A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 24

Victoria

In the silence of the day inside Manor Dorn's brooding reaches, we heard a thing we had not heard in a very long time.

Sound from upstairs, from the master bedroom.

But it was a shriek.

It wailed into the rest of the house, a tormented, desperate echo. The slaves went still, listening.

And then it was quiet.

I glanced at Letta, as if she could explain the unexpected cry. Tanen shifted uneasily. Henry ran his hat through his hands, standing. “Dashsund,” he said simply, and the two men shared a moment of understanding, and moved toward the stairs to investigate.

“Tread carefully,” Letta bade.

Enda drew a frightened Viola into her embrace, and Dani appeared in the kitchen door frame, hugging it. Ombri was right behind him.

We stood in the common room, waiting for Dashsund and Henry to return safely, hoping they would have word of some sort, though I knew all of us were thinking it could very well be something we didn't want to know.

Momentarily, we heard their voices. They were muffled, but carried persistent quizzical and convincing intonations, as if they were meeting with a distinct lack of cooperation. It went on for a time, but finally relented, and then we could hear them returning to us.

Dashsund appeared first, the strider of the two. Hat in hands, Henry followed.

Shaking his head, Dashsund reported; “They won't talk. Can't get so much as a crack in the door. Felicity gave orders to only come up with the items we've been instructed. No extra visits. We have just been told to stay away, ladies and gentlemen. No answers there.”

“But something happened up there,” Tanen said, as if he needed to convince the rest of us. It did not bode well with him, that was clear.

“Something is happening everywhere, in case you hadn't noticed, Mr. Nysim,” Dashsund pointed out. It was not mean-spirited, but convicting.

“So that's it?”

“They have not broken their silence in many long months,” Enda put in, almost as if siding with Tanen.

“And what would you have us do?” Dashsund asked.

“You're a strong lad,” Enda indicated, a little bit patronizing as he was in his forties. “Perhaps it's time they were made to come out and face the world.”

“Made to?” I put in, a protest in my voice. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I like our Masters better in hiding.”

“It would be their house again,” Henry agreed, his shy voice putting in his lamenting two cents.

“I cannot break the door in,” Dashsund responded to the controversy. “When it's closed, it's as if it's sealed.”

“Did you hear anything else?” Letta wanted to know.

“Someone was whimpering,” Henry said.

“Victoria, Lesleah... hard to say.” Dashsund shook his head. “They're both of age, at this point.”

I sighed, recognizing my own concern. It was inconvenient, but I couldn't ignore it. “Is there any way to gain any semblance of access?”

“Where a door is shut, a window will be opened,” Letta recited, always ready with words of wisdom. “There will be a way.”

It was difficult for me to be so easily convinced, but she had rarely proved wrong in the past. Had she ever? I couldn't remember a time that she had. I was sure there had to be one, but...that could simply be my own skepticism speaking again. My desire to remain skeptical, because that was where I was comfortable.

“There is nothing to be done now,” Letta went on in dismissal, in a manner meant to soothe distress. “Mischief will be mischief.”

Reluctantly, we began to turn back to our duties for the day, but there was no way to shake the echo of that scream from upstairs. It was held over our heads, cut off but left to eddy. Like a pool of blood seeping out from under that door and spreading through the upper reaches of the house. The floor above our heads became heavy with it. It was safe to say we all eyed the stairs during our passings through the common room, wondering when it might begin to creep down the stairwell and spill into the rest of the house.

Mischief will be mischief... Such was true, but that did not make it any easier to share a house with the stuff. That is, what was left of the house, and those in it.

*

In the end, it was not us that pressed a solution to the problem. It was Victoria. I retrieved the supper dishes, and found it: a note smuggled between the plates. With a prick of adrenaline, I dissected its clumsy folds and read the quick scrawl.

Please –

The room has taken Mother and Father. Strange things are happening up here, but Felicity won't let anyone out. She has lost her mind, and cannot see what it is condemning us to. Help us.

Victoria

Dismay and urgency filled me as I read. Regardless of if anyone rightly knew what to make of all this, the note in my hand was a cry for help, and I had always had a soft spot for Victoria. A sense of loyalty inside me made itself known as I read her plea, and I realized this was an obligation I had to act on, for my conscience's sake.

I took the note to the others, presenting the development in the case.

“What does she mean, 'taken' them?” Tanen asked guardedly.

“It is likely she means exactly that,” Dashsund explained, kindly enough. “For all its mystery, you can't do much but take the mischief at face value, at times like these.”

