The Room Behind the Counter

There is a door behind the counter at the Metaphysical Haberdashery.

I had never paid much attention to it before.

This is not particularly unusual at the Haberdashery. There are quite a few things one doesn't notice until they decide they are ready to be noticed.

The door is made of vertical wooden planks and curves into an arch at the top. It has a handsome brass knob, rather more elaborate than a doorknob strictly needs to be, and long silver hinges engraved with tiny patterns. I had always assumed the hinges were merely silver-colored.

They aren't.

The door I almost overlooked

This is another thing about the Haberdashery. It rewards closer inspection.

Naturally, I opened the door.

The room beyond was dark.

For a moment I could see almost nothing. Then my eyes adjusted to the small amount of light spilling through the doorway behind me.

It was an old room.

The mysterious unused room

The floorboards were wooden, and the air smelled of dust and old timber, warm and faintly musty. Large pieces of furniture stood beneath white dust covers. On the opposite wall were tall windows concealed behind heavy forest-green curtains with gold tassels.

Nothing seemed ruined.

Only unused.

I stepped inside.

As my eyes adjusted further, shapes began separating themselves from the darkness.

Against one wall stood an old piano. Beside it was a rocking chair I knew immediately.

It was my mother's chair.

She had given it to me when I was a young woman. It had been in poor condition when she found it, but she had patiently oiled the oak until the grain became rich and beautiful again. She had upholstered the seat and back in a faded green tapestry covered with flowers.

I ran my hand along its familiar wooden arm.

What it was doing in a forgotten room in the Metaphysical Haberdashery was anybody's guess.

I continued looking around.

A grand maple dining table occupied much of the room, surrounded by chairs hidden beneath white covers. Above it hung a crystal chandelier designed for real candles.

I pulled the cover from the chair nearest me.

Deep green velvet appeared beneath it, soft as moss, fastened to elaborate carved wood with rows of upholstery tacks. The chair curled and scrolled in unexpected places, as though its maker had considered straight lines an unfortunate limitation.

On the table stood three brass candelabra.

Their candles had been burned perhaps a third of the way down. Hardened wax ran along their sides.

Someone had once lit them.

Someone had put them out.

And then, apparently, nobody had lit them again.

There was nothing else on the table. Only a fine layer of dust.

Then I noticed the trunk.

It stood beneath the windows, an old-fashioned steamer trunk with a rounded top, leather straps and a large brass padlock hanging from the latch.

The padlock wasn't locked.

Before I touched it, I knew there were letters inside.

So, of course, I opened it.

The upper tray was divided into compartments and lined with brittle blue-and-white patterned paper. Inside were stacks of yellowed envelopes.

I had expected them to be jumbled together.

Instead, someone had arranged them carefully into bundles and tied each bundle with ribbon.

I reached for the one on the far right.

Its ribbon was blue.

The top envelope was addressed in beautiful old-fashioned cursive:

Bion Vickerman.

My grandfather.

I turned the entire bundle over.

On the back of the bottom envelope was a round seal of silver wax.

Pressed into the silver was a peacock.

I untied the ribbon.

Some of the seals had already been broken. Others, I suspected, had not.

I opened one of the letters.

It was from my grandfather's wife, written before she carried his name.

Ruth Emma Munson.

Her handwriting was magnificent and almost impossible to read, the sort of cursive produced when penmanship was something children actually studied rather than a peculiar historical affliction inflicted upon future genealogists.

I tried to decipher it.

Most of the words refused to cooperate.

Three did not.

I love you.

I stopped reading.

Suddenly the letters felt private, almost sacred.

I folded the page carefully, returned it to its envelope, gathered the stack together and retied the blue ribbon.

Then I lifted the entire letter tray from the trunk and set it gently on the dusty floor.

Beneath it were clothes.

There was a beautiful gray wool coat with fur around the collar and cuffs. White kid gloves. Dresses. Shoes with sensible heels. Everything smelled faintly musty, but nothing was damaged.

These were my grandmother's things.

And tucked among them was a tiny jewelry box.

I opened it.

Inside lay a silver necklace.

At its center was an oval piece of Whitby jet, black and glossy, surrounded by intricate silver knotwork.

I own a necklace very much like it.

But this one wasn't mine.

It was my grandmother's.

I lifted it from the box and fastened it around my neck. The chain was short, so the jet rested high on my chest, just above my heart.

I put my hand over it and closed my eyes.

England.

The feeling came immediately.

And with it came sadness.

My family had known England in a way I never would. My grandmother had spent time there. Generations before her had belonged to that landscape. Whatever connection they understood through experience, I possessed only through fragments, records, stories and that peculiar ache that sometimes accompanies a place one somehow recognizes without having belonged to it.

I felt outside my own history.

Disconnected.

I opened my eyes.

The room was brighter.

Nobody had opened the curtains.

The candles remained unlit.

There was electricity in the room, I realized, but it had clearly been installed long after the house was built. Even so, no electric lamp appeared to be switched on.

Nevertheless, I could see.

There were red velvet chairs near the piano. An elaborate wooden buffet stood against the opposite wall, decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay.

