We arrived at Elmwood house after a long and harrowing drive up the 169 from Mankato to Minneapolis. What we were doing in Mankato is another story for another post, which I just might tell later, but the point is, we were very tired when we reached 1 Elmwood. The innkeeper had phoned earlier to let me know she wouldn’t be around, but she had left an envelope with our names and the key in a mailbox outside.
As we neared the Elmwood, we glimpsed one austere tower rising out of a shroud of bushes. It wasn’t quite how any of us had envisioned.
A month ago, perusing websites from my green couch, Jenny and Mo sandwiched beside me, it had looked so cute and charming, billing itself as “quaint and comfortable,” and promising, “a parlor filled with afternoon sun and a living room fully furnished with classical sofas, antique decorations, a baby grand piano…” It sounded great. Just to be cautious, we had looked up reviews. One woman complained of scratchy towels. We can handle that, we said to each other. It looked perfect for our one-night stopover in Minneapolis.
Elmwood seemed to have lost something in the virtual to actual translation. We tilted our heads up to the topmost gable of the foreboding Victorian mansion. The whole thing was shingled in a thick brown color…the shade a chocolate bar turns when forgotten in the back of the cupboard. That was all we could see through the 20 ft. blocks of shrubbery.
Beyond the bushes, a saggy, graying porch swing sat on the grass lawn. It swayed ever so slightly, a tiny creaking nose coming from the rusty springs. We crossed a porch which jutted out like a pier, fished through the mailbox for our key, opened the double glass doors, and stepped out of the drizzling late-afternoon.
Inside, we climbed a winding stairwell with a stained-glass window letting ing yellow-blue, sickly light. On the third floor, a post-it with the names “Linda, Jenny and Krista” was stuck to our door. Mo ripped it down quickly and crumpled it up. No one needs to know our names, she muttered. I felt suddenly thankful for the typo, as if it gave me a little edge on things.
We had a two-room suite. Next to my bed was a statue of a butler holding a tray. He looked angry. He came up to my lower waist. He followed my unpacking progress with his beady little eyes. The room was not one to invite lingering; in short, it did not scream “quaint and comfortable.” We headed down to explore the “sun-drenched” parlor.
Against the dark paneled walls hung the head of an unfortunate elephant and rhinoceros . Between them was giant, dusty chandelier. A built-in bookcase housed cozy titles like “Ghost Story”, “Valley of the Dolls”, “A year with Edgar”, and “Sybil.” A life-sized, black metal statue of a woman in a tight dress with a lampshade for a head was posed next to a dormer window.
Dinner? Jenny suggested. We scurried out to our car.
After eating at a diner, we explored a park next to one of the lakes. The sun had already set, but we basked in the glowy early evening sky mirrored by the water. After about 5 minutes, Mo noted that she thought, maybe, a man had been watching us. Mo can be quite dramatic about these things. I didn’t even bother turning around. Well we are beautiful, I said to her, laughing, but he’s probably just looking at the beautiful lake.
A moment later, Jenny tugged my sleeve in the direction of a nervous, twitchy man. He was definitely, for sure, not looking at the lake. He was looking at us, watching as we frolicked innocently in the twilight.
I shouted almost involuntarily, in my angriest teacher tone: Time to Go!
The creeper really did look extremely guilty: he gave a start, looked right at me, and then slouched away up the hill, his blue polo shirt disappearing into the dusk. True, Mo was at the height of her theatrics, but we didn’t protest when she insisted that we walk in circles so he wouldn’t know how to follow us. We dutifully skittered all over the park for about two minutes then leapt into our bright red-rental car.
I’m getting down, she cried and dove face first into the back-seat. Her stage-whisper, now muffled by the sweaters she had buried her face in, continued: That way he won’t know there are three of us in here; we’ll confuse him! Jenny, you too!”
Jenny buckled down into jackknife position.
What do I do? As the driver, I couldn’t really duck. A phantom hand from the backseat shoved a white and yellow beach hat in my general direction. I grabbed it, placed it low down onto my head, and stole away into the night.
We drove for quite some time, the voice from the back insisting that we could not make a beeline for the Elmwood in case we were being followed.
Well, I said, the scare wearing off, that jogger is staring at us too, and he’s hot, so maybe it’s just that we’re really, abnormally, attractive.
And you’re still wearing a beach hat, Jenny observed, still slightly hunched down in her seat.
This broke us, and we were laughing as we turned onto Elmwood Drive. There was a man, in a blue polo shirt, on a bike, right outside the driveway to the Elmwood. The laughed stopped. I squealed to a halt in the middle of the road.
And then we looked closer, and noticed that this man was young, nice-looking and smiling at a little blond haired girl on a tiny bike beside him.
Shaking, and still clad in my brilliant beach hat-disguise, I pulled a U into the steep driveway of the Elmwood house and sent the car screeching back to the street, right behind the girl and her father.
The girl turned around, her eyes amazingly wide. Her father rode ahead, leaving her alone in the wash of my headlights. Her little foot slipped off the pedal. She looked back again, right at me. We locked eyes. I started to smile, but before I could she let out eagle-ish caw of pure terror, lept forward on her seat, and peddled frantically.
I looked at Jenny and Mo in confusion. The creep-ie had become the creep-er. We exploded into laugher, much harder and louder than usual. My heart had honestly frozen at the sight of that second blue polo shirt. It felt necessary to laugh.
Besides, we still had to walk into that house.
Through the veil of bushes, past the grey swing which still swayed mysteriously, up the front steps. The porch ceiling had seemed to lower during dinner and in the darkness it hung just inches from our head. We fished out our key, opened up the heavy glass door and felt for the light. I was praying the headless black lamp-woman would not be the one to light our steps up the stairwell.
My wish was granted, technically: a glowing globe on the stair rail appeared and illuminated a life-sized statue of lady justice, blindfolded and with the scales balanced carefully in her hand. We had somehow overlooked her in our earlier explorations. We sprinted the stairs, straight to our room on the third floor.
Mo shoved the door closed, dragged a suitcase in front of it, and let out a long sigh. I was about to follow suit, but just as my sigh escaped my lips, it morphed into an involuntary shout. A wizened, waist high silhouette loomed dark against the rainy windowpane.
