A tense moment, and a decision.

When Robert had finished his story, my eyes were darting about the dark room searching for any such terrifying things as the shadows which he described and which I, too, sometimes saw. My wife had stopped clutching at me, and sat staring before her, like a deer or another animal one happens upon by accident in the forest who does not know whether to run, succumb to the will of a human, or ask for supplication from some guardian entity of that same woodland.

Roman burst out laughing, and clapped his hands together. So did Miss Gilda. I followed the trend, as did Jacinta. For a moment or two we all simply laughed. The power of laughter, I think, goes a very great way to dispel anything that might be ill in the world. When something pains us, though hard to bear, it is with laughter that we are lifted up. When something scares us-- more than a whistle-- a laugh or a bad joke or remembering a time of happiness that fills one with such joy that they can only express it with pure laughter is the only remedy. I have even heard it said that magicians, if they still exist, will use laughter in the banishment of the spirits with which they do their works. So it seemed with this laughter, which possessed the whole of the room. And as we laughed the storm stopped.

Light returned.

We climbed down from the attic as more than we had been before we had journeyed there. The simple detachment of wife, lover, adviser, employer, and friend had coalesced into something more.

“We are a good band indeed,” said Robert, his serious facade breaking for just the tiniest of moments. But his face soon resumed the no-nonsense bearing of which I was to grow more and more accustomed. We spent much of the rest of that afternoon poking about the house and grounds, which were likewise extensive and included a small copse of trees in which there was a bench by a statue of a man we could not identify. It seemed that all one needed to do to disappear completely from the concerns and cares of the rest of the house was to step into the thick ring of trees and be gone.

It was agreed that the house indeed fit my bill of a place to really rediscover my childhood side, and that there seemed to be something magical about the whole of the land on which it rested. There was even, in one occult corner, a small grove in the midst of which was a lamppost between various evergreens and a small stone marked “Memoria Hendrickson”.

“It’s positively Narnian,” I remarked, and engaged my fellows in a lecture on the importance of that series in my life. I concluded with my heartfelt assertion that the last lines of The Last Battle were some of the most important, most endearing ever written. “We must remember that the sort of imagination that allows toys to become truly real to the child’s mind is the sum of our game. And if, as we do with our small dinosaur line, we can engage parents in nostalgia for their own pre-rational worlds, then we are to be the kings of our very market, as legendary as FAO Schwarz.”

The place, it was clear, needed some work, but with my assets this would pose no problem. It was all agreed that the place would become our retreat within six months, given some required renovations. So, we acquired the land, and a company quickly made the desired changes. It seemed, however, not to come quickly enough, and every day I found myself viewing and reviewing the pictures of the property that were taken both initially and when we visited the property. Every day I was tempted to drop everything and go back to that house, even just to see it before all preparations were made. But the call of the house seemed to strong, and I still had much to do in setting my company up to run well without my day-to-day involvements, that I dared not venture to the house until it was truly ready.