“Can we take down the door with an ax?” was Tanen's resulting suggestion. I had to admire his new-dawning practicality regarding the nature of things.

“Chopping into the house itself may be unwise,” Dashsund advised. “I would not go that far, lest it release something from the bones of the place.”

“We could starve them out.”

“You read the note,” I protested. “Felicity has gone mad. She would probably just as soon not eat, or eat whatever there is in the room, edible or otherwise.”

“You don't suppose she'd...” Henry began, but I cut him off, not letting him go there;

“We're not starving them out.”

“Take them their food. Let the door be opened for you,” Letta proposed. “Surely you can force your way in then.”

“Felicity has taken to spying through the keyhole,” Dashsund said. “She doesn't open it, not even a crack, unless we are at least to the stairwell down the hall.”

“Is there nothing you can do from a distance?” Enda challenged. “You're men! What good is muscle if it doesn't work from a distance?”

“It is against a man's pride to fight from a distance, love,” Letta pointed out. “In the brunt of things is decidedly the point.”

“So you're useless from a distance?” Enda concluded, ruthless.

No... it occurred to me. They're not. “What about the arrows?” I asked.

“You want me to shoot her?” Tanen asked, disbelieving.

“Not her. The keyhole, the lock... jam the mechanism or some such thing.”

“I don't...know that I'm that that good of a shot.”

“Practice.”

No one protested, and so it was that a quizzical form of expectancy grew in the room, waiting for Tanen's response. Since no one else called out the absurdity of the scheme, he seemed to find it in him to admit it could work. However, he did go as far as to point out,

“If I miss, she's on to us. And we don't get another chance.”

A hard twinkle entered Dashsund's eye, something between amusement and gravity. “There's an easy solution to that, Mr. Nysim.”

Don't miss.

*

“It won't be the keyhole,” Tanen said later.

“What?”

“It won't be the lock. I'm going to aim for the hinges; the crack. Other side of the door.”

It was that that I had in mind as I visited the upstairs that night, and stood before the barrier door. One might find it unsettling visiting that door, standing there in the dark before it knowing what had happened beyond it, when I could be at a safe distance downstairs. But it wasn't as if the thing was going to open. I was one of those pointedly banished to this side.

Regarding the door, I debated touching it. There were so many reasons to debate touching a thing, these days. But I felt drawn to it, as if I could unlock some relevant secret, or do something with my touch that might render the door and I in cahoots, or some such nonsense, so that when the time came for Tanen to lodge that arrow...the door would comply. It was ridiculous, but there I was.

The door stared me in the face, dark and solid and unyielding. But my eyes were not the part of me that was gifted. And after learning of Omrbi's past through my fingertips, the appetite of my curiosity had been whetted. Slowly, I raised a hand and touched my middle finger to the wood of the door, sliding it gently down the surface. It was scarcely a caress, and only a whisper of vision resulted. I saw things through a haze, and sound was muffled as if under water.

Felicity, shuffling across the room. The train of her faded rose-colored dress torn and stained with dust and soot and dry mold.

Victoria, huddled in a corner, her delicate frame beginning to resemble more of a hollow nature. One cheek was blushing, stung, as if she had been slapped.

Lesleah – defiant one moment, wracked with sickness and laid out on the floor the next.

Vandah – the mother of Dani and Viola. She was there, quietly poking the ashes in the fireplace, soot staining a cheekbone.

Mr. and Mrs. Dorn, being devoured by the room in some way that one could not rightly fasten his eyes on. There was perhaps a tremor, something that caused disorientation, and my focus became slippery and jerky as I struggled to keep track of the man and lady of the house, where they were somehow whisked – dragged toward the corner of the room and swallowed by it...

It was all over almost before it began, and only then did focus truly cooperate, leaving one to glance about at an orderly room, where nothing was bent out of proportion.

A small scuffle near the edges of the room that could have been evidence of Christopher tickled my mind then, but I had taken my hand from the door, withdrawing. I cast about for additional reason to be there, considering the hinges that Tanen had said would be his choice of target. Experimentally, I touched one. At first, nothing happened. Then I closed my eyes, and was possessed by the breath of the door. Every time that it had opened and closed pulsed through me, and I shared its creaky breaths from the time that it was mounted. Its breath rattled in its lungs in recent years, and mostly it held its breath altogether these days.

Would you not like the chance to breathe again? I asked, as if it could hear my thoughts. But if I could share its breath, why not? We were fused together at that moment.

