They fell to the floor with an enormous cloud of dust, which swirled around Cinnamon so strongly that she left the room, coughing. She went back into the main reception room, and picked up her few belongings. She looked up the dusty grand staircase and thought that perhaps the master bedroom would be up there. She’d make it her own. She found the room without too much effort, and laid her duffle bag on the floor, glad to see that most of the furniture in the room had been covered with old sheets.
She thought to move her clothes into the closet, but when she opened the old wardrobe, she found that it was still full. The old-fashioned clothes of a large man. Cinnamon took the sleeve of one jacket in her hand and examined it a moment.
Caspar Langford Rassmussen
Caspar’s clothes, still hanging in the closet, but the furniture all covered. How strange. Just how did Old Rassmussen die?
Chapter Six
Cinnamon wasted no time in getting the house back into order. She decided to first clean the spaces she would be living in the most; the Master Bedroom, the kitchen and the garden. The bedroom wasn’t so bad, since it had been covered in sheets, but all the sheets had to be washed, so had to take them downstairs into the kitchen, and set them in a tub. The pump still worked, although for a long time it ran almost as red as blood from the rust. Cinnamon gathered some wood from outside, and got to work, quickly setting a fire in the stove to boil some water. She’d need a lot of boiling water, she had a lot to clean. She’s found in the laundry room some soap, not very good but still just usable after however many years it had sat there. While she waited for the fire to burn and the water to boil, Cinnamon set about starting to sweep up the dust from the kitchen.
The kitchen wasn’t as bad as the main entryway was; it had no doors to the outside, and Cinnamon suspected that helped to keep the dust down. She shook five dustpans to the trash can, and then took a mop to the floor about three times, rinsing it after nearly every run, to get it clean. The floor was still in very good shape, but for the initial layer of dust. The house had lain as still as a tomb, it appeared, and had preserved itself better than a mummy.
Cinnamon opened the cabinets, and as she suspected, found silverware and china, serving platters and spoons, mixing bowls… the entire kitchen was perfectly stocked. Everything had to be washed, rinsed, and dried, but before they could be put away she had to clean the cupboard they had come from.
It was hard, tedious work. Suddenly Cinnamon sat back, wondering. Her personal possessions had all fit into a few bags this morning, but now she had a great deal more, and wondered if among her new possessions she had a gramophone. Rich folks often had those things. She momentarily abandoned the kitchen cleaning and set out looking for the rare treasure.
She looked first in the Library, but did not find one, and so continued on down the hall, checking room after room until she reached the end of the hall. She noticed one last door that she had neglected in her initial tour of the mansion, and so pushed the door open. The first thing she noticed was the gramophone sitting on a table near a lounging chair, and she joyfully hurried over to it. But as she picked it up, it suddenly occurred to her. She slowly turned about her, looking. The room was clean. It was a sitting room, a beautiful parlor. The furniture seemed new and up-to-date, and there wasn’t dust on anything.
Cinnamon shook her head. Perhaps it had been Mr. Andrews, or likely someone had made the old abandoned place their secret hideaway. She hoped it wouldn’t mean trouble. In any case, she was taking the gramophone.
The rest of the afternoon passed much faster, much better. Music always made thing better. She sang along to ‘Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home’, ‘Toy Land’, ‘In the Sweet Bye & Bye’ and other favorite songs she found in the room until she had properly memorized each one.
Sometime during the late afternoon, while she was beating the dust out of the Master Bedroom, she stumbled across a large, leatherbound book.
She scrubbed and washed, swept and mopped all day, until the sun just started to get low, casting it’s long, languid shadows, and she realized that she was hungry but there wasn’t anything to eat. She had gone hungry before, but wasn’t eager to do it again. Being hungry made it harder to sleep. She wasn’t eager to be kept awake all night in this still-unfamiliar place. She remembered the tangled garden, and hopefully she picked up a nearby mixing bowl to go see what she could harvest.
The garden was badly tangled and wild, neglected for fifty years, but Cinnamon struggled through the vines and thorns, and managed to find some potatoes, yams, and radishes still growing in the verdant Louisiana soil. Since the sun was setting she hurried back inside and settled for a rushed dinner of thinly sliced raw yams and radishes, which wasn’t very good, but was food nonetheless. She called for Tybalt and lit a candle, heading for the stairs and up to the only bedroom she had yet cleaned; Old Rassmussen’s Master bedroom.
That same, familiar feeling of fear and paranoia crept at her until she could scarcely breathe, but still she fumbled with the buttons and ties of her clothes and slipped her nightgown over her head.
“Tybalt? Tybalt!” Cinnamon called for her cat, a little louder than she had meant to.
Tybalt didn’t seem to mind, looking up at her from around her ankles with his big, yellow eyes. Cinnamon scooped him up into her arms and climbed into bed. It still wasn’t completely dark, but dark enough for the shadows to fully dominate the house.
“Hateful shadows.” Thought Cinnamon, who blew out her candle and covered her head with the musty blankets.
