The Wind Chime House

The Wind Chime House

By Gregory J. Meyer

“Stop that, you’ll break your neck if you’re not careful!” cried my mother before returning to the conversation she was having with my father.

With a leap I jumped from one parking lot concrete barrier to the next, wobbling on the landing with unsteady footing. I tried to regain my balance, but my foot slipped down the side of the barrier and onto the pavement and loose gravel that I imagined to be an endless pit. Game over.

I sighed and looked around my surroundings for something to do. Being a kid that lived in the suburbs, my whole twelve years of existence was surrounded by concrete and generic one to two-story homes. The nature preserve was an all-new experience for me. Fresh clean air, countless trees, and not a television in sight. While the last bit was a disappointment, I knew I had enough imagination to keep myself entertained. Beyond the picnic table where my parents and I had enjoyed our lunch break from our six-hour yearly trip to my aunt’s house stood the entrance into the forest preserve along Cardinal Lake. With some time to waste before we packed up, I headed towards the entrance.

“I’m going to see where this trail goes,” I announced as I passed my parents.

“I don’t know son, we’ll be leaving soon,” said dad looking towards my mother.

“Just for a little bit?” I begged.

“You walk down it for a few minutes, but come right back,” sighed my mother.

In a flash I ran down the dirt path and into the dark and shady green world beyond the boring, flat, picnic area. The path snaked around the nature preserve, twisting left and turning right with interchanging intervals. I imagined I had entered into some imaginary place where trouble lurked around every corner, cowardly thieves needing to be pummeled, maidens that needed saving, and a treasure chest just waiting for a brave adventurer to claim its ancient contents.

After jumping over a tree trunk that had fallen over across the path like a certain Italian plumber, I noticed a clearing that lay up ahead. I jogged up towards it as the clearing revealed more of itself to me. As I exited the woods, I found myself on top of a mound looking out towards Cardinal Lake. This was the end of the trail. I stopped to marvel the sight, taking in that lake water smell that emanated from the water below. The lake surface was smooth as glass. Not a single boat could be seen on the deep greenish water. On the other side of the lake, I noticed some people were playing volleyball on the sandy beach, their laughs and cries barely audible to my ears. As I strained my ears to listen to their voices, I heard something else, the sound of a chime.

The sound of the chime broke my concentration, and I turned my head to the right in search of the source of the noise. There was another path that led to the mound, but a simple wooden fence blocked entrance down the path. As I walked towards it, I spotted in the distance a wind chime hanging from one of the branches. A small breeze passed by, and I heard the chime again, in addition to another one further down the path. Curious, I climbed over the wooden fence and followed the single dirt path to the chime. I didn’t know if I was trespassing on somebody’s property or not, but I figured I’d take my chances. I reached the oak tree that held the wind chime in its branches.

The chimes were made from old silverware, mainly forks and spoons, and they gave off a tinny sound as they clattered and clinked in the wind. As the wind grew stronger, I heard more chimes sing their songs to each other out of my field of vision. Continuing down, I encountered more chimes in the trees made from household items, wood, bamboo, and rusted metal. The further down the path, the more odd wind chimes the oak trees held. It was then that I saw the old one story house not more that a few hundred feet away. I hadn’t noticed it, as the curvy path obscured its appearance with the many trees of the wood.  As I drew closer, I could smell a change in the air. No longer did it smell of pine, but rather of moss and rotting wood.

The derelict house stood before me like the dead carcass of an insect long forgotten in a basement. The front door hung listless on just one hinge, waiting for a sneeze by the smallish and disgruntled wolf to topple it over. The warped wooden frame appeared faded from years of neglect, with some of the wall bending inwards, ready for an implosion. The shingles lay haphazard on the roof, ripped from their original resting places from previous storms. The windows lacked any sort of glass, and had nothing to protect the interior of the house from the elements. I doubt I would’ve given the house a second thought if it hadn’t been for the wind chimes. Wind chimes were situated on each sloping corners of the roof. They moved without a care in the world, swaying slightly with the gentle breaths of a northern breeze.

