Part 14

        And then I saw what the path had been leading towards.

        It was a house, half-hidden behind vines and overgrown gardens. But it wasn't the quaint little cottage you would expect to find in the woods like this, it was... an Italian villa, more than anything. There was a tall central square tower, with a tunnel of trellises leading up to it, presumably to the front door. To one side, I could just make out two stories' worth of windows; to the other, there was apparently only one story, but the windows reached from the ground nearly to the roof, it must have been a huge room. There was a small overhang on that side of the house, an outdoor patio maybe. Each tall, rectangular window was rounded at the top, and a small white arch set above it. It looked like there was a balcony on the left side of the house as well, the entry to which must have been on that side of the central tower...but whatever plants had been set up there had grown as wild as anything else, and now it looked like a small forest grew on the roof of the large room. The walls were a dusky orange, stucco I supposed, though I could only catch glimpses of it through the Virginia Creeper and other vines that clung to the walls. It had obviously been abandoned for ages... I looked around anyway, but saw no "no trespassing" signs, saw no signs of human habitation at all, no tire tracks, no road anywhere... I realized that it didn't even look like there was a driveway leading to the house, though I knew any paths would probably have been overgrown by now. (Except for the strange path I had found, it seemed.) I thought for a minute, and I was pretty sure no roads came anywhere near here - the house must have been abandoned a really long time ago, before the current roads had been made permanent. But, there must have been a road once, the house couldn't have been completely isolated...
        Speculation could be done later - I was dying to have a better look at the house. Cautiously, I moved closer to it, still expecting to be yelled at any moment by some crotchety old guy telling me to get the hell off his property. But no-one yelled, no dog barked, no sign appeared. I walked as quietly as I could, but heard no more sound here than I had heard anywhere else in the woods, just bird calls and the stream in the distance, an occasional breeze rustling among leaves. How on earth had a house this large, this beautiful, been left to decay by itself like this? Drawing closer, I realized that there was stone beneath the layers of leaves I was walking on. I kicked some out of the way, and saw what looked an awful lot like marble tiles on the ground, leading toward the house. I could see glints of color in the large windows on the left side - it wasn't stained glass, was it?? Though it was hard to tell through all the plant growth, it didn't look like any of the windows had been broken, or like there was any graffiti on the smooth outer walls. I hadn't seen any beer bottles or pop cans yet either, which was also strange. I couldn't possibly have been the only one to find this place...
        The clearing around the house really wasn't very large, trees leaned pretty close to the walls. Many of them were fruit trees, which might have been planted as small ornamental trees originally, and had encroached on the house over the years of neglect. There were a few giant flowering bushes which I decided had probably done the same. Vines covered everything. As I got closer, I realized it wasn't all Virginia Creeper. Most of what was on the house walls was, it was pretty tenacious stuff I knew, but the trellis leading to the front door was something else, with pale purple flowers beginning to flood over it... wisteria? It had to be; I remembered one of my neighbors as a kid warning my mom never to plant it, because it would grow too big and basically destroy whatever it grew on, it had pulled down a gazebo or something of this lady's, it got to be so heavy. It looked like that was exactly what had happened here - I could see a few fragments of trellis still standing along the tunnel to the house, but it looked like it had been pretty much destroyed. The vines had grown to the size of small tree trunks, and were pretty much their own support system, though I could see faint traces of something under it... I reached the entrance to the tunnel, and was nearly overpowered by the strength of the flowers' fragrance. It was beautiful, but so strong I could hardly believe it. There was definitely something under the vines at the entrance, supporting them, pillars of some kind... I tugged aside some of the vines, and was astonished to see more marble. It was pitted and rough, the weather and the plants having done considerable damage over the years. I thought I could make out dark lines running from the tops of these columns to another pair against the house, metal-work of some kind, helping to hold up the heavy vines.
        It was eerily dark under the wisteria, as I made my way carefully through the tunnel. It felt cold in the shade, and goosebumps grew on my bare arms and the back of my neck, though I knew it was as much from the unsettlingly silent atmosphere of the place as from the cool air. Even the bird calls were muffled by the heavy vines, and I felt almost as though I were losing all connection with the outside world, like if I kept going, I would be in another place entirely, untouched by anything else in the world... I shut out the small voice of logic in my head that told me I was being ridiculous - I wanted to enjoy the mystery of the place for all it was worth, I was fascinated by the beauty I could see, hidden beneath the ravages of time. Who would have built a place so elaborate as this? Someone rich, obviously, but the family must have fallen onto hard times, to give up a place like this...but then if they had, wouldn't they have sold it? Granted, it was pretty secluded, but who wouldn't want a place like this? I was sure it had to be beautiful inside, I hoped like anything I could find a way in.
        The original trellises ended at the wall of the house, where an archway opened into a small space before the front door. The wisteria, once it had no longer been kept pruned, had continued on to the walls, working its way up the terra cotta stucco, gripping at window frames and the arches that topped each window. I stood for a few minutes in the little cove in front of the door. It was downright cold here, I wondered how long it had been since the sun reached in here. There were fewer vines, though small plants clung to the cracks that had developed in the brickwork that made up the floor of the patio I stood in, and dark lines crackled across the walls where the stucco had weakened. There were sconces set on either side of the door, beautifully shaped glass bells, which were filled with some dark debris. The door itself had large marble half-pillars on either side, set into the wall. The door was of some incredibly dark wood, such a dark brown it looked black, and I wondered if it was ebony. An elaborate knocker was hung at about eye level, and I was startled by the brilliance of its shine - it was the first thing I'd seen that didn't seem to have been touched by age. It couldn't be gold...though it looked it, it was so bright in color. Hardly any stain showed on the elaborate floral swirls of it, and I almost took this as a sign that the house wasn't abandoned after all. But no, there were piles of leaves blown up against the door, and when I kicked them away, I found the bottom layers in various stages of decay, so they had been there for over a year. Of course, there could be another door...
        So I knocked. I felt incredibly ridiculous, and my heart pounded so hard I was sure it was audible. The metal thudded low and solemn against the heavy wood - that, too, it seemed had barely been touched by age. Now that I had looked at it for awhile, I noticed that the wood, too, had elaborate swirls on it. Leaning closer, I saw that the delicate lines ran all the way around the border of the door, intricate vines and flowers twining gracefully. I listened intently, but heard no approaching footsteps. There was no doorbell, but I wasn't surprised by that. There hadn't seemed to be a garage, either, and I didn't exactly see any power lines running to the house. It must not have been used for...when did electricity first start being run into houses, that wasn't until early in the 1900s, and I wasn't sure quite when it started being commonplace. I knocked again, harder this time, but there was still only silence in response to the boom of metal against heavy wood. My heart still hadn't quieted down, and my hand actually shook as I grasped the door handle. It, too, shone golden in the weak light that filtered through the vines, and the metal felt smooth and cold to my touch. I lifted the handle gingerly, surprised that its workings still slid so smoothly... but then it stopped. The handle wouldn't go any more than a quarter of the way up, and with a sinking feeling I realized it was locked. I jiggled and shook the handle a bit, but no luck. Definitely locked. I looked to either side...and I knew I wouldn't be able to bring myself to break any of the gorgeous windows, I couldn't destroy what had remained so long intact. I'd have to find another way in.