You slam the boot door of your black Bentley Continental and crunch across the
gravel in your glossy Derbys, awkwardly carrying the large “FOR SALE” sign under your arm. Gusty winds are blowing the salty ocean breeze up the mountain from the sea, making you shiver, so you hug the sign more tightly to your body, using it to shield yourself from the
winds. You set up the sign beside the driveway, and then stand back to admire your
handiwork. You like the vision of your name and face up there on the yellow sign, alongside
the company’s locally famous slogan – “Your Dream Home Awaits!” You haven’t even
stepped inside this particular property before, but you’re confident that your slick
salesmanship skills will have the place sold within the fortnight.
            You march up the driveway to the front door of the ugly old shack – no, your inner
realtor interjects, “antique cottage” – and pause briefly to find the perfect words to title the property listing. While you pause to think, you hear the wind moaning, insects buzzing
loudly, and the relentless trickling of a stream nearby. “Listen to the soothing sounds of nature from your own personal treehouse,” you think, making a mental note for the description. As you unlock the door and step over the threshold, the hardwood floors creaking beneath your feet, you hear a faint cuckoo! cuckoo! coming from the living room. Absentmindedly, you hang your gold jacket up on a hook overhanging a door to your left. You turn and stroll into the living room, peering around with all the keen interest of an obvious tourist. You don’t hear the door creaking open, nor the hook dragging the coat inside the other room, nor the door closing again.
            The living room bears all the signs of abandonment; but, with the well-trained eyes a
realtor, you see all the signs of potential. Tree roots and branches have grown into the room
through the windows and fireplace, but they can be cut back. There are cracks in the walls,
roofs, and floors, through which trail networks of ants treading their well-worn paths; but
these can be plastered over, plugged up. Ramshackle furniture is strewn across the room,
overturned and decaying, but easy enough to dispose of. Carpeting the floor are layers of
leaves trampled flat by years of fauna footsteps, but a quick sweep shows that the floorboards are salvageable. A mosquito buzzes around your face, looking for a place to land. When it settles on your sleeve, you quickly smack it and flick its gunky carcass off into the air. “Abundance of flora and fauna from your front door,” you mentally note. Your eyes are
drawn to the mantelpiece over the fireplace, where you see the aged cuckoo clock that had
chimed at your entering. You’re surprised it still works, considering the state of the rest of the
furniture in the room. As if aware of your approach, the clock springs to life; a small, brightly-painted, yellow bird bursts out of the small door and chimes – cuckoo, cuckoo! – before springing back inside it’s hiding place. The minute hand twitches into place to mark a new hour. Looking at your watch, you notice that the clock’s time is wrong, so you reach out and gently push the hands into the correct place. The bird bursts forth again – cuckoo, cuckoo! – and then retreats behind the door. Broken, obviously, but charming nonetheless. Oddly
comforted by the quaint little clock, you begin to whistle to yourself. You turn cheerily
towards the kitchen, and in your distraction, trip over a jutting root that you could have sworn
was not there a minute ago. You mutter a few choice expletives to yourself while inspecting
your ankle for damage; you don’t hear the quiet chuckling.
