The Cellar at Still Mansion

There was a time when all cellars were filled with old treasures. Moments of the past tucked away from the generations before, memories held safe and quiet within the earth preparing themselves for rediscovery. Still Mansion had one of these; filled with tools and dirt and spiders and the occasional snake, old pictures, a record player with boxes of records, big band, small band, scratchy voiced blues and summer love songs; microscopes and chemicals with forewarning labels, odd glass jars filled with preserved aunts and uncles, cracked paintings of the family, hidden photos, a statue of St Jude and a myriad of damaged instruments.

All moods lurked in the treasures beneath the mansion. But it was not until Freddie and Alfred found the hidden room that Freddie first felt love. It's where their Grandfather, Vanity had stored himself and where they learned about the wive(s).

A gargantuan mirror with a broken frame sat against the far wall on the south side of the cellar. In order not to chip more of the oversized gilded frame the mirror was angled against the wall which left enough room behind for a small child. During a game of hide and seek Freddie had made her way into the space between the mirror and the wall. It was from there that she noticed a deliberate break in the stone on the floor and once Alfred had found her, which he almost always did, they collectively drug away the carpet covering the trap door. A finger hole was embedded in the ground, and within, there was brass ring, which did nothing to assist opening the door but did a world to encourage their curiosity.

Either it was too heavy to just lift by the ring or it was locked and if it was locked there had to be a key. The two began to search behind the paintings, stained glass and sculptures, through the stack of musty beaver pelts, along the wall of hat boxes and tanning materials. They moved records and travel trunks of clothing. The skeleton key drawer would only be useful if there was a key hole to be found. And they found nothing. Alfred was now wearing a redcoat's hat from the revolutionary war and trolloping about on a taxidermied greyhound while swinging a cricket stick. He was waging war on the trap door. They would be certain to get to the other side.



**The nameless woman interjects

I want to address the cellar of the mansion and its place in their story. The cellar is just a location as is any location but some locations are stronger haunts than others and it is in this cellar where I fill the cracks in my story. The stone walls have a cold breath and if you stand quietly in the center of the room you can hear them talk over each other. I moved into the house 8 months after the tragedy. I have been there just over 11 years, myself a haunt. I move slowly throughout the house cleaning as my body allows. My hands have begun to curl under and the veins rise like blue mountain ranges dividing my skin which is a litter of dark places. I appear much older than I am. The house has worn on me more than I would have thought possible. I'm by trade a restorer, a historian, that's why they let me move in; so that I could maintain the contents while they wait for Meredith to die.

Every room, every hallway, coat, hat, work of art and piece of furniture has a story. There is nowhere in the house that doesn't speak. But the cellar is where they keep their secrets. Vanity, Douglas, Victor, Clara, Petra, Freddie and Alfred and before all of them, the great great grandfather, Norman Douglas Varekamp III, his story was my last to find, although it should have been the first. My mother talked about him the most, but that isn't saying much as my mother rarely talked about Still or Danbury.



She raised me upstate at a boarding school where she found employment.





Petra sings in the cellar

Petra has turned eleven and is wearing the small sequined hat she's just found with the four peacock feathers, her white undershirt, a silk maroon scarf and no shoes. She is playing a record on her brand new player and singing into the mirror Vanity had recently taken out of the front hall. By placing her former (and much smaller mirror) on the other side of the room she easily multiplies herself.

Vanity is above her in the first floor office. A splintered wooden cane and two crutches mark off where the walls are above so that when Vanity is in his office, she is in his office just below. Petra has become an expert at tracking his movements. He starts at his desk, his feet tapping in his favorite orange leather shoes as he pursues the numbers. That's what he tells her, "I'm pursuing numbers my love, because they are running away". And after some moments he will walk to the bar, west wall 4 paces Vanity, 12 paces Petra. Then on to the window overlooking the river where the factory looms to the north, 3 paces Vanity, 8 paces Petra. He pauses and waits to hear the scratchy sound of one of Victors recordings begin. Petra touches the mirror she has place just below where the bay window lies above and begins to sing. She wants to take away his frustration and worry about the state of affairs of the factory, the town and the industry. She wants to steal his attention away from the legacy of lunacy he feels responsible for.

Pe's voice trickles slowly through the floor boards and penetrates the bottom of his feet bounding up through his body and piercing his chest. He will not move for as long as she sings. His eyes slowly closing he stands statuesque sipping his whiskey. He knows he has no control in these moments.



Petra's songs are all her grandfather Victors. He died of tuberculosis when she was 9, they would record together in his "conservatory for one" but when he realized he was not going to recover he recorded all of his instrumental music without her and on her 9th birthday presented her with a library of songs and records. He spent his last 4 months teaching her the numbers she had never heard. The ones he felt she was too young for. It was in those months that Petra grew up. It was Victor who taught her life's lessons and Lo who would show her how to handle herself. Vanity just watched and admired. He was hopeless with her after Victor died. Later in life Petra would perform in front of hundreds and yet every performance was for Vanity alone, every performance was in front of her mirror, every performance was to gain his attention alone, no one else.



Her favorite song, the one she sang today, was about the child who had gone into the woods and become lost for years. It was about wanting to be home in the arms of the ones she loved most. The child eventually makes her own way in life and finds love of her own, but nothing like the love she'd once known. At the end she discovers that she'd been abandoned by her family, not lost at all, and kills herself. Most of Victor's songs we're about women who killed themselves. He never believed his father when he was told their mother died in childbirth. He believed she had become forlorn and hung herself for some dramatic reason or another, "male intuition" he would tell Petra and wink.