Relieved, I found her perched still on her timber throne. So relieved in fact I admit to loosing a chortle, as when a nurse reading ghoulish tales to a babe tries an amusing accent to break the tension. Truthfully I expected to see her slumped or turned or posed in some impossible way, arms moving independently like a haunted marionette dancing in an abandoned vaudeville theater. Closer than ever, my footfalls became muzzled as my boots scraped the last of the hardwood stepping onto another Persian rug, this one emblazoned with azure dragons and golden worms with spiraling tails.
Could she have - no, my weary mind striding paths the wakened mind's cunning avoids. Only this and nothing more. There. Again. Fainter than the first whisper, only a hint of an utterance, a phrase mouthed to the ears of lonely voidclingers yet I could hear it myself. Despite lowering in volume the words were clearer this time, somehow more pronounced. Wishing to be rid of number sixteen and far from the western wing I scurried forward seizing the doll by hair and nestled her in the crook of my arm as a vagrant gathers bundled fagots, her face turned inward to save poor William a hearters in passing. Cold layers of chipped paint daubed across her unsplintered cheek brushed skin through my shirt sending a second wave of tremors through my hurried form.
Once in hand I tarried no second longer than was absolutely necessary. Curiously, and in my mind necessarily, I backed in a straight line toward the door, never exposing my flank to Lucretia's empty chair. What varnish or lacquer made splendorous her spider-haunted throne in lost gilded ages such as I imagined her inhabiting was long gone, only thick dust and the muffled sobs of melancholy children remained.
Indeed, I felt in that moment a great fear, as when an arachnophobe poised with shoe in hand to make a brown puddle of its foe turns at last to swing at an empty stretch of wall, and all the nooks, crannies and alcoves visible then where it might hide.
Reaching the corridor I glanced backward three times over shoulder. 'You're not the only one who keeps records, bucko. I have my own book.' Taken by surprise, I leapt in the air theatrically, losing a shoe at the zenith of my upward pounce. Floating back toward terra firma with all the grace of a dancing elephant, I saw the face of trickster William glistening beneath a fresh jam coating.
'You know what, William? There are men who slave dusk to dawn over steaming vats of jam, and have done so since infancy, whose hands know less of jams sticky handshake than you. What do you think about that?' 'I don't think much' he smiled, tracing his tongue along the outline of his hand. 'I can tell' I riposte promptly.
I met his gaze. I can almost hear the whirring of primitive machinery in his brain, spinning cogs and grooved brass discs circling the plinth of his being, forming his thoughts and those untapped vistas of halcyon landscapes like blazing watercolours which live too briefly to fully form and bloom as full ideas, living instead as dreams and nightmares and daytime fancies arriving in moments of pensive silence or quiet reflection.
Then I remember to whom I speak, jammy William with his summer fruit mittens and a mouth stickier than a custard meringue baked on wet toilet tiles, and decide maybe his inner-apparatus is knocked slightly, thrown from its rotation, unable to form new ideas. Neither of us will be the first to break the deadlock, lines appear on our furrowed brows as rake marks across a rockery both straining to halt our blinks.
'Do you want to know what my book is then?' 'Let me guess. Is it... The book of crummy brothers?' He grinned a red grin, the toothy gurn of a beetroot chewer 'Nope.' 'Enlighten me.' I sighed. 'Grown boys who play with dolls compendium, volume II.' 'What? This old thing?' I pulled her from the snug and pushed the doll right close to his face. Close enough that the tip of his sugar coated nose nuzzled her dusty corset.
The scream he let in that moment made pale any sirens effort. So loud and so shrill to hear the pitch reached the ears of Odysseus smoldering in Aegean exile would not have surprised. I peered through each window returning to the atrium ensuring no Grecian galleys scraped oars astride our ochre pebbled drive in search of source.
Recovered from his shock, William was back to his usual dullard self swaying as he went, loping the length of the corridor. We reached the large door to the central foyer, a clinker built barrier of hardwood that screamed 'This is your last warning.'
