The House

The House

It was an old wooden cottage with an attic on the top. There was a chest lying in the attic. It was an old metal chest ornately designed. He had not given much thought to it except that it had been there for very long time, through generations in the family .He had grown up in the cottage even playing on the chest. It was not opened, if fact it was locked since a very long time. When he asked his mother she replied that it would be opened someday when it would time….

He was very much given to science and fiction and believed them to be genuinely true. His mother would get disturbed whenever she found him involved in thoughts of science and fiction.

He had an uncle. He would often ask him show what the chest held inside. The uncle had promised to get the keys and open the chest one day.

The attic was basically empty. It was a small place. There was a window in the wall which used to light up the room in the day. He would often spend time up there. He would feel a strange tranquillity and peace there. The lid of the chest was bolted with a big lock hanging of it.

He had an aunt who had one day disclosed to him that the house itself was a kind of Time machine controlled by the chest. This was when he had decided to find out secret of the house and the chest and had insisted his aunt to tell him about it. He was a favourite of his aunt and she had yielded after a little while. He had been surprised. He had secretly dreamt about those Flying Saucers and Time Machines but had not expected his own house to be a Time Machine.

He was sitting on his chest one day thinking if it could really transport him into Time. He looked towards the window, it was daytime. He waited there reading a book till it was night and dark outside. He was on his chest the next day also reading stories. He had a thought; his uncle had talked of a key. There must be something inside.

His mother did not have the keys either. She had replied that it was in a very far-off place where he would one day to study to study Engineering. She disclosed to him the story of a tale attached to him and the chest. It was the last part of the tale she knew and it said he was to be an engineer and study in a far off distant place. That is the way the tale went till then.

His mind was now on the far off place where he would have to go to study. They would call it just the ‘place’. He still longed to open the lock of the chest. He wished if something to work out soon. His mother had told him of the tale was about every bit of him his words , thoughts, actions, only that one had to go ahead in Time to that place and  understand everything to be able to solve the jig saw puzzle of he tale. ‘Understand’, she had stressed.

He was just a seven year old now, he thought. If he only could find out a way to travel through Time. He could paint. He got an idea to paint the key. He would paint whatever he could understand of the of the ‘place’ of the jigsaw puzzle of the time ahead. That would surely be the key.

He had heard of the place being of Sun, rain, trees, grass, hills and a kind of people he had not heard of. The tale went to say of a girl who would be there to be after to destroy him and he strangely, he thought as his mother had told him, would come to like her. That had worried him. Sensing this, his mother had replied, ‘Don’t worry you will not even notice it, but you will like her then’, ‘At least’, she had repeated.

He had sat down and painted as and what he understood. When he finished he went up to his mother and showed it to her. She looked at it and told him to go up to the attic and give it a try. ‘Put the painting on the window sill and make a wish, if you are right the House shall work as you wish’. She had strongly insisted on being and going with him in the Time. His uncle had been out of the village on some work and was not expected back until the next day.

He agreed and went up, put the painting on the wall and made a wish. The chest stayed locked.

He heard voices below. It was his mother’s. There was another voice. It was grown up girl’s. He heard his mother come upstairs. ‘We are there’, she told him. ‘In that place in Time ahead and a there is a girl downstairs who insists on meeting you’, she said.

His wish had been granted. She told him she had refused but the girl still kept on insisting until his mother had firmly put her feet down. His mother knew what was coming and had firmly said ‘No.’.

He removed the painting from the window sill and kept aside. He had travelled in Time, and had nearly come across the girl would be out there to destroy him and he would be not be knowing and was to come to like her. His mother had met her and knew her name.

He felt safe and reassured.