A Story With an Epiphany and Gothic Sensibility Like Southern Gothic - Assignment Example

– Following is the complete story. It took about an hour and 30 minutes longer than you gave me. If this hasn’t adversely affected you,I’d greatly appreciate it if you would place a final extension on the order deadline so that I am not penalized for the tardiness. Student name Instructor name Course name Date Buried Treasure Stan was moody. He hated applying the word to himself, only girls were emotional, but he couldn’t think of any other way to describe his condition at the moment. This was not how he’d wanted to spend his summer. He sat in the back seat of his Uncle Jack’s car trying to remember if he’d locked up all of his video games. He didn’t want his brat of a sister using them while he was gone. He was pretty sure he’d locked the video cabinet and he knew he’d secured the padlock just in case, but he couldn’t remember if he’d fully bolted his bedroom door. They drove all the way out to the house without a word. Uncle Jack was actually Stan’s great-uncle and they didn’t have much in common. Uncle Jack belonged to the old world before there was a color TV in every room and barely even knew what a computer was. He also almost never talked. As they pulled up to the crumbling old Colonial, Stan’s hazel eyes widened with shock at what he saw. Just from the outside, it looked like the place should be condemned, not fixed up in a bid for a historical marker. The drive was choked with weeds, the balconies sagged and the shutters, where present, sagged in frames of broken or missing glass. “Why can’t we just hire contractors?” he asked for the hundredth time since he was first informed of this ‘summer project’. “Family helps itself,” Jack muttered, ambling over to the front door, fumbling with the large ring of keys he’d brought with him. Stan was impressed. Keys meant control and possession, two of his favorite things. Uncle Jack swung the blue painted wood door inward with a barely perceptible creak and Stan walked into a hallway filled with sunlight as it danced across the millions of dust motes the outer breeze was stirring. His first reaction was a giant sneeze. It was going to be worse than he thought. Jack pointed to doorways as they stomped down a frayed rug – “parlor, drawing room’s through that doorway there, library, den’s in the back, dining, storage, this here’s where we stay – servant room.” The door opened to a small cramped space that was just large enough for two twin beds, a nightstand each and a single dresser – no closet. But it was clean and he could smell the wholesome scent of fresh sheets. “I don’t get my own room?!” Stan was stunned. He’d never shared a room with anyone before and didn’t even like sleep-overs. “Help yourself,” Jack said. Stan explored the rest of the house, finding several more bedrooms on the second floor, none of which had a decent ceiling, as was obvious by the stains in the ceiling and the piles of leaves under the holes. None of them had a bed either and all of them had skittering things running around at the sound of his footsteps on the sometimes shaky floor. The downstairs rooms were mostly large spaces, none of which had windows. Even with the breeze being mostly calm, Stan could hear strange noises in these rooms, making him feel very uncomfortable. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep here. The only other room that seemed operational at all was the kitchen, but he didn’t think he could sleep here either. The kitchen had a small refrigerator in it powered, as was everything else electric in the house, by a noisy generator, humming away just outside the kitchen window. In the end, Stan had to concede that sharing a room with Jack was the only acceptable option. It was more than irritating that Jack just smiled at him when he tried to lay down the law about which part of the bedroom space would be his, but Stan tried not to let it get to him. He’d won after all. Jack hadn’t said he couldn’t claim all that space. Work on the house started the next day. Jack insisted they start with the parlor. This was a large room at the front of the house that Stan thought of as the living room. Stan was assigned to cleaning out the debris of years while Jack began assessing the stability of the floor first by walking around in the room and then going outside to climb underneath. Stan grew to hate the house more and more as the day wore on. The dust kept clogging his nose even with a bandana tied across his nose and mouth in bandit fashion. He was also sure that Uncle Jack was messing with him. Every time his uncle left the house, Stan began to hear choking sounds, like a small animal strangling, but his uncle never gave a hint that he knew what Stan was talking about. Toward evening, Stan finally