End of an era

 Welcome to the Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to write about new neighbours moving in. 

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

 

End of an era

by Chiara De Giorgi

 

Image by 652234 from Pixabay

Every year, for Christmas, I go home to visit my family. My brothers and I live scattered around the world and Christmas is a big deal, because it is the only time in the year when we all gather under one roof, in the house where we grew up.

Last year we learned that new neighbours would soon be arriving in the house next door, which had been empty for as long as I remember. This filled everyone with melancholy, because we spent many a day (and night!) in that house when we were younger. An old and rather dilapidated house, it was our favourite destination for organising secret meetings, founding secret societies, telling ghost stories on Halloween night… but mostly it was our secret, just mine and my brothers’. To my knowledge, no one else ever snuck in. At least, we never found any evidence of it. Maybe the fact that it’s the last house on the street and is next to the cemetery isn’t very attractive to normal people.

The old house was surrounded by a wall over two metres high, then there was a locked rusty iron gate with pointed bars. There used to be a gap in the wall, and we would pass through it to enter our own personal secret world.

A couple of nights after Christmas, having sent our parents to bed with unusual solicitude, my brothers and I went to the breach, just before midnight. Like when we were kids, we jumped out the window of Baby’s room, (he is the youngest of us, we still call him Baby, to his immense displeasure). There is a tree right in front of it and we used to hang on to the branches like little monkeys and then lower ourselves down with ease. I will gloss over our agility twenty years later, let’s just say that the operation was a rude awakening for all of us, but everyone would rather be tortured by pirates than admit it.

A bad surprise awaited us at the breach. Someone (I imagine the future new neighbours) had blocked it with rocks. In hindsight, I would say luckily, because I remembered it being wider. Twenty years later, surely some of us would have got stuck.

“And now what?”

“We cannot give up.”

“Of course not, it’s our last chance.”

“We have to climb over the wall.”

“I mean… It’s a bit high.”

“Well, climbing over the gate is really impractical. I want to get into this house, but not to the point of risking getting skewered on a sharp, rusty iron bar.”

“No, I would say not.”

“Maybe it’s so rusty that it’ll crumble if we hit it.”

“You think so?”

“Well, it’s worth a try. If we can wipe out a couple of bars, we should be able to sneak in.”

“Um… With my girth… we should wipe out at least three.”

“Two, three… It’s all the same, let’s go see.”

Long story short: no, the gate did not crumble.

“OK, the only way in is over the wall.”

“Um, I don’t know…”

“Come on, let’s at least try it.”

“Alright, let’s go around, see if we can find something to stand on.”

We found some unmarked gravestones leaning against the fence that bordered the cemetery. We thought it would be cool to use them, but they were far too heavy to carry and probably wouldn’t have been much use even if we stacked them.

Someone suggested going to the tool shed at our house and taking the ladder. We all felt a bit ashamed of this idea, it was not stylish nor adventurous. Nevertheless, we went to the shed. The ladder, however, was not there. God knows where it was. It could have been somewhere in the garden, but it was too dark to see anything. And it could also be that Dad had lent it to someone.

“New plan. In the shed I saw a rope. We’ll make a lasso and tie it to a tree branch, then pull ourselves up with it.”

Of course, none of us managed to lasso the branch. These things only work in the movies. So, my brothers decided that they would throw me on top of the wall so I could secure the rope to the tree, and they would use it to climb up. That’s what being the only girl means. No, not necessarily that you get thrown by your brothers on the top of a wall surrounding an old, abandoned house in the middle of the night, but that your brothers team up against you.

One of them intertwined his fingers, I put my foot on his hands, and he lifted me up. I managed to grab onto the wall and pulled myself up to sit astride it. At that point they threw me the rope. I could not fasten it to the tree while sitting on top of the wall, because the tree was too far away (or my arms were too short, as the three of them implied). So I grabbed onto the nearest branch with my legs and arms, like a real monkey, and moved to tie the rope around its base, tightening the knot as much as I could. Then I threw the rope over the wall and finally, with my trademark gracefulness, let myself slide to the ground. This operation proved tricky, as the tree was very close to the house and, on the way down, I banged my leg against the stone sill of one of the windows. Ouch.

Once we were all inside, we suddenly felt excited again. The house was just as we had left it, only twenty years older itself. There were lots of spiders, a musty smell, rubble and rotten furniture (more rotten than we remembered, in fact).

We walked about the rooms, debated briefly whether to trust the wooden stairs and decided against it (for once, common sense came to our rescue). Eventually, we sat on the floor in the middle of the salon in the dim light of our phones’ torches, the bottoms of our trousers getting damp, but we didn’t care. And we spent the night telling stories to one other. One of the best nights of my life, despite the fact that, by morning, the leg I had bumped against the stone windowsill showed the biggest blue bruise I had ever seen on myself or anyone else.

“Well, I guess it’s time to go home.”

“Yeah, Mama’s gonna wake up soon. Even though there’s no point in hiding our mischief anymore, I’d like to keep this a secret just between us.”

“Agreed.”

We got up reluctantly, said goodbye to the house, and headed for the tree.

As we dropped down beyond the wall of that house for the last time, we were aware that an era was ending, but it was not very clear which era was ending. The one of dreams, of stories, of adventures? Or that of youthful recklessness, of doing shenanigans for the sake of challenging one another and oneself?

***

A couple of hours later, we were helping Mom make Christmas pancakes for breakfast. Baby poured himself a cup of coffee and stood by the window, looking out. Suddenly, he dropped the cup, that crashed on the floor splashing coffee everywhere.

“The house…” he said.

“What about it?”

Mum grumbled as she went to get rags and dustpan, while we went to Baby and looked out the window. The house was gone.

“Why are you still standing there?” Mom said, irritated, when she returned and saw that no one had done anything yet to pick up the shards or wipe up the spilled coffee.

“What… what happened to the house?”

“I told you the new neighbours are coming. Of course they had that crumbling old house demolished. Soon the construction company will arrive to build a new cottage. They just left the wall to mark off the property, but they will tear that down too. Would you guys move over now, please? And maybe give me a hand cleaning up this mess.”

 

 

 

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The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/