the unfixable house

There are some places we go knowing that we do not belong there -- and even in doing so, expect that our presence will be enlightening in some way.

There's a house, on a hill, overlooking a would-be-ritzy condominium complex inhabited by military families with a monthly stipend to kill on a good view, a deeply scarred bay that will someday be the site of an upscale gated community, and a tumbling cliffside facing east across the expanse of deep, unending blue ocean.

The house supposedly belonged to the late former governor of Guam, who killed himself amid a dramatic corruption scandal by shooting himself in the middle of downtown traffic, chained to a statue with a note plied to his chest.

Sometime before or after the former governor's untimely end -- it's not clear to me which -- construction on the hilltop mansion stopped.

Local lore claims, as it often does, that the house is haunted.

So, like many a wayward high schooler before me, I decided that visiting the place would be a really good idea.
















I started thinking that it was less of a good idea when I had to tramp defenseless through the overgrown jungle brush, up a winding cement path, past heaps of seemingly still usable construction materials abandoned in the wilderness, to face a half-finished and prolifically tagged two-story residence, that looked more like it housed very real, and possibly unfriendly, squatters.

















Everything about the place -- from the feeling that multiple generations of teenagers must have used this as a creepy/romantic place to make out, to the pervading sense of decay -- was unnerving.























With an impressive number of wasps nests dappling the ceiling, trees roots and branches invading every open space, and a strange, unidentifiable white gnat-like fly, almost as imperceptible as the air, hanging about the myriad puddles and pools of standing water, the natural world seemed to know it was in charge here -- and relish it almost sadistically.
































The masterful ambitions of the architect, however, could be seen in the design. Beautiful bay windows opened on three sides out to the west, giving as clear a view the setting sun dropping below the green horizon as could be imagined.

















The open-air staircases were often built directly into the coral bedrock, and led around sharp corners to reveal and almost Gothic quality to the architecture.

For a moment as I hastily navigated my way out I was sure I would be lost amid the graffitied walls, and wondered if the maze-like quality of the staircases and sharp right angles would prove to be the secret death trap lurking in the place.


Details like columns designed in the shape of Latte stones -- hinting at the of the former governor's recently finished pet project -- underscored the pathos of the place.




At the top, the roof become a second, perfectly flat patio from which a 360-degree view of the island could be seen.



Despite the views and the architectural detail, the place did have a bit of haunted quality to it. The aggressive quality of some of the spray-painted images -- for example, a naked woman with bloody hand prints on them -- seemed to hint at something darker than just teenage angst.






Malevolence isn't really the right word -- although there was plenty of scary-enough graffiti to assert, if one was inclined, that the place hosted a kind of bad vibe that brought out the worst in adolescent taggers.

But with it came the feeling of disappointment from things left unfinished -- and from the feeling crushed hope that can interrupt even the most ostentatious of plans.

This house, designed as the centerpiece of a familial dynasty, etched into the very stone of the island, now lays rusting, breaking apart -- not rotting as much as dissolving.

Here on Guam the elements have a particularly dramatic power to dismantle from the inside -- and even the most hardy of building materials. Stone crumbles to reveal the rebar skeleton, already rusting and disintegrating.

Walking around I got a sense not of ghosts and evil spirits, but of irreconcilable disappointment, and a hurried abandonment that can only come with the impulse to forget.

There was clearly no intention to rebuild -- and no way really, to make the thing that someone once had envisioned sitting on top the hill.

I suspect this house will forever be unfinished.

Someday someone may replace it, or wrangle with the ghosts of the past to rebuild, but I cannot see that task being taken on lightly. And it seems like even the most brazen-hearted, on an island so small, and so prone to remembering everything, would shudder at the thought of building on top of this place.

There are things that cannot be repaired, the place seemed to be saying.

And I agreed. And then left, quickly.