Smoke and Mirrors by Anthony R Wilson

Author:Anthony R Wilson [Wilson, Anthony R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

We get in the car in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

“Let’s go past our old house.” Marcus says on a whim, and we turn down the familiar street off the highway to the residence where we grew up.

The house hasn’t changed at all except it has not been maintained nearly as well as our father did. I wonder again who Mark and Lorna Middleton are and why they felt the need to buy a house in Allentown, New York. The front stairs are in bad shape, and the concrete is cracking and splitting away in places. The screen is the same one we had, only now it is rusted and old. I can see the window to my old bedroom is stuck open, and the vines have grown up the house, almost covering it on that side. The paint itself has held up reasonably well, despite the harsh winters we sometimes see. I am surprised at the condition of it. It is faded for sure, but it is not as peeling as I would have expected. The fancy chimney that dad had rebuilt the year after Marcus was born is crumbled in spots and a fire hazard at best. The roof has decomposed to a faded black color, and it looks as though there is a hole in the flashing right above Kendra’s room. It all seems as if it needs to be replaced or maybe just plowed to the ground and completely rebuilt. The windows are dirty and need to be replaced. You can see the wood rotting a little bit around the window of Marcus’s old room. The garden is a mix of overgrown weeds and the perennials that Mom planted all those years ago. It looks like the grass has been cut a couple of times, but it is far from nice, almost like the head of a toddler who decided to give himself a haircut. I laugh out loud when I think of that but quickly clamp my hand over my mouth. The white picket fence around the property is lopsided and peeling. It is kind of a euphemism for the life of the family that owned it all those years ago, I realize with a mixture of horror and sadness.

“Which bedroom was yours, mom?” Eleanor asks, breaking my bleak thoughts

“The one on the left side of the house, honey. With the broken window that is open.” I point at the house, and Eleanor nods and looks at it solemnly.

“And Kendra’s?” She asks quietly a second later.

I point to the window right beside Marcus’s room, “That one. With the pink curtains. They are the same ones.”

Marcus stares at the house with a mix of horror and sadness on his face. This is one of the first times I have seen him near the brink of losing it, and I walk over and put my arm around him. He smiles at me and goes back to looking at the house. All In all, the place is in bad shape.

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