I imagined the belt cracking off my backside, Father sitting in his tall backed chair for a post-sentencing pipefull. The whole house stank of Old Goblin tobacco imported from the tropics, a smelly brown weed that came pressed flat in an obnoxious yellow cardboard box, the words 'tempered on a virgins thigh' daubed in gaudy purple lettering front and back, all swanlike loops and ribbons, beside this a crude watercolour painting of a dark haired beauty working the tobacco across her nude, shapely thighs, only a crude shell bikini concealing a bust so large it warranted scientific investigation.
Art, music, wine, cheese, antiquities, bound first editions, faux grimmoires, in these father was a man of lauded taste, a high society trendsetter. When it came to his lungfuls though, tacky did not accurate convey my distaste.
Businessmen and magnates often came on business. They never tarried long, enough to pat our heads and comment on our behavior (immaculate on pain of thrashing) before retiring to the faraway paradise of the Western Wing. Despite the brevity of their visits I always noted what the keen gents of our age smoked. Woodbines, Rothmans, British Heritage, Players, Luckys for Americans or wannabes. Never Old Goblin. I don't know if they are awaiting public suggestion but perhaps 'Old Goblin: Our Most Shameful Export' is more apt.
Turning the handle before leaving I looked to William as if to say 'and this is how we work door knobs here on planet Earth'. He didn't notice, much enamored with a coloured sweet wrapper he was placing over his eyes as a lens, a favourite pastime, affectionately christened the 'rainbow gaze'. I don't know if it was William's levity or previously untapped veins of courage newly pickaxed but I trained my gaze back down the corridor to the doorway, ominous and wide, tall and grim.
Relief, nothing there. I stared longer.
A shifting form like the faintest net curtain shifting at the caress of a springtime zephyr glided across the carpet through the opposite open door to stand near the frame of the dolls former abode. Clouds momentarily obscured the sun outside and the specter disappeared without a trace. I rubbed my eyes. That cannot be.
The rational man cannot program from his mind delirious fancy, he can merely himself make aware of it, in doing so dispel the fear that makes superstition fact. Light streamed anew as the cloud broke, beaming across the table, past the crude maps, over the carpet so rustled and frumped from our ruckus, through the frame of the fifteenth door to the corridor. Illumined by the fabled Archimedes beam again I saw the figure loitering by the entrance. It was at once solid and formless, like the veined glassy texture of a linnets wing. Footless it glided again disappearing behind the frame.
William, by this time, reached the pantry. Bib about his neck, doilies on his fingertips like a surgeons glove, he licked his chops in anticipation of a second pantry assault. Frozen where I stood, I wanted to shout out. As to whether my voice would carry I had no doubt, the atrium was cavernous and acoustically suitable, the plasterwork floral decals about the ceiling corners and skirting boards allowing great resonance.
No scream left my lips. Lungs burning with the effort, beads of sweat appearing across my brow like a diadem of raindrops, nails biting hard to my palm, I screamed and screamed. Screamed for father to rush to my aid, all knightly vim and vinegar. Screamed for William to toss a jam jar, or pull the drawstrings shut and kill the light making visible the apparition. Feeling returned to my hands one stinging nail mark at a time. Prying my gaze I bolted through the door like a charger from the stiles, the heavy door slamming fast but slowing before colliding with the flame to shut with a muted shudder, as if at the last some ghastly demons palm pressed flat to slow its course.
Lucretia, still nameless to my estimation, jangled as we went, a spine tingling chorus of bells the overture to my delirium. Far enough from all that I caught my breath upon the stair. No more sugar loading, I thought. Three packs of bon bons is enough to meet a phantom, what odds. What must William see on this marmalade induced vision quests? Egad, one shudders.
I ironed the creases from my formalwear using the flat of palms, now glistening with sweat, cleared my throat right proper and mended my hair in a mirror. An ostentatious thing, a gift from one baron or another, stags to either side, their lined antlers entangled forming a dome above the reflective surface. Positively Gorgonic, I whispered beneath my breath, flattening the medusalike strands protruding from my mane.
