The House for Lost Things

Hey guys!

     This is Cherise. Here to let you guys know that we're starting a new weekly short story! Yay! A new part will come out each Thursday, so please follow and share. We would love it if you would leave comments and/or suggestions for later stories. 

- CT

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The House for Lost Things

When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me that there was a mansion. A mansion for lost things. When my mother’s gloves went missing she said, “Oh dear. Oh well, I suppose they went to the Mansion.” When my favorite doll disappeared my father told me, “Don’t worry, she went to a safe place. She’s in the Mansion.”  

The same thing  happened to my ball, my pony’s bridle, and my dress for my cousin’s wedding when I was twelve, the first social party I was allowed to attend. They all disappeared. They all went to the Mansion, the house for lost things.

It makes me wonder...what did everyone say when I went missing? Did they tell my little siblings that I went to a safer place, that I went to the Mansion? Did anyone look for me, or did they just accept that I was gone?

Looking out the upstairs window of the Mansion Tower, I realize: This is something I will never know.

I stare through the glass, misted over still by the cold winter air. Morning is just dawned and from the Tower window, I can see everything below for miles and miles. I smear the blue sleeve of my dress over the foggy pane, trying to smudge it enough that I could look outside.

I press my face to the freezing tile blocking me from the outer world. Far, far below little farms and villages sprawl across the valley floor like little toys. Little animals freckle the land with their shadows. I can hardly tell which are cattle and which are horses or sheep and goats. They are simply black dots on a palate of harsh, cold white.

If I ever leave this place, I’ll never see the white again. I’ll go somewhere where it is always warm and there is no white.

I shiver, straining to see farther, over the mountains at the end of the valley, far into the distance.  

There. I would go there. Over the mountains, somewhere green and warm.

But I cannot. No matter how much I want to leave this place, I cannot. Why? Because I am a lost thing, and lost things must stay in the house for lost things, The Mansion, until they are found.

My parched lips are hard and feel as though they are scales under my tongue as I lick them. I can feel the tip of my nose and my cheeks burning with color from being pressed against the cold glass. I exhale shallowly and pull away from the window.

Yes. My only hope of leaving this...this God-forsaken place is to be found.

I close my eyes, turning away the window. I shuffle towards the door of the Tower room in my slippers, or rather someone else’s slippers. The soles make soft scuffling sounds on the stone floor of the ancient Mansion. I wrap a “borrowed” black shawl, a widow’s mourning shawl, tight around my shoulders.

I give the door a slight push outward and it swings open into the hall. The light knocking sound of it coming to rest on the wall resonates through the narrow hallway. I grimace at the sudden disturbance.

Best not wake the Master.

Holding my shawl close around me with one hand, I use the other to lift my thin blue skirts from underfoot, the borrowed gown being far too large, really. Then, I begin to descend the stone steps into the lower levels of the house.

My soft footfalls echo through the hall as I go to prepare morning tea in the kitchen. As I do, I glance back over my shoulder at the door. It leans, strong and unyielding, against the wall leading into the Tower room. Beyond that where I cannot see, the thing I long to see, my Tower window, sits.

I wish to go and stand before it, to open it, to scream outside for someone to come.

“Please,” I’m not even certain if I’ve said it out loud. Honestly, I’m afraid to say it out loud. I turn my gaze forward once more as I continue down the narrow steps. “Please, someone find me.”

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