Dark Lord Rob's DarkForce

The House the Damned Call Home

     Nathan looked at Brother Woodbine, giving him that "Hey teach, I didn't study for the quiz but I'm a jock so pass me anyway" sort of grin. Not that Nathan ever had to do that; he was "Straight A" all the way (hey-hey); that's just the sort of look it was, it seems to me.
     "It dates back to the last century, I'd guess. Most of the houses here in the historical district do, right?"
     "Yes, they all do, or else they can't be considered 'Historical'. This one was built in 1812."
     "And didn't some famous singer live here in the thirties?"
     "It was the great tenor and actor Tobiah Cartwright, and it was the forties. But that's a good example to start my story."
     We knew about Tobiah Cartwright already, though we didn't know much about him beyond his name. Nathan had been deliberately playing dumb to draw Woodbine out. He took the bait, of course.
     "Cartwright was known as 'The Voice of the Working Man' in the thirties. His voice was operatic in timbre, and he could and did sing opera; but his passion was folk music, the songs of the blue collar coal mining world he came out of. In the thirties, in the depression, there was a great market for those sort of sentiments, and Cartwright became wealthy. He sang around the world, before kings and to packed houses in the capitals of Europe. He was a superstar in his day."
     "What happened to him?" I asked. "I mean, everybody's heard of, like Sinatra and Woody Guthrie... and they weren't even superstars back then."
     "Cartwright never changed his tune. He remained the 'Voice of the Working Man'. But as the forties wound down, that wasn't such a cool thing to be.
     Woodbine looked at the marble hall, the ostentatious stairway. "People said he was a communist. He was blacklisted. Pickets stood outside this very house. 'Go to Russia, you dirty Red!' the signs said. He began to find it harder to get work, to earn enough to keep the house up. The servants left, the grounds fell to ruin. And the house mirrored his own state... drink, drugs, and despair broke him down. He died nearly destitute in a room at the top of these stairs."
     "Sad," Nathan said, shaking his head. He looked at me with an expression that said, "Here it comes...".
     Brother Woodvine caught the look and smiled. "You expect me to launch into a tirade about how sin drove Cartwright to his doom, don't you? Well, no."
     Woodbine slid a hand up the polished wood of the bannister. "It wasn't sin that led to his downfall. That came later. And it wasn't the money, or even the blacklisting. No, it was this house that destroyed him. It stole his soul, you see."
     Nathan and I exchanged looks.
     Brother Woodbine looked at both of us, sternly. "That's right, I said it 'stole his soul'."
     Then a pause. Then: "Would you like to see it?"

Next: The Souls Gallery

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