Part 1: We Are Strangers

Chapter 2

(Note that if you’re new to The Mist Folk, please begin with the Prologue. From there, you can click through, one chapter to the next. And if you’ve started reading but haven’t caught up, you can find where you left off by going here.)

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The old door shut behind him. It was dim, and quiet. He heard the floor creak.

He was in a large foyer, with a chandelier above and a Persian carpet below. The handrails up the stairs were dark and smooth. In the air was the smell of a morning fire.

“Are you doing all right?” he asked.

 “I’m fine, don’t worry,” Aunt Ellen said. “I thought you might like to stay in your old room.”

He said thanks and started up the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs hung the painting, still, the one that showed the judge in his white wig. A few steps up was the next one, showing peasants enjoying their cider as the sun came down, and then the painting of a girl, staring off to the side. She was the girl he used to talk to when he was young, but the judge never spoke back, and neither did the peasants, because they were always tired after working hard all day, and they just wanted to be left alone to their cider.

He came to the top of the stairs and looked down a long hallway. On each side were sconces holding light bulbs, all the way down to the far end of the house. He walked up to the fourth door on the right. When it opened a bit, he looked at the floor and saw the crevices among the wood planks, where ants in the summer used to climb around. He pushed the door open a bit further and saw his old desk and chair, his old bed, the closet in the corner.

When he sat at the desk, the chair squeaked like it did when he used to sit here and lay out his baseball cards in front of him, and organize them by year, or by position, or by batting average, or by who might be the best even though their numbers didn’t show it yet.

He got up and went to the bookshelf, and ran his hands along the spines, the copy of Treasure Island from Ellen, The Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson from his grandfather. The stories of vampires and time travels. Sitting on the bookshelf, up in the corner, was a plaque that read: Daniel Strathburn, Sixth Grade Finalist, Capital Region Spelling Bee.

He walked over and opened the closet door, and found the box he was looking for. On top of it, on top of all the newspaper cutouts and report cards, was a picture of him and his grandfather.

He was eight or nine years old in this picture, and he was sitting on Grandpa’s lap. Daniel was smiling, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Grandpa, on the other hand, always thought it was stupid to smile just because a camera happened to be propped in front of you, but then again, he didn’t want to disappoint anyone, so he went ahead and gave one of his slight grins.

And for the first time since Ellen called with the news, Daniel cried.

The funeral would be the day after tomorrow, and cousins and old friends would begin to arrive here at the house within the next few hours. They would be watching, they would notice his responses, the way he held his shoulders, how he was handling it.

He wiped off the tears, left his suitcase by the bed. He walked down the stairs again, and the judge in his white wig was still unwilling to speak. The peasants with their cider were still tired, and the girl on her own still looked away.

Coming to the living room, he saw that Ellen wasn’t there yet. Hanging on the walls were the portraits, though. The faces shone in the light, with dark wooden frames around them.

Here were his great-great-great-grandparents Thomas and Ellen Strathburn, sitting beside one another, unsmiling. Land and lineage were in their eyes even when they met, and they got used to running the estate together, and that was all. Sometimes they would give each other a kiss on the cheek as they retired to their separate rooms and said good night.

Next to them were Daniel’s great-great-grandfather Matthew Strathburn and his wife Alida. She was his second cousin on the Strathburn side. He was stern, his eyebrows and his lips didn’t suggest that he had been troubled by anything, ever, in his whole life, but had met every challenge head on. His wife looked so formal, with her tiara and ruby necklace, and her husband would never know—never, in his whole life—that she would one day let her hair hang down her back and see ghost ships on the river.

Then there were Daniel’s great-grandparents, Ethan and Margaret Strathburn. Their portrait was the largest, hanging above the fireplace. Ethan looked deliberative here, formal like his father, but the truth was that he was instinctive, more instinctive than anyone around him. And his wife Margaret, sitting beside him, looked like she was simply happy in this portrait, but the painter didn’t capture how she would sometimes turn away from all the others, for quite a while, and then return.

Daniel heard Ellen’s voice behind him. “So did any of them say they missed you?”

He smiled and turned around. She was already sitting down on the sofa with her coffee in hand, and he took a seat on the chair next to her. She was Grandpa’s youngest sister.

