This Other Eden

by Paul Harding

So many hallways and corridors and rooms. Ethan had glimpsed enough of the house’s mysterious, confusing depths passing its lit windows at night. Should Bridget have the devil in her and mean to tease, she could step aside into a doorway behind him, into another dark room, from right next to him, whisper, Find me if you can, and he’d be as astray in that palace as if in primeval woods or a maze in a myth, all the more so for the thickets of lamps, spindly old chairs and glazed vases, alcoves with clocks shaped like little brass pagodas on narrow tottering tables or like wooden cottages atop mantels high as cliffs, a tall case clock at the end of a dim hallway like a giant dozing owl, head bowed, eyes closed, wings folded until he passed, when its eyes would open golden and honeycombed, large as numbered dials, and its wings would unfold silently and reach down the length of the hall and gather him back into their silent depths, more silent than silence because they not only would make no sound but would absorb it from the air and cancel it in their layers, and entomb him at the dark end of the forgotten hallway forever.