Exploring the old house of an old man.

     Gregory's house was a very old house. It must have been put in in the fifties, at least, and hadn't been taken care of very well. The wooden floors creaked, and had cracks between the planks. The paint in his kitchen was peeling, two different layers, yellow, then an old sage green, finally revealing the old fashioned plaster underneath. It was amazing to me to think that anyone had been living here at all. But the signs were there that Gregory had been living here not more than a few years ago. The furniture was still arranged, and though it was covered in a thick cake of dust, the couches in his living room were fairly new, with only the faintest imprint of a sitter in them. The fireplace was made of old red bricks, with cracks in the mortar, and lichen growing on the mantle. The back door had been broken in long before we arrived, and the screen had been torn in, down at raccoon height. There were leaves scattered around the floor, and it felt like we had broken into a ghost's home. All through the house were small reminders of the man who had lived there. His copper pots, tarnished now, but hung by order of size, the photographs he had taken himself, of beautiful lakes, and his beautiful wife. Even she was left behind, resting in an urn on the mantle. That place broke my heart. It was a beautiful old house, where two people had really loved one another, and something had torn that apart. We just weren't sure yet what had done it.
     Allen searched the house carefully, wandering through each room, shining his flashlight into cupboards, sifting through closets, lifting up furniture. He didn't seem to find what he was looking for, but he was determined to find it. He and Otis sniffed through the whole house while I went to get something to eat. When I returned to the house with food from a shop nearby, he and Otis were sitting in an upstairs bedroom. Resting against the wall, caught in a green blur of sunlight filtering through the leaves of a tree branch that had pushed itself through the window, he looked defeated. I offered him food, and he ate it, begrudgingly. I guess he thought that Gregory would have another clue for him, another breadcrumb to lead him to answers. The fact that the house was empty sent him back under his raincloud, and he was sulking again. We spent the night in that dusty house, and sat in that room all night.
     The next morning, I woke up first, and grabbed breakfast. When I got back, Allen was still asleep, and Otis was curled up against him. I waved a breakfast burrito around their head,s but neither of them even wiggled, so I ate my own, and killed some time. I decided that I would try to find something that Allen might have missed. I definitely didn't expect what I found. I walked to the bathroom, to snoop around, and then I walked around the corner to the kitchen, and realized that something felt a bit off. I walked back and forth, and realized that the walls didn't match up. Somehow, the rooms were smaller than they should have been, and then I realized that they were spaced apart to far, and that in the wall between them, there must have been some sort of space. I started in the kitchen, running my hands all over the walls, looking for something that might get me between the walls. I came up empty handed, and headed to the bathroom next. I searched every inch of the wood-paneled walls, and didn't feel any latches, so I started searching other things around the room. There didn't sem to be any levers, or switches, or anything in the room that would open it. then, I got a bit desperate, and flung myself into the wall. I bashed it with my shoulder twice, and as I braced for my third charge, Allen came running down the stairs. Then, with a wild strength I borrowed from someone else, I charged the wall again, and cracked one of the slats.
     Allen came over to the wall, looking through the slat I had cracked open, and his eyes lit up. Allen ran up to his pack and brought back his crowbar, pointing out that I could have just grabbed it myself, and began to pry boards off. I took it from him, and told him to go eat his burrito. This was my discovery, and he wasn't getting the glory for it. He laughed at me, kissed my cheek, and ran back upstairs to share his breakfast with otis.