House of Whispers: Chapter 2 - Faerie Haven

(Sorry, this is a bit longer. I was trying to fit in enough description of her mansion to do it justice and I might have done too much! Hope you enjoy anyway.)

Whisper couldn’t stop thinking about that boy. He had seemed so familiar. There was something about those defiant, silvery eyes that she couldn’t quite shake. But she’d never been here before, right? Well, except when she was really small, according to her father. Had she maybe seen him them?

His face floated in her subconscious, but it seemed somewhat changed. His hair was longer—it was in a ponytail, and he was clean and smiling kindly, silver eyes sparkling with friendly mischief.

No, that’s definitely not him, she thought grumpily. She couldn’t really picture the boy smiling, even though she was sure he did it sometime. Nobody could stand never smiling, right?

“Whisper, this is our driveway,” Mr. Spring said, jerking her out of her reverie. She looked out the window to see a narrow, pebbly road turning away from the main one. The car turned into it, the headlights on so they could see. The trees were so tight around it that it was almost like driving through a long tunnel with half the lights burned out. It twisted and wound, dipped and rose, just like any country road should. Whisper strangely enjoyed the vibrations from the wheels skidding over rocks and dirt as her stomach occasionally rose like butterflies when they suddenly went down a small hill.

“Faster!” she cried.

“You silly, I’m already going too fast,” Mr. Spring replied. Mrs. Spring was tenser than ever, her face seeming older than before.

“Mom, relax,” Whisper said, her voice exasperated. She didn’t look a thing like her parents. Her father had black hair and silvery blue eyes while her mother was platinum blonde and brown eyes. Whisper had long, thick, feathery brown hair and eyes the same deep, mysterious, blue-tinged green as the forest around her. She looked like she belonged there in the unfathomable, cool mists and stately red trunks. Whisper, really, was very unlike her parents, or any of her family. Except her cousin Michael. He alone shared her thick brown hair and strange eyes.

Whisper quivered with excitement, trying hard not lean out of her window again. She wanted to see if she could hear those voices, even though they scared her slightly. But she didn’t want her mother more uptight, so she didn’t do anything alarming.

Whisper was nearly bursting when the turned into the yard. It definitely needed work, but she immediately adored it. The over grown lawn was full of flowers, not just grass, and there were roses growing wildly over a garden archway. The house was enormous—definitely a manor, not just a house, and it sprawled haphazardly across the yard. Whisper counted five stories, plus an attic—and the tower had an extra level at the top, as well as a gazebo built onto the corner of the third floor and multiple balconies. The roof was gabled and there were stained glass windows in multiple places. It wasn’t painted, just dark weathered wood, so it looked right at home in the forest. The yard itself was grand, though overgrown and in dire need of care. There was a flowerbed along the porch of the house; it was a mass of weeds and roses that had crept their way past their bounds. There were fruit trees peppered across the place, and a rusted swing set beneath a maple rocked back and forth. The whole effect certainly looked haunted—it was a forbidding, forgotten sort of feeling.

“Mom, are we rich?” Whisper asked, sliding out of the rich.

“Ever since Matthew decided he didn’t want any of the fortune and Mom said she didn’t have a use for it, we are. I’ve become the sole heir.”

Whisper didn’t know where to go first. She longed to bounce around the house and see the back yard, but she also desperately wanted to see the inside of her new home. Her dad chose for her. “Since the moving van won’t be here with the rest of our things for another week, let’s spend some time exploring today. Come on, Whisper, let’s go take a look at the yard.”

“I’m just going to go in and start cleaning,” Mrs. Spring said before they left. “And I want to see what kind of job has been done in the kitchen and living room.”

Whisper trooped around the side of the house with her father, bouncing with adrenaline. The back yard was even more massive, with some more fruit trees, a marble fountain of a dryad and a naiad together, and even a scummy pond beneath a tree with an ancient looking stone swing set over it. “It’s incredible, Daddy!” Whisper exclaimed, racing around the spacious yard. “This is so much nicer than the city!”

He grinned. “We never did like the apartment much, did we, Whisp? I just hope your mother can adjust to being back here. When she left, she’d planned on never coming back.”

The yard grass was all the way up to Whisper’s knees. She waded back to her dad. “How long has it been since anyone lived here?” she asked.

“It’s been a little over ten years since your grandmother moved out. I don’t think anyone has been inside since, except the cleaning crew. And even then, we couldn’t get anyone local to take a look at it.”

Whisper whistled. “I hate to think how dusty it must be inside. The fountain looked filthy.”

