After two unfruitful days of planning, Elizabeth headed back to the house.

Well, they weren’t actually days of planning how to get into the house. They were more days of watching TV without watching, walking around London without looking and worrying that she was about to make another big mistake.

That’s what all her friends in Germany told her. “You’re are making a big mistake. What if you don’t find anything or they don’t accept you? Do you know at all who are they? It will be hard to come back and start anew. Everything changes so fast. What if the house doesn’t exist anymore and you don’t find anyone? Why do you have to give up your apartment here? Go for a vacation first and see whether it is worth going there, and then decide.”

But no, what was done was done. It did seem so crazy now, but somehow it happened step-by-step. All by itself.

Elizabeth felt like a dark witch took her hand and led through the darkest times in her life.

First, her best friend, her father, died.

Elizabeth and her father shared everything, including the common melancholy. But it was always a sweet melancholy. Or so Elizabeth used to think.

After her father died, the melancholy turned into a bitter and stinking veil spoiling every smile, every warm word of compassion addressed to her.

From there, all went down hill.

Only three months after her father’s death, she was given notice. Partly because her boss had quit and the half of department were let go, and partly because she lost all the interest in the job she loved until the day her father died.

It was him she found and done this job. He was a big fan of numbers and facts. So she went and studied statistics at the University in Dortmund and became an associate professor there.

But after he was gone, what was the meaning in all those numbers?

Her friends were tired of all the facts and trivia she was reciting.

All of them were immersed in the particular, as they claimed, problems of their families. They hated when she said that their cases were typical and that at least seven hundred fifty six thousand in Germany alone were in the same situation. Whatever the domestic problem, whatever the anomaly of their children’s behaviour there were always at least one hundred thousand others.

All they said was, “You don’t understand.”

Well, they didn’t understand her now either.

All lost sense when her father died. Even dating. She used to discuss her dates with him and he would cook for her and a more deserving candidate.

She even decided to move with Frank, of whom her father approved.

But then all the world came to a halt when she saw a policeman marching with large steps toward her office with glass door at the end of the long hallway.

“Your father has terminated his life.”

What an awful way to put this into words!

Yes, yes, there was no good way to say this out loud. And it didn’t help to find out that her father had an irreparable case of leukaemia and didn’t want her to suffer with and for him.

All the facts, all the help, all friends, even Frank, even her father’s letter to her, nothing helped.

The first light came when her best friend, Jenny, said, “You never know where life leads you. Maybe there is a meaning in all this.”

With a steaming coffee cup in front of her, and tears in her eyes, Elizabeth asked, “You mean there is a meaning in everything collapsing and burning around me? Haven’t you heard what I’ve just said? Frank left me! I can’t find another job. Even with a PhD title in statistics. Or maybe because of it.”

“So what holds you here then? Go on and travel. You said your father left you some money behind. Wasn’t he originally from Ukraine? Don’t you want to find out more about him and you roots?”

“But I was born in London.”

“Well, London is closer. You can start there.”

And so, she was in London now. In a completely unknown world and city to her. She’d need to look for an apartment here. And maybe even a job.

Jenny of all people couldn’t let Elizabeth’s purse go, as they took farewell at the airport. “You know you can always sleep on my couch, when you decide to come back and until you get your apartment back.”

“Jen, I don’t want my apartment back.”

“But it was so close to mine!”

Elizabeth stroked her friend’s hand holding the purse she got from Jenny on her birthday three years before. “I’ll miss you too.”

“Give me a call, and write to me as often as you can.”

“I will.”

“No! Promise that you will write me even if you don’t find a coffee-shop with a hot-spot and even if stamps cost a fortune.”

“I promise.”

But so far all Elizabeth wrote was, “I arrived well and got me a small room in a cosy hotel downtown.”

Elizabeth took the room keys lying on the unsent post-card and went out of the room.

She was going to do everything to have more news until tomorrow.

Picture: Sky over Aalborg this morning.

P.S. Chapter 5 will be written and posted in two weeks time.

P.P.S. You can find the complete story written so far at the page “Free Online Books”.

P.P.P.S. If you think you have friends who could like this story, feel free to forward this story to them.

Everything except one paragraph  (1st paragraph in Chapter 1) of “Nothing is As it Seems” is under copyright © 2015-2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Elizabeth turned to go, but in the last moment noticed a young woman watching her out of the window on the ground floor, farthest from the entrance.

When Elizabeth turned to face the woman, she didn’t disappear as Elizabeth had expected. Instead she smiled.

This moment of confusion and hope was spoiled by the man stepping closer to Elizabeth. “Please, go now.”

“OK, OK.” Elizabeth raised her hands as if letting to be arrested and saw that instead of softening the man’s look aggravated. And became nervous. He must have noticed the woman in the window as well.

Who was this woman?

I need to think about this later, decided Elizabeth as she headed to the street she crossed the night before.

But before she could lower her foot onto the road she had to jump back. Two cars stopped with screeching tires right in front of her.

The drivers of both cars secured their vehicles simultaneously as if following a strange choreography.

