William is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.
Transcript:
Joshua did whatever his clients asked of him – refurbish existing properties or rebuild them from scratch. He was trying to be better known among the Mercer Island crowd. The islanders were always looking to expand or rebuild their domiciles, which could cost hundreds of thousands of 1960s dollars for the level of modern they wanted. His company, Farrington builders, had a good crew who had worked together for a decade, starting with Northside homes and moving into the big leagues as soon as they had the credentials. Joshua never visited the clients outside of a job site though. Not in their clubs or their bars or their social venues. He knew what they wanted him for, but with the cash he was pulling in, he was planning to visit these places someday as a paying customer.
Which is why he found it extremely odd when a new client asked for two very strange things. One was a mansion on an existing property in Queen Anne. And the second was that all its windows were to be facades. And done in a very old style, long out of fashion. The client, William, was very insistent though, “as modern as he would allow it,” explained George, the manager of William’s companies. William also wanted a strict timetable for the work so he would know the exact night he could move in. William and George already had lavish properties on Mercer Island, and it made little sense they’d also want Queen Anne housing on properties that did not even have a view of Puget Sound. Every businessman was grabbing waterfront property but Joshua knew better than to question old money.
After a week of finagling with the architect, Joshua began demolition at the site of the new mansion. The teardown was witnessed by the neighbors who brought their children to watch the old church stripped to the bones and toppled. It had undergone some hard times, and been rewarded for its perseverance with enough cash to be rebuilt elsewhere, miles away to the north. Seattle was near impossible to travel around without a car, but the old church had been there for citizens without cars. Joshua expected to find paint on his own car for doing this job but fortunately enough, he never did. It had been hard to retain the church after the parish minister had died that summer, and now dealing with this horrid, windowless mansion was quite another.
On the night after the final paint job had been completed, with the mansion assembled a few weeks past its scheduled date, Joshua took a walk inside its ornate, fabulous rooms. As he purveyed the great halls within, he stopped to make sure he was hearing correctly. The walls seemed to be breathing. He put out his hand on one to confirm it was slowly moving in and out. And yet the drywall remained unbroken. He thought he must have been experiencing delusions from the paint fumes, and turned to head out, when he found William standing right behind him, in all his regal splendor.
“You shouldn’t be here,” William said. “But now that you are, you have seen my work. I’m imbuing the house with life.”
“That’s fantastic,” Joshua said. “I really have to be going now.”
“You would like to go,” William said. “But new life needs to be fed. And the house is very hungry.”
“Okay, you’re drunk or something,” Joshua said. “Let me by.”
“Of course,” William said, and stepped aside.
Joshua turned down the hall he had spent months building, reinforcing, and painting. But around the next corner, he found himself in an entirely different room. One he had not built. A vast space with an amber globe in the center made from glass in the style of Modernism from the 1920s. He hurried through to a different hallway, with floral print on the walls that he had not put up, lined with doors made from wood that did not grow in the States. Joshua began to run, finding himself in one strange room after the next, lost in a labyrinth he thought he knew, terrified that the house had become something other than his creation. That nothing of his remained within it, and that he would never find his way out. And no windows. No windows anywhere. Just as William had requested. There was simply. No. Way. Out.
And then he felt a strong, clawed hand on his shoulder, reaching out seemingly from the void, holding him in place.
He looked back. It was George, William’s businessman.
“Good heavens,” George said. “The house is not that large. Just, get out. Get out before he notices.”
And Joshua once more saw the house as it was, as he had built it. And while he could, he fled.
-END-
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