Mr. Spring nodded. “Oh yeah, we have our work cut out for us. But your grandma refused to sell the place, and—well, it suits our needs perfectly. We got to move out of the city without worrying about buying a new house or anything.” He and Whisper turned to look at the back side of the manor; there was a greenhouse that had been built onto the end, but the glass panes were yellow with age and grime. Whisper could just see the vague forms of long-dead plants.

“They didn’t even clean out the house before leaving?” she asked. Mr. Spring shook his head.

“Everything here just kind of got left the way it always was. Marian just upped and left with no warning.” They walked together around the other side, where there was a trellis up the wall for ivy to climb on—but the ivy had grown past those bounds, too. Then they were back in the front, and Mr. Spring led his daughter onto the porch and to the front door. “Before we go in,” he said, “let me tell you a little about this house, Whisper. It’s truly impressive, and I think it deserves to be bragged about.

“Faerie Haven is worth a fortune. It was built in 1850 by your great-great grandfather, Percival Carpenter. That’s only a few years after California became a part of America. All the flooring, furniture, doors, paneling on the walls, and décor is made out of red oak—an expensive commodity, especially since it’s such a desired wood. It goes beyond that, though. Everything was hand carved by masters, the furniture handmade and imported from England to New York by boat, then here in a train. The stained glass, too, is finest quality, and the library is full of originals and other expensive editions. As I’ve said, Percival Carpenter was a little eccentric and believed in faeries, so you’ll see a lot of that theme throughout the house. Thus the name ‘Faerie Haven,’ right? Anyway, let’s go in.”

The feeling of anticipation inside Whisper was indescribable. She felt like she couldn’t possibly hold so much emotion within her. As the oak door swung inwards and the house came into view, she felt her throat constrict and her heart pound.

It was beautiful. Whisper was sure even those big English palaces didn’t have it this good. The oak wood was a medium brown with just a hint of rose to it, and it gave the room a warm, golden feeling. Whisper was glad this, at least, had been cleaned already; she couldn’t imagine such a lovely parlor being coated with dust. As her father had said, the floor was oak, too, and the paneling went nearly all the way up the walls. There was about three feet of deep, forest green paint above the wood, then a corner panel that framed where the wall and ceiling met. The glowing, polished wood was good enough by itself, but that hadn’t been enough for Percival Carpenter; slender arches connected pillars to the walls, carved vines and leaves cascaded down the panels, and many lines had been broken up into soft, graceful curves. The air seemed denser inside, but not in an unpleasant way. It made Whisper tingle all over with expectancy. The furniture was carved to match the rest of the woodwork, with forest and sage green embroidered cushions depicting strange faerie creatures. There was a bookshelf and armchair on the right side, and a little coffee table with a couch and two more armchairs on the other. There was a glass display case by the left window, with decorative porcelain dishes, gold trinkets, and lots of colored crystal and glass figurines of fairies and trees.

“This is incredible,” Whisper breathed, hands over her heart. How was it that she felt home for the first time in her life? Mr. Spring slung an arm around Whisper’s shoulder and she snuggled against his side. “The ceilings are so high.”

“The whole place is designed for chandeliers,” Mr. Spring explained. “I think the lowest ceilings are still ten feet tall.”

“That would explain why the house looks taller than five stories,” Whisper replied conversationally, tracing the engraved designs of fairies along the top of the panels. “I can’t see why you wouldn’t like it here, Mom. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s more the memories that bother me,” Mrs. Spring reminded her daughter. “I didn’t really get along with Dad, and after what happened with Tori….” Tori was Mrs. Spring’s younger sister, who had vanished when she was fourteen.

After drinking in the parlor for a long time, Whisper continued through the doors—it was a double door—directly ahead of the front doors. There was another off to the left, which led on to a part of the manor that had been added in the 1900’s, but Mr. Spring said to leave that till after. They stepped into a kitchen, which was shaped like a slender rectangle. There were cupboards, a stove and dishwasher, and refrigerator crowded onto the left wall, with a long oak dining table reaching from the center of the room to the opposite end, where there was a padded window seat rather than another oak chair.

The kitchen was even more oak than the parlor, because it didn’t have a break in the paneling for green wall to peep through. The cushions on the chair and window seat were the proper forest green, however, and it was just as fancy as the parlor—though the embellishments seemed less lacy and had to do with fairies presenting fruits and other foods.

