The Garden of Darkness

“But gold.”


“How about going now?” said Jem.

They tightened the wheels on their little wagons and set off for the gold (or yellow) house. They could really do with a fruitful scavenge—it seemed as if they had eaten almost everything in Fallon and were running out of places to explore for food.

Clare noticed that Mirri was looking towards the wood. As she followed Mirri’s line of sight, she caught a flash of blue moving through the trees.

“Why is she following us?” asked Clare.

“She likes to be near us,” Mirri said. “She doesn’t mean any harm.”

“Maybe. But we need to tell Jem she’s here.” As Clare did so, Mirri looked at her sorrowfully, as if she’d committed some kind of small betrayal.

The Cured-in-the-blue-dress came no closer, and they dropped the subject.

“I hope there’s no one dead in the house,” said Mirri as they rejoined the road.

“The dead won’t bother you,” Clare said.

“That’s what Jem says. Right, Jem? It’s not as if they went walking.”

“They’re re-incarnated.” Sarai said. Then she frowned. “But that’s hard to explain. My mother could explain it really well.”

Mirri and Sarai now lagged behind Clare and Jem, who were trying to remember an old movie they had each seen.

“I don’t remember the title,” said Jem. “But it was about the Nazis. The Nazis took away this old professor for saying Aryan and non-Aryan blood was the same.”

“I sort of remember. The professor had two sons, right? And one was sort of good and one was bad—but they were both Nazis.”

“I don’t know how you can be a sort-of-good Nazi. But I do remember that at the end Jimmy Stewart and what’s-her-name try and ski across the border to escape.”

“Right,” said Clare. “Into Switzerland.”

“Austria.”

“Right. But they shoot her. Right?”

“Right. She dies,” said Jem.

“I remember now. At the end, one of the brothers—”

“The sort-of-good Nazi brother—”

“Runs off into the snow. I actually cried at the end. The movie’s ancient. I saw it on the Classic Movie Channel when I was supposed to be doing homework.”

“And I thought you were a straight A student.”

“Oh, I was.”

They could see the house now. Clare, who had only heard the description, was taken aback.

“It really is yellow,” she said. “Mirri had me convinced it was gold.”

“It’s gold when the light catches it,” Jem said.

“All right. For Mirri we’ll call it gold.”

“See how it looks like a skull?” Mirri said.

Clare didn’t like the house. She noted the configuration of the windows, and she understood why Mirri had said it looked like a skull. The gold house dwarfed its ruined garden, and time, Clare saw, was hard at work on the building. Morning glories curled up the banister leading to the porch; small plants were growing out of the gutters.

Then Clare looked away only to see that the Cured-in-a-blue-dress was no longer hiding but was standing in front of a tree. Jem saw her as well.

“She’s never come so close,” Jem said, and as he spoke the Cured-in-the-blue-dress slipped behind the tree and was gone.

“So much for that,” said Sarai.

“It would be nice if she were gone for good,” said Jem.

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Mirri.

They turned their attention to the house.

“Well,” said Jem. “Here I go. I’ll call to you if it’s okay.”

“If you think I’m letting you go in there without me and Bear, you’re wrong.” Clare said.

“It won’t take me a minute to check it out.”

“You need someone at your back. I don’t like this place.”

“All right. But not Sarai and Mirri.”

Clare and Jem went in together, and Bear followed. For an instant, Clare thought of Michael. Michael would have never let her go in with him.

The door opened into a short hallway that led to a wide room where patterned blue wallpaper seemed to dance across the walls—in contrast to the slight odor of human decay. Everywhere there were display cases filled with butterflies. Each butterfly was transfixed by a pin that gleamed silver, as if a dot of mercury had fallen on its back. Wings glittered vermilion, orange, deep blue and green. Some of the butterflies had enormous shapes like eyes on their wings. Off the living room they discovered a study. The head of a doe sprouted out of the blue wallpaper above the desk. A buck with small antlers stared down at them glassily from another wall. Pairs of antlers hung above the fireplace.

“It’s a deer mausoleum,” said Jem.

“Let’s find the kitchen,” said Clare.

“And then the cellar. That’s where they put the good stuff. Pretty often. You don’t have to come.”

“Forget it. I’m in.”

The kitchen was filthy. Dirty broken dishes overflowed the sink and covered part of the floor. Bear started licking some brown stuff off a plate, and then turned away as if in disgust. Forks, knives and spoons looked as if they had been hurled at random.