The Impossible House

There are all kinds of houses in the world. Gigantic mansions with sweeping staircases and marble floors, single room beach shanties, and cabins with wood-burning stoves. There are longhouses and Minkas and split-levels and bungalows and really no end to the style and shape and size a house can be. Lucy read about them once in the set of Encyclopedia Brittanica’s that had filled the bookshelves that lined the entirety of the eastern wall.

Even the bookshelves are gone now, disappeared into the night as though they’d grown feet and tip-toed out the door and into the garden, down the path and away from Lucy’s reach. Of course, they very well may have, along with the grandfather clock, and stiff cushioned sofa, and the big brass lamp. Everything that once made the room something like a home had vanished so that all that was left was little Lucy and her patience.

You see, for all the variety of houses that exist, there’s never been one quite like the impossible house and Lucy is the only one who's ever occupied its rooms. Well, she thinks maybe there was someone else once because sometimes she can see a set of brown eyes with tears sticking in the corners staring at her from the shadows and she can almost remember the name that sticks to the roof of her mouth like peanut butter. She wonders why they are so sad, wonders if it has something to do with what she’s waiting for.

The only thing she knows is that whatever it is she’s waiting for, the answer is in the impossible room. You see, as impossible as the house is with its locked doors and disappearing furniture, the impossible room is somehow even more impossible. It mirrors the room that Lucy’s always occupied except it’s still furnished in exactly the same way Lucy’s room was, which is precisely the reason that Lucy even remembers the book or the grandfather clock. Though there is no door or barrier separating the rooms, try as she might, Lucy can’t seem to enter, like an invisible wall keeping her from stepping in.

It’s no surprise really, much like the locked doors leading into what she can only assume is the rest of the house or the garden outside the single window in the room that somehow always manages to stay perfectly tended. There’s no exit to outside either, but Lucy wouldn’t use it if she could. Of all the things Lucy knows, which, admittedly, isn’t much, the one thing she knows best is that she cannot go outside.

She doesn’t know why, but when she considers it, even as a fleeting thought, her heart begins to race in her chest and her legs turn to jelly, and she can see those teary eyes, so she knows whatever is outside must be dangerous.

Lucy is ten and she’s been ten for a very long time, maybe even longer than she’s been in the room, but she doesn’t remember how long. The days having blended together into a timeless void of months and years. In fact, the only thing Lucy does remember is her promise. Once upon a time, she made a promise to wait and she will do just that. No matter how boring or lonely it is in the impossible house, Lucy made a promise that she intends to keep.

So, she’s taken to spending her days staring out the window into the little garden and talking to the garden gnome that guards it. She thinks the gnome is rather charming with his little red hat and bushy beard, and even if he never talks back it’s the closest to company she’s managed to find.

She tells the gnome stories from the books she read, and stories that are her own, wonders if she ever lived any of them or if they only exist in her imagination. She talks about the weather, which never changes, and tells the gnome about the impossible room. Hours and hours and maybe even days, though there’s no way to tell for sure, she talks and she waits.

Lucy doesn’t sleep, there’s no need or bed to anyway, or eat or drink, which is also good because the cupboards were always empty even before they disappeared.

Sure, it’s not a very exciting life, but Lucy knows she has a purpose, even if she can’t remember what it is, so she waits diligently for whatever it is she’s waiting for, does her best to ignore the thoughts creeping in the back of her mind, the ones that wish for something different, that want to escape the impossible house, that pine for a single friend, someone to talk to who will talk back.

She bats the thoughts away into the cobwebs of her mind and talks to the gnome about nicer things. Whatever she is waiting for will come and then her life can really begin, she’s certain, just a little longer, just another day, or month, or year and she will understand.

At some point, she grows comfortable with the constant sameness of the impossible house and even hopes that whatever she is waiting for will not come. Though it may be less out of comfort and more out of fear. When things have been so impossibly the same for so long, it’s change that becomes the most impossible.

Of course, change always comes eventually, no matter how much one might wish it won’t.

For Lucy, it starts one fine spring day, well, they are all fine spring days, the sun shining high in the sky and the light breeze blowing through the window and brushing her curls against her cheek when she goes to take her place and tell the gnome a new story, this one about a lazy cat and a cheeky mouse. She’s already talking by the time she reaches the window.

“Oh Mr. Gnome, I have a wonderful story for you. There was once a…” Her words catch in her throat when she looks out the window and, for the first time ever, her friend with the pointed red hat and bushy ceramic beard is not in his spot in front of the roses that line the garden path.

“M-Mr. Gnome?” She chokes as she gazes around the garden, hazel eyes searching for his familiar blue jacket and rosy red cheeks.

Fat tears fall from her face before she even has a chance to admit to herself that he is, indeed, gone, disappeared like everything else, minus that which exists in the impossible room.

Quick as her little feet can take her she rushes to the outskirts of the room and presses her hands up against whatever it is keeping her out, frantically eyeing the contents of the room for her friend.

He’s not there, of course, nothing has changed in the impossible room either, but Lucy can’t help but feel like the world is falling apart. Her fat tears turn to sobs that unravel her from the top down as she falls to the ground and pulls her knees up to her chest, rolling herself up tight in hopes of keeping it together.

In her moment of weakness, the thoughts that she’d locked up tight run free. For the first time, she wishes. She wishes for her friend, she wishes to be free of this empty room in this impossible house, she wishes to grow up, she wishes that whatever it is she’s waiting for would just come already.