got the last of the debris swept out, along with thousands of spiders and beetles and Jack motioned him to follow. “Windows,” he said, pointing at the six empty casings in one corner, “caulk, scraper. Stumps,” now pointing under the house, “prop up the weak spots best we can do. Drywall,” pointing at several places in the wall that had been cruelly ripped away and others that sagged with damp. Stan just followed, surprised at all the things they needed just to fix this one room and somewhat impressed, though he’d never admit it, at his uncle’s confidence in what was needed and what would work where full repairs were too expensive. The next day they went into town for the supplies they needed, another all day errand and then they were finally ready to work. It was strange, but in the one day that they had been gone, a pleasant day with a light wind at the beginning of summer, the parlor floors had been refilled with piles of dead leaves blown into the corners. Stan was indignant that they were back so soon and promptly got to work to clear them away again. As Stan and Jack began transforming the room into something livable again, Stan began taking even more interest in making it comfortable. He found some old wooden chairs in one of the storage rooms and cleaned them up for them to rest on and he spent his evenings clearing away some of the vines from the outside. Sometimes he would take a walk away from the house, mostly when Jack had run into town on more errands. Stan could only put up with the strange choking sounds for so long, especially now that he knew they were not caused by Uncle Jack. His favorite place to walk to was the top of a nearby hill. It wasn’t very high, but was high enough to conceal a small copse of trees that might have been some kind of orchard. On the close end, though, was a strangely rectangular clearing full of grass and flowers. One evening as he enjoyed this view feeling very proud of himself for having completed the parlor and developed new muscles, he turned to discover a girl watching him. She had blond hair caught up in a white ribbon and a white flouncy dress on. It seemed strange to him that she was there since he hadn’t seen anyone else on the property in the week they’d been there and she was so inappropriately dressed for the day. “Hi,” he said, not sure what else to do, “my name is Stan.” The girl stared at him. “Do you live around here?” he asked. Still, she stares. Finally, she points down into the clearing. Stan turned to look, but didn’t see anything different down there. “It’s kinda pretty …” as he turned to look at her again, she was gone with no trace of which direction she might have taken. Troubled, Stan returned to the house and shared another silent dinner with his uncle. The next day they started work in the drawing room. Stan had managed to get his uncle to explain that this was the room that the ladies would use in the evenings while the men were in the parlor. They followed the same routine as when they’d started on the parlor, only this time, the choking sound Stan sometimes heard was louder and it was unmistakably the sound of a child crying. Stan took frequent breaks to search for the source of the sound, but Uncle Jack never heard it and finally lost patience with Stan’s frequent stops. “You’re staying, working,” he mumbled, meaning, Stan supposed, that he would miss tomorrow’s anticipated day in town in order to put in his full measure of work that was skipped today. For the most part, he was right. As soon as Jack pulled out of the drive, though, Stan took off to his clearing in the woods. He had no intention of putting up with that sobbing all day long and he knew it wouldn’t let up until Jack got home. What could Jack do anyway, fire him? Stan stayed in the woods all day, wandering around the trees, lying in the grass, even taking a short nap. He’d never experienced a day like this before with no computers and no games. It was … good. He thought he might like to try it again sometime. As the sun started to sink in the sky, he decided he’d better head back to the house just in case Jack came home early. Strolling back to the drawing room that he’d had mostly cleaned out the day before, Stan’s great mood drained away at the door. The room was completely destroyed. Old leaves, papers, pieces of wall, all had been thrown about the room as if in a great storm, but there was only the two windows and the day had been fine. Just as he was getting over his shock, Uncle Jack came up behind him. Stan had never been so frightened and so relieved at the same time. But the look on his great-uncle’s face was dark enough to put the fear back in him. “I … I didn’t,” he stammered. “I went for a walk, it was clean, I swear, and I came back and …” “Ghosts,” Jack said. “Get back to work.” Not