Both were oblivious of Elizabeth standing on the pavement and watching them.

One was obviously a nurse, taking hurriedly her uniform coat off while stepping out of her car. The other was a man, in his forties, with a stethoscope hanging around his neck. He must have noticed the stethoscope as he slammed the car door shut, because he opened it again, took the stethoscope off around his neck and threw it on the driver’s seat.

The “mad” man, as Elizabeth started thinking about the man who woke her up this morning, became pale and hurried to the man with the stethoscope.

Both men whispered urgently and walked slowly to the house. The nurse passed them quickly and entered. The men didn’t seem to be in hurry but discussed something with grave faces, while the first man watched Elizabeth with a policeman’s look out of the corner of his eye. This corner was too broad not to notice.

Elizabeth sighed. She had to retreat if she didn’t want trouble. She crossed the street and turned the corner.

And almost bumped into a tree. A large tree. A huge and ancient tree.

How hadn’t she noticed it before?

Then she suddenly remembered. Not with her head, which turned to look briefly around and check if someone saw her. She remembered the tree with her hands and feet. Which started climbing, almost by themselves. With fewer grips than must have been many years ago, she was inside a dense forest of branches and took a seat on a narrow arm-chair, made of branches as well.

Elizabeth pulled her purse onto her lap and looked around. This tree. She must have climbed it before. She hadn’t climbed a tree since …

Since when actually?

Elizabeth couldn’t remember climbing a tree at all. She always thought she was afraid of hight and now she was sitting up in a tree.

How could that have happened?

A commotion somewhere in front of her stopped Elizabeth’s frantic attempt to remember.

The noise was coming from the house she came to last night, and from which she was so urgently sent away this morning. The nurse and the doctor, who arrived a few minutes ago in such a hurry, came out of the house. An elderly woman between them.

If this person wouldn’t have a softly coloured dress on, Elizabeth wouldn’t have guessed it was a woman.

There was something strange about this woman. She was hardly walking. No, she was not walking at all! The woman’s head was hanging low and it looked like the nurse and the doctor were carrying her.

What on Earth? Was she dead?

Elizabeth jerked back in her narrowly branched arm-chair.

No, no, this couldn’t be, she thought. The woman was probably just sick. But then why there was no ambulance, instead just two normal cars with medical personal ripping off their medical clothes and instruments and a few minutes later carrying the patient like two pals carrying a drunk friend home?

When Elizabeth peered out again the nurse’s car was making an U-turn. The elderly woman sat on the passenger seat, hanging strangely in there. Elizabeth couldn’t see more from her post in the tree. The doctor followed in his car close behind.

Elizabeth set back again in the tree.

What was that?

Was there something explainable or did this house hide some dark secrets?

Her thoughts were interrupted by another car. This time no screeching tires.

But one of its doors opened as quickly and shut as loud as by that doctor a few minutes ago. Elizabeth peered out again of her hiding place. This time the loud person was not a driver, but a girl running toward the house from the passenger side of the car.

“Alice, Alice!” The girl almost fell over the stairs as she tried to take two at once.

The young woman, who smiled at Elizabeth this morning from one of the house’s windows, ran out with her arms wide open. She caught the girl into a tight hug. Then she released her hug and held the girl at the length of her arms.

Elizabeth couldn’t make out what Alice, as it looked was the young woman’s name, said to the girl. But she could hear the girl’s clear bell-like voice. “It’s over, it’s over! I don’t have to go there anymore. And I can go back home!” The girls voice suddenly changed, still loud, but without the initial merriness in it. “I can leave now.”

The girl stopped and looked back at the woman, who must have driven her to this house.

The girl had tears in her eyes. “Mummy, I don’t want to leave.” She said these words quietly, but Elizabeth could lip-read them.

The girl’s mother crouched beside the girl, just like Alice did and they both patted and consoled the girl.

Elizabeth couldn’t move seeing this scene from aside.

Finally Alice said something that made girl’s face brighten and nod. The women stood up and all three entered the house.

Nothing else happened in the next, what felt like three hours, but probably had been only one. Although how could she, thought Elizabeth, had known when she was woken up and how long she had sat in that tree?

All she knew was that her rear side, starting with her neck and ending with her thighs, was completely stiff and hardly movable.

After checking that no one was looking, neither from the house nor from any angle she could overview from the tree, Elizabeth climbed down and hurried in the direction opposite to the house.

She needed to get to her hotel room as soon as possible, so that she could process all that she had witnessed and experienced this morning.

The house, the man, Alice-the-young-woman, the nurse, the doctor, the elderly-looking-so-dead-woman, the happy-then-sad-girl, her mother … The tree. All that was whirling in Elizabeth’s mind and she couldn’t make any sense out of it.

What was sure, hundred per cent sure, even more than hundred, was the fact that she had to come back to this house and find a way to go in. She simply needed to go inside and find out more.

And she needed a plan how to do that.

Picture: At an edge of a road.

P.S. Chapter 4 will be written and posted in one of the coming two weeks.