I should’ve run. I mean, I was twelve years old. There could’ve been a squatter inside waiting to hurt me. For all I knew, there could’ve been old used drug needles on the floor, waiting to prick me in my careless actions while exploring. Yet, it’s exactly this kind of danger that lures children into doing things they shouldn’t in the name of adventure. The only resemblance of a warning I recall years later was that the house reminded me of the story of Hansel and Gretel being lured into the trap of the witch’s candy house. If you ask me, I got the raw end of the deal. Hansel and Gretel at least got candy.

I crawled under the half-fallen wooden door and entered into the wind chime house. Now, you’d imagine a house like this would have garbage littered everywhere, beer bottles, graffiti, and maybe a dead animal. That wasn’t the case in the least. There were tangled cobwebs and dust, but everything else looked almost untouched. A wooden table sat in the middle of the main room covered with old tools, a few coins, and a metal cup. The chair next to it had fallen over on its side, as if waiting for someone to pick it up and sit down. The cupboards were all open to varying degrees; all empty except an old ceramic plate here, a dirty bowl there. A few newspapers were thrown about in the room, a few decades old by my guess. The walls had chipped and cracking paint, and the shadows of where pictures and frames had once hung in decoration.

I noticed these items on my second pass through the room, as my immediate attention was drawn to the wind chimes that hung from the ceiling. There had to be fifteen different sets of wind chimes scattered through the main area of the house. They hung motionless and still, with some having a bit of webbing interwoven through the strings, chimes, and dirty yellowish clangers. As I inspected one, I noticed the extraordinary artwork on the chimes. I could discern what looked like a person, but figure was more abstract than human. It reminded me of that one painting I had seen in a textbook, The Scream by Edvard Munch. The person seemed as if they were in agony, with bright orange and red flames engulfing them and the rest of the chime. The other sections connected to this chime had similar figures writhing in agony in this apocalyptic scene. I moved to the next wind chime, one colored in blue, and the chimes all had similar figures drowning in a great sea. Each chime I glanced over had these terrible scenes of death or misery. One, colored in black, had figures in states of utter horror and fear, hopelessly lost in unrelenting darkness.  As disturbed as I was at the artwork, a part of me had a morbid curiosity in seeing all of the wind chimes.

I moved towards the back of the house. There were only two other rooms. One room was a small bathroom with perhaps the filthiest standing bathtub I had ever seen. It was filled with blackish and grimy water, and I had to cover my nose with my t-shirt. The bathroom only had one or two wind chimes in it. The room was dark, so I didn’t expect to see anything on them. However, the paint must’ve been reflective, because they each had painted eyes that glowed in the darkness. They glared at me from their dark world, and while I knew in my mind that they weren’t alive, I still had to keep my eyes on them as I shut the door again. I considered just getting out of there, but a noise from the unopened room piqued my curiosity.

ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting

It was the by now the unmistakable sound of another wind chime. While all of the other chimes had been silent, this one in the other room sounded like it was calling to me to come find it. Without a moment of hesitation I opened the final door in the wind chime house, like a mouse taking another nibble on the bait to a spring-loaded trap.

The final room was a small bedroom, with one window fully intact and shut. An old mattress and collapsed metal bed frame sat in the right corner. A wooden floorboard was out of place in the middle of the room, with a rusty hacksaw placed by the edge of the hole. Much like the other rooms, the bedroom had multiple wind chimes decorating the ceiling. They formed a circle pattern, with the one in the middle clanging softly, making the ting-ting noise. The chimes seemed related to the ones in the bathroom, as they were painted to look like savage and grotesque creatures. Some appeared as hairy monsters with gaping mouths and sharp pointed teeth. Others looked like apparitions, mouths agape in the act of a dreadful wail.

