thesheedspot
09-03-2013, 03:08 PM
“The fireplace is the only remaining piece of the original house. The only thing that survived the fire,” the real estate agent tells them. “You can see the char on some of the bricks. Our records indicate it’s almost 200 years old. Quite historic, no?” Mark Bradbury ran his hand across the coarse, red bricks and smiled at his wife, Karen. He could already tell she was in love with the place. “Fire?” he asks. “Oh, yes, but it was a long, long time ago. The house has been remodeled several times since then, including just this year. Still though, the fireplace is original, and quite impressive. A testament to the original builder.”
The house was a blend of modern architecture and old world charm. Everything was new, yet designed to look old. The floors were hardwoods, which came from the nearest home megastore, but were made to look like they were pried from the deck of the Mayflower. In the kitchen, modern appliances were hidden in clever ways and the sink was a dimpled brass. The house itself was set back on the edge of a deep wood, in the fog-obscured outskirts of Mansfield, Pennsylvania. Everything about the “four bed, three point five bath” home was perfect for the designs of a man of his wife looking to start their life here. Mark walked aimlessly around the main living area of the first floor, dreaming of his sons and daughters.
From the back porch there was some shouting and a slamming of doors. Coming around the corner to investigate, Mark saw an older man eye him through the kitchen window. Something about the man’s sad eyes made him look much, much older than the rest of him. Mark felt instantly uneasy and was glad that Karen was upstairs, presumably mentally measuring rooms for cribs and bunk beds. “Sorry.” The real estate agent looking slightly nervous closed the porch door behind her. “Who was that?” An awkward few seconds passed as the real estate agent beat her fingers on the marble counter top, as if trying to drum up the right answer. “Oh, no one. He had made an offer on the house, but it didn’t go through?” The way she phrased the answer as a question was suspect, but Mark wasn’t going to let a wayward old man ruin this for them. She recovered quickly with her water to a well smile and said, “So what are you thinking?”
Three months later the moving trucks were following Mark and Karen’s two but soon to be four door Audi up the driveway of 462 Morningstar Drive. Mark put his hand on his wife’s knee and looked in his rearview mirror. In the cloud of dust he thought he saw the same man from the day they were shown the house. He was leaning against a tree at the edge of the property eyeing their new home in earnest. The intensity in the man’s eyes was unnerving. Mark jerked his head around to look out the back of the car, but saw only dust and trucks. “What’s wrong?” And even though he didn’t like to be untruthful to his wife he said, “Nothing.”
…
The last clutching fingers of the sun released their fleeting grasp on the outer fields and darkness swelled quickly. A day, a week, a life’s worth of dust on his boots. Everyday the same walk to the same house where he shared his life with nobody but their memories, the dark woods and the gray days. Twenty years of toiling had left him with next to nothing to show for it, except he was alive and his family was dead; smiling ghosts in the early morning fog and tortured memories in the stillness of night.
The coach arrived in that same half dream state in which his family was forever fixed, drawn by a white horse with ruddy eyes. Its windows were closed tightly with purple and red shades made of the most elaborate velvet and trimmed with gold drawstrings. As if the intent was to make unbearable the mystery of what lay behind them. The grandeur of the coach had a spellbinding effect and he hadn’t noticed its driver already standing beside him where he had stopped. “John Moulton. My employer wishes to have a word with you.” It wasn’t until some time after that John pondered how the driver knew his name, but by then, in truth, he already knew.
Inside the coach he found a slender man in a form fitting black suit, sitting with his left leg crossed over his right. “Please, sit.” The coach was tall enough inside for John to stand, but he obliged. “ Do you know who I am?” John knew but did not want to nor know how to give answer. The man leaned forward and answered for him. “Good. Now that that bit of un-pleasantry is behind us, we can get down to my offer. I can tell a great deal about a man from his boots.” The man in the suit tapped John’s filthy working boots with the steel tip of his slim black cane. “You have worked your whole life, morning to night. You have been a dutiful and faithful servant, and yet, where has this trust gotten you?” John felt the words stirring up resentment in his breast. From under the bench the man in the suit was sitting on, a chest appeared. It was pushed up to the tips of John’s soiled boots by a shining black leather shoe. Using his the cane, the man in the suit opened its lid, revealing scores of gleaming gold coins. John reached to touch one, but was stopped by the cane’s steel tip. “These are not for you. Not yet. They are a show of my good faith, that I am able to make good on my end of the bargain.” John prepared his lips to ask what was expected of him in return, but again the man in the suit answered before the question could be asked. “I am a recruiter, I seek out men and women who need my assistance, and in return I ask only that when my favor has been fulfilled, you join my Organization.” The deal was simple enough and John understood. He felt like he saw without being shown, directly. An image entered into his mind; a scale balanced exactly even, on one side a pile of gold and on the other the part of John Moulton that was invisible, but not weightless. His brain buzzed and his heart hummed. It took no more than a few seconds for him to accept.