            With greater mindfulness of your surroundings, especially tree roots, you weave
through the overturned furniture, sticks, dirt, leaves, and other natural debris – “an idyllic
paradise,” you tell yourself – to inspect the rest of the house. The place seems much bigger
from the inside; the further in you walk, the more doors you notice, and hallways leading off
impossibly into more rooms, and a staircase that seems to go downwards, into the mountain
itself. You consider going back outside to get some perspective, but curiosity bids you further inside. The wind howls more loudly, making the walls creak and groan. You whistle more loudly to yourself in response. When what remains of the kitchen hits your eyes, you stop whistling, and sigh, knowing you have your salesmanship work cut out for you – the sink is completely clogged with muddy water, spilling over onto the linoleum. A fat frog is balancing on a plate, half-submerged in the makeshift sink-pond; it croaks as you enter and leaps out the window above the sink, splashing more water onto the floor. You groan at the state of the oven, which has become a sort of nest for a family of possums, who hiss as you approach. Grimacing, you bend down – your knees aren’t what they used to be – and try to pry open a cupboard. While you tug at the unmoving handle, a white spider descends on glistening string from a web in the eaves overhead, silent as it turns eight eyes to face you. You manage to pull the door free and fall backwards into the puddled water in the process. A bat flies out unexpectedly, flapping frantically, trying to escape the sudden excess of light. A deep rumbling emanates from another room, like snoring, and you instinctually feel alarmed,
somehow, as if you are trespassing; yet you know the house is empty, has been abandoned by the owners for years. You feel a tingling on the back of your neck that is unrelated to the cool breeze, and decide you’ve seen enough of the house for one day. You know nobody is nearby, and that the house is empty, but you’re starting to feel unnerved by the isolation and all the encroaching nature. It’s just the wind whistling and moaning, and the creaking and groaning of the forest outside, you reassure yourself, trying to massage the goosebumps out of your arms as you get to your feet. The creaking sounds makes you think of senior citizens
struggling from their beds, getting to their feet as fast as nature will allow. The thought
triggers you into doing a few calf stretches.
            You take a step towards the dining area, and as the sole of your left shoe descends you hear a shrill squeak; looking down, you see the tail of some small animal scurrying off into the shadows. At the same time, you hear the cuckoo clock from the living room burst open again, with a shrill cuckoo! cuckoo! cuckoo! You ignore it at first, but the clock doesn’t stop this time; you peer back into the living room and see the bird shooting in and out of the clock with an increasingly haphazard passion, as though the clock is trying to jettison the bird, or the bird is trying to escape the clock. Yet the bird and the clock are manufactured as one and the same, chiming and tweeting in unison, irretrievably entwined, unable to stop. You pick up the clock and look for the batteries, but there are none. As the cuckoo clock grows steadily more fervent in its acknowledgement of time, you hear, again, a deep rumbling snore, louder this time, and the stirrings of ancient limbs from deep sleep. Startled, you drop the fragile clock onto the floor, where it smashes. The bird, vulnerable in mid-cuckoo, snaps apart from the clock, and its chiming falters into nothingness.
            You try to cross the hardwood floors more quickly now, dodging roots that seem to be
appearing wherever you try to plant your feet, to find the exit and leave before you lose your
nerve entirely. You leap over a tree root that is grabbing at the air around your feet, sidestep a
glistening spiderweb, and skid on some soaked floorboards; the water spilled in the kitchen is rising quickly from seemingly nowhere, now sloshing around your ankles. In the entryway,
you see that your jacket is missing, and the coat hook gone. Dark rainclouds have collected
overhead, drowning the entrance in overcast darkness. You stop to pull out your pocket
notebook one last time to jot down the perfect title, which has come to you at last – “secluded fixer-upper” – and quickly use the wall as a vertical desk to lean on. The wind quickens as you make contact with the wall, and the house audibly protests this time; the walls sway and creak, and all the doors slam shut.
            You jump and exit quickly through the front door, not bothering to lock it. A strong gust of wind blows it shut behind you, almost clipping you on the way out. While scurrying back to your Bentley, you hear the wind howl more loudly and the house groaning and moaning, disgorging you like the first bite of some unpleasant new food. You stumble into the car and lock the doors. You pause for a moment, staring back at the house against the backdrop of the swaying forest, and behind it, the panoramic views of the city below – and a final winning description comes to you. “Breathtaking, striking views.” As you pause to write it down, impressed by your own instinct for copywriting, a branch creaks ominously overhead. You adjust your tie in the rear-view mirror and turn on the ignition, feeling quite optimistic about the place. Sure, it has its quirks, but you’ve seen worse. If all else fails, the new owners could just knock the place down and start again, you think. People will pay anything for a view of the city, even if it’s out here in the middle of nowhere. You roll out of the driveway just as a heavy falling branch narrowly misses you; it lands with a sickening crunch in the exact spot you had been parked just a second ago. But you’ve cranked the stereo and are turning onto the road, whistling along to the song on the radio.