Samuel’smother claimed that he was walking by the age of one, yet Samuel’s first stepafter his re-emergence, if it could have even been called a step, lastedseveral decades. Unstuck in time, his mind swimming in and out of memories ofwho he was and what he had become, the world around him evolved. He was dimlyaware, while peering through the building’s many windows in the grips oflunacy, that the city was growing disproportionately, sprouting clumps of steeland brick like hair on a puberty-ridden body. Before he became conscious of hisactions, Samuel watched through dulled senses as marvels sprung out through theworld around him.
Advancesin technology that influenced the lights, buildings and the streets themselves,all rebuilt countless times into vaguely familiar shades of what they oncewere. The irony, yes, Samuel knew it well. His entire catalogue of publishedwork was based off satire.
Eventually,all rocking ships either sink or still and Samuel found himself in control ofhis mind and ethereal body. The decades stopped fluttering by him like thethumbed pages of a novel, and he became aware of the individual apartments andtenants around him. Mere moments after the revelation that he was back, that hehad completed his transformation into a conscious spirit, he encountered theoverwhelming presence of dread that he first encountered in this building as aliving man.
Theshadows that twitch of their own accord in the corner of a partially lit room,the wandering things just outside one’s field of vision, and the chills in theair that draw visible the breath from the tenants living their partially awarelives around him. As a mortal, Samuel had little doubts that there was an evilin The House of Death, that there was a reason it was given such a namelong before his last breath.
Whileinhabiting his West Village apartment, Samuel lived each and every day to thefullest. At night, with his dear wife Livy by his side, his alcohol-glazed restwas disturbed by a presence disguised as nightmares. The incidents were randomand almost always after he’d been drinking; as if something were peering intohis mind, running its bone-thin fingertips over his arms and lapping up some ofthe essence that made him real, that made him an artist. His work suffered andit was only after his wife became ill and they moved out that he became trulyaware something had been wrong. Something had been sharing his and Lilly’s bed,the very air they breathed. Years later, he wondered if it had fostered thesickness that killed her.
Despitebeing anchored in time, Samuel found himself suffering from some inexplicablephenomena that plagued both the dead and the mentally handicapped. One momenthe would be wandering the apartment of a journalist and his wife on the thirdfloor, and the next he’d be on the first, nodding his head back and forth by astreet side window. Travelling up and down the four-story building’s staircasewould inexplicably take hours, during which he could only stare at the stepshis shoes weren’t connecting with, as if hypnotized by their rectangularsymmetry. While giving a lecture in South Africa, he learned that certaintribes believed stitching an intricate pattern onto a quilt could fixatespirits and demons and offer protection. This fit in with what he knew of othersuperstitious architects in the world, from the creators of actual labyrinthsto hotel corridors. There was also Sarah Winchester, a madwoman who used her fortuneto build a mystery house full of stairs that lead nowhere, backwards rooms andhidden passageways, all in an attempt to confuse the legions of ghosts thatallegedly haunted her. Samuel had assumed she was mad, but perhaps she was moreintelligent than anybody.
Beingdead, Samuel found that he was ridden with apathy. There was a certainrestlessness - he could care less about life and death, as well as his purposefor returning to his former apartment building. His wife and daughters alongwith his parents and siblings, who had all died years before him, were justnames and faces once dear to another man. Samuel lingered by the windows, halfcurious if anyone could see him from the streets below. Occasionally a childbeing dragged along by his mother would stop and point, only to be hurriedalong as its parents passed a wary eye over Samuel.
Hiscuriosity would flare over the memory that spirits would oft be seen in windowsand doorways, watching the living much like how he would sit in his garden beforehis death, watching cardinals and humming birds. Samuel’s curiosity would fadebefore it could do him any good, before it could give him that familiar sparkof inspiration, of desire and purpose. It wasn’t until a child was dead that hebegan to feel alive again.
Asidefrom their modest wealth, there was nothing unusual about the building’stenants; accountants, artists, architects, the usual mix of the New York middleand upper class. Samuel passively flickered through their lives, imperceptibleand having no impact on the environment around him. Snapping his fingers infront of a man’s face registered nothing. Watching a young couple sleep didn’tcause them to shiver and nude occupants the building over showed no signs ofshame when he spotted them fresh out of a bath. Children, on the other hand,were a different matter entirely.
Theycouldn’t see him, but they knew he was there. There were three children in thebuilding, one a newborn often confined to her crib and the other two, toddlers,barely of speaking age. On the second floor, in the same unremarkable unitSamuel used to live in, a little girl living with her single mother pointedright at Samuel and said “man,” which the mother promptly ignored while she wason the telephone, a fascinating device whose wirings had somehow wormed thereway through the walls of the building. Considering the building was built inthe mid 1800’s, it was likely no stranger to such rude re-workings.