Back in his home he went over and over the conversation in his mind. All he had to do was place his boots in his fireplace. He was assured first that his boots would go unharmed by the flames and of this he felt confident, the arrangement having been agreed upon by their master. If he were to honor the agreement, he was to put his boots in the fire before going to sleep and in the morning he would find them filled with gold. He took one look at his boots. They were covered in a life’s worth of honest dust. Brushing them off he prepared the kindling and logs and started a roaring fire. Holding the boots close to his chest and looking into the hypnotic flames, he had an idea. He rushed to the small shed behind his house, grabbed several tools and quickly got to work.
For years after people wondered and gossiped on the sudden change of fortunes for John Moulton. Secondary to the speculations of where his seemingly never ending spring of wealth had bubbled from was the question of why he remained in his small and modest home. Some thought it was because he had built the entire place with his own hands. Others said he couldn’t leave the ghosts of his family behind. What was known was that John Moulton had gone from a lowly farmer to one of the most successful, and ruthlessly so, businessmen in the Northeast, a region marked for its prominence in industry. His desire for more was unquenchable and he quickly had controlling interests in many of the most powerful organizations in the country. The man himself was still an enigma. The people, who worked with John, or more accurately, for John, noted an unnamable absence about him. He was a private man who despite his great fortune and notoriety kept almost exclusively to himself. When the fire finally died of its own accord, and the neighbors found his unrecognizable remains among the rest of the burned wreckage, no one was sure what to make of the situation. His body was buried near the edge of the woods on the back of his property and his business endeavors were sold at auction since he had no family to succeed him.
On the night he set fire to his house John Moulton thought about his deal with the man in the suit. “And when the last piece of the gold has changed hands, that is when my part of the favor will have been fulfilled. That is when you will become a member of my Organization.” He had made his peace with his fate. The room smelled heavy of lamp oil. John pulled a chair he had made in front of the fireplace. He struck a match and watched it as it burned down to his fingers. When the heat of the flame began to cause him pain, he let it go. As he watched the match’s slow spiral to the floor he pulled the last of the gold pieces from the breast pocket of his suit’s vest. The blaze of the fire glinted on the shiny gold surface as everything around him ignited. Even the chair beneath him began to burn. Feeling neither heat nor pain he stood and turned to look where he had been. The ornate and finely crafted workmanship consumed in the simple elegance of the flames. The world was ablaze. He pulled the gold piece from his now lifeless hand and flipped it into the fireplace, where it fell with a thud. He walked to where the door of his home stood once proud and exited through a veil of fire into the waiting day. Morning drew opened its curtains with no sunlight and he walked into the early blue smoke.
He turned to watch his entire house become engulfed in flames and watched as it crumbled piece by piece. All was gone but the fireplace. It never fell.
…
A work van pulled up in front of his house and Mark let the three men inside. They had been working on inspecting the foundation and crawl space to see if it was possible to add a basement, laundry room and wine cellar under the house. About thirty minutes had passed when one of the workmen came up the stairs shouting for Mark. “I think you will want to see this.” Mark followed the man down into the crawl space that was just high enough to inch on hands and knees in. “We got around to inspecting the area under the fireplace when we found this.” The workman showed Mark a chamber that was about four feet wide and extended down about five feet deep, directly underneath the fireplace. “Looks like whoever did the remodeling just walled this area in and put a false bottom in the fireplace upstairs. I wonder what this was for?“ Mark crawled over to the exposed pit. He stuck his hand into the ancient ashes and pulled it out with jerk. “Everything ok?” the workman asked him. He put his hands back in and raked out handful after handful of the old soot. After a few minutes he pulled out a pair of boots. Through their tops ran an iron rod. Their soles had been almost completely removed so they were bottomless. Intrigued and confused Mark dug some more. Then he saw it. Sitting in the very bottom of this hidden compartment, a solitary gold piece. He could tell by looking at it that it was very old, but it surprisingly looked no worse for the wear, having spent countless years covered in ash and concealed in a dank basement. Even though there was no light down here, Mark saw the gold gleam as he reached for it. It seemed to recognize the advance of his hand and for a fleeting second Mark recalled the sad eyes of the old man leaning on the tree. He paused for a brief moment, then picked it up.
