TWO Cobwebs & Dust
A few miles past the edge of the town proper, just as the forest walls rose up again, I saw the painfully familiar sign on the side of the road and hit the turn signal.
“Is that it?” Wyatt asked.
“That’s it.” I slowed and prepared to turn into the narrow gravel lane just behind the sign.
“Sea-Mist Cottage Inn,” Wyatt read aloud, ignoring the smaller, newer sign attached, a vinyl banner that read CLOSED . “It looks like the sign was worn out for a lot longer than two years.”
I turned onto the lane; the old sign loomed over us like a cranky old ghost. “It does. It looks like I was around the last time it got a facelift. For all I know, she ran the whole place into the ground before it finally closed.”
I could feel Wyatt’s toothy grin. “Maybe it’s haunted. That would be so cool.”
Oh, it’s plenty haunted , I thought. Just not by moaning old souls in white sheets.
Aloud, I said, “Your ideas about what’s cool leave a lot to be desired, bud. Let’s hope for no ghosts.”
We cleared the lane and arrived on the gravel parking lot. I sucked in another of those deep, careful breaths and faced the main cabin of the Sea-Mist Cottage Inn. My childhood home.
The final tendrils of golden sunlight were fading back to the ocean. Redwoods hulked over the scene, and gloom began to fill the cracks between their barky trunks. Always the dark took the forest well before it claimed the town. I tried not to think of dusk descending here at just the moment of our arrival as anything more sinister than poor timing.
The property had stood empty, abandoned, for about two years, and it looked it. The cabin before us, both office and home, showed the accumulated damage of several storms as well as the wear of ‘delayed maintenance’ that had clearly gone on much longer than the place had been derelict. But it hadn’t run completely into the ground.
All the windows were boarded up, but bad weather had knocked the boards around, and the two at the front of the cabin, beside the door, were hanging on by about a nail apiece. I could see that the interior shutters were closed.
On the wooden steps leading to the porch, an old sign rested against a riser. The gloom was already too thick to see it clearly, but I didn’t need to see to know what it said.
Office , it read. Wipe yer BIGFOOTS good before you come in! There was a bare spot on the door’s face where that sign belonged. A decrepit fiberglass Sasquatch had once stood beside the door, its head grazing the ceiling. Now it lay in pieces on the porch floor.
The counties of Humboldt and Del Norte were ostensibly Bigfoot country. Most tourism-centered businesses made use of the folklore in their advertising. Not one cell in my mother’s body had been whimsical, but she’d understood her business. The people who vacationed in the Pacific Northwest wanted Bigfoot. So she’d had Bill Stokely carve that sign for her. I have no idea where she’d gotten the ridiculous statue.
A caul of memory wrapped around my head, threatening to choke out the past twenty years and drag me back in time.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a haunted cabin, Mom.”
Wyatt had carefully shaped his muttered words into a faux-somber ‘hate to break it to you’ tone that struck me at just the right place. The caul broke, and I laughed. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I threw myself back against the truck’s seat, slapped my hands over my belly, and absolutely guffawed. Wyatt caught the hilarity bug, and then we were both laughing like loons.
Eventually, we returned to sanity. For another moment or two, we sat in the cab, staring out the window at Wyatt’s new home and my old one.
This was it—the final moment of my life away from Bluster. When we opened the doors and stepped down from the cab, when my feet touched NorCal ground again for the first time since the night of my high-school graduation, my old life would wrap itself around my ankles and start pulling.
No. That didn’t have to be true. In fact, it couldn’t be true. I was a different person now; I’d lived a different life. I was a woman, and I’d been only a girl when I’d left. I was a mother now.
And my own mother was dead.
The life I’d lived as a girl would not fit the woman I’d become. I was determined to wear only the parts of my old life I wanted. Only the parts that fit.
“Okay, bud,” I said aloud. “We’ve got work to do before full dark lands. Best get to it.”
We got out of the truck. My feet landed on the gravel, and I stood in place for one more breath, my hand on the truck’s door, ready to close it. Or to jump back into the cab and flee.
NorCal ground. I was back.
When the earth did not split open and suck me into hell, I headed toward my old house.
And now my new one.
AT THE DOOR, AS I DUG through the manila envelope the mayor had sent, Wyatt asked, “Is there electricity? It’s so dark.”
Grabbing the keys from the bottom of the envelope, I answered, “I called PG no point in delaying the inevitable. Catherine’s was the perfect place to dive into the deep end of the gossip pool. I was prepared for sharks.
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Okay, Boomer. That’s not how it works, but okay.”
“I am a Millennial!” I corrected, adding some theatrical outrage to my expression. “You’re two whole generations off!”
“Then you should know how the internet works, huh?”
It was good to see him playful again—and I realized that the banter had started as we’d approached town. This journey had brought me backward, to a life I’d fled, but for Wyatt, this was forward. Away from the things he wanted—needed—to escape.
That understanding lifted most of the gloom from my mind. I grinned at my kid and pulled him close. “I love you, buddy.”
Wyatt’s arms were strong around my waist. “I love you, too. This is okay, Mom. This is good.”
“Even if it’s haunted?” I asked against his hair.
“ Especially if it’s haunted!”