Granville's Folly

Chapter 1The first time Layne saw the house he was thirteen and his sister, Nicola, was eleven. They’d been sent to spend the summer with their grandparents while their parents were on tour, costarring in a musical comedy. They felt it would be too disruptive to bring the children along, especially since Nicola was at the age where the idea of becoming an actress was all she dreamed about, pestering her mother incessantly to find small parts for her in whatever show they were doing at the time. Layne couldn’t have cared less about the theater. His current interest was architecture so he was in seventh heaven when they told him that he and Nicola would be spending ten weeks in the small town in the mountains where their grandparents lived. He loved the old houses, the different styles, shapes, and sizes. He wasn’t all that happy with the few newer ones, and the high-rises that were sprinkled around the town’s edges, although he knew he should at least study them so he’d know what not to do when he was old enough to take architecture courses in college. Their grandfather bought the kids bikes and backpacks, in the interests of self-preservation as Layne overheard him tell his father. “That way they won’t be bugging me to drive them into the mountains so they can explore.” And explore Layne did every chance he got, with Nicola tagging along on occasion, when she professed to be bored with their grandmother trying to teach her how to cook and embroider. Early one afternoon in late June, they took off to follow a dirt road Layne had happened upon two days previously. It was narrow, the trees so close to the sides their branches created a tunnel-like effect. They stopped often to watch chipmunks or rabbits, sometimes following them until they vanished into the thick underbrush. Nicola found a small patch of wild flowers and made a bouquet to take back to her grandmother, laying it in the basket attached to the bike’s handlebars. The farther and higher they went, the narrower the road became until it was little more than a rock-strewn path wending its way through the forest, forcing them to walk their bikes. “Can we go home now?” Nicola whined. “I’m tired, my feet hurt, and my flowers are wilting.” “I want to find out where this goes,” Layne replied. “Nowhere, silly. Who’d live up here?” “A giant troll,” Layne teased. “Uh-uh. They live under bridges.” “So maybe there’s one at the end of the trail. A bridge that…umm…crosses a gorge to the get to the next mountain.” Nicola crossed her arms, saying stubbornly, “You go find out. I’m staying right here.” “Not by yourself you’re not. Come on. We’ll go around the bend I can see up ahead and if there’s nothing there, I promise we’ll go home.” She pouted for a moment then nodded. “Okay. Just that far, though.” Layne agreed. The path had steepened enough that, if he wasn’t even more stubborn than she, he would have been willing to turn around right then and there and head back to town. They made it to the bend, which curved to the right, walked maybe fifty feet farther along the path, and came to a dead stop when they saw a house several yards ahead of them. “Wow,” Nicola whispered. “No kidding.” It was ramshackle, standing in a small clearing, and was surrounded by high weeds and shrubs—yet it was still impressive. Three stories in height, it had porch that curved around from the front door to the side one, with bay windows on the ground floor, a steep, gabled roof —missing more than a few shingles—and shallow bay windows on the second floor. “Victorian,” Layne told Nicola. “Who would build something like this in the middle of nowhere?” “The troll, because he was tired of sleeping under bridges.” “I wasn’t serious about him,” Layne muttered. “Well, it was your idea,” she countered as he started toward the house. “Where are you going?” “I want to see what’s inside.” “No way! It’ll probably fall down on your head, if it hasn’t already. I mean it hasn’t fallen on your head, but I bet it could.” “Come on. We can at least peek through the windows.” “How?” “Umm…” She had a point since all of them were boarded up, with vines covering some of them as well, even as far up as the top floor. The steps to the porch were broken, as was much of the railing, and every bit of visible the wood was weather-worn to faded shades of gray and brown. “No one’s lived here in forever,” he said. “I wonder if Grandpa knows who it belongs to.” “Let’s go ask,” she replied, turning her bike around. He laughed. “That’s one way to get me to leave, though I really want to explore it.” “Better not. Besides, it’s going to be dark pretty soon.” She had a point as the sun was lowering in the western sky. Not enough to make the walk and ride back down the trail dangerous, but it soon would be. An hour later, as they were riding down the street to their grandparents’ home, the streetlights began to come on. “Grandpa Paul, you’ll never guess what we found,” Nicola said, dashing into