The house was a blend of modern architecture and old world charm. Everything was new, yet designed to look old. The floors were hardwoods, which came from the nearest home megastore, but were made to look like they were pried from the deck of the Mayflower. In the kitchen, modern appliances were hidden in clever ways and the sink was a dimpled brass. The house itself was set back on the edge of a deep wood, in the fog-obscured outskirts of Mansfield, Pennsylvania. Everything about the “four bed, three point five bath” home was perfect for the designs of a man of his wife looking to start their life here. Mark walked aimlessly around the main living area of the first floor, dreaming of his sons and daughters.
From the back porch there was some shouting and a slamming of doors. Coming around the corner to investigate, Mark saw an older man eye him through the kitchen window. Something about the man’s sad eyes made him look much, much older than the rest of him. Mark felt instantly uneasy and was glad that Karen was upstairs, presumably mentally measuring rooms for cribs and bunk beds. “Sorry.” The real estate agent looking slightly nervous closed the porch door behind her. “Who was that?” An awkward few seconds passed as the real estate agent beat her fingers on the marble counter top, as if trying to drum up the right answer. “Oh, no one. He had made an offer on the house, but it didn’t go through?” The way she phrased the answer as a question was suspect, but Mark wasn’t going to let a wayward old man ruin this for them. She recovered quickly with her water to a well smile and said, “So what are you thinking?”
Three months later the moving trucks were following Mark and Karen’s two but soon to be four door Audi up the driveway of 462 Morningstar Drive. Mark put his hand on his wife’s knee and looked in his rearview mirror. In the cloud of dust he thought he saw the same man from the day they were shown the house. He was leaning against a tree at the edge of the property eyeing their new home in earnest. The intensity in the man’s eyes was unnerving. Mark jerked his head around to look out the back of the car, but saw only dust and trucks. “What’s wrong?” And even though he didn’t like to be untruthful to his wife he said, “Nothing.”
…
The last clutching fingers of the sun released their fleeting grasp on the outer fields and darkness swelled quickly. A day, a week, a life’s worth of dust on his boots. Everyday the same walk to the same house where he shared his life with nobody but their memories, the dark woods and the gray days. Twenty years of toiling had left him with next to nothing to show for it, except he was alive and his family was dead; smiling ghosts in the early morning fog and tortured memories in the stillness of night.
The coach arrived in that same half dream state in which his family was forever fixed, drawn by a white horse with ruddy eyes. Its windows were closed tightly with purple and red shades made of the most elaborate velvet and trimmed with gold drawstrings. As if the intent was to make unbearable the mystery of what lay behind them. The grandeur of the coach had a spellbinding effect and he hadn’t noticed its driver already standing beside him where he had stopped. “John Moulton. My employer wishes to have a word with you.” It wasn’t until some time after that John pondered how the driver knew his name, but by then, in truth, he already knew.
Inside the coach he found a slender man in a form fitting black suit, sitting with his left leg crossed over his right. “Please, sit.” The coach was tall enough inside for John to stand, but he obliged. “ Do you know who I am?” John knew but did not want to nor know how to give answer. The man leaned forward and answered for him. “Good. Now that that bit of un-pleasantry is behind us, we can get down to my offer. I can tell a great deal about a man from his boots.” The man in the suit tapped John’s filthy working boots with the steel tip of his slim black cane. “You have worked your whole life, morning to night. You have been a dutiful and faithful servant, and yet, where has this trust gotten you?” John felt the words stirring up resentment in his breast. From under the bench the man in the suit was sitting on, a chest appeared. It was pushed up to the tips of John’s soiled boots by a shining black leather shoe. Using his the cane, the man in the suit opened its lid, revealing scores of gleaming gold coins. John reached to touch one, but was stopped by the cane’s steel tip. “These are not for you. Not yet. They are a show of my good faith, that I am able to make good on my end of the bargain.” John prepared his lips to ask what was expected of him in return, but again the man in the suit answered before the question could be asked. “I am a recruiter, I seek out men and women who need my assistance, and in return I ask only that when my favor has been fulfilled, you join my Organization.” The deal was simple enough and John understood. He felt like he saw without being shown, directly. An image entered into his mind; a scale balanced exactly even, on one side a pile of gold and on the other the part of John Moulton that was invisible, but not weightless. His brain buzzed and his heart hummed. It took no more than a few seconds for him to accept.
