There is a warped old house on the edge of town. Its walls are slanted, the hanging shutters clenk-clunking slowly in the gentle afternoon breeze like breathing things bumping against the flaking blue paint of the ancient siding. The only piece of this place not faded and sunbleached is the front door: a heavy thing of solid oak with all the color and magnetism of a surging river's deepest whirlpool. Its indigo glazing pools in the carved eddies swirling round and about the natural knots and grain of the wood. The depth and movement of the pattern reminds you of the shaded curves of the rushing creek at your childhood home: the shadows which sang you softly into daydreams of grand adventures and eternal love with hidden teeth.
You've dreamt of this place nightly since moving into your own small cookie-cutter prefab a few blocks up the way. It's been three months. The place is widely considered an eyesore. You nod along with scathing indictments of its bent eaves at neighborhood barbecues, shuddering as the other young ladies whisper the curse: haunted. You offer your own hollow pretensions, fitting the suburban mold, all the while sensing your marrow and molecules reaching out toward the beautiful brokenness in the tall weeds beneath the gnarled old willow on the cusp of an ancient birch forest. You never knew yearning could tingle like this.
Today you stand before the house, your shaking fingers on the door, trembling with fear even as you slide the pads over the curved etchings and pull the hinges on a creaking journey, swinging the weight of the wood outward. You hold your breath, expecting a waft of stale air to exhale over the porch slats. Instead, the sound of absolute, utter, impenetrable silence emerges from the depths of the house. The quiet echoes weightily around your bones, pulling you into the foyer as though spectral hands are caressing your forearms. As you enter, the door swings shut with a shockingly loud slam. It electrifies your senses, replacing your nerve with static and screaming danger down your spine.
Gathering yourself, remembering that you are a Good and Reasonable Girl who doesn't do foolish things, you wrench the door with all your terrified might. It takes three, five, eight pulls at the antique purpled glass knob before the portal gives and you hurry yourself to the other side of it. Once back on the porch, quaking legs carry you, a small ship on choppy seas, to the overgrown cement patio on the edge of the woods. A glance over your shoulder illustrates the source of the invisible hands as dozens of translucent children gaze mournfully through the filthy window at you. I'm sorry, you think at them. I'm too weak to help you.
Your heavy breathing echoes against peeling birch and stony riverbank. It is a layered echo, the deep panting matching your heartbeat with thundering richness between your lips and meshing in the leafy wood with a lighter sound: the delicate, harmonic sound like someone singing to pair with your distress. It is an organic thing. It reminds you of the frights your abuela passed along to you in your youth, of tales featuring a tragic figure weeping and searching for innocent souls to carry into the cold depths of the river. A horrible, enchanting forever companionship. You always loved those stories, though you never confessed it at the time. Finding fear somewhat delicious was never the done thing in your home.
Your shaking body stiffens as you realize the truth: the echo of the woods is disguising a being other than yourself. Someone is behind that gold-hued birch, casting a cool blue mist about the trunk. Were your adrenaline not already surging and had that blue not been in such strange contrast to the evening light filtering through champagne treetops, you may not have noticed. The temperature plummets, taking the day from late summer afternoon to midautumn chill in moments. Astonishment steals the breath in visible clouds from your lungs and suspends it in midair: white puffs of this can't be happening held aloft between you and the coalescing humanoid form peering out from behind the tree.
One ice-blue hand grips a low branch, followed by another. A woman, sad-eyed and otherworldy in her tall beauty, pulls herself around the tree toward you. The movement is unnatural and clumsy, as though she isn't used to her own body. Footfalls stagger from the treeline and onto the patio one shaky step at a time. Have your own legs ever worked? You can't seem to remember in this moment. Eyes lock onto eyes, and you can feel yourself drowning. A sudden sensation crashes over you: that you've always known her. That she's always been waiting here for you.
Those cold hands reach for your face, and the voice of your reasonable self screams in your mind you know this is wrong, you know you need to leave!
A momentary burst of strength allows you to push her hands away and make a run for town. You are a good, normal girl and you don't want this. You don't. You don't. You aren't supposed to. You aren't fast enough. She is standing in front of you, having turned to mist and back again in a flash, her posture unchanged. Those eyes and hands are on your face again, all you can see, and they are devouring you.
Her lips are on your frozen ear and she is filling your mind with the sweetest songs of I have been waiting for you and there is family here for us and one kiss and we can live beneath the water and keep house for the children and never feel wrong or alone again.
Sharp teeth extend toward your tender throat. They are a gift, an offering turning your blood to cold river water and your loneliness to a soon-forgotten dream. Days and years and decades from now, the town's whispers of haunted will filter down like a blessing on the breeze, the only gift suburbia ever gave you.
What did you think of our first Steeped Story, teaheart? It was created using the most common responses and result from our Horror Collection-inspired Choose Your own Teaventure, and took particular inspiration from our teas La Llorona and O-Negative.
We love telling tales with you! Follow your own path through the HaunTEAd House and let us know your story!
xoxo, Friday
