September 1996

I was at my father's house attending a birthday party for my half brother. He was a lot younger than he is now, and really annoying for some reason. He and his friends were being really loud, so I decided to go out onto the back porch with some of the grownups. The sky outside was purple and dim with a weird, heavy dusk falling around the house. I leaned up against the sliding glass door the whole time I was out there, and I think I may have had pajamas on. Hard to know. Loud music started to play then and I found that annoying as well. I peeked in through the white vertical blinds and saw some kids jumping around the family room, the adults sat back in low comfortably-cushioned chairs enjoying the scene. One of the adults addressed me from inside (I was still leaning against the glass) saying that they were going to play other kinds of music too. Country music soon began to blare from the speakers and it was more than I could tolerate.

Inside again, I made my way away from the party, down a dark narrow hallway. This is when the house became my grandparents'. The music and shouting faded as I walked on the faux stone tile, down the hallway until I came to a small back room. It was a dark room, lit only diffusely by light coming through smoked glass in a door at the opposite end. There was a washer and dryer here, as well as a few refrigerators and unknown equipment too. My grandmother and mother were here trying to get at things I couldn't see, opening and closing drawers, turning things on or off. They remained silent while they toiled, and just tried to stay out of each others' way. It was difficult because the room was so cramped with equipment. I couldn't really see what they were doing, but they paid me no mind as I slipped by them toward the door on the other side of the room, which led to the bedroom I shared with my brother. My grandmother only acknowledged me once as she opened a drawer and almost backed into me. I opened the bedroom door and entered the room. My brother was not there (he was probably at the party at dad's house), but the room was warm and well-lit. There were two beds squeezed into the room, and it looked like I'd have to crawl over them if I wanted to get to the other side. I first looked to my right at the wall just inside the door and saw a series of old brass switches. Each one was different, as if the standards had changed as the house was being built. The switches looked antique, as if from the industrial revolution or some long past age. Some were up and others were down, and I took them to be light switches - which they were, of course. I flipped one up and looked up at the ceiling. There were several different kinds of light up there, from fluorescent plastic squares to old metal fixtures. The first fluorescent square flickered on, white and harsh. I turned it back off and flipped up the next switch, which was more like a metal handle molded to look like the arm of a dragon. As the switch went up the one next to it went up too, like they were paired. I looked back up to the ceiling to see a much more yellow, incandescent light come on. Looking over at the single heavily-draped window farther down the right wall I thought that this wan light would look better when the sun came up in the morning - as if I were going to leave this light on all night.

Staying close to the wall on my right I started into the room, skirting the low bed to my left. I passed a series of vents that were blowing hot air into the room, and I noticed that it was a lot warmer in the room than I had originally thought. Looking around I saw more vents (ones that I hadn't noticed before) along the wall close to the floor, and in several bulging boiler-looking fixtures that jutted from the walls at various points around the room. Some were made of wood which had long ago been stained red or black, but now the natural wood color showed through. I came to the first boiler. It was ornately carved, and had knobs, levers, vents and drawers in it, but wasn't mechanical. I looked into one of the eye-level vents which was completely open. At the back of a long duct made from a patchwork of wood and metal I saw the red glow of fire. Heated air blew from the vent into my face. I reached up and turned the knob that was closest to me, which was placed between the two most evident vents. As I turned it, the knob squeaked and I could see a leather pulley tug at a metal shutter at the back of the duct. The duct slowly closed - blocked by the swinging flap - as I turned the lever, and the hot air stopped blowing.

I went farther into the room then and closed a few more vents, the ones I could figure out. The entire room was a busy mishmash of varying styles, from gothic to industrial to colonial American. Along the wall at the opposite corner from the door was a massive fireplace, the hearth of which was covered with a giant black beveled iron plate. From a hole in the plate came two thick leather straps which were shiny with age and wear. I followed them over to a strange device to my right, where the straps disappeared into a complex series of wheels, gears and pulleys. One of the vertical wheels was spinning swiftly, but the leather strap had come off its track and hung limply at the axle of the wheel. The mechanism further in the system (which was hidden by the gear closer to me) was making an impotent clunk clunk clunk sound as the machinery worked at nothing. Following the straps more slowly I saw they were knotted tightly in a pile near a tiny red metal door in the wall. They had obviously been like this for some time, and I wondered why my grandfather hadn't been in here to fix the system. I looked back to my left at the large fireplace and wondered if it would overheat without the fan within to cool the embers. I did see some white smoke escape a small vent in the iron plate, but it drifted harmlessly up the plate into another vent directly above.

Further along the same wall, to my left, I saw my grandfather's study desk. There were papers and books arranged neatly into small alcoves on the desktop, but the chair was pushed in and it didn't look like it had been used in a long while. Above, near the ceiling, was a mantle cluttered with antique dolls, wooden tribal masks and old painted tin toys. I grew slightly alarmed as I looked around the room and saw that the mantle completely circled it, with these old toys sitting along it staring out into space. The room seemed more empty then, yet somehow more forbidding. I kept seeing things move out of the corner of my eye, and looked from a wooden gargoyle to a doll, to cracked wooden egg, the red and blue paint of which had flaked off over time.