Part 23

      Next chance that I get, I head back to the garden, determined to find the site of the old house. It shouldn't be far from the central fountain, the glimpse I caught of it was off to the right of where I was standing, just at the corner of my eye as I turned...
      It rained last night, so I get soaked on my walk through the woods. It's a gray day, and while normally that means for bland photos, I have a good feeling about it today. I love the look of wet stone, the grittiness of concrete and stone and brick after the rain, and having that richness set against a flat gray sky makes for some really nice visual atmospheres. Looking at the ruined foundations of a house that burned down, just after the rain with a gray sky above? Should be just about perfect.
      I crank up my headphones to distract myself from the uncomfortable feeling of my jeans and socks getting soaked through. “Stand Up Comedy”, off U2's latest album, is loud and surprisingly raucous from them, but a great song for walking determinately to. Coldplay's “Square One” follows it, and I can't help but smile. I tend to make playlists according to moods, but it's so cool when the songs I leave on shuffle compliment each other so nicely – this is another great song for walking, full of this striding energy, the chorus ringing out over wide sonic spaces...
      Wriggling under the fence is especially irritating today, with the mud and the inevitable sliminess of wet leaves, both on the plants and covering the ground. I've really got to find another way into this place... I should figure out where the actual real entrance to the grounds are, and see how far out of my way it would be. But just as I'm about to come out into the garden, one of my favorite Kent songs comes on, and I can't help but smile. Thank you, music, for once again saving my mood from gloom and doom. It's another good song for walking to, almost for running to, and I find myself half-dancing as I follow the path toward the central fountain.
      When I reach it, I sit down on one of its benches again, gazing thoughtfully at its myriad flowers, that are so full of life, despite the lifeless metal they're made from. I take a long drink from my water bottle, leaning back against the bench and looking around, taking in the surroundings. There are five paths leading out from this paved area, set equidistant around the edge of the clearing like the points of a star. Two of them are in the right direction for the mansion... at least, I think so. And the path I was on before wound around so much, it's really hard to guess where any of these might lead.
      I flip a mental coin, and decide to go for the one a little more to the right. It's a little closer to where I think I caught sight of the house, at least I think so. I was pretty distracted by everything else I was seeing at the time...
      The gray skies are keeping some of the flowers closed up, but there's still plenty of ones that are blooming anyway. Every time I walk into this place, there's more color than the time before... It's just getting to be really, truly summer now, and the garden should really start hitting its main stride. Or... it would, if it were still cared for. I can't even imagine how many gorgeous, delicate little flowers have been crushed by the more voracious varieties, how many beautiful little vignettes have been overshadowed and lost over the long, long years...
      A wrought-iron bench is almost completely obscured by some vine of a plant, and while instinct would have me uncover the gorgeous ironwork I'm sure is hidden away... the vine is covered in the largest and boldest flowers I've seen yet. They've got to be something like six inches across! A rich, warm, velvety purple, with a reddish tinge along the center of each of the six wide petals. The center is a burst of white, little... I don't even know what they're called, stamens? The bits that have all the pollen on them. I dig my guidebook out of my bag, and flip through it... Clematis? That must be it. This plant is immense... it's covering everything within about ten, fifteen feet, maybe more, I can see the leaves merging into some other bushes around the bench... It's an interesting mix, the tendrils of the ever-growing vines twisting around the tendrils wrought of immobile iron. I jot a note in my sketchbook, and continue on – while I still want to take everything in, I'm determined to make it to the mansion today.
      And eventually, I do reach it... at least I'm assuming so. There's a space that's... well, it's still covered in green growing stuff, but most of it isn't as tall, and it's more sparse than anywhere I've seen yet. The area was definitely clear at one time, and it's a pretty large area. I'm an awful judge of any measurement that's bigger than my sketchbooks. But it's definitely enough room for a house, and a pretty large one at that. Large for two people anyway... and I have no idea how many stories it had. At least three, I'm sure, the tower I saw seemed pretty tall.
      There are the remains of a path leading a short distance into the clearing – marble? I think it is, it's discolored and worn down with the years... there are pockmarks and dark spots all over, but I can tell it was once white. It looks just like the oldest of the gravestones I've seen... I shudder a little, trying to shake the image from my mind, but I can't entirely. This place is the grave, of one person at least... Mr. Mason died in the fire here.
      I can't see the ground itself anywhere, everything is covered in grass and low brush and invading flowering plants. A few things, at least, I recognize at a glance – there's a huge swath of daylilies, blooming bright gold and orange off to the right. A small patch of crayon-colored zinnias are just beside my feet. And there's another one, in the far left corner of the semi-clearing... the structure is familiar, and I want to say it's yarrow? It turned up in one of the older books I read once, it was used for some kind of homeopathic remedy, though I can't remember what. But I was young enough at the time that I was still looking up every word I didn't yet know in the dictionary – yarrow was one of them, I looked it up, and for whatever odd reason I can still picture the illustration in my head.
      Ask me what I ate for lunch yesterday, and I have no clue. Ask me about a picture I saw fifteen years ago, and I'll describe every line of the damn thing.
      But near the end of the aged marble path, my foot hits something hard – hard, but it moves a little at my nudge. Crouching down, I see that it's a rusted railing... must have been painted once, there are little scraps of white on the insides of the curlicues... and their shape is somehow familiar, and I realize it's the same pattern as the fence around the estate! Only much reduced in scale, obviously. From the size of this, I'm guessing it was a railing on a stairway maybe, leading to the front door? I can see some stones nearby, their tops jagged and rough – probably once broken by the weight of the house crashing down on them, but worn a little smoother by the weather of a hundred years.
      Stepping into the area that was once the inside of the house, I stand still and just look for awhile, feeling subdued, feeling like an intruder. I pull out my iPod, to turn down the sound, feeling like the music is an intrusion on the silence of dead memories that cling to the walls no longer here... But as I reach for it, the lines of the song catch my ear, and I shiver though I'm not sure why.
      “Only love, only love can leave such a mark. But only love, only love can heal such a scar...”
      Alright, so it's U2's “Magnificent”, which I love, and granted the song does tend to give me shivers. But not shivers like that one... There was an odd sense of connection, for just a moment, the words came as much from the crumbled stone foundations as they did from my headphones.
      Instead of turning it off entirely, I turn it down to the edge of where I'm just able to still make out the song, then begin to walk slowly, slowly, through the house, my eyes fixed on the ground under my feet, searching for any clue about the place I've never seen...
      And I get a flash of an entryway, a hall with a high, high ceiling. Twenty feet above me, a chandelier of a thousand tiny crystals hangs, its light refracting into a million dancing glints of light on the warm golden-yellow walls. The walls are draped in jewel-toned fabrics, and hung with absolutely stunning paintings of ancient paradises and people whose beauty makes your heart ache to see, and there are huge tropical plants in every little nook...
      But I've barely had time to throw a glance around the room before it's gone again. I stand still a moment, reeling a bit. When I'm sure the vision has gone, I perch cautiously on something that might once have been part of a pillar, and jot down everything I can recall in my sketchbook, making a few rough sketches of the general outlines. As eager as I am to keep exploring... I can't let myself risk losing any tiny detail I learn of this place. These visions... they give me so much information that's totally gone from this world. I'm sure there's no record of that hallway, anywhere in the world, apart from my head, and now my sketchbook. There's no newspaper article about that chandelier, there's no town record of the huge leaves on whatever that plant by the door was.