House of Januarys

Every town has one of those houses – a house that isn’t like any of the others on the rest of the street. It isn’t necessarily the house’s looks that set it apart, either, although that may be part of it. When you pass such a house, you can tell that something’s not quite right there. It may be the spirit of the house itself that’s to blame, or it may be the people who live there. There’s just something about it that causes passers-by to avoid it instinctively.

Story’s house in Black Dove was just such a house.

Of course, it was barely in Black Dove at all, as it was situated right before the point where you’d find yourself in White Swan instead, by the deep, dark woods everyone liked to pretend didn’t exist.

It was also a house of Januarys.

Legend had it that it was built during a particular January many years ago, some say by a witch.  Story’s family had bought the house on the first day of a January and moved in on the last day of the same month. Story was born there during one January, and her parents died in a fiery car accident during another. And as far as the rest of Black Dove knew, Story had lived there alone ever since, but Story herself unfortunately suspected otherwise.

She didn’t know the full extent of what her parents had been into when they were still alive, but she knew it had been something. They’d never allowed her to be part of whatever went on in the attic, and that was probably just as well, judging from what she’d sometimes overheard.

Her parents chanting in a strange language that made it sound like they were speaking backward. Strange scratching sounds that brought to mind images of animals set loose behind the heavy, iron door that had always, always been locked. Sometimes odd banging or slamming sounds and occasionally an eerie whistling, like the sound the winter wind made when it blew through the leafless, skeletal trees in the woods behind the house.

Story had known better than to ask questions, and she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers anyway. Her parents were the stern sort who expected to tell their children what was what and have that be the end of things. They’d told her the attic was not a place for her, so she’d simply accepted that and tried hard not to think about it. Especially at night.

Story’s bedroom was located directly below the portion of the attic hidden by the heavy, iron door, and sometimes she’d hear noises over the ceiling above that chilled her to the bone. More mysterious scraping, and sometimes voices. More than once she’d heard a sound that sounded almost exactly like a woman weeping as if her heart would break. And she knew it couldn’t be her parents up there, because she could hear them in the living room chatting about everyday things as casually as you please.

So she’d turn on her radio and twist the dial until the local classical station rose through the static loud and clear. At that point, the weeping and wailing simply bled into the soaring violins of Vivaldi and the mournful cellos of Beethoven. It almost made it possible to tell herself she’d heard nothing at all – nothing but the shimmering sounds of the stringed instruments she loved so much.

That was the rhythm of Story’s life for many years. She lived out her childhood there in the quaint, creepy little January house. She grew into a young woman under the attic filled with ghosts and mysteries.

And just on the eve of her nineteenth January birthday, a day that had found her wondering what she should do with the rest of her life, she received the news that her parents were no more. That was the day the house of Januarys, the secrets it contained, and the key to the heavy iron door passed into her possession and became hers to do with as she would.

For a very long time, Story did nothing with that key. When she was younger, she’d always assumed her parents would tell her what was what up there when she was old enough. But the years passed, and so did the Januarys, each without that conversation ever coming to pass. And then her parents were gone.

Now there was just that key and the strange noises overhead, although the sounds did seem to be decreasing in frequency as the months and years wore on. The scraping eventually stopped altogether, and the weeping grew noticeably fainter. Eventually, Story decided that whatever had happened up there before had started to run out of steam now that her parents were gone.

Maybe they weren’t the sounds of ghosts so much as they were the echoes of old emotions that had been felt in the house, perhaps before Story’s family had ever even been here. And if that were all it was, then it was silly to be afraid.

So things continued on that way until the morning Story decided knowing would be easier than not knowing – a chilly, snowy morning in January, of course – and made her way up the stairs to the attic, key firmly in hand.

Story slipped the key into the ancient lock on the heavy, iron door and turned it. She felt the inner workings of the lock giving way and opening with a series of cold, metallic clangs. And then, with just the slightest touch of her hand, the door swung open with a muffled creak of the variety metal always makes when it hasn’t moved in a while. 

Story wasn’t sure what she expected to see beyond the iron door, but it wasn’t what appeared to be a relatively ordinary attic. The room was spacious and neatly kept, the chilly light of a cloudy morning filtering in through the windows, which were covered only by sheer curtains of the kind Story’s mother had hung elsewhere throughout the house.

Around the edges of the room were old pieces of antique furniture covered neatly and carefully with white sheets – the furniture that had come with the house when her parents had moved in. Rather than get rid of it, they’d simply moved it up here, covered it until they decided definitively what they wanted to do with it, and forgotten about it until it had simply become part of the room.

The floor was neatly swept, and the air smelled fairly clean, if a little musty. None of the stale, fruity smell that hinted at the presence of rodents or anything else untoward. In fact, Story couldn’t see any signs that anything strange had ever occurred in this room and was just about to write all those eerie memories off as the imaginings of childhood when it caught her eye.

It was the only item in the room not covered, although it showed no traces of dust – an ornately carved old-fashioned mirror, tall and stately as anything Story had ever seen. It was the spitting image of what she’d always imagined the magic mirror in Snow White must have looked like. Beautiful and elegant, if a little out of place.

As she stared at it, Story became increasingly certain she could hear it whispering to her as she made her way across the room for a closer look. And once she was there, it became clear this was no ordinary mirror.

From across the room, Story had seen what one would expect to see when you looked at the surface of a mirror – the reflection of the room in front of it. But the closer she came, the more she could see.

Layered over the room’s reflection was something else – a boiling sky full of rolling clouds, surging and swirling in a vortex. Bright bolts of lightning sliced through it periodically, and Story could now hear the howling winds and the pattering of the rain on the other side of the glass. She could even smell the ozone and the dampness of the storm.

And there Story stood inches from the glass, sure now that this was no ordinary mirror. She tentatively touched the surface and felt something very like static electricity jump from the mirror to her fingers. And then came the understanding that the glass wasn’t solid at all as her fingertips broke the surface and passed through into that strange, swirling world beyond.

She felt the cold, bitter wind against her skin, and when she pulled her hand away, her fingers were wet with very real rainwater. It was then that Story noticed the storm clouds beyond weren’t really clouds at all. They were thick knots of undulating ghosts and spirits, swirling and looping in, out, around, and back in some strange, otherworldly dance. Some cried and moaned. Others scratched and grabbed. And it was then that Story realized they were the source of the odd noises that used to keep her up at night as a little girl.

And that was all she needed or wanted to see of that. This was a house of ghosts after all – a house of strange Januarys and solitary, secret rituals. Story might never know what exactly her parents had used this mirror for or how many of the residents of the other side had been invited over to visit throughout the years. And for now, she was perfectly content not to know, as some things were better off left unknown.

So with that, Story grabbed a fresh sheet from a neatly folded pile on top of one of the covered sofas, threw it neatly over the mirror, made her way back through the heavy iron door as quickly as she could, and locked it firmly behind her.