I breathed along with the door until one time in its past it slammed shut more forcefully than the others, and as it rattled in its socket I was rattled back into reality. My eyes flashed open again, and as I tried to let my hand fall back to its place at my side something unusual came to my attention; web fastened my palm to the door, sticky as I tried to pull away. Fused indeed, I thought, distastefully extracting myself.

The web, rather flexible and resilient, did not break as I managed to peel my hand away, and instead remained plastered over the hinge. Your target, Tanen, I thought, for that's what it looked like; and it seemed at that point I had fulfilled my mission to grant him some sort of insurance for his task.

*

He perched in the stairwell, ready and waiting. At his nod, I proceeded with the dinner tray. He was as ready as he would ever be, and I could only hope Victoria had not lost hope in us by now. And that our scheme would work.

I padded down the dark passage, the dishes rattling ever so slightly with my steps. I was half concerned that the target I had conjured would be reduced to a useless cobweb by now, but it appeared to still be holding strong. Besides, would a cobweb be any less affective, when it came down to it? It was merely a symbol, was it not?

I placed the tray at the threshold and rapped out the required knock, then retreated down the hall. It occurred to me to hug the wall as I realized I was now between Tanen and his target – all at once I was in the line of fire, and a strange force of adrenaline propelled me.

Not a moment too soon, either, because as soon as Felicity had that door open a crack, Tanen's poise went rigid with aim, and an arrow ripped down the hall and ate into its target – a splintered wedge. What happened then was mayhem. A cry escaped Felicity – something I thought was alarm, until the arrow's goal was recognized and it turned to a cry of rage. Tray forgotten with a clatter, Felicity retreated into the room with a whisk of her musty skirts and threw herself into slamming the door. But Tanen was already halfway down the hall, Dashsund close behind, and the arrow still wedged. It splintered under the force of Felicity's endeavors, but the men would reach their goal first.

I don't know what I planned to do beyond my role in delivering the tray, but in the end I stood there a little stunned as it all played out anyway, a witness in the hall. Felicity was shrieking – ridiculous sounds of distress – and dishes were clattering as Tanen and Dashsund stepped all over them to force open the heaving door. Then it was open, the splintered remains of the arrow falling away from the crack, and I gained a dim visual of the interior. It was a tumultuous visual though, as Tanen and Felicity were now scuffling and Dashsund was going for Victoria in the corner. They met somewhere in the middle, and then Victoria was being smuggled over the threshold as Felicity gained ground in the fight, and the door was being forced shut again. It ground shut on the three of them, a haphazard mess of limbs wrestling their way back over the threshold – once, twice, three times. Demanding they get out yet not letting them get there.

There were voices, too; Felicity's mad raving and Tanen and Dashsund yelling over it all, to whom or about what I could not say. Did yelling do any good, in the middle of all this?

Victoria was finally dragged through the door. Dishes clattered again. Tanen hit the door with a powerful fist to allow him to extract his ankle – battered, no doubt – and Dashsund slipped quickly free as well, his hands on Victoria's arms. Then the door slammed for good, and we were locked out.

She really has gone mad.

I stared, stunned. I had had no idea what had brewed and festered beyond that door. There was a collective moment of astonishment as everyone recovered from the scene, and then a slump of spirit as it became obvious there were still other innocents in there. We had gotten out with only one.

Regaining his composure, Dashsund steered Victoria down the hall by her arms. She was rattled, and let herself be steered by his grasp.

It had been a good while since I had last seen her, and while I recognized her, she was much altered. Dark circles under her eyes, poor diet evident in her frame, and lack of bathing overall had slashed her beauty down to an ebb. She had been stunning before, and now she looked starved and haunted. I caught her eye, briefly, as she was coaxed toward me, and saw, however, that the spark was still in them. She would be restored.

She did not speak to me, though I'm sure she had to recognize me. Perhaps she did not know how to go about speaking to her slaves while they occupied these roles. We were her saviors, now, and this world we delivered her into, if governed by anyone, was governed by us. This was our territory, and she would not know how to handle herself here. She had not dealt with the outside world in years. She was naïve as a child. The term 'master' would take on new meaning for her – we were the masters of this world not because of birthright or designated title, but because we had mastered it. Plain and simple.

Stepping aside, I ushered them past me. As Dashsund ambled by with his charge, I could see how shaken she was. It roiled off of her in waves as she trembled.

Sending a glance my way, Tanen grabbed his bow from its prop against the wall and followed. I eyed his ankle as he descended the stairs before me, but if it was injured, he hid the limp. Collecting myself, I retrieved the tray, cleaning up the dishes as best I could with my bare hands, and followed them down.