“You remember how your grandfather used to stand with you in front of these paintings?” she asked.

He nodded.

“He would tell you all those stories. About our great-grandfather Thomas. He loved that one. How Thomas one time decided to begin walking to Massachusetts because he was so angry at his wife Ellen. She really had a beautiful name, by the way.”

Daniel smiled again.

“So Thomas walked and walked, expecting a carriage from the estate to arrive behind him any time and ask him to come back. And several men with their horses did come by, men who recognized him well: Good evening, Mr. Strathburn, I’m surprised to see you here. Good evening, Mr. Strathburn, it’s a fine night, but would you like me to help you in any way? Still, Thomas braved the weather, stopping to rest now and then. He arrived early the next morning in the first village across the state line, and promptly walked into the village’s only inn and requested a room. The innkeeper responded by handing Thomas a letter that had arrived by horse just a few minutes before. It was from his wife Ellen, and it gently reminded him that he’d forgotten to bring any money along.”

Grandpa always winced when he told that story.

Ellen looked away and was quiet for a few seconds. She shook her head and said, “You know, when he went…” Her eyes became wet. “God, that was just last night.”

Daniel looked down.

“Well, when he went, he didn’t give one of his speeches, you know what I mean. He, just, went.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back more often,” Daniel said.

“Now, listen,” she replied. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. I don’t even know how many times you invited him down to the city, and how many times he went down and stayed with you. Every time, he came back and told me what a wonderful time he’d had.”

What she said was true, actually. What she didn’t know was that he had insisted on going out with Daniel at night, and everyone thought he was hilarious, in his way. Perfect strangers would sit around listening to him tell stories.

Silence for a few moments. The fire made its crackling and popping sounds. “You’re going to be all right?” Daniel asked.

She looked at him and didn’t blink. “Don’t worry. It’ll be strange, but he and I talked about it many times. It’s not like this is some kind of surprise.”

“Still, I’ll make sure to come back more often.”

“I hope you do. Of course I hope you do. But listen, I want to mention something. Do you remember our cousin James, Uncle Peter’s son?”

Yes, Daniel recalled him from family events, and from trips to his house with Grandpa. He was an eccentric guy, smart.

“Well,” she went on, “he and your grandfather have always had their regular get-togethers, you know. So I called James this morning to tell him about your grandfather, and of course he said he was sorry, and he’d be at the funeral. I also told him that you’d be here. He said he remembered you, and he was wondering if you’d be willing to talk. He said it had something to do with our family, the history.”

Strange. But maybe not so strange, now that Daniel thought about it, because Grandpa and James often talked about their family’s history when Daniel was there, and Daniel always listened.

“So here was my thinking,” she said. “People are going to start showing up here in a couple of hours, and I know that you don’t want to deal with that kind of thing right now. So how about if you go see James, and you can come back later, after the crowd’s thinned out? I called James, and he knows to expect you. If people ask, I can just say that you had to do something in the city today.”

Oh, how he loved Ellen. “You’re sure?”

“Of course. Now, look out the front.”

He got up, walked into the front foyer, and looked out the window. The car that had brought him here was still parked in the driveway, and the driver was still behind the wheel.

Daniel turned around to look at her. “OK, but I’ll be back in the afternoon,” he said, and she nodded.

The sun was shining in his eyes, and he squinted and he was relieved, as he said hello again to the driver and got in the backseat. The driver had James’s address, and within a few moments they were driving back down the road.

James lived almost an hour away, because he liked being away from the others. He liked his collections, his books, his artifacts. He knew all the names and dates.

They drove on for another fifteen minutes or so, through open fields and farms and forest, before coming to a four-way crossing, which Daniel remembered from his trips with Grandpa. The driver kept going straight.

But, no, actually, that was odd—Daniel was sure they should have turned left. He leaned forward and said, “Sorry, I think we’re going the wrong way.”

“It’s OK,” the driver responded, and the car picked up speed.

Daniel thought about it again, just to make sure he wasn’t wrong. “I’m pretty sure we were supposed to turn left.”

The car kept going. “We’re not going to hurt you,” the driver said.

Daniel’s heart started beating fast.

“Do not try to leave,” the driver said.