Not many normal folks live around here anymore. I walked near the gates of the old house, but too near, cognizant as I was of whomever might be resting inside. This place was so barren of life and movement; you'd think nothing had been born here in 50 years. It reminded me of the Midwest, in America, driving there for hours on a two-lane highway nested between endless gray and brown fields of wild grass, barbed wire and the occasional wooden barn or tool shed, such as I was passing now. Of course, this is countryside in France, a world away from Illinois and what I never considered more than the Drab American Backdrop. I'd heard the people here stopped answering their doors after having one too many strange things show up. What a strange story.
I'm going to see my friend Bob. He lives about 10 kilometers north in a cottage with his wife. He records all his music there in his own old, wooden barn. It's kind of funny to think that in the middle of all this decaying landscape, withering branches and mud that squirms like maggots near puddles of last week's rain, sits old Bob Drake recording music like some castaway of an art commune hell-bent on making folk hymns for ghosts, interspersed with avant-prog etudes and fragmented horror-show symphonettes. I have to admit that I wasn't looking forward to making the trek from Razes to Caudeval. After you pass the main road, there's not much but the "scenery". This place is cold.
Nobody around here is willing to discuss the events that led them to dynamite the graveyard. I asked a few townspeople in Razes about it, but got only abrupt frowns in return, as if I'd said something offensive. I'd read about it before the flight, knowing Bob was into that kind of thing. However, seeing this place now, I wish I'd read more. Staring at this old house (curiously, it seems generally well kept-- I wonder if someone still lives here), rotting wood and whistling wind behind me, yellow-gray skies and the sun completely obscured by some pretty fucking odd cloud formations has me semi-spooked. I mean, I'm not deathly afraid of anything, but I have a chill that I can't pin completely on the breeze. The clouds are elongated and bending in unnaturally bizarre ways, as if God was strung out and particularly pessimistic today.
The reputation of the house by the river isn't so good, and from what I understand, it wasn't exactly improved by what they found there after the recent storm ("freakishly localized", per Bob, though he tends to get macabre in weird moments). I've been staring at the front door for fifteen minutes now, getting colder and thinner in my cheek. I hate it when my mind wanders like this. I hate it because I'm at the mercy of whatever "spirits" inhabit this place. Like the wind, and that damn chattering grass. I don't think I've ever heard grass make noise like that. I don't think I've ever heard grass click and resonate like hollow wood. Hollow, dead, decomposing wood. Brown and black, and wet with muddy water, housing the eggs of mosquitoes and bacteria and parasites eating the life out of long-buried roots. Even the stars rot here, so the wolves can fly at night, driven by the scent of blood and small, crushed bones of whatever birds were unlucky enough to choose this route from the north. They say a noxious looking oily cloud came down into the yard here one day, and ever since then the things that grow here are deformed. Poisonous and evil. Where is the sun?
Yes, and now someone is looking at me from the house. I hate it here. Why did I come this way? I can truthfully say that if I could pick a time to kick the bucket, I'd pick some other day. Who's there? "Hello?" No one answers. "Hello? Can you help me?" No one answers. The wind around my neck is coarse; it makes my hair scrape against my head, just like the grass in the yard of this house. I'm opening the gate. I've heard a lot about this house. I've heard too much, and haven't seen enough. I'm coming to the front door. I'm doing it. I'm going to open the door. "Witch house" be damned. Yellow fangs, loathsome tittering, hybrid blasphemy, morbid atrocity, paws-like-little-hands be damned. This is the shunned country. I bet you can get a place here real cheap. I remember he said, "if I were you, I'd avoid it." The shunned country. I'm going to open the door now. I'm tired of being afraid of this house. I'm tired of being afraid.
