Night had come.

Finally.

I looked forward to the night. It was my refuge, my escape. My prison.

I had lived here all of my life. Playing hide and seek as a child in the rose gardens my mother spent her Sundays tending. Building a tree fort at the edge of the forest that bordered our yard. Staring at the stars, an arm wrapped around the shoulders of a high-school crush. Sipping iced tea with my wife on the sun-drenched patio. Watching the squirrels scratch their way up a snow-bound oak to invade the bird feeder that my wife so hated.

All of these memories were outside. And yet, I could not bear to leave this house. It caused me pain.

The halls were dark, as always, and cold. But my memories embraced me, surrounded me, pushing out the here and now, creating a psychological warmth. It was all I really needed.

Dust was my eternal enemy. Unarmed, I was helpless to fight the slow war that time waged against me. My memories helped to push aside the thoughts of what was happening to my home. And usually they worked. But tonight, for some reason, my memories were not enough.

The wonderful brass clock given to me by my grandmother on my tenth Christmas was deeply tarnished. The bricks around the fireplace were forever blackened by soot. My father's chair... as dark as the memories surrounding it were, it saddened me to see it old and tattered now. The arms worn by years of sweat and coal dust. The wooden feet chipped and cracked. The back scratched and torn by four generations of cats.

The wind whistled through the window upstairs. I made my way up the circular banister to my bedroom.

Just when I thought that the wallpaper could peel no more, another crack slowly formed, and the paper began to tear away, gravity an ever willing accomplice. The cold wooden floor beneath my bare feet brought back memories of Monday mornings and school closings that failed to materialize on the radio. My desk and bed were gone now, replaced by simple furniture for guests, but I could see them clearly still, smaller than I remembered them.

Turning to the window, I placed my hand over the hole in the glass that was responsible for the only sound the house ever made. But nothing happened.

With a sigh I left my room and went back downstairs.

I stood by the fireplace and stared out the window, imagining the sound of a crackling fire, and the warmth it would fill the room with. A mug of hot chocolate and a dog eared book completed the memory. I smiled.

Forgetting myself, I suddenly noticed a couple standing on the road in front of the house pointing in my direction. I stared at them for a moment, not completely sure that they were pointing at me, then ducked back behind the edge of the window. The woman's expression haunted me. She had seemed scared, horrified actually.

Across the room high on the wall was a painting of my mother. Poised and proper in elegant evening attire, with a smile that could not be anything but forced, she was seated in my father's chair. It was the only time she had sat in it. And in her lap was a magnificent hat, her favorite, made of crushed velvet and accented with a pheasant's feather. She looked at me now as she had all of my life.

I slowly turned to look out the window again, hoping that the couple were still there, but the street was empty. With a sigh I left the imagined warmth of the fireplace and the gaze of my mother's portrait and descended through the floor into the basement, to be with the boxes of my childhood things and the darkness that I used to run away from. Now I only run away from the light.