Chapter 2 – Something Familiar

As people start filtering out of the dining room Jacqueline looks at me, smiles, and asks. “So, what are your hobbies?”

“Hobbies? Well, I love to play the piano.”

“I have an idea,” Jacqueline says darting out of her chair. “Follow me,”

“Okay,” I say getting up. She takes my hand and pulls me out of the room.

“So what’s your idea?” I ask.

Jacqueline smiles back at me. “It’s a surprise!”

We walk for a minute or so when we reach the room. The first thing that catches my eye is a gloss black grand piano. My heart jumps a little as a smile creeps over my face.

“At least there’s something familiar here,” I whisper to myself as I look around the room. There is a little box with a needle for the records. On top of it, instead of a normal speaker, it has a horn like a tuba. It swirls around and goes above the record. Behind it, there are several bookshelves with records on them.

“Does that record player actually work?” I ask.

“Yes, thank God,” Jacqueline says. “Otherwise, I would be bored out of my mind, especially when Frank plays the Piano.” She leans in and whispers to me, “When he plays, it sounds like my sister when she was 5.”

“Come on he can’t be that bad,” I say rolling my eyes. “How long has he been playing?

“He’s been playing since… about a year and a half,” she says with a sad look on her face. She smiles and darts to the piano and asks.

“Can you read sheet Music?”

With a puzzled look on my face I say, “Kind of but not really. I can learn from sheet music and I can’t sight read.”

“That’s okay if you’re interested,” Jacqueline points over to a bookshelf on the other side of the room. “There are quite a few pieces of sheet music over there, most of it’s old Beethoven, Bach, things like that. Nothing modern sadly, but it’s still better than nothing.”

“Would it be okay if I play the piano?” I ask.

“That’s why I brought you in here,” Jacqueline says grabbing my arm and pulling me to the piano.

The Piano is covered in dust as if it hasn’t been played in quite a while. A bit of sadness fills my heart. I see little rings and scratches from where people have set wet glasses on top of the wooden frame, I lift open the lid to see the soundboard, and considering how much dust that is on top, I’m pleasantly surprised that it’s rather clean on the inside and there’s not a single spider web.

I lift open the fallboard to reveal the keys. The keys are faded yellow from years of non-use. I start by doing my scales to test the tune of the piano, I work my way up and down, just making sure everything sounds okay. Not a single note is out of tune, which strikes me as odd considering that no one plays it or seems to maintain it. But then again, we’re in a world where food magically appears and disappears. I begin playing a bit of improvisation.

I focus on telling a story with the notes I play.

It’s about someone who hated their life. Someone who wanted nothing more than to go somewhere new. And when she did, it wasn’t what she wanted. She still wants to go somewhere new, but she longs for where she was.

I lose myself to my music, this entire world seems to melt away. It’s just me and the piano, a little piece of heaven. I put every ounce of energy I still had left into those notes. I stop playing when my soul feels drained. As I play those last notes, I take a deep breath and my arms come to rest on my lap.

I hear applause as I look over and notice it’s no longer just Jacqueline anymore. Several others entered the room while I was playing.

One of the guys from dinner smiles and says, “Yeah, that’s way better than what I can do. I’m Frank by the way.” He waves at me, his long hair reaches just past his shoulders, and is slightly tousled but well-kept. He wears a simple, lavender button-up shirt.

I look over at Jacqueline and see a tear strolling down her face. “That was beautiful.” She says, “Thank you.”

I smile.

“I haven’t hurt music like that in a long time,” Frank says.

The last person here was also at dinner. She has long blonde hair tied back in a loose braid and is wearing a simple linen blouse, tucked into high-waisted jeans. The blouse is fitted but comfortable, perhaps in a soft pastel or earthy tone, and it has small, intricate details like hand-stitched embroidery.

“That was amazing,” she says. “By the way, I don’t think we were formally introduced yet I’m Lila, and you are truly gifted at this.”

“Thank you,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you, Lila, and you too Frank. I’m glad you all appreciate my song.”

“Did you write that?” Frank asks.

“I didn’t technically write it; it’s uh, improvisation.”