And behind it...

There was something else.

A fireplace.

Or rather, there had been a fireplace.

It had been bricked shut, and the buffet had eventually been placed in front of it.

I knew what was inside the buffet without opening it. Silverware nested in brown velvet. Serving spoons. A gravy ladle. Silver trays and a gravy boat. Linen napkins.

But I wasn't interested in the buffet.

I wanted to see the fireplace.

I placed my hand against the wood and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, the buffet was gone.

So were the bricks.

Before me was an enormous fireplace, its mantel nearly at the height of my head. A fire crackled inside it. From a wrought-iron support hung a large black cooking pot.

Something was simmering.

Beef. Turnips. Onions. Carrots. A dark, thick broth that smelled faintly of warm spices.

And beside the fire stood a woman.

Her dress belonged to another time. Simple linen over a white undergarment with full sleeves ending in delicate lace cuffs. Her hair was gathered into a loose bun with a silver clip, although strands had escaped around her ears and neck.

Around her neck was the jet necklace.

My grandmother's necklace.

The necklace I was wearing.

She knew I was there before she turned around.

When she finally looked at me, she wasn't surprised.

“Hello, dear,” she said. “Have a seat.”

Beside the fireplace stood the rocking chair my mother had given me.

Only it wasn't quite the same.

The faded floral tapestry was gone. Its seat and back were covered in the same rich green velvet I had found on the dining chairs.

I sat down.

The woman took a ladle and filled a bowl from the pot. She handed it to me with a spoon and a white linen napkin.

The stew was extraordinary.

The beef fell apart in my mouth. The root vegetables had cooked until they were almost creamy. The broth was dark, silky and rich, with the faintest suggestion of clove or cinnamon.

It was comfort in a bowl.

The woman wiped the ladle, set it aside and brought over another rocking chair.

It matched mine.

She sat opposite me.

She didn't speak.

She simply watched me eat with the peaceful expression of someone who had nowhere else she needed to be.

When I finished, I realized she was waiting for me to speak.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to invade your space.”

She looked almost amused.

“Don't be silly, child. I knew you were coming. I made the soup for you. I know it was your favorite.”

I looked at her necklace.

Then at mine.

We were both wearing it.

Suddenly I wanted to tell her everything.

Every problem. Every uncertainty. Every question I hadn't been able to answer.

Surely this woman would know.

She looked at me as though she already understood the entire unwieldy bundle.

“Everything is okay, child.”

That was all.

And strangely, it was enough.

Something inside me loosened.

She took my empty bowl and stood.

Only then did I notice a wooden door between two sets of tall windows.

She opened it.

Sunlight poured into the room.

Beyond the door was a walled English garden.

“Come,” she said.

We stepped outside.

High stone walls surrounded the garden. Paths wandered among roses of every imaginable color. There were tulips and daffodils too, although somehow I understood that they did not all bloom together.

Each flower had its season.

The day was perfect for walking. Sunlight warmed the paths without making the air hot. There was no oppressive humidity, only that delicious dry coolness that makes you want to keep walking simply because walking feels good.

We followed the winding path all the way to the back of the garden.

There, set into the high stone wall, was a fountain.

The water came from an eternal spring.

I don't know how I knew this.

I simply did.

The woman handed me a silver ladle.

The Eternal Spring

“Taste it.”

I dipped the ladle into the fountain and drank.

The water was astonishingly pure.

And something happened.

Something inside me changed.

I couldn't tell what.

I only knew that it had happened, that it was something lovely, and that I wasn't supposed to understand it yet.

It would unfold by itself.

Like the flowers in the garden, perhaps.

In its season.

The woman knew.

Of course she knew.

She looked at me and smiled.

Then she hugged me.

And suddenly I was standing behind the counter of the Metaphysical Haberdashery.

The arched wooden door was open in front of me.

Beyond it was a dark, dusty room filled with furniture beneath white covers.

For a moment I simply stood there.

Then I noticed something.

I reached up and touched my chest.

The silver necklace was still around my neck.

The oval piece of black jet rested just above my heart.

I looked once more into the darkened room.

Then I closed the door.

Definitely NOT the end.

laura

The Creative Process

This story wasn’t planned or plotted in the usual way. I began with an imagined place, The Metaphysical Haberdashery, and then allowed someone else to ask me one simple question at a time: What’s behind the door? What do you see? What happens next? I didn’t try to invent clever answers or decide where the story should go. I simply paid attention to the first image, sensation, bit of dialogue, or knowing that appeared, and described it. Each question arose from the answer before it, and little by little the story seemed to discover itself.

The process has similarities to open-ended guided meditation, active imagination, intuitive visualization, and even some of the protocols used in remote viewing, although I’m not making any particular claim about where the images come from. Perhaps they arise from imagination or the subconscious. Perhaps consciousness is stranger and less local than we ordinarily suppose. I’m quite content not to know. If you’d like to experiment with it yourself, find someone willing to ask you one neutral question at a time, close your eyes if that helps, and describe what appears before you begin deciding what ought to appear. The trick is not to write the story. It’s to follow it. 🦚