Each one made my heart beat a little faster, but the one that concerned me the most was the middle chime, the one that moved. It had the appearance of a man, but I’d hesitate to call it such. It was gaunt, stringy, and had dreadful claws. The man wasn’t pale, but had a reddish tone to his painted skin. The unnerving part was that it wasn’t painted to look at me. Instead, the man, or thing, looked down into the hole in the floor. I swallowed hard and moved towards the hole in the floorboards. I needed to know why the chime was painted to look that way. I tiptoed to the precipice and got on my knees. Like the bathroom, I couldn’t see down the hole except for an object not too far out of reach. I bent lower and thrust my arm into the hole, extending my arm as far as it could reach. Feeling something hard and rough, I pulled it back up and took a good look at the object.

It was a bone. Not just any kind of bone, but a human arm bone. I let out a scream and dropped it, backing away from the hole. All of the knockers for the wind chimes I looked at had a similar color, had similar features. Were they finger bones? Longer bones sawed into smaller pieces? My chest heaved and as I attempted to keep myself from heaving, I heard it again.

ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting

The middle chime was ringing again. That’s when I looked at the window and the realization dawned on me. The window, it was sealed shut. A chill ran down my spine, and I wanted to back away. I wanted to leave, but I was frozen in my spot. Then, in the middle of my panicked state, I heard a raspy voice whisper in the midst of the ringing.

“Would you like to sing with us?”

At that moment, all of the other wind chimes in the room began to stir to life, as if someone finished winding the horrendous key and brought to life the grotesque scene displayed in front of me.

ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting

ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting

ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting-ting

My knees shook and all the bones in my body felt like gelatin. No matter how hard I tried, I could not stand up and make my escape. My fear intensified as I witnessed the chimes whip around like an invisible whirlwind had come to life in this room.

TING-TING-TING-TING-TING-TING screamed the chimes.

I screamed, too. I yelled at the top of my lungs at being audience of this inhuman whirling dervish. I tripped over my legs and stumbled out of the room. I sprawled into the living room and into the wooden table, causing some of the tools to fall to the ground. The chimes here, too, were spinning and clanging louder and louder. I’m sure I yelled again, but I couldn’t hear myself in the din of noise and chaos. My ears hurt from the cacophony of crashing and clanging.

As I ran towards the door, I stood up too high and the bone clapper for one of the wind chimes slashed across my cheek. I hit the floor with a thud, seeing stars in my eyes. Tears welled up in my eyes as I tried to reorient my mind back to reality from all of the confusion. I felt something warm trickle down my cheek, but I didn’t bother checking it at the time. What was on my mind was that now the floor and walls around me were starting to shake to its very foundation. Yet I couldn’t hear a single thing except the chimes.

TING-TING-TING-TING-TING-TING they wailed.

Keeping low to the ground, I maneuvered to the exit. By now the drawers were falling out of the walls and cabinet doors swung open and shut on their own. With a rush of adrenaline, I burst through the front door and back into the living world around me.  With my exit, all sounds of the chimes ceased, and all that remained was the stillness of the wood around me.

I didn’t look back, I didn’t want to. So I just kept running. Running back down the trail path. Past the still lake and over the fallen log in the middle of the path. Anything to escape the wind chime house that I was sure was on my heels. Once or twice I fell into the dirt, only for me to dart right back up and continue on, dirty and bleeding.

I ran back to the picnic area where my parents waited for me. They stopped their conversation and looked up at me as I limped back to the table. They were taken aback by my condition, and asked how I managed to get hurt in just a few minutes. I told them everything, and dad went to investigate the path despite my objections. He came back some time later as my mother finished bandaging up my wounds. According to him, he couldn’t find a path off of the trail overlooking the lake.

The rest of the trip to my aunt’s remains foggy in my memories. My parents forced me to recuperate, which meant no exploring outside. To be honest, after what happened at the wind chime house, I felt that my exploring days were over. When we returned home, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. At last I could relax and recover from my ordeal in the safety of my home, my sanctuary. Or I thought I could, that is, until I saw the long and rusted wind chime that someone had placed on our porch.