The Rotting Stem

Regardless of all these outward displays of piety, there still came the nights when the reverend would arrive home tormented by some unfounded scorn. There never appeared to be any particular provocation on any given day. The rules of the Winter house were always rigorously abided, but in the end that rarely made a difference. And in my struggle to understand the harsh nature of my surrounds, instinctively I turned to the house for answers.

From the moment we had moved in to Cedar Hill, the house had taken on a vivid role in my young mind, and that role grew increasingly sinister as the years passed and as the days it housed turned darker, its four walls becoming like the fifth member of the Winter family, as potent and compelling in its influence as each of its disenchanted residents.

Grandpa Bill’s words stayed with me, re-surfacing now with renewed conviction, and I imagined those roots he once spoke of as having budded from a venomous seed, the poison from which spilled forth from under the house and tied us all to its rotting stem. As I saw it, the Winter house was locked in turmoil, and so, as the house despaired, so too did my father. The withering roots of those aged walls had infected him with its misery, and he in turn expelled that misery onto those of us around him.

It was a terribly innocent conclusion, of course, but as no one offered an alternative, I was left clinging to my own assumptions for the longest time – long after the naivety of childhood had left me. And despite the falsity I see in it now, back then I held to this idea of the house – of its roots, of its poisonous rotting stem – with unwavering belief.

It wasn’t just a possible explanation, it was the only explanation, and everything that happened in the house after that, I perceived it under the influence of this childish contention. The was only one problem with the conclusion I had reached, which was that it posed no possible solution to the situation.

I could see no way of curbing the potent impact of the Winter house, no way to dispossess the reverend of his anger, and so it seemed the only option left to me was to find some way to endure it.