Next Door (Chapter One)

I’ve always had an unexplainable, and to be frank, kind of morbid, fascination with the house next door. It’s been empty forever, and you can tell. The grass in the front yard is waist high, the tin roof is thick with red rust, the walls are invisible behind some kind of climbing weed and the trees and bushes choke the wooden side fence. Where the more daring plants reach over to our side of the fence they are neatly pruned back, forming an extra couple of metres of fence, almost completely blocking the view of the house. Every summer, the jacaranda tree drops its flowers, covering our driveway in a carpet of purple. It’s wild and untamed and it wreaks havoc with my hay fever, but there is something rather … magical about the garden’s unruliness.
Ever since I can remember I’ve felt its pull, but I’ve never acted on it. Whenever I’ve even remotely considered exploring next door doubts have dragged me back home.
It’s illegal. You’ll be caught for trespassing.
There are probably millions of spiders and rats and god-knows what else in there.
No doubt it’s light-years away from anything resembling safe. Odds are you’ll fall through a rotten floorboard and then where will you be?
You won’t be able to even get in. The door will be locked. There’s no point.
After a while I came to the realisation that these weren’t the real reasons why I had never set foot inside the front gate. It was actually a much simpler reason: I was afraid. I might pretend to be blasé and nonchalant, and I might even fool some people, but the truth was this place had me properly scared. In truth this also explained why I had never asked a boy out, or gotten into a serious fight with a friend, or even been yelled at by a teacher. I was a coward when it came to consequences. But this year that was all going to change. I’d made a New Year’s resolution, and for once I was going to keep it. This year, I would be fearless.
As it happened, on the very day I decided I would have a look around next door, it was sold, complete with a big red sticker across the For Sale sign. At first, from a distance, I didn’t think anything of it, my first reaction was that they had replaced the sign, like they do every few years, after it becomes too faded or weathered or out of date. One year vandals had covered the sign with graffiti before it had been replaced, so I was used to seeing a new sign nailed to the rusty metal of the front fence. This was different. Unexpected. For my entire life and lifetimes more this house had sat, empty, watching the world change and grow around it. This was a relic of a time long since passed, and to think of it becoming a part of the modern world seemed really and truly wrong. I also, rather selfishly, lamented the fact that I would very likely never get the chance to explore it. Perhaps, by chance, I might be invited over by our future neighbours, but by then it would be their house, filled with their belongings and memories. It would be a part of the present, instead of the place which hints at tales of history and ghosts. Or perhaps I was just annoyed that by the time I had finally decided to do something it was too late. Figures.
Two weeks of sweltering summer heat later, a moving van was parked outside the house. Despite my initial disappointment, my curiosity was piqued. After all, this was a tiny miner’s cottage which was in state beyond simply disrepair, with a small jungle in the front yard and an entire ecosystem which spread from the rear fence to the back door. It wasn’t exactly top of the market. Whoever had bought it must be either mad for history or just plain mad. Honestly, I had my bets placed on the latter.
Either way, boxes and furniture were now being carried from the truck in through the front door. Someone had mown a thin path from the gate to the verandah, a feat which I had heard being attempted for the past three days, and had involved a myriad of tools, including a chainsaw. In the midst of the boxes being transported into their new home, an old Commodore had pulled up behind the van. From my perch amongst the foliage of the tree in a front yard, I watched them get out of the car. A woman and a girl, perhaps about my own age got out, and wordlessly walked through the front gate, and stood, as still as statues, in front of what was, I assumed, their new home. There something odd about them both, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly made them seem so ... wrong, I suppose. I hated myself for thinking it, I didn’t think of myself as judgemental, and surely these were just, normal, regular people who were perhaps interested in owning a piece of history. I was just unwilling to let that piece of my childhood go, and I was trying to pin my feelings of loss onto them. Whatever. I hate that kind of psycho-analysis kind of rubbish, and I knew in my gut that something was ever so slightly, or rather, majorly, off with this pair. I deliberated what to do. Either I could take the course of action I always took and did nothing; chicken out and avoid any possibility of an awkward confrontation, and be left wondering what could have happened if I was braver and didn’t overthink every single possibility, searching for anything resembling a flaw. Or I could do the opposite, and actually do something. Yes. I would do that. Things were going to change this year, I was making sure of that. With perhaps too much enthusiasm I leapt from my perch, landing hard on the ground. I toppled over, then managed to execute a kind of somersault, that I doubt I could ever intentionally replicate, to avoid smashing my face on the sun-hardened ground. Reassured by my unexpected newly found ninja skills, I stood up, and marched over to the fence.
“Himyname’sTessI’mfromnextdoorwelcometotheneighbourhood,” I blurted to no one in particular from the fence. Wow. That was one way to make a first impression, I suppose. The teenage girl glanced at me, undoubtedly looking for the source of the crazytalk on the other side of the fence. Hopefully I sounded more coherent to them than I did to myself. Hopefully.
“My name is Jane,” she replied, “Pleased to meet you.”
Jane spoke in a very clear, practiced tone, which hinted at an acent of some kind, though what it was, I could not discern. She looked nervous and out of place. At the time, I put that down to moving nerves, something I myself couldn’t relate to. Part of spending your entire life living in the same house, I guess.
“Nice to meet you too,” I replied, sounding somewhat more sane, “Guess you’re our new neighbour now.”
I was stating the blindingly obvious, but Jane didn’t pick up on it. Instead, she was looking at the rosesbesidemy face. I was standing at the only gap in the vegetation growing along the fence, between the flourishing rose bush and the very dead plant beside it. I’m unsure exactly what species it is. Botany isn’t exactly my forte, and I tend to zone out whenever our science teacher mentions plants.
“The flowers are very beautiful,” she observed, then turned and looked at me, “Would you like to meet my mother?”
