Calliope: Voice of the Writers

 

 

The Great Novel Race 2008:

Feels Like Home

by Crystal Crawford

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Chapter 4: The Doorway

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Allison sat down at the kitchen table and tried to organize her thoughts.  Not even a full day had passed since she’d arrived from a redeye flight into Westfield and gone directly to the hospital.  She’d slept for a few hours once arriving at her mother’s house, only to be awakened by a strange boy rummaging through her mother’s cabinets.  She had a photograph with a cryptic statement, a phone number for a guy she’d never even heard her mother mention, a lockbox that no one seemed to know the combination to, a house that should have been musty from being closed up for weeks but which had not even a speck of dust in it, and a pot with a date carved on its side.  It had been a bizarre half a day.  

Though the accumulation of all the small things made Allison feel as though something strange were going on, the more she thought about it, the more she realized there really wasn’t much out of the ordinary.  Her mother had probably just forgotten to mention the lockbox to her, and the fact that she hadn’t shared the combination with the hospital administrator was of no surprise; her mother was a very private person.  The writing on the photograph beneath the lockbox was probably just a bit of poetry.  After all, her mother had a love for reading, and had been known to write from time to time.  Jim was probably just a friend, and if Allison really wanted to know more about him, she simply had to work up the nerve to call the phone number above his name. The pot was probably nothing, maybe even a used pot she’d picked up at a thrift store with the carving already on it. The boy was probably just a curious neighbor kid searching through a seemingly abandoned house, and the fact that the house smelled fresh and looked spotless – well, maybe her mother had some friends who had been coming over to keep the house up for her.  It all made sense; none of it was connected; they were just random fragments of a person’s life calling the attention of unfamiliar eyes.  

 Allison sighed and let her head drop down onto the table.  I really must need some sleep, she thought.  After all, it was silly of her to feel so disturbed by any of these little details.  They were normal, everyday things, and it was her own fault, her own stupid fault, that she knew so little about the life of her own mother.

 Just then a loud scratching noise came from the hallway and Allison jumped up, darting across the kitchen and out into the front hall.  No amount of sleep could have prepared her for what she saw there – a portion of the hallway wall had been slid back, revealing a steep, dark stairwell, and there were muddy child-size footprints leading downward into the darkness.

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