the kitchen, sliding to a stop in front of him. “A gold mine?” “Uh-uh. A house. A real old one. It’s falling down, sort of.” Grandpa Paul looked at Layne, who was right behind her, eyebrows raised in question. “We did. I found a road a couple days ago that looked like it was never used, so we went up it to see where it went. I thought we might find a mine, and I know, if we had we wouldn’t have gone in because you said they’re dangerous. But we didn’t. There’s a really old, falling-down house way up in the mountains.” “The Granville place, I bet,” Grandma Jane said, turning from the stove where she was cooking dinner. “I’m surprised there’s anything left of it at this point.” “Me, too.” Grandpa Paul chuckled. “It’s called Granville’s Folly by the few locals who remember it’s there, because it’s a mansion in the middle of nowhere.” “Why would he build it up there?” Layne asked. “And how did he do it?” “The story is—” “You can tell it over supper, which is ready,” Grandma Jane said. “Nicola, Layne, would you set the table, please, after you wash up.” They did, and when everyone had made inroads into the meal Layne asked his grandfather, again, why and how the house had been built so far from civilization. “I don’t know why,” Grandpa Paul said. “Some say that Granville was fleeing the war, the Civil War, because he was a Southern slave owner whose home had been burned to the ground. Others say he realized the errors of his ways and fled to escape the wrath of his neighbors who considered him a traitor to the Confederacy because he’d freed his slaves, whom he brought with him when he came west. My guess, it was closer to the latter because, and again this is the story that’s been passed down over the years, he, his brother, and his brother’s wife arrived here with a dozen black men and women in tow. They went into the mountains above town, found a spot he liked, cleared the land, and built the house by hand. It took several years and when it was finished, the freedmen left to make lives of their own. His family stayed with him until he died.” “When that happened,” Grandma Jane said, continuing the story, “it’s said that they buried him behind the house and then boarded it up so that no trespassers could get inside, and lived there until they died. Of course that part’s debatable because who would have buried them when that happened. I suspect they took off for greener pastures, leaving the house to the ravages of time and nature.” Layne frowned. “Nobody tried to get inside, anyway?” “There were rumors that people did and were frightened away by their ghosts. Once, years ago, a group of ghost hunters visited. When they left they said the house was a rat’s nest of destroyed furnishings and broken walls and staircases, but there was no sign of ghosts.” Grandma Jane huffed. “Not that any sane person would believe otherwise.” “Spooky,” Nicola said, shivering. “Don’t let your imagination carry you away,” Grandpa Paul told her. “It’s just an old, vacant house, nothing more.” He turned to Layne. “I know you. You’re already thinking about going up there, again. Don’t. It’s not safe and if something happened to you, your parents would never forgive us.” “I won’t,” Layne replied, with his fingers crossed in his lap. It took three weeks before he was able to return to the house by himself. Nicola had decided there were better things to do than go off on another ride with him, like helping their grandparents with the garden. With their permission, and the admonition that he was to stay on the side roads during his ride and not go exploring into the woods—“because there could be lions and tigers and bears,” his grandfather had teased with a touch of seriousness—Layne took off. The house was still there, exactly as he remembered. Leaning his bike against a tree at the edge of the clearing, he walked slowly toward it, wondering if he could find a way inside. If the ghost hunters did, I can. He knew he couldn’t have pried the boards off the windows even if he’d thought to bring a hammer or crowbar with him, which he hadn’t. There were boards crisscrossing the doors, as well, but spaced fairly far apart—enough so that maybe, if he could find a door that would open, he could squeeze between them. He crawled onto the front porch, since the steps were too broken to be safe, then carefully inched his way to the front door. He tried the handle. It turned but that was it. When he pushed against it, the door remained firmly closed, making his wonder if there weren’t more boards across it on the inside. The same held true with the side door at the far end of the porch. He dropped to the ground and went to the bay window, trying to find a crack between the boards that would let him see into whatever room was behind it. He had with no luck as they were tightly pressed together. “Guess they didn’t want anyone knowing if there was something valuable in there,” he said under his breath, moving on to the next bay window on the