House Hunting

J and I were looking at a house for sale. Initially she was not very keen on it; the previous owner had died at home. The house was technically two stories, but with a pair of small finished rooms in the attic (Pepto pink and mint green dormers, for J) it was essentially three floors, even though there was only a narrow folding ladder up to the two smaller rooms.

The flooring in each room was different from the next, and the transitions, in some cases, were rather jarring. Each bedroom was done in different colors and flooring, the halls were each different from the others and both great rooms, one upstairs and one down, were like night and day. The house was big, however, and the yard was low maintenance. There was a pool, but it was laid out like a series of interconnected ponds.

In one of the upstairs rooms, there was a circle set in the floor with a thirty inch opening down through it. It was odd, though, the room below was obviously in sunlight, but we were in the house at night. I stepped out of the room and down the stairs. The room below was paneled in dark wood, with a chocolate carpet. The room we could see through the hole was blonde oak flooring and large windows, to judge by the shadows on the floor.

J and I really wanted to jump down through the hole to see where it went. I was wishing there was a pole, like a fireman's pole, but realized the hole was too small to put one in. We both were thinking that we wanted to buy the house right then and there. Just to see where the other part of the house was (obviously somewhere in the world with sunlight, or really bright lights outside.)

We went into the chocolate room, and noticed that there was no opening in the ceiling to match the one in the floor above. I wondered if the trip was a two way trip, or if we'd better make sure we had our passports when we popped through the hole. The realtor refused to go back upstairs with us when we decided to finish the tour of the house. By the time we were done touring the four upstairs bedrooms and two bathrooms, both huge, the realtor was gone. The house keys were on the desk by the front door, and there was a copy of the deed with stickies showing where to sign, and a will.

I opened the will and began to read, the short of it was that it appeared that if there was anyone who could see the "portal" they were to inherit the estate immediately,  and the lawyer and realtor were to get a rather hefty bonus for making it happen in less than three days.... J picked up a business card, "I'll be back in twenty minutes," was written on the back in green ink. "Sign the papers if you want the house."

I tried to call my folks while J tried to call R, but we had no cell service. I assumed the realtor was going somewhere with cell service to call the law firm.