On the opposite side of the first doors, another pair was already flung open into the living room/kitchen number two. It was a vast open space, with an island counter in the right corner nearest Whisper, and a group of couches and armchairs around the massive fireplace on the other end. The walls in here were completely green paint, with no oak except for the basing on the floor and near the ceiling. The windows along the right side were large and arched, with multiple panes and stained glass in the single top one, which was shaped like a peaked half-circle. They were flooded with gold light—the sun had come out from behind the clouds. There were two staircases, one in the back of the room and one immediately to the right, just past the door to the add-on, covered with green carpet. The one on the right led downstairs and upstairs, the other only upstairs and was plain wood.

Unfortunately, all the other rooms were covered in dust. Whisper found this just added to their mystique, however. While her parents began cleaning, she thoroughly investigated the entire mansion; wood floored hallways, stained glass windows, odd rooms with everything left as though they were about to be returned to, beautiful old furniture and faeries everywhere. Finding her way was difficult; the sprawling manor took unexpected turns and the floor plan made little sense. She got stuck on the fourth floor in her search for the fifth. Finally, she discovered a door hidden behind a tapestry that blended in with the wall.

The mansion seemed to have everything; offices, sitting rooms, entertainment rooms, bedrooms and master suites, two ballrooms, a theater, dining rooms and kitchens. And through all of them, faeries persisted in carvings or paintings or inscribed words. It took Whisper forever to find her way into the attic, though. Finally she noticed a faint line on the ceiling of a quaint little corner room—the bed was covered with a comforter that was lace-edged, white, and covered with sprays of peach colored blossoms on dark reddish wood branches.

A wardrobe that didn’t look like it belonged in the little room was blocking the trapdoor. Whisper frowned at it, got on one side, and pushed with all her might. Finally, it began to inch across the floor. All the same, it was heavy and Whisper was sweating by the time the trapdoor was bared.

There was a cord dangling off the hatch in the ceiling. Whisper pulled it and it swung open, a stepladder sliding smoothly out. She climbed up eagerly.

The attic wasn’t at all what she expected—there was only a few boxes stacked neatly in the corner by the desk. There was a four-poster king-sized bed against the wall by the trapdoor, and it had moth-eaten turquoise hangings. Coughing from the dust, Whisper tucked them out of her way and saw the bed had a cover to match the one downstairs. The walls were the customary dark green, but there were gauzy white and peach curtains over each window, though now faded with age. A desk huddled against one wall with the boxes, and against the opposite wall was a massive vanity and closet. There was an armchair and floor lamp in one corner and a half-sized door leading to what had to be the tower.

Whisper turned to the nearest window and wrestled the dust-thick curtains apart to let in some more light. She knew she’d love it up here once it was cleaned; it was spacious and old fashioned. There were even a few porcelain dolls on display, and when she opened the closet it was full of clothes in remarkably good condition.

But something about this attic bedroom seemed horribly lonely. Whisper stood still inside it, a lump rising in her throat and tears springing to her eyes. She had just turned to look at the vanity again when a loud clicking noise made her spin back around.

The window had unlatched itself! It creaked open as a breeze blew into the room, making the curtains flutter feebly and stirring up dust. Whisper’s heart raced. What on earth? She’d seen that latch—it was closed as solid as could be! The lump in her throat wasn’t just sorrow anymore, but fear again. This was turning into a very strange day.

Then she heard something else; footsteps hurrying down the stepladder, the downstairs bedroom door opening and closing. Whisper yelped and leapt into action, racing out of the attic.

What she saw astounded her. The dust had been so thick and untouched that she’d been leaving footprints everywhere she went; now, walking alongside her own, was a second pair of footprints. They led to the door. Whisper held onto the ladder, her arms trembling and her eyes wide as her heart thudded loudly against her chest. What’s going on? The house…it can’t really be haunted, can it? Those footprints were about Whisper’s size, but they were of bare feet. No one inside the house could possibly have made them!

“Whisper! Whisper, where are you?”

Anne Spring’s voice sounded faintly through the floor. Whisper jerked back into action, racing back out and through the hall and downstairs, pretending she couldn’t see the other pair of footprints. Her mother was waiting at the base of the hidden staircase; the other set of prints ended just out of Mrs. Spring’s line of sight. When she saw Whisper, she smiled. “Hey, kiddo. Your dad and I want to go into town to eat dinner. Are you coming or not?”

Whisper smiled tremulously and tried to hide her fear. “Of course I’m coming, mum! I’m coated in dust, though. Better give me a few minutes to change first.” She hurried past her mother and down, down, back to the first floor where unusual thing seemed much less likely to happen.