Frank says, “You played all of that off the top of your head. Man, you are better than Jason.” A few moments after he says those words he lowers his head. Lila places a hand on his shoulder as she looks at me.

“Jason was a friend of ours.”Lila says, “He’s gone now. He used to play the piano for us nearly every night. He wasn’t as good as you but he was close. But let’s focus on happier thoughts!”

She pats Jason’s shoulder and he looks back up. I can see the pain in his eyes, but he shakes his head and smiles. Lila continues.

“Do you like to read? Because we have a large library here and it is wonderful, as long as you don’t mind old books. I’ve been here for 6 years and I still haven’t gotten through half of the books in there.”

“I love to read, but only specific types of books,” I reply. “If it’s anything else then it ends up boring me out of my mind or it puts me to sleep.”

Lila laughs, “I understand, well if you are interested I can take you by the library sometime and perhaps we can find you a good book.”

“I’ll have to take you up on that offer,” I say.

Frank stands up and says, “I have some work I need to get done. It was a pleasure meeting you Samantha. You are a truly talented musician.”

“See ya later,” Jacqueline says.

Lila stands up, “I’ll get going myself, and if you have any ideas for clothes that you may want just let me know and I can try to fit it into my schedule.”

“Goodbye,” I say as Frank and Lila wave goodbye and head out of the music room.

Jacqueline looks at me when the doors close. “So, What would you like to do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you like to be alone? I could take you to your room if you are tired.”

“I kind of don’t want to be alone right now,” I say. “If it’s okay, I would like to hang out with you for the rest of the evening.”

“That’s no problem. I can show you my favorite spot if you like.” Jacqueline says.

“That sounds great.”

She guides me through the halls and down the flight of stairs. I forgot there was more than one level in this place; this place is huge.

We walk for about 10 minutes before we reach a room that’s glowing with purple light through stained glass windows.

Jacqueline turns to me and says, “This is one of this is my favorite spots. When I need a spot to sit and just not think I like to come here so, voila.”

She opens the door to reveal potted plants covering the floor. Rows and rows of them. Purple light comes from the plants, not the ones in the planters, but from plants hanging on the ceiling, the light is beautiful, the light, how do I describe this? It’s as if there are thousands and thousands of fireflies perched up on the ceiling, but instead of the gold light that fireflies give off, it’s a purple light. You’ll see light from one area at one point and then it’ll fade away for a minute and then come back on. These little flickers are all over the place, which provide enough light to see, but not too much where it’s blinding. It seems to be pulsing, but the light levels remain constant throughout.

“Woah,” I say.

“Yeah,” Jacqueline says as she walks in. “This is where I work. I am what you can call an apothecary, basically a pharmacist who makes medicine with these plants. I also study these plants for non-medical reasons to see what they do. I don’t grow them, that’s Callen’s job. I test the best ways to make them grow, and he finds anything that might be interesting and brings it to me so I can study it. Like this plant over here. This plant we found out has sweet leaves.” It looks like a sunflower except its petals are navy blue.

“So, as you saw from dinner, we don’t have any food if we miss dinner. You either make it to dinner or you go hungry. We do have other methods of food since I got here at least. We can get little pieces of these plants, like this.” She rips off a leaf and hands it to me.

“This one tastes like almost cotton candy, at least I remember cotton candy tasty tasting like. And then this one over here that she rushes off to another area pulling me with her.

“This one here, the bulbs can you take” She plucks off a pink bulb and holds it out to me.

As I went to grab it, she pulled it away and said. “Try not to do this too often. This is a kind of show and tell. If we aren’t careful, we can run out of the plants and it is a major pain to get them.”

She reaches out and places the bulb in my hand. “This plant, the bulb, when crushed, tastes like cinnamon. So, with some hot water, we can crush this and make a cinnamon tea. We have lots of different uses for all these plants and different things. There’s a plant over there that I think works better than Neosporin if I mix it up with that plant over there. It just Burns a lot more with that plant, so I have to be very careful with how much I combine the two.”

