modifiers

Setting One – The House



Removing Modifiers



         Number 92 Second Street, in Fall River, MA is a small, narrow house, in the center of a shabby residential street.  Grimy green trim outlines the sooty gray house squatting inches from the sidewalk between larger, grander houses, and even they had seen better days. 

A lone tree perches between the edge of the drive and the curb, but it provides little shade from the glare of the late morning sun.  It’s once verdant spring leaves had ripened, first to a vivid serpent-green, before aging on to the same sad hue as the door and shutters.  Now the late summer heat has toasted them, making them appear like small pieces of leather tanning in the sun and filling the immediate area with the warm beginnings of autumn leaves.  A puff of air, like a hot breath, rushes over the neighborhood, rustling the crispy leaves for only a moment before the eerie stillness returns.

The air is heavy—oppressive with humidity—but something else as well.  Ah yes, it is the stench of impeding doom that also hovers above the house and yard.  And despite the cloudless sky, there is a hint of the earthy dampness percolating through the leaves that promises temporary relief from the heat with an impending thunderstorm.

Now we pass through the locked and bolted door—mere spirits, unfelt and unseen.  The front hall is windowless and dark, although a streak of light shines down from second floor window, silhouetting dust fairies suspended in the stale air.  The stairs and banister are of dark wood, worn darker by years of use—sticky from years of waxing. 

It is a quiet house, for except the incessant tick-tocking of the mantle clock, forced (due to there being no mantle) to live on the buffet in the dining room, silence reigns.  Even harsh words are spoken in muted tones here.  Raised voices, like so many other things, are not tolerated.

Twenty years ago, when Andrew Borden had purchased the two family building and remodeled it for his brood, the wallpaper had been clean and fresh.  Now it had faded to the point where the undeterminable pattern was fused with the drab background.  Here and there, along the ceiling, dampness had caused its corners to pull away from the wall, hanging down in dingy curls.  And an invisible cloud of mustiness dripped from the ceiling of each room.

Massive pieces of dark Victorian furniture crowd into the skimpy rooms in an attempt to fill the hollow—hush the reverberating echo of silence.  Parlor, sitting room and dining room are all very similar, couches in all.  Odd to have so many in a house when no one ever relaxes—really.

In other house along the street, wafting scents of roasting meat and boiling vegetables entice people in to dinner.  Here, nostrils are accosted by the rancid, off-odor of mutton broth kept too long in a time before refrigeration. Too deep breaths deposit a film of that nastiness in the back of your throat that nothing takes away.

The cellar is even darker than the little rooms and narrow hallways.  Hovering over the clutter of old tools and broken furniture, is an aromatic cacophony of sour laundry, starch and coal dust, with just the subtlest low note of human waste.  Besides clogging the lungs, the coal dust coats everything in a fine black film that permeates everything.  Somewhere there is the drip…drip…drip…of a spigot, that seemsmuch louder because of the grim stillness of the house and the family that lives here.