The Third Floor

The last church that Mom and Dad pastored met at a local community centre for a few years. The community centre had originally been a single-family house in what had been an upper-middle-class neighbourhood at the turn of the 20th century.

A large meeting room had been added to the house and this was where we had most of our services. It was also where junior high school dances and other community events took place on Friday and Saturday nights. The main floor of the original house had a kitchen, a small dining room and a parlour. There was a built-in bookcase in the parlour that I was occasionally able to pry open. The books were musty and read like modern-day self-help books (if such a thing existed in the early 1900s?) My allergies and lack of interest in slightly preachy treatises that were written before my grandparents had even been born led me to explore upstairs. The staircase upstairs was horribly creaky. Had we lived in that house I would have been sorely tempted to slide down the banister. I wasn't sure it could hold my weight, though, so I never tried.

The next floor contained a master bedroom and a nursery. Both rooms had high ceilings and large windows that flooded them with light on all but the most overcast days.

The master bedroom now served as some sort of art studio or classroom. Once I drew a picture on a scrap piece of paper that had been left lying one of the tables in that room. I felt guilty for using someone else's art supplies, though, and mostly avoided that room after that.

The nursery had mirrors hung so high on the walls at each end of the room that you couldn't see your reflection in the mirror even if you stood at the other end of the room. The wallpaper was a bright, cheerful colour. Yellow, maybe? I remember being impressed that it still looked fairly nice after all of these years. There were a few other, much smaller rooms on that floor. I couldn't guess what original purpose they may have served but they were now used to store decades of paperwork. I skimmed through a few stacks of girl scout manuals and correspondence once but other than that those rooms were of little use in my explorations.

The third floor was by far the most interesting. I suspect it was originally used as the servants quarters or to store seasonal or bulky household items. The rooms were small and dark, the hallways desperately narrow and many of the walls were now covered in graffiti. Although I wasn't at-all superstitious and never saw or heard anything otherworldly I only went to that floor when the other kids were with me. I did try to walk up the staircase to the third floor alone once. I managed about four steps before changing my mind.

(Picture credit.)