A stream of restless nights would follow the first motionless slumber. The three pairs of feet bound to the end of the queen-sized mattress by exhaustion would kick and struggle in the nights to come. But not that night. That night, the souls of the three young boys huddled under one thick blanket were given permission to depart from their tired bodies and roam about the gaudy manor. In their earthly forms, they were only sanctioned to explore the bedroom in which their empty vessels rested; however, when weightless in the face of mankind’s struggles, the boys could flutter about the cathedral ceilings, amuse themselves with the countless curios shelved along the hallways, and wrap themselves in the sympathetic blaze of the stone fireplace—all without the pageant dog barking, all while the landmaster serenely slept, as she did every night.
The children’s souls, riddled with curiosity and unfettered by closed doors, peeked into the bedroom that sheltered their parent’s bodies which were held together by the confines of a twin mattress. Tracks of crusted mud led up to the wheels of their luggage scattered across the hardwood. Their breathing was labored, yet not strained enough to awake the landmaster. Before passing into the next of many bedrooms, the youngest of the brothers hovered over the tender cheek of his mother to return the kiss that she slipped to him before retiring to bed.
Four more doors awaited the three spirits of inquiry. The first was a grand bathroom, equipped with a heart-shaped tub and luxury bubble bath. Although the boys split up to investigate the two rooms at the end of the first hallway, their faces would rise and fall with the same frustration and dejection at their discoveries. Each moonlit room dispirited the boys, presenting to them two placid queen-sized beds, embellished with satin sheets and the ornate embroideries of feather-filled pillows. Later, the boys would discover that their prohibition from the adorned rooms stemmed from the inability to pay the landmaster for her acts of vainglorious kindness.
In the last, unexplored doorway, the landmaster sprawled about a king, practically laying at a diagonal. The disheartened young men loomed over her heedless body—their faces contorted and eyes sunken at their inability to affect her. She stole from their parents, she stole from them. With their heads roofless, the landmaster was free to infiltrate and suckle from their storm-ravaged neediness. There was no skillfulness to her predation, for the family had no choice but to submit to her will. Nonetheless, the landmaster had no reluctance to ingratiate herself in her perceived “good deeds.” She could give up some, but reap the rewards of giving up all. These circumstances infuriated the boys, but they needed to return to their bodies. Every night past that first night, they were restless.
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