A Convergence

A Convergence

         

         It was about 9:00 on a Saturday night, and we parked our car at the 7-Eleven on the corner of Brown St. and Fricks Lock Road. After a short walk and a surreptitious hop over the fence covered in “No Trespassing” signs, we arrived at the abandoned mansion. We walked around the house, surveying the land, as it were, and around the back we found the only door not boarded up. Once we had kicked a few stray boards out of the entrance, we took our first cautious steps into the house. The paint was peeling and not a single piece of furniture was upright, save the one metal chair ominously placed in the center of the study. We walked the layout of the ground floor, bathing in the stale time that the house preserved, and were contemplating who would take the stairs first. That was when a pair of lights pulled into the abandoned driveway.
         

         There was a restaurant about half a block down from the mansion and across a big intersection, where a young boy sat in the southwest corner with his arguing parents. He knew they would be sparring throughout the meal, and so he resigned to watching out the window at cars and their drivers. Once he turned his head to look out of the window, however, a flash of someone turning a flashlight on then suddenly off again caught the corner of the boy’s eye. He watched as four boys much older than him hopped the fence and entered the mansion. The mansion had haunted his dreams and fueled his fantasies for as long as he could remember, and now these four mysterious marauders had realized his dream. Soon, the boy forgot about his parents’ arguing. All that mattered were those four boys in that big, forgotten mansion. He wondered where they could be at every moment, fervently searching for a light to shine through one of the rotted walls as to give a clue to their whereabouts. He was so surprised to see a big, old black van race into the driveway that he jumped and gasped. Both of his parents turned and faced him. “What’s wrong, honey?”
         

         Mr. Fallon was a farmer’s son, who was also the son of a farmer. For more than 4 generations his family had owned this property, despite the fact that its prime had long ago passed. Once, back before the war, his family had proudly been the third largest farming family in this county. And before that his family had owned more than 200 acres of land, the easternmost portion of which had a small mansion where they lived prosperously. When the depression hit, however, the once grandiose farm was reduced to a feeble 120 acres, barely enough to sustain a family, and one small patch of decrepit, infertile land where the rotting mansion now sat. He was standing in his kitchen, smoking a pipe and gazing out his window when he noticed the same flash of light that the young boy in the restaurant had noticed. “Damn kids, trespassing again,” he muttered to himself as he threw on a flannel overcoat and grabbed his keys. Seconds later, Mr. Fallon had scraped his tires against the abandoned gravel and come to a halting stop, his lights shining pervasively on all of the broken windows of the house. He opened the door without shutting off the car, and with rage in his eyes, he stepped out.