front of the house, getting the same result. “The ghost hunters got in,” he grumbled, then figured they’d probably come prepared with something to pull off the boards and had put them back when they left. He walked down the side of the house, testing all the boards on the windows. “Nailed down tight, dang it.” He knew there had to be a back door, not that he’d be able to get through it any more than he had the others, but he wasn’t going to give up without trying. The rear of the house faced east and cast a long shadow across the weed-filled yard since the sun was to the west, although still fairly high in the sky. That didn’t deter him from his continued search for a way to get inside. There was a small, covered back porch ahead of him. When he reached it, he let out a panicked gasp. Someone was standing in the dark shadows by the door. “What are you doing here, boy?” a sharp voice asked. The owner stepped forward so that Layne could see him. The man had long, black hair, pulled back into a ponytail, piercing dark eyes, and thin lips. He was dressed in black pants held up with suspenders, a full-sleeved dark shirt, and tall black boots, which helped explain why Layne hadn’t seen him until it was too late. “I…I wanted to see inside,” Layne confessed, his voice trembling. “Like everyone else who ventures up here, I’m sure.” The man smiled briefly. “Including me. It’s not happening, I’m afraid. The house is sealed tighter than a drum. I’m Kieran, by the way, and you are?” “L-l-lay…” He took a deep breath. “Layne.” “It’s a pleasure to meet another intrepid explorer.” Kieran glanced up at the roof over the porch. “I wonder…If you could climb the post holding up the roof, perhaps you could see through the crack between the boards on that window.” Layne stepped back to see what he meant. “Maybe?” Layne tentatively placed a foot on the porch steps. They held him, so he made it to the top then gingerly climbed onto the railing and from there hauled himself up the post to the edge of the porch’s roof and pulled himself onto it. He inched to the window and peered through the crack. “It’s awfully dark but…” Layne waited for his eyes to adjust then sighed. “It’s an empty room. Maybe a bedroom? There’s no furniture and the wallpaper’s peeled off the walls and the floor’s covered with…ugh.” Kieran chuckled. “Ugh?” Sliding down to the roof’s edge, Layne shinnied down the post, jumping the last few feet to the ground before replying, “Dust and things. It’s hard to tell.” “I kind of figured that’s what it would be like inside,” Kieran said, still standing in the shadows on the porch. “According to the stories, the place has been vacant for a hundred years or more. Not surprising. Who’d want to live this far away from civilization?” “Me,” Layne replied. “Well, if there was a way to drive up here. It’s pretty neat.” He waved his arm around to encompass the house and the view, which to the east included the mountain peaks towering above the clearing. “It would be lonely though, I guess.” “Indeed,” Kieran agreed with a slight smile. “How did you get up here?” Layne asked. “Hiked.” Kieran pointed to the side of the clearing several yards from the narrow path Layne had used. He glanced at the sky. “You’d better head back where you came from. There’s a storm brewing if I don’t miss my guess.” Layne didn’t want to leave quite yet, but he knew Kieran was right. “If I come back some other time, will you be here? I could bring my Grandpa’s crowbar and you could pry off some of the boards.” “I’m afraid not. I’m on vacation from out of state and have to go home in a couple of days. Work and what have you, you know. Well, you probably don’t, but give it a few years.” Kieran winked. “Well, drat. Okay. I wish…” “There had been something interesting in the house.” “Yeah, but you’re right. After so long…” Layne shook his head. “It was fun, though, talking with you and…yeah. Have a good trip home.” The clearing was getting darker, so he hurried to his bike, hoping he’d make it back to town before it began to rain. The storm broke minutes after he got home—one of the worst in memory according to Grandpa Paul. When Layne tried, a few days later, to return to the house he found all traces of the path to it had been washed away, leaving nothing to say it had been there. He attempted hiking up the way he thought it had gone, leaving his bike at the end of the narrow road, and almost got lost in the process. Only the sun glinting off the bike’s handlebars let him know where it was so he could backtrack to it. After that, he gave up. The next summer, much to his dismay, his parents got permanent positions at a theater in the city where they lived and decided it would be better to visit the grandparents over the Christmas holiday when the theater was dark. Then, a year later, Grandpa Paul died of a heart attack and Grandma Jane sold the house and came to live with them. It would be over twenty years before Layne saw Granville’s Folly again.