P.P.S. You can find the complete story written so far at the page “Free Online Books”.

P.P.P.S. If you think you have friends who could like this story, feel free to forward this story to them.

Everything except one paragraph  (1st paragraph in Chapter 1) of “Nothing is As it Seems” is under copyright © 2015-2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels

Preface

If you are interested to see how I came to write this story then take a look at this link and this one too.

The Chapter 1 has been posted already some time go (see one of the links above or here). I have made several editorials and added a new chapter.

Enjoy.

Note: the first paragraph in chapter 1 is coming from the bestselling novel by Menna van Praag “The House at the End of Hope Street”.

Chapter 1

The house has stood at the end of Hope Street for nearly two hundred years. It’s larger than all the others, with turrets and chimneys rising high into the sky. The front garden grows wild, the long grasses scattered with cowslips, reaching toward the long-hanging leaves of the willow trees. At night the house looks like a Victorian orphanage housing a hundred despairing souls, but when the clouds part and it is lit by moonlight, the house appears enchanted. As if Rapunzel lives in the tower and a hundred Sleeping Beauties lie in the beds.

Elizabeth’s hands dropped to her sides and her mouth opened.

Was this really the house she searched for? The house she came to, to find the answers. It looked nothing like the tall Gothic clog of the house with rain stains below its spiky turrets rising up in a war declaration.

Nothing like the house she remembered from her childhood. The childhood she’d tried to forget, but didn’t manage.

Except one single gap. Something so immense that it erased itself from Elizabeth’s memory.

Something that made her the person she was today. Sad, pale, with lips pressed into a flat circle of a cold copper coin.

She came in the middle of the night, because she couldn’t face the house in the daylight after so many years. And now she was glad she did so. If this house glowed now, in the moonlight, how would it look like during the day?

Elizabeth drew a deep breath and kept the aroma, coming from the wild roses that framed the door, inside her for as long as she could.

As she let the air out a sudden fear wrapped her into its icy arms. She came to find answers. At least she planned to do so tomorrow during the day. But this house, this fairy tale house surely couldn’t reveal anything. Someone new and good lived here. They were probably unaware of the torture and agony whirling inside this house when her family lived in it.

Elizabeth pointed her intent look at the door both hoping and fearing someone to come out.

And then she suddenly relaxed. Whether it was another gulp of rosy air, or the peacefulness of the street around her, or both, it made Elizabeth lower herself onto the fence base and lean on the metal vine branches behind her. She looked at the house.

Something must have happened here. Was this during this gap she was so keen to close? Maybe, whoever lived here knew what happened?

It must have been something big and terrible, she thought. Like a hurricane.

Only a hurricane had the ability to remove everything and leave an empty space for something new to grow.

Was she and her father part of this hurricane? Elizabeth realized that she both hoped and dreaded this.

Chapter 2

“Hallo?! Miss. Are you all right?”

Elizabeth opened her eyes and squinted at the light shocking her with its brightness.

Where was she?

A sharp pain in her neck made her cringe as she tried to support herself on her hands stretching her arms into vertical pillars. She was surprised to find herself sitting.

“Oh, you’re waking up. That’s good. Are you OK?”

Elizabeth raised her head and saw a young man, maybe her age, maybe a bit younger, bowing slightly over her.

Who was he? And why did he wake her up? “Who are you?”

The man took a step back and frowned.

“Well, I live here.”

“Where?”

“Here.” The man gestured behind him. “In this house. The question is what are you doing here?”

“I …” House? Elizabeth tilted her head and looked behind the man.

Oh no! Was she here all night?

“I …”, she said again. Say something, say something. I might as well tell the truth.

She drew a deep breath and ventured. “I was looking for the house from my childhood … and it is … it is this house. I hoped I could find out what—”

“No.”

“What?” Elizabeth focused at the man in front of her.

His concerned look evaporated and gave place to a gaze of steel. Somehow the house seemed to become a bit darker now, even in the bright sunshine. “You are mistaken. This is not the house you are looking for.”

What? “But how can you know?”

“Because this house have been my family’s property for centuries. And I surely don’t know you.”

“But I am convinced that I got the correct address. At least from my memory.” I shouldn’t have said that.

Elizabeth sat a bit straighter on the fence behind her. How did she sleep here all night?!

She drew a deep breath and said, “I found the house immediately, even in the dark and I remember it well.”

“I said no. Please leave this property. Now.”

The man took a step closer to her. Now he looked older than she was. And stronger. Much stronger. Elizabeth felt goose bumps all over her body and shivered.

She stood up. She thought of another attempt, but the look in the man’s eyes made her change her mind. There wasn’t a gate on the intricate fence. Elizabeth could bet that the man would slam it shut otherwise.

She needed to think of another plan to find out what she was looking for.

Chapter 3 will follow in a later post

P.S. You can find the whole story at this page.

Picture: Roses in my grandparents’-in-law garden.

Everything except one paragraph  (1st paragraph in Chapter 1) of “Nothing is As it Seems” is under copyright © 2015-2016 by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels