I remember that chair.
When I was a little boy, my grandma scolded me only once. It was because I sat in that chair. She barked at me – it stands out, even now, because she never spoke to me in that way – and she told me to get out of the chair. She informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never again to so much as touch that chair. Later on that evening, she made me a cup of cocoa and gave me a chocolate chip cookie, and she apologized for having been harsh to me like that, but she simply shushed me when I asked about the chair. In fact, she never spoke of it again after that day.
On a late autumn afternoon, a few years later, however, when I was fishing with my grandpa, I asked him about it; what was so special about that chair. He glanced over at me when I inquired, took the pipe from between his teeth, and heaved a soft sigh.
“S’haunted, is what it is. Claimed, as it were. Ain’t yours. S’why she got snappish. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” He chuckled, somewhat grimly. “Ain’t hers, neither. Sure as hell ain’t mine. We just keep it for the one whose it is.” He looked back to the river, placed his pipe between his lips once more, and spoke through clenched teeth, in that way that he often did. “Came down to your grandma from her grandma, who got it from who knows where; back before telephones, and airplanes, and ‘lectric lights. Comes down from colonial times, I figure. Maybe even earlier.”
I asked him whose it was, then. He smirked, never looking away from the water.
“You’re my grandson and I love you, and so I hope you’ll never have cause to know. I don’t know. Heard tell, but I don’t know. Your grandma, though, she knows…”
It was the last that he and I spoke on the subject of the chair. It was the last that I ever spoke of it, right up until the day I died.
And here I am, now, back in that room in the far corner of the third floor of their home, with that thin, red dusk-light filtering in through the lace curtains and the haze of dust that always swirled in the air in that house, just like when I was a child. The chair faces away from me, toward the window, and she sits upon it, rocking slowly, while she hums a lullaby that I’ve never heard before; something eerie and half-tuneless. She holds something in her arms, though I cannot yet see what it is. Slowly, I cross the floor, acutely aware of every soft groan in the floorboards, and of each gentle creak emanating from the chair, as it tilts lazily… forward and back, forward and back.
Like the windows, she’s adorned with lace, though hers is gray and dingy, and it covers her in layers, almost completely. Her hands, somewhat less concealed than most of her, under long, voluminous sleeves of lace, are chalk-white, with bruise-black nails. She cradles a small, limp bundle in her arms, swaddled in dark gray-brown rags, soiled and stained. As I draw closer, I cannot help but to think of how the innumerable sheets of gauzy fabric hang upon her like the cloth of a woman in some dour old religious painting, down to a hood that swallows her eyes with shadows. What I can see of the lower half of her face is attractive, though of that same unwholesome pale hue as her hands, and her subtle smile looks as though she has hastily smeared ashes across her lips. Her head begins to turn toward me. As she opens her mouth, I see that all of her shining black teeth taper to sharp points.
Something halfway between a demure, feminine whisper and a cadaverous rasp escapes those blackened lips, and I realize that she is speaking to me…
When I was a little boy, my grandma scolded me only once. It was because I sat in that chair. She barked at me – it stands out, even now, because she never spoke to me in that way – and she told me to get out of the chair. She informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never again to so much as touch that chair. Later on that evening, she made me a cup of cocoa and gave me a chocolate chip cookie, and she apologized for having been harsh to me like that, but she simply shushed me when I asked about the chair. In fact, she never spoke of it again after that day.
On a late autumn afternoon, a few years later, however, when I was fishing with my grandpa, I asked him about it; what was so special about that chair. He glanced over at me when I inquired, took the pipe from between his teeth, and heaved a soft sigh.
“S’haunted, is what it is. Claimed, as it were. Ain’t yours. S’why she got snappish. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” He chuckled, somewhat grimly. “Ain’t hers, neither. Sure as hell ain’t mine. We just keep it for the one whose it is.” He looked back to the river, placed his pipe between his lips once more, and spoke through clenched teeth, in that way that he often did. “Came down to your grandma from her grandma, who got it from who knows where; back before telephones, and airplanes, and ‘lectric lights. Comes down from colonial times, I figure. Maybe even earlier.”
I asked him whose it was, then. He smirked, never looking away from the water.
“You’re my grandson and I love you, and so I hope you’ll never have cause to know. I don’t know. Heard tell, but I don’t know. Your grandma, though, she knows…”
It was the last that he and I spoke on the subject of the chair. It was the last that I ever spoke of it, right up until the day I died.
And here I am, now, back in that room in the far corner of the third floor of their home, with that thin, red dusk-light filtering in through the lace curtains and the haze of dust that always swirled in the air in that house, just like when I was a child. The chair faces away from me, toward the window, and she sits upon it, rocking slowly, while she hums a lullaby that I’ve never heard before; something eerie and half-tuneless. She holds something in her arms, though I cannot yet see what it is. Slowly, I cross the floor, acutely aware of every soft groan in the floorboards, and of each gentle creak emanating from the chair, as it tilts lazily… forward and back, forward and back.
Like the windows, she’s adorned with lace, though hers is gray and dingy, and it covers her in layers, almost completely. Her hands, somewhat less concealed than most of her, under long, voluminous sleeves of lace, are chalk-white, with bruise-black nails. She cradles a small, limp bundle in her arms, swaddled in dark gray-brown rags, soiled and stained. As I draw closer, I cannot help but to think of how the innumerable sheets of gauzy fabric hang upon her like the cloth of a woman in some dour old religious painting, down to a hood that swallows her eyes with shadows. What I can see of the lower half of her face is attractive, though of that same unwholesome pale hue as her hands, and her subtle smile looks as though she has hastily smeared ashes across her lips. Her head begins to turn toward me. As she opens her mouth, I see that all of her shining black teeth taper to sharp points.
Something halfway between a demure, feminine whisper and a cadaverous rasp escapes those blackened lips, and I realize that she is speaking to me…