found drama

It’s an imaginative confluence of House of Leaves and Edward Scissorhands – the scene rendered in a Burtonesque palette: a narrow swath of rich blacks, blues, greys, whites, and the very rare, very bold singular subject color. The house is already labyrinthine, made oppressively so by a… feeling that something is not quite right. The fixed space is already both claustrophobic and enormous. But certain rooms shift. And things… disappear. And though no one has hurt, someone has recently disappeared.

We make expeditions into the caverns of the shifting and shifted room. But no luck. (And whereas the team in the house on Ash Tree Lane went apparent-down, we go up-up-up into the attic.) We find nothing but boxes of forgotten trinkets or else crumbling insulation.

But then we take my nephew, or plan to, at least. It was his suggestion – my nephew’s. And we finally agree to take him since it appears that we are finding nothing anyway. But then, at the top of the attic stairs this time is a peculiar, triangular door, almost too small for a man. My brother physically forces his way through and I will myself small as a mouse.

We both manage to come through on the other side to find a strange room. It feels like a child’s room. There are toys, and a small bed, and paintings of happy-looking cartoonish animals. But the room is also somehow… too clean? sterile? A stagnant wind shudders through the rafters and we hear a far-off knocking sound.

About Rob Friesel