sure what to think and too shaken to argue, Stan did as he was told, glad that Uncle Jack, for once, stayed near enough to keep the sobbing at bay. As he reached the inner back corner of the room, he noticed a board loose on the lower portion of a built-in bookcase and he bent down to make sure the piece wouldn’t be swept out with the garbage. As he did, he noticed yet another pile of paper just inside the open space. Picking them out, though, he realized they weren’t just trash. These sheets had been bound together by poking holes in the paper and tying them with strings. Each page had a different picture drawn on it with a childish hand. As he made his way through them, he realized they were scenes from around the house, back when it was in much better shape. One of the drawings was unmistakably the viewpoint of his place on the hill, looking down on the clearing, except there is a crude building filling most of the space and a few poorly clothed black people standing or sitting outside doing their chores. “Dinner,” Jack again calling to him just when he was feeling on edge. Glad to forget about them for the night, Stan put the pictures back where he’d found them and headed off for dinner and a return to the book his uncle had brought him. He liked it because the stories were short and not usually what you’d expect – by a guy who knew the old south, William Faulkner. The next morning, though, Stan’s courage was back up. Taking the pictures with him, he went to the hill again to compare the scene. Suddenly, the girl from the other day was standing right next to him. Her eyes blazing in blue fire, her hands reached out for the drawings – “Mine!” comes through to him quite clearly as a deafening snarl hurled in his ears but without having actually heard a sound. Shaking, his hands fell numb and the papers fell to the ground at her feet, landing with the image of the slave’s quarters turned up to her. As the girl looked down at the image, she crumpled in sorrow, burying her face in her hands. “Mine!” comes through again in a much different tone – this time deep sorrow and regret. She pointed down the hill again. Curious, Stan goes down into the clearing itself, something he hadn’t done earlier but he couldn’t say why. As he walked around the clearing, he suddenly realized he was feeling a hollow space under the ground as his uncle had taught him. Thinking of buried treasure, something the girl would have valued, Stan vowed to find a shovel the next day. It took all day of work before Stan finally got the chance to slip away for a few hours before dinner. He’d found a shovel a little while earlier and was anxious to start work of his own. It didn’t take him long to find the buried wooden floor of the shack, but Stan didn’t know how reinforced this floor would have been. He wanted to find the access hatch rather than attempt to hack through the floorboards, especially since he hadn’t been able to find an axe of any kind. Three days later, Stan finally uncovered what he was seeking. His attempts had been delayed by a day of rain, the need to let the ground dry out and then another day of work on the drawing room. This was frustrating because Uncle Jack’s ‘ghost’ continued to undo their work every time they left the house for more than an hour. As he entered the clearing that evening, he saw her, standing near his old diggings, watching him intently. It was unnerving working under her supervision like that, but he persevered and the hatch was unearthed. As he put down his shovel, he hears again the silent word - “Mine!” quietly, with deep sorrow. Stan reached down to pull open the hatch. There was a strong resistance and he noticed an ancient lock, slipped through rings embedded in the floor for the express purpose of keeping the storage cellar locked. The metal was so old and corroded it took almost no effort for the edge of the shovel to break it and Stan was finally about to reach the treasure of his dreams. He looked down into the black hole only to be met by a grinning skull, lying where it had fallen when the trap door wouldn’t open. Looking down into the darkness, Stan saw three more bodies – one had to have been a child. In the gathering darkness of the evening, he experienced the horror of these people as he realized whose hands had secured the lock in the floor and looked up into the deceptively blue eyes of the girl. She smiled a sad, repentant smile – “Yours” – and disappeared. With a start that felt like a cannonball to the gut, Stan suddenly envisioned the three locks on his bedroom door, the padlock on his gaming center and the locking drawer he’d been so concerned about before he got here and then he remembered his four prized angel fish that swam in an aquarium on top of the cabinet, realizing the true price of greed. Read More