Letta was downstairs in the kitchen to receive us. A cup of tea was in her hands instantly, proffered to the shaken Victoria. “My dear,” she said. “Sit.” There was a stool for the purpose, and Victoria was helped to sit upon it. She took the cup shakily, holding it more for stability, it seemed, than sustenance.

Wrapped in a vibrant quilt, Ombri appeared from the adjoining room and watched from the sidelines, curious.

“Have a sip,” Letta urged, then looked to Tanen and Dashsund. “No others?”

“Felicity has gone mad,” Dashsund replied. “We're lucky we got back out ourselves. She guards the status of that door most fiercely.”

Hiding her dismay, Letta turned back to Victoria. “Are you well other than the fright?”

Victoria managed an uneven nod. “But Lesleah – she's ill. Taken with fever. Felicity won't see it, even though Les lies on the floor. She says we are better off, all of us, behind that barricade. That all the worse things out here will not hesitate to devour us, given the chance. Even after Mother and...” She could not say it, and, unable to finish, trailed off.

Enda scurried in with a shawl then, one I had not seen in a long time. I wondered where she had scared it up, but she appeared to have been at her wits' end looking everywhere for something. We were at the end of our supplies providing for all of these bodies. My Albino instinct told me it was high time to find a more fruitful haunt in the city.

“Well,” Letta said. “I suppose you've read the papers same as she has?”

Victoria nodded. It was a fragile nod, somehow, as if nods could be such. “It was clear enough there was some validity to her warnings. But it does not take a philosopher to realize one who hides behind a door and gets waited on day in and day out knows essentially nothing of survival in this world. I could not conform to that leadership. It did not rest well.”

“Smart girl,” Dashsund murmured, approving.

“How long has she been like this?” I spoke for the first time. All eyes turned to me. Then, I did think I saw recognition in Victoria's eyes, now that she was forced to address me.

“It's been in the making for some time. A year, perhaps. You could see the paranoia taking hold. The obsession cropped up a number of weeks ago. Since Mother and Father were taken she's been positively overbearing. But she doesn't acknowledge that they were taken – or that they were ever there.”

“What of Christopher and Vandah?” Letta wanted to know.

“She dotes on Christopher. He's like her pet. And she doesn't dare mistreat Vandah because she is the only one to take care of her up there.”

“And Lesleah's illness? A fever, you say? How long has that spanned?”

“Two weeks. She lapsed in and out of it, at first, but now it's peaked.”

Letta glanced at Dashsund, but he shook his head. “There's no getting in there again.”

Ducking her head over her tea, Victoria seemed to pretend she hadn't heard, or was ignoring the implications.

I sighed.

“Well, minda,” Letta went on practically, “complications are a part of the language that is spoken in Dar'on these days. We deal with them as best we can, and if there is no dealing with them, we make a way for ourselves through other courses. It is a hard reality, but it is solid in its determination.”

Victoria's eyes flitted up, non-committal, and I could see it (for it was obvious): she knew nothing of determination. We had saved her, perhaps even welcomed her, at this point, but how could she survive? In a world of holding her own, she was a lost doe. It struck me then, too; the extent of it. This girl did not even know how to feed herself. Could she even serve her own bowl?

Suddenly I wondered how she could possibly even stand a chance, and our rescue mission went to pot where it had yet seemed a fresh success. But the look on her face was so pitiful, fraught with the pressures of not only holding her own for her sake but living up to standard for the rest of our peace of mind... I could not think about condemning her so swiftly. She was too pitiful to condemn.

I sighed again, inwardly, and turned away – but it was with every intention of helping her along, however much of a sufferance that would be. I did not know how we were going to do it, but it was what we did. We had acquired more stray puppies as of late...

Who was going to feed them? It didn't seem to matter. We had a calling, and Serbaens were sensitive about these things. I could swear they turned everything into a calling. But there was no dissuading them, when they heard it, and it would appear I had caught some semblance of the bug. The loyalty I felt for Victoria was inconvenient and, after seeing her tonight, seemingly somewhat ill-placed – she was a shell of a creature to earn any great sentiments from anyone – but I could not deny its empowering tickle. Something in the past had sparked it, and I felt for her.

And so the downstairs brood expanded a member, and Felicity's reign grew darker and heavier over our heads. But it was home, dark or otherwise, and great sentiments, however misplaced, still lived under its roof.