What was Lost and Found in the Fire

Ch. 44 Silas and the Castle of Glass

Not even Leninora is interested. She sucked up every drop of her boozy drink, and I think she's smoked an entire pack of her Natural American Spirit's. Her eyes are glazed, and the only reason we're going at a reasonable pace is because of Len's long legs and my arm keeping her steady.

We follow a dirt path, long overgrown but still detectable by small, shiny trail tags set into the ground. They're pretty, opalescent in the sun and they remind me of the inside of the shells I'd found along the ocean coast.

They're the reason I'm staring at the ground, instead of watching where we're going.

Brightness nearly blinds me when we walk out of the tree line, and for a moment I can't see a thing. It's not just the outside glare, I realize as I finally get my barrings.

In front of me is this glass building. It's huge and ornate and....everything I've never known I wanted.

"This would have been where we raised you." Leninora lets go of me to plop on the ground. She's so drunk some of her words take a few seconds to form as if her brain is powered down to battery-save-mode

"It's beautiful." I admire it, walking closer to the shining walls.

"It's a death trap." Len slurs. "Your mother built it, with a few of her beaus. She didn't want anyone to know it existed, so she was adamant about doing it all ourselves. Maybe it would have been fine if we'd been keeping up with it over the years....but that's not what happened."

"What do you mean?" I question. It seems fine to me.

"She had the other guys dig a basement floor before they built the house. One of the guys, you'll meet him sometime, did some elementary calculations to guesstimate where it would make the most sense to put support beams. I guess he wasn't as smart as he thought, because it's started to warp and sag in places."

"How bad is it? Is it safe to go in?" I creep closer to one of the windows, charmed at the intricacy of the glass webbing as I get close enough to touch it.

A shadow appears in the window, a large, imposing figure, and I yelp in fright.

I propel myself backward, and trip and fall on my butt. The figure moves away from the window in a hurry, leaving me with a pounding heart.

"Len!" I silently shriek, forgetting for a moment that I don't have the loud volume I need. "Len! In the window!" I shout-whisper.

"I saw." Len seems to sober up almost instantly. My arms are grabbed and Len hauls me to my feet.

"Yeeaahh." Len draws the word out. "This is going to fuck me up real good. We need to make...go in and make sure it's not a reporter." She stumbles and shoots a hand out to rest on the glass panes, the only sign she's not quite right, and pushes herself forward.

I follow, my heart in my throat.

~~~

The deeper into the building we get, the more off  it seems.

While the outside is glass and metal, the inside has rooms sectioned off by shoji panels and every piece of furniture has long been shrouded with sheets. It lends the hallways and rooms we pass an odd and eerie aesthetic.

You would think with all the light from the glass that it would be less creepy, but the odd haziness from the immense amount of sunshine is like something out of a dreamscape and it puts me on edge. Add on the sheet-covered furniture, or sheet-covered zombies or sheet-covered ghosts or sheet-covered monsters, and you've got all the makings of a new-age horror movie.

Leninora isn't making the situation any better. She's moving at a snail's pace and jumping at every little noise. To be fair though, the building does shifts more than normal. It's got to be from the sagging area's and maybe the iron casings wearing down from the years of neglect on the windows.