I
My great aunt was finally dying. The whole family had come to her old Victorian mansion to mourn and say prayers over her sick form. Great Aunt Olivia De Silva Walburg, one hundred and four years old. Her husband came from an old Austrian branch of the nobility that had emigrated to the United States and invested in transportation. If World War II hadn't happened, he'd be an Austrian count and my great aunt a countess. She was a fantastic person with hundreds of stories, many of which colored my years with her. Everyone knew that she was dying, but they all had to do their best to impress the old lady before she went. Her home was large, and old. Everything creaked and groaned as you walked over wooden floorboards and held onto once glittering gilded rosewood railings.
At first I thought it was the old vents settling, the way any place groans when it's been empty too long. But lying there in the dark, sheets pulled to my chin, I felt the exhale brush across my cheek — warm, damp, too close. A small fan whirred as it turned towards me. I held my breath, waiting for it to happen again. I tried to tell myself that the electric fan would ease the sweltering heat of summer, telling myself I was overtired, that moving back into my great aunt's childhood home was stirring up old nerves. I stayed with her for four years during college, helping her out and commuting to the nearby state university. This was my old room in a corner of the house. The roof was just above. I used to climb out onto it and look at the night sky and a sea of stars when the weather was too hot indoors. Great-aunt did not have centralized air conditioning in this part of the house. This room used to be an attic room used for servants, so it had few amenities. Thankfully, it had a small working bathroom attached. A few of my college things were still gathering dust in the closet. Faded objects with memories and a few old pictures in boxes.
Unfortunately staying by myself in the old attic room left my overly vivid imagination to renew old fears of the mansion being haunted, especially since Great-aunt Olivia lay sick and dying downstairs. But I could feel that the air shifted, slow and deliberate, as if something in the walls was listening for my heartbeat. It was a cloyingly hot day in July. July 4th was two days away, but it wasn't time for festivities. Everything during the day was all silence and whispers, some already mourning the sick old woman in the master bedroom, writing up plans for their inheritance. I had been here for three days, helping great-aunt as the most junior relative in gratitude for free room and board in those college days.
I whispered my own name just to hear a human voice in the room. It sounded small. Wrong. Like the house swallowed it before it reached the door.
I didn't sleep after that. I just stared at the ceiling, watching the faint pattern of streetlights and gabled old mansions through the curtains. I trembled, as if something unseen was pacing back and forth on the other side of the glass.
By morning, I'd convinced myself it was nothing. Stress. Memory. The kind of tricks the mind plays when you're alone in a place that reminds you more about your old self than you remember about it.
And the house was quiet — too quiet — like it was holding its breath now. The relatives puttered around doing their mourning, waiting for the elderly woman's last gasp, and the priest had gone home for a rest. The relatives would eventually eat breakfast and go wherever they went during the day. None but me would be staying in the house with great-aunt. I was between jobs at this time and needed time away from the grind. The rest of the family would be back tonight and sit vigil again with the priest or just wait it out like they had been doing for days. Great-aunt's lawyer and team for the funeral rites were on speed dial should she finally pass away.