Progress to Date

Adam Sass

SIRS:

I am writing to inform you of progress to date in the acquisition of the property. 

I must tell you that I have not found the property to be in the condition originally described.

Upon arriving I found the door wanting a knob and a bell, and the caretaker who answered my knock wanting a tongue, for he never spoke, only pointed up the stairs.

The stairs themselves appeared to be in an unfinished state. Due inspection suggested that they had been recently molded from clay, as they were still damp to the touch. Upon concluding my appraisal of the stairs I noted two animals, which I took to be otters, sliding down them from above, shrieking riotously as they came. The rogues nearly bowled me over before slipping between my legs and disappearing out the front door (the caretaker having left it ajar). As it was I found myself spattered with clay, pond weed, and fish scales; the laundress at my inn tells me that while the stains can be removed, the smell is likely to persist.

When I finally set about climbing the stairs the difficulty of keeping my footing on the wet clay nearly caused me to abandon the project. I sought a railing to steady myself, but found none, so I fumbled for handholds on the stairway’s central pillar, a massive treetrunk that still wore its bark, as if it had never left the forest. It afforded me no sturdy purchase, though my hand came away sticky with sap (which, I should add, constitutes a not-insignificant fire hazard). 

Just as I had begun wiping it clean with my handkerchief, a mad whir of starlings suddenly rose from below me, swarmed my head, savaged my ears, and carried off my hat. I gave chase, but slipped on the clay, and could only watch as my hat was carried off into the rafters, doubtless to serve as a sort of readymade nest.  
 
Regaining my feet, I continued cautiously to the top of the stairs, where I encountered a giant knothole in the aforementioned trunk, suggesting a grave compromise of its structural integrity. There was also a man inside the knothole.

He appeared to have been there for some time, because he was quite overgrown with moss. So completely did it swathe his face and limbs that I wondered, and still wonder, whether it was growing on him or from him, as hair grows naturally from your honored heads. His eyes, too, were tinged a mossy green – not simply the irises, but the whites as well (or perhaps I should say “the greens”). We regarded each other in silence for at least a minute, for his part almost certainly out of indifference, for mine, bewilderment. All the while a steady trickle of water dripped from the tip of his nose, and a small brown bird hopped in and out of the folds in his verdant cloak, each time emerging with something new in its beak: a beetle, a worm, a speckled egg.

When it became apparent to that he did not intend to speak, I stated my name and office and presented him with your letter of introduction. But he would not deign to look at it, insisting instead that I produce a ticket. This was, to say the least, a surprising request, and I protested that I did not have a ticket, only the letter. True, I had had a ticket when I first arrived by train, I said, but had discarded it at the station, and I doubted it was the sort of ticket he wanted anyway. Wouldn’t the letter suffice? “A ticket, I need a ticket,” he grumbled. “A letter is not a ticket, nor a ticket a letter. I would expect you as a lettered man to know that.” Those were his exact words; he would not elaborate further. When I repeated that I had no ticket, he gave a terrible roar, thrust a gnarled and mossy arm from the knothole, and flung me down the stairs. 

I am afraid it will be some days, perhaps a week, before I can return to the property, as I am now confined to bed owing to injuries suffered in the fall. Since taking to bed I have also found my rest disturbed by a curious change in my rooms. Every piece of wood has sprung shoots and begun to put out leaves—the bureau, the floorboards, the planks of the walls, the beams of the ceiling, all are covering themselves in new foliage. At night the rustling of its growth is so loud that I cannot sleep. The innkeeper refuses to take the matter seriously; on the contrary, he seems to regard my predicament as some sort of joke. I have heard his laugh in the hall outside my doors, and I suspect he is spying on me through knotholes in the walls. But it cannot remain a joke much longer, as the room will soon be too overgrown for habitation. I have decided I must find new quarters. 

In short, progress has been slow; indeed, I am not certain that there has been any progress at all. I await your instructions.