My cottage sits alone in the clearing.
It is a squat Georgian building, constructed from bricks coloured a dull orange that borders on the brown of rotting autumn leaves. Singled-storied and roofed with slate, it stares out at the landscape through two iron-latticed bay windows. It looks toward the surrounding treeline that forms an arboreal ring around it. Virginia creeper snakes up the right side of the cottage, putting the mud-red bricks and stormy slate to shame with its sunset gradient. The saturated crimson hues make the house seem awash with flame, as if a scarlet inferno had been caught in the act, standing frozen with embarrassment. Factor in the wrought iron windows, and the building seems as if it were itself alive, as the creeper mimics a nervous blush or hideous scar framing the glass eyes. The partially paved path leads up toward the door like a thrown rope trailing in a turbulent sea. It is uneven, but welcoming in a way that any shelter is, once you've experienced the worst a storm can offer.
The expanse between the house and the treeline is a small, circular meadow of grass and seeding dandelions that reach just above my knees. I like to trail my hands through the grass and feel the scratchy seed heads brush past, trying to latch on so they can later fall and grow elsewhere. For all their effort, the gentle green waves proceed no further than fifteen metres. They end, or begin, at the forest.
Golden-brown oaks dominate the treeline, with branches and roots spreading out across the forest like carved clay. Silver birches gleam like distant strangers in white, and mountain ashes scatter bitter berries across mottled mud. The woods hide a bounty of good food, for those who know how to scavenge. Pumpkin patches grow like ripening boils, and tangles of brambles offer up shrivelled blackberries. Raspberry canes poke from the fallen leaves with their fruit dangling like tiny red lanterns. Apple trees dot the forest too; their fruit grows small, speckled, and red, like nearly everything in the level, and are tart and refreshing. Between these and the sparsely stocked kitchen, I've been able to cook things I'd never dared imagine since I ended up on this strange journey. A diet of almond water, canned mysteries, and roasted rat is certainly not a comparable feast for the senses.
The house embraces you when you first enter, as if you were meeting a distant relative or a kindred soul. Opening the front door presents you with a short hallway to its back counterpart, with two inner doorways on your left and one on your immediate right. Turning right will take you into the dining room, which boasts the right front window, opposite which, the right rear window lights the adjoined kitchen. A single chair sits at the table, a single set of cutlery sits in the kitchen drawer, and a single candle burns gently on the front windowsill. A grey carpeted floor gives way to the kitchen's chessboard tiles where a cranky white oven and dull chrome countertop await your culinary whims. The first threshold on the left will lead you into the living room, where the textured wallpaper presses in close and comforting. An armchair sits centred against it, staring with the house out onto the wild lawn, and accompanied by an antique, curved coffee table sitting at its feet.
The second doorway on your left precedes the bedroom. Like the rest, it is modest and boasts a neatly made bed in the middle of the room, empty rosewood drawers on either side. A blue lamp on the left drawer casts the room into a sleepy haze when lit. However, the very last and very first space is the most interesting. The short hallway is lined with framed pictures, far too many to maintain a symmetrical or orderly pretence. They hang in patchwork fashion, covering the walls in different shapes and sizes until the original cream of the wallpaper appears like tributaries flowing around the geography of the photographs.
I believe these are the only things to change from visitor to visitor, because each and every one depicts me. The memories follow a vague chronology, progressing further through my life as they continue down the hall. At the start, my mother is hunched in a hospital bed, cradling my small, new form. Her face is tilted down towards mine, displaying a roiling cocktail of emotions. I am shown learning to crawl, walk, cycle, and drive. My mother and I exchange Christmas gifts in our third home in my tenth winter. That brass lighter proved invaluable in my smoking years, as well as all the arson I was never caught for. It was a thing of beauty, engraved with the intricate floral patterns of a grand hotel's wallpaper that gleamed mischievously even after years of handling. I still have it, though the urge to see things burn has faded like the lighter's pattern: still noticeable, but not prominent. However, the rest of my soul is not emptied so easily: I am still the child left on the doorstep, still the rebellious teen in the headmaster's office, and still the young man with old addictions. I've shacked up in rotten apartments, squatter's shelters, green belts, and brownfield sites. No empty mall or homely hall has ever felt as welcoming as this cottage. This seems by design, but the artificiality only draws me in further. The memories that hang in the corridor do not entice me to continue on. They do not fill me with wanderlust, nor the need for new experiences. When I look back through my life, I cannot find a single settled moment, so here I will make my own. This house will be my home whether it likes it or not.
Unfortunately, all the beauty and homeliness seem to hinge on one condition: you do not stay for long. This is a tranquil place with a benevolent feeling to it. I want to believe it is a kind and gracious host, simply one that does not tolerate guests who overstay their welcome. It has all the makings of a quick and comfortable rest, one that would revitalise a wanderer's spirit to no end upon discovery, but I am being greedy.
One thing I've learnt on my travels is to trust my instincts. These rooms are in tune with emotions, or built on them, or emit them. Whatever it is, trusting your hunches may just see you safely to the next level. But neither the tingling fear of a quiet noise around the corner nor an inhuman footprint in old dust can compare to what grows in this level. Where once I had to run the taps for fear of rust and dirt, I now have to wait for half-clotted blood to dissipate before it is drinkable. The lamp in the bedroom has gone out, and the kitchen lights begin to flicker. The pictures in the hall are peeling and ageing faster with each passing day. From the window I see the forest press closer, the distant, sunlit oaks being replaced with the dark spears of pines and hostile masses of holly bushes. Foraging trips reward me with more scratches and dirt than food, and tame, edible mushrooms are being outgrown by caps that drip foul, clear liquids. A venomous winter greyscale is suffocating the passionate reds of autumn, but still I will not take the hint.
Maybe it is selfish to settle in a place meant for many, but I do not find that I care. This is me wresting the well-earned rest I am owed from whatever set me on this godforsaken path, consequences be damned. If you find this wood once again hazy with evening sun, this house glowing with subtle invitation, and the path inviting you to rest a while, then beware. I have not left, and I am not going to leave, so if this cottage is empty, then I am dead. If all this is the case, then do not overstay your welcome. Take heart and keep going. Keep wandering. Good luck.