Slightly put off by her sudden change in topic, I nodded dumbly. She smiled, and beckoned for the woman to come over.
“Hello, I’m Tess,” I said as she approached. Unlike Jane, this woman was missing any uncertainty. Rather, she looked like the sort of woman who was determined enough to achieve anything, no matter what. She smiled, but not warmly like Jane, and her eyes remained emotionless.
“Pleasure to meet you,” she replied, “It is good to know that my daughter will have someone her own age to spend time with.”
Jane’s mother spoke in the same careful way as her daughter, and seemed to pause over certain words, although in a way this made her seem not uncertain but almost powerful. I paused before replying, this woman’s presence was unnerving.
“I hope so, Mrs...?”
“Green.”
“Well, Mrs Green, if you or Jane are ever looking for help, or need anything, I’m sure my family will help,” Politeness seemed to be oozing out of me, a kind of formal civility I did not know I possessed. I wasn’t rude, mind you, but being near Mrs Green was making me speak as if I was addressing the Queen.
“Much appreciated,” Without another word, Mrs Green turned back towards the house, inspecting one of the boxes that had been carried from the moving van.
“So, that’s your mum, huh?” Again, I was stating the obvious, but once again Jane didn’t comment. Anyone else I knew would have made a sarcastic comment at that, but somehow, I couldn’t see this girl uttering a single sarcastic tone.
“Yes,” Jane seemed to be an even poorer conversationalist than myself, and she had been completely silent in her mother’s presence. No surprises there. Mrs Green was very likely the type who still believed children should ‘be seen and not heard’.
“Are you going to go to school in Woodlake?” I asked.
Jane nodded, “May I ask why this town is called Woodlake? I didn’t see a lake coming into town, and there appear to be very few trees. It seems there are more in this garden than in much of the rest of the town.”
“Well, during the gold rush, they chopped down a lot of trees around here for wood to use on the gold fields, I think,” I replied, “I think that is where the ‘wood’ part comes from. I don’t know where ‘lake’ came from though. The nearest lake is nearly an hour away.”
“Hmm,” Jane looked thoughtful, “This town has a lot of history to it, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so,” I replied. Jane was a bit odd but in a good way. She was actually interested in history, and didn’t find the fact that I, at least in part, knew why my hometown was named what it was strange, “I mean, it’s not entirely unique. A lot of towns sprung up during the gold rush, and this is just another. But there is something...”
“Atmospheric?” Jane pitched in, with the perfect word. It was then I realised that she got it. She understood that this town wasn’t just a place to leave someday. She saw past its lack of shops, and its dodgy old houses and saw what most people I know didn’t. It was a place filled with the memories, of so many, and she knew that, even though she had just moved here.
“Exactly,” I grinned.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked, her initial uncertainty and nervousness beginning to abate.
“My whole life,” I answered, finding my reply woefully short, “What about you? Where did you use to live?”
“Oh,” Jane’s face dropped slightly for just a second before she composed herself, “It’s really not very interesting. We’ve travelled around a bit.”
“Not interesting!” I exclaimed, “I’d give anything to travel,”
“Do you not leave Woodlake often?”
“Not really, when you think about it,” I sighed, realising I was talking more seriously to a girl I had just met than to friends I had known since I had started school, “We go into the city occaisionally, and we’ve been on holidays interstate but not overseas. Unless you count Tasmania.”
“Well, travelling is not necessarily as... glamorous as you might think, at least, it wasn’t for me,” Jane’s face was serious.Damn. She probably had reasons for that travelling that weren’t as light-hearted as sight-seeing.
“I’m sorry,” I stated, meeting Jane’s eye.
“For what reason?” she asked, appearing genuinely puzzled.
“The way I, uh, was talking about travelling...it was, well, inconsiderate,” I fumbled for the right words, “You obviously had serious reasons for it and, well, as I said, it was inconsiderate for me to not pick up on that.”
“It is fine,” she smiled wanly.
“Are you sure? Because I feel like I've insulted you,”
“I’m not angry in the slightest,” Jane seemed almost amused now, “You had no way of knowing, so stop stressing.”
“Well, in that case, welcome to Woodlake, Jane Green,”
“Thank you,” she replied, “ I should probably assist my mother with the unpacking. I will see you soon, I hope?”
“Of course.”
“In that case, good bye for the moment,”
“TTFN,” I replied.
“Beg your pardon?” Jane stared at me in confusion.
“TTFN. Ta ta for now.”
Jane’s face remained blank.
“Tigger. You know, from Winnie the Pooh.”
“Oh, of course.” Jane smiled, but her voice betrayed her. She had no idea what I had said, and she hadn’t recognised the names of Tigger and Winnie the Pooh. Who hasn’t heard of Pooh? “Bye,”
I watched her walk back and join her mother, still puzzled by her strange lack of knowledge. There were reasons, sure, why she wouldn’t be familiar with the phrase TTFN, but to not immediately know who Tigger is is really quite bizarre. Perhaps she was homeschooled and never read any of the stories or saw any of the movies, I reasoned. It seemed plausible enough. Mrs Green didn’t exactly seem like the kind of parent who would indulge her children with things like Winnie the Pooh.Sad, really. It had been the stories and fairytales that had made my own childhood exactly that, a childhood. No wonder Jane acted so strangely.
Or perhaps she was just exhausted from moving, and she had been too tired to register the comment. From my knowledge of moving house, albeit limited, which I have gleaned from hearing friends talk about it, and also what I’ve seen in movies and on TV and read in books, moving house is tiring. It looks like hard work, at the very least.
Turning back to the tree I had been sitting in, I realised that Jane and her mother had arrived without any bags. When you move house, wouldn’t you have bags with you in the car? Perhaps not. I really don’t know very much about moving house.