She’s so busy wishing, tears running down her face and snot dripping from her nose, that she misses the gray clouds gathering outside the window, misses the ice in the usually warm wind, misses the changes happening all around her.

She even almost misses the knock at the locked door, a sharp rapping against the old oak.

She catches it on the final beat though and her head whips up to stare at the door, her brow knitting together in confusion as the knocks start again.

Slow and careful, she unwraps her arms from her legs and crawls to the door, frightened and curious of what lay on the other side, until a muffled voice has her eyes widening.

“Hello? Are you there, Lucy?”

It takes her a moment to find her voice, as she swallows her tears down thick and heavy and wipes at her soggy eyes with her forearm.

Her voice shakes a little as a few stray sniffles escape with her words. “Y-yes? I am here.”

“Ah, very good then! Would you be so kind as to open the door?”

“B-but it’s locked!” Lucy cries, low and frustrated as she waits for the voice on the other side.

“Well, that is a problem, isn’t it.” The voice trails off as though lost in thought. “How about you give it a try anyway? Won’t hurt anything to try, will it?”

“But I have tried!”

“Hmm, won’t you try again though. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right, doesn’t make it impossible.”

Lucy isn’t one to be combative, or she hadn’t thought of herself as such, but the voice on the other side of the door just doesn’t seem to understand.

“But this is the impossible house,” and for some reason, her voice comes out small and quiet, little more than the squeak of a mouse.

“Oh dear, it might be. How about you give it one more go. I think you might find this house isn’t quite as impossible as it seems.”

Something clicks for Lucy then, that maybe this is what she’s been waiting for, or maybe the voice is right and this is something worth trying again. So, she scrubs at her eyes and stands tall on strong feet. The doorknob taunts her, but she screws her face up tight in determination and stares it right back down. With a deep breath and squared shoulders, she reaches for the handle and, to her surprise, it turns when she wills it to, and, with a creak the door swings open to reveal…

An empty hallway.

“Ahem, down here!” The voice calls to her and she looks down to find Mr. Gnome from the garden smiling back at her. His felt hat looks well worn from this close up and his bushy beard is impossibly bushier when it’s made from real hair. His cheeks are rosy as ever and even the tip of his nose is a little red.

She hardly has time to react before he’s pushing into the room and walking circles around her, looking her up and down.

“Well your dress is all covered in dust and your curls have fallen out a bit, but otherwise no worse for the wear. Now c’mon, my dear, no time like the present and we haven’t got the time to dawdle!” He calls as he comes up behind her and pushes on her legs, shoving her towards the long empty hall on the other side of what was once a door locked tight.

“Wa- wait!” Lucy cries as she stumbles into the hallway and glances over her shoulder at the empty room that’s been her only home, well the only one she can remember at least. “Mr. Gnome, wh-”

At that, Mr. Gnome stops pushing and stands up tall, well tall as his three feet can manage, straightening his jacket and beard, “it’s Horace Greenway actually. That’s as silly as me calling you Ms. Human. Of course, I might call you that if we weren’t already so well acquainted. So, Horace, or Mr. Greenway if you prefer,” he extends a hand for her to shake, though he doesn’t stop talking. “I’m the keeper of this house, the garden primarily, but I’ve been sleeping for so terribly long.”

“You were asleep?”

“Ah, yes, I have you to thank for all the wonderful dreams, but alas, our time must come to an end. You have somewhere to be!”

“I do?”

“Of course you do! You can’t just sit in the disappearing room forever, I dare say you were about to disappear yourself!”

“I- I was?”

“Yes, yes, but never mind that now, you best be getting on your way. There’s a storm brewing and I have to cover the roses.”

Lucy’s eyes grew three sizes at that and she turned to glance out the window that she could hardly see from her place in the hall. Horace is right and the dark clouds are heavy and full above the green garden.

When she turns back around, Horace is already rushing down the hall and around a corner.

Not knowing where to go or what place she has to be, she follows after him, calling to him, “but wait! Where am I going, Horace? How will I get there?”

The sound of his voice echoes down the hall back at her, as though it’s the walls themselves speaking to her, “only you know the answer to that, My dear. I can only give you a push, the rest is up to you. Trust yourself, Lucy! And don’t forget, sometimes it takes a few tries. We’ll meet again, old friend!”

When the hall grows quiet and Lucy is sure she is alone, she glances back to the room, considers just turning back around and closing the door, and hoping it locks behind her.

This though, this is something new and, though she’s shaking from the tips of her toes to the ends of her curls, she sees the teary brown eyes in her mind’s eye, but this time there are freckled cheeks to accompany them and Lucy somehow knows she must take this path, hard as it may seem.

So she stares ahead at the hallway in front of her, seemingly endless and lined with doors and hallways that are just as endless branching off of it.

She gulps and wonders if she should try to open one of the doors or if she should take one of turns. She can feel frustration gnawing at her thoughts and she wants to cross her arms over her chest and stomp her feet and throw a fit, but before she has a chance to, a clap of thunder sounds behind her and brings with it the echo of a voice in her head.

A memory, perhaps from a book she read, but she recognizes the voice, though she can’t place it. Either way, it fills her with warmth and urges her on.

“See Lucy, it’s just as easy as taking the first step.”

So, she does.