Captive Orbits

There are places throughout the world where the past seems as alive and vibrant as the present; where you expect, if you turn your head quickly enough, you might be able to catch the shortest glimpse of some figure, now long gone, scurrying across the floor and lurking in the shadows just beyond your reach; where the faint sound of distant laughter echoes throughout the halls, first mingling with the tap of your footsteps, then eventually drowning them out; where the joy, as well as the suffering, of long forgotten generations still hangs heavy in the air, enveloping you, until you are no longer sure of what is real and what is merely fantasy.

Mandrake Hall was such a place.

With its massive stone walls and Gothic architecture, it was a remnant of another age, a by-gone era of opulence and excess.

Although there were four floors, its height was diminished by its prodigious width, giving it the appearance of a giant crab which sprawled across the far end of the lawn, its north and south wings jutting slightly forward like massive claws.  In the center, the porte cochere protruded like the pinchers of its mouth, ready to devour anything that came within its reach.

Its gargoyles, with faces hideously distorted, stood sentinel on the corners of the parapet like guardians of a medieval churchyard.  You might almost expect to hear the other-worldly strains of some ancient Gregorian chant drifting towards you on the winds.

But on that icy November afternoon, it was more like wailing banshees whose screeches could be heard on the winds, warning of impending doom.

"It's not like the postcard, is it?" my sister Noelle asked, bringing to mind that image of the house bathed in ethereal summer sunshine, its gardens filled with glorious vines and flowers in every color of the spectrum.  Now the lawn was little more than patches of brown stubbles of grass and mud.

I could not suppress a sigh as we continued our trek up the paved expanse of driveway that led to Mandrake Hall.  Too often, great anticipation breeds even greater disappointment.

The brightly lit, gilded, and wonderfully ornate interior, however, was a sharp contrast to the gloomy exterior as we entered the Great Hall.  To one side, a woman sat behind a podium collecting entrance fees and dispensing tickets to tour the house.  She stared openly at Noelle, inspecting the crop of wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair, the playful expression in her dark blue eyes, and the large dimples that appeared in her cheeks when she smiled.

Here we go again, I thought.  Then I realized the woman hadn’t looked at me at all.  Very strange.

I moved forward, glancing around the enormous Great Hall, with its sweeping marble staircase and its arches leading into the north and south wings.  I marveled, not for the first time since we had come to Newport, Rhode Island, that there were people who actually lived in this type of splendor.

I turned back and grinned at Noelle.

The woman behind the podium continued to stare as Noelle walked back to join me.  It was then that she visibly blanched when she looked at me, surprised to see that there were two of us.

I gave her a quick smile, for this happened all the time.  We’d grown to accept it as the curse of being identical twins.

We joined a wet, bedraggled-looking group of people just as an elderly woman stepped forward and introduced herself as Mrs. Miller.  I had a sudden vision of a record player's needle moving slowly inward and settling lightly down onto a record as Mrs. Miller's monotone filled the air with a speech she had obviously repeated a million times before.

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