Back in his home he went over and over the conversation in his mind. All he had to do was place his boots in his fireplace. He was assured first that his boots would go unharmed by the flames and of this he felt confident, the arrangement having been agreed upon by their master. If he were to honor the agreement, he was to put his boots in the fire before going to sleep and in the morning he would find them filled with gold. He took one look at his boots. They were covered in a life’s worth of honest dust. Brushing them off he prepared the kindling and logs and started a roaring fire. Holding the boots close to his chest and looking into the hypnotic flames, he had an idea. He rushed to the small shed behind his house, grabbed several tools and quickly got to work.
For years after people wondered and gossiped on the sudden change of fortunes for John Moulton. Secondary to the speculations of where his seemingly never ending spring of wealth had bubbled from was the question of why he remained in his small and modest home. Some thought it was because he had built the entire place with his own hands. Others said he couldn’t leave the ghosts of his family behind. What was known was that John Moulton had gone from a lowly farmer to one of the most successful, and ruthlessly so, businessmen in the Northeast, a region marked for its prominence in industry. His desire for more was unquenchable and he quickly had controlling interests in many of the most powerful organizations in the country. The man himself was still an enigma. The people, who worked with John, or more accurately, for John, noted an unnamable absence about him. He was a private man who despite his great fortune and notoriety kept almost exclusively to himself. When the fire finally died of its own accord, and the neighbors found his unrecognizable remains among the rest of the burned wreckage, no one was sure what to make of the situation. His body was buried near the edge of the woods on the back of his property and his business endeavors were sold at auction since he had no family to succeed him.
On the night he set fire to his house John Moulton thought about his deal with the man in the suit. “And when the last piece of the gold has changed hands, that is when my part of the favor will have been fulfilled. That is when you will become a member of my Organization.” He had made his peace with his fate. The room smelled heavy of lamp oil. John pulled a chair he had made in front of the fireplace. He struck a match and watched it as it burned down to his fingers. When the heat of the flame began to cause him pain, he let it go. As he watched the match’s slow spiral to the floor he pulled the last of the gold pieces from the breast pocket of his suit’s vest. The blaze of the fire glinted on the shiny gold surface as everything around him ignited. Even the chair beneath him began to burn. Feeling neither heat nor pain he stood and turned to look where he had been. The ornate and finely crafted workmanship consumed in the simple elegance of the flames. The world was ablaze. He pulled the gold piece from his now lifeless hand and flipped it into the fireplace, where it fell with a thud. He walked to where the door of his home stood once proud and exited through a veil of fire into the waiting day. Morning drew opened its curtains with no sunlight and he walked into the early blue smoke.
He turned to watch his entire house become engulfed in flames and watched as it crumbled piece by piece. All was gone but the fireplace. It never fell.
…
A work van pulled up in front of his house and Mark let the three men inside. They had been working on inspecting the foundation and crawl space to see if it was possible to add a basement, laundry room and wine cellar under the house. About thirty minutes had passed when one of the workmen came up the stairs shouting for Mark. “I think you will want to see this.” Mark followed the man down into the crawl space that was just high enough to inch on hands and knees in. “We got around to inspecting the area under the fireplace when we found this.” The workman showed Mark a chamber that was about four feet wide and extended down about five feet deep, directly underneath the fireplace. “Looks like whoever did the remodeling just walled this area in and put a false bottom in the fireplace upstairs. I wonder what this was for?“ Mark crawled over to the exposed pit. He stuck his hand into the ancient ashes and pulled it out with jerk. “Everything ok?” the workman asked him. He put his hands back in and raked out handful after handful of the old soot. After a few minutes he pulled out a pair of boots. Through their tops ran an iron rod. Their soles had been almost completely removed so they were bottomless. Intrigued and confused Mark dug some more. Then he saw it. Sitting in the very bottom of this hidden compartment, a solitary gold piece. He could tell by looking at it that it was very old, but it surprisingly looked no worse for the wear, having spent countless years covered in ash and concealed in a dank basement. Even though there was no light down here, Mark saw the gold gleam as he reached for it. It seemed to recognize the advance of his hand and for a fleeting second Mark recalled the sad eyes of the old man leaning on the tree. He paused for a brief moment, then picked it up.