As Jacqueline looks back at me, she palms her face and says, “I’m sorry I’m talking your ear off here. I know it’s not easy on your first day. I’m the most recent person besides you. It was difficult for me to adjust to this place. So, I’m not trying to overwhelm you with information but that’s kind of my thing though.”

“I wanna help, so I’ve brought you here so you can have some time alone, but not to just sit in silence. Silence was the part worst for me, sitting in silence and thinking but also being too overwhelmed to do anything else. So, walk around, enjoy the plants, and just have fun, I’ll be sitting over here with my book.” She pulls a book out of her lab coat.

“If you need anything, or if you just want to chat, feel free to interrupt me. If you have any questions about the plants, I know most of what they do. I will leave you to it.” She waves, turns, and walks away to a chair in the corner of the room.

In my hand, I still have the cotton candy-tasting leaf. I look down at it and take a bite. It’s not quite like cotton candy. It is sweet, don’t get me wrong, but the thing I remember the most about cotton candy was how it would dissolve in my mouth, how it would melt away on my tongue.

This did not do that I had to chew, and as I chewed, I could taste the sweetness of cotton candy, but it wasn’t the same. It was almost like trying to eat a non-mushy version of cotton candy-flavored gum. Still sweet, still good, but not quite like cotton candy.

“Do I swallow this,” I think to myself. “Or do I spit it out? I don’t know if this is a safe leaf to eat like, are we just supposed to chew it? What am I supposed to do here?”

I look over at Jacqueline to see if she’s looking at me. She is engrossed in her book so I spit the remnants leaf back into the rest of the leaf. I stuff the remains into the dirt.

…

I walk around looking at the plants, there is this plant with leaves that looks like a fire. The center of the leaf is yellow. and as it goes to the edge it turns into a bright orange. Other plants have little berries hanging from them. I am, tempted to snag one and eat it, but I decide against it, for safety reasons. I think about home. Think about how Alan has been here for 16 years and that the Butler has been here for longer. They’ve been here nearly as long as I have been alive if not longer. What am I supposed to do?

Do I just stay here and accept it? I want to go home with my family. I don’t want to do this anymore. I think about my parents I wonder if they’re worrying about me back at home. They probably called the cops according to Jacqueline when it’s been days. I may never see them again.

After an hour or so, just looking at plants and thinking, I turn to Jacqueline, “Hey Jacqueline,”

“Yeah, Sam?”

“I think I’m ready to go to bed now. Can you take me back to my room?”

“No problem, come with me.” Jacqueline closes her book and tucks it back into her lab coat.

We walk in silence for a while. Throughout the trip, she turns to me and smiles. She doesn’t say any words. She doesn’t have to. I think she knows how I’m feeling. There isn’t much that she can do.

Eventually, she brings me to my room, it’s a bigger room than the one I woke up in. It’s the same basic premise. A bed, this time has a desk with a little candle sitting on top of it. A wardrobe and a stained-glass window with wooden shutters that can be opened and closed. I keep them closed.

“I left you a couple of things in there. The first day you arrived I left you some clothes in the wardrobe. Hopefully, they’re a little more comfortable to sleep in.” She pulls out a skeleton key, “Here, is the key to your room. Well, It’s technically a key to every room. When you close the door you will see a slide lock that you can use to lock it at night. Landon and Frank installed them so we can have extra privacy.”

She hands me the key. “I don’t know if you like to write or anything like that, but just in case. I left a quill some ink, and a notebook on that table there. If you need anything, I’m three doors down on the left.

She turns to walk away. I start to call her name but I can’t seem to get any sounds out. I reside to my fate for the night close the door and lock it. The candle in my room is flickering in the silence.

…

I took a seat at the desk and I started to write. The question is has it helped? I don’t know, not completely, but at least it let me get my thoughts in order. That’s one thing that’s better than what it was. So, with that, I sign this letter at the end of the first day.

–Samantha Haynes

Authors Note:

I hope you like the second Chapter of the Mansion.

I’m still working on a schedule for posting these. My goal as of right now is to post a chapter every other Sunday morning at 6:30 AM EST. I will let you know how that schedule is working.