We took proper supper that night. All three of us in the dining room playing lordlings, knives and forks placed correctly by our plates, napkins with our initials embroidered in orange thread spread across our laps for the messy soup course. Argued briefly with William over the efficacy of his newest treatise Why Jam is Soup Too. Andrew said little, as babes are like to do. Occasionally though he gurgled in favour of some pikelike counterpoint of mine deflating William's position.
'Why can it not be soup? It goes in a bowl. You can eat it with a spoon. It's liquidy.' 'First, liquidy is not a word, it sounds like a name for an ancient Romans dog for heaven's sake. Also, in your mind that's the only prerequisite for being soup? If I had a bowl big enough and a cauldron sturdy enough to melt your bones I could vanish you with only a spoon. Does that make you a soup?'
'Don't tease!' He screeched, banging the pommel of his fancy knife on the table. 'Heel, heel.' I snapped, clicking my fingers to focus his attention, 'Be a sport, no need for stropping.'
His face turned the colour of a robin's tits. 'I'm going to eat it from a bowl, so it is soup.' I guffawed, wiping a tear from my eye much to Andrew's amusement. Soon William joined in, seemingly ignorant of our laughters source.
'That's not the argument, you bean. Nobody is saying you cannot eat jam from a bowl, or that you don't enjoy jam in near-fatal quantities, but simply moving something from jar to bowl doesn't change its properties. Jam is jam, bread is bread, soup is soup.'
I stooped across the table, placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled, assuming my eyes were twinkling affectionately, beaming a smile that displayed every tooth 'And you're a cretin.'
Otherwise a most enjoyable and mature evening, away from the usual horseplay and babbling fare my younger siblings indulged. William did not think to inquire after Lucretia. Sparing his sanity, fearing a night spent wide awake would be worse for me than him when the tantrums began. I thought of her often despite this, nestled on a chair in the furthest darkest corner of my chamber. The shadows her vestments, hair cascading to rest between her polished thighs, she sat waiting with malicious intent.
If she was aware of her own existence, and mine as well at that, she made her will known. Images flashed in my mind, hints of feelings and orders offered as whispered suggestions. Although unspoken the suggestions seemed mandatory. Surely my own unease roused my mind to a fever pitch, mixing with the morning's treat banquet to imagine these perceived horrors. Another part of me, the irrational primal mind where instinct and fear both crest the waves of voidlike oceans bid me hark to my guts summon, trust the shifting feeling in my guts like some terrible eel laid its hatching brood in forgotten nightmares. A feeling I am sure has nothing to do with my cooking (which is sublime).
This abstract mind resonates with hers, knows her intent and bids me cast her away, down the deepest well, forced to the widest stormdrain, thrown to the furthest tide bobbing toward oblivion, anywhere but here.
A sense of general danger. I did not know then it was another due this peril. Like the full moons brood wanes, William's lapsing attention finally disappeared entirely. He sat chewing a heel of bread like a savage steppe child, crumbs on every inch of clothing, embedded in the trenches of his brown corduroy shorts.
I made some excuse, bid him adieu and bound for bed, passing the stairs with such ease I had not felt in years. Totally revitalized. I suppose I broke through my sugar crash now the glucose in my system leveled out, truly I felt positively Spartan, a little less than a spring in my step but a pronounced ambitious stride, a hearty lope. Would I have walked so gaily knowing how periled I my own flesh and blood? Unbecoming, not at all my style.
Entering the room I noted again a profound and notable drop in temperature. Changing to my bedclothes, a heavier set reserved usually for winter, my breath left my maw in great plumes like an angry dragon smoldering upon his horde, belly swollen and pregnant with angry fire. Eyes were upon me, of this I was sure.
I dared not return their stare. Fear of what I might see, fear my courage would fail perhaps. Either way, I hopped into bed and pulled the covers like a shawl around my head, facing the opposite wall to where Lucretia slumped oppressively.
Submitted September 05, 2018 at 06:10PM by Satanicbearmaster https://ift.tt/2MMgBZs
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