sort of petition?” the old man wheezed.
The boy stepped inside the house, breaking the sanctuary, and explained that he wanted the townspeople to sign an agreement that would expand the local cemetery.
The old man thought of his own mother’s body buried deep in the graveyard; “Why would a puny little thing like you be thinkin’ about that?”
The boy thought for a moment, then looked the old man in his squinty eyes and said,
“My mama’s about to die, and she’s lived here her whole life. She wants nothin’ more than to be buried here in Granepoint. Unfortunately, the lot is full, but I’m tryin’ to have it expanded for her.”
The man thought about asking this intruder why his mom was going to die but thought better of it.
Still, the boy mumbled, “Tuberculosis.”
The man felt the floorboards collapse under his feet. His own mother had passed away, fifty years ago, from the same consumption. He looked at this child, with his dark round eyes and sun-darkened skin, and his heart softened.
“Look, I’ll sign your petition, boy. I’ve been there, and I know how it feels to lose one. Ya’ got a pen?”
The boy meekly offered him a pen that didn’t write. He apologized quickly. Farmer Wellsley looked around in apprehension.
“Look boy, I think you better accomp’ny me while I search around here for somethin’ to write with.”
The small boy followed the man as he searched around the house. He went to his room in the attic, carefully scaling the steep plank stairs. The room was just about empty, as if made up for a guest rather than the sole owner. He had a small bed, a nightstand and a dresser, each made out from other pieces of furniture from when their owners moved on. The boy stood by the door. But the man still opened the drawers in a way that would hide its contents from the young child. Not everything was fit for kids’ eyes. Silently, the man exited the room without a pen.
Then, the two went to the rooms that hadn’t been used in years: his sisters’ rooms, his brother’s room, and, finally, his mom’s room. He avoided it like the plague, but this boy’s soft, grasping hand and sad eyes compelled him to help. That way the kid would leave in time.
Her room was the only one that still had real furniture in it, but that didn’t mean much. There was a rusted old bed and a carpet speckled with stains. There was a desk full of spider webs and a creaky old chair. Mr. Wellsley found a pen in a drawer on her desk, left over from when she would stay up nights and write in her diary.
“I doubt it works, but we can try,” the man grumbled.
They walked back to the living room, which was empty of everything but an old TV. While he scrawled his signature, the boy looked around. His eyes caught on the old teapot still boiling on the stove in the kitchen.
“Any chance I could have some tea? I’m awfully thirsty.”
The man looked around. He hesitated. Then, his eyes narrowed. He grinned.
“Sure. Let me cook somethin’ up for ya’. In the meantime, you can watch tv. I’m sure you’re exhausted from travelin’ around all these houses all day.”
The boy thanked him and sat down. While he fiddled with the knobs, the man took the flier and went into the kitchen. He pulled out some bottles with a renewed vigor and began humming a gloomy song his mother used to sing.
“Hey I know that song! That’s the one about the couple. God that’s a sad story,” the boy exclaimed without turning around.
Old man Wellesley solemnly gave him the tea in a cracked mug. His face was twisted by shadows.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t have anything better.”
For a few minutes, they sat watching cartoons. The boy’s eyes were transfixed to the screen, while the man kept glancing at him. Slowly the midmorning haze warmed the house as the rays of the sun snuck through the shuttered windows. The boy closed his eyes and slumped down. The man lightly shook him awake.
“Oh, before you leave, I want to give you back your flier.”
The boy groggily looked down at the flier. In scribbled handwriting, barely legible, he could make out one world: RUN.
The boy hazily looked up. The old man’s eyes had gone black. This was not the same man who had searched all over to find him a pen. This man was consumed by evil itself. His fingers were daggers, and his movements were too sharp to be human.
The boy could barely feel his legs as he stumbled up. The man lunged for him, but the boy numbly moved his body away from the mass of a man who wanted him dead. He began to run, or, at least, he attempted to run. It was like running through molasses. The living room became encased in shadow; it stretched out before him like a cave with only a pinprick of sunlight to guide him to the exit, or in this case, the door by the kitchen.
He could hear the man rise from the floor and rush toward him. Somehow, he made it out of the living room with the man on his tail. Old Man Wellsley was about to reach out for him, but the boy glimpsed his outstretched hands through the fog of his mind. He ducked, leading the farmer to trip over him and fall with a loud thud. Motes of dust flew up, visible through the kitchen window. The boy saw the black bird and the blood oozing from its wound. From someplace deep inside him, he screamed.
He lumbered to the front door, grasping onto the handle for his life. Meanwhile the man had gotten up and walked off.
The boy made his way through the dusty trail back to the main road. His body had slowed down from a run to a jumbled walk. He couldn’t think and didn’t realize that the man hadn’t left him to escape. That is, until he heard the creaky old front door open and shut behind him.
Lazily turning around, he saw Old man Wellesley step out with a mean look on his face. In his left hand, he held a rifle—the same rifle he had shot the black bird with.
The boy moved as fast as he could, but his muscles were slushy. The farmer easily caught up with him and aimed a gun at the back of his head.
“Why?” the boy squeaked.
A shot rang out. The birds flew into the sky, and the man left the corpse to the vultures. What the boy would never know is that he had spent too much time in the house. It had turned against him. It flew into the old man. The farm thrived off of blood: blood of his siblings, blood of their children; blood of the boy. The old man tucked the gun away and went back into the house, ready to continue his daily routine.
The next year the harvest grew large and golden.