The handle is recessed into the floor, fitted with a cartoonishly large padlock, and there are symbols carved into the wood. It feels like discovering a clue in a video game, a giant glowing arrow inviting me to come closer, dig deeper, learn more. I lay the rug flat again and leave the pantry half-cleaned. I sing to myself all that afternoon, about dreams and thunder and old houses burning down.
On Sunday I wander up to the third floor looking for a stepladder and wind up in a high-ceilinged room full of armchairs and shelves and more books than the public library.
It’s the sort of place I didn’t know existed outside of movie sets, all mullioned windows and oak paneling and leather-bound spines. I see folklore and mythology, collections of fairy tales and children’s rhymes, horror novels and history books and fat Latin dictionaries with half the pages dog-eared. My stomach twists with longing and resentment and wonder.
I snatch a book off the shelf, not even pausing to read the title.
It’s a super old edition of Ovid, written in that awful verse where everything rhymes and “over” is spelled “o’er.” The book falls open to a page titled “The House of Sleep,” followed by a long passage about a drowsing god in a cave. The word “Lethe” is underlined more times than seems strictly sane, the page so deeply indented it’s torn a little. In the margin beside it someone has written a list of Latin names: Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon, Lethe,and then: a sixth river?
And I know without knowing how—unless it’s something in the stark shape of the lettering or the black of the ink—that E. Starling wrote this note.
A throat clears behind me. I jump so badly I drop the book.
Arthur Starling is watching me, Bond-villain-ly, from the shadows of a wingback armchair. There are dozens of books piled around him, bristling with sticky notes, and a stack of neatly labeled folders. Tsa-me-tsa and Pearl Starling, 1906–1929. Ulysses Starling, 1930–1943. Etsuko Starling, 1943–1955.9
Arthur has a thick yellow pad of paper balanced on his knee. His left pinky is silvery gray with graphite, and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow. His wrists look stronger than I would expect from someone whose main hobbies are skulking and frowning, the bones wrapped in stringy muscle and scarred flesh.
“Oh, hi!” I reshelve Ovid and give him an innocent wave. “What you got there?”
His face twists. “Nothing.”
I tilt my head to see the page better. There are notes at the top, tally marks and dates mostly, but the lower half of the page has been overtaken by crosshatching and graphite. “Looks pretty good from here. Is that the sycamore out front?”
He flips the pad over, glowering.
“Are those tattoos?” There are dark lines of ink slinking out from under the rolled cuffs of his shirt, tangling with the jagged lines of scars. I can’t make out any images, but the shapes remind me of the carvings on the front door: eyes and open palms, crosses and spirals.
Arthur rolls his sleeves back down and buttons them pointedly. “I’m paying you for a specific purpose, Miss Opal.” His voice is frigid. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning something?”
That night I leave Starling House with a pair of candlesticks and a fountain pen rolled up in my hoodie, because fuck him.
At least I don’t have to see him very often. Whole weeks pass without an exchange of words longer than “Good morning” when he unlocks the door, and “Well, I’m headed out” as I leave. Every now and then I take a wrong turn and catch a glimpse of hunched shoulders and uncombed hair, but usually the only sign that the house is occupied are the occasional thumps and murmurs from the attic above me, and the slow accretion of dishes in the sink. I might find a fresh pot of coffee or a soup pot still simmering on the stove, smelling wholesome and home-cooked in a way that’s completely foreign to me, but I don’t touch any of it, thinking vaguely of burrows and mounds and what happens to the idiots who eat the fairy king’s food.
Time already passes strangely in Starling House. Sometimes the hours slouch by, and I find myself indulging in little-girl fantasies to occupy myself (I’m Cinderella, forced to scrub the grout lines by my evil stepmother; I’m Beauty, trapped in an enchanted castle by a Beast with a face like a crow’s skull). Sometimes the hours skitter away into grimy corners and stained baseboards, and I look up from a gray bucket of water to find the sun hanging near the horizon, and realize the house has swallowed another day, another week.
The only reliable measurement of time is the state of the place.
By the end of February the first floor is almost livable. There’s still a thriving population of spiders and mice, and I can’t do anything about the hunks of plaster that sometimes fall from the ceilings, or the way the floors all seem to slant toward some central point, as if the whole house is collapsing in on itself, but walking down the halls no longer feels like touring a crypt. The tabletops gleam and the windowpanes wink. The rugs are red and blue and deep green, rather than gray, and the smell of bleach and tile cleaner has driven back the black smell of mildew.
The house seems to appreciate all the attention. The exterior is still stained and gloomy, but the vines are greening faintly, supple and alive, and there are fresh bird’s nests in the eaves. The floor still provides an entire symphony of groans and creaks, but I swear it’s no longer in a minor key.
Sometimes I catch myself humming along with it, weirdly content. Mostly it’s just the money, which in my experience will solve all ninety-nine of your problems, but it’s also Starling House itself: the way the walls feel like cupped palms around me, the way the doorknob fits in my hand, the absurd, childish feeling that I belong there.
EIGHT
By the middle of March the sparrows are bathing in the potholes and the daffodils are peeking cautiously through the matted leaves. It’s still cold, but the world smells muddy and awake, and I’m inspired to drag the rugs and couch cushions outside for an airing. I prop them against the biggest, oldest sycamore and beat them with my new broomstick until dust fogs the woods and sweat stings my skin, despite the chill.
I leave the cushions to air out and head back up the steps, kicking aside the leaves and curled-up grubs. It’s only when I reach for the doorknob that I realize it’s locked itself behind me.
I pound on the door a few times, annoyed and embarrassed and wishing very much that I was wearing my hoodie rather than just a bleach-spotted Bible study T-shirt. The wind pokes icy fingers through the holes in the collar. I knock again.
After an amount of time that makes it clear Arthur isn’t coming—either because he can’t hear me or because he’s a prick—I get more than annoyed. God, I hate the cold. It makes me think of the river closing over my head, the stars vanishing, the world ending. I haven’t gone swimming in eleven years.10
Classic PTSD,Mr. Cole called it, as if that helped at all.
I stomp and swear at the house. I try my gate key in the lock, but it won’t turn. I remind the house in a wheedling voice of all the hard work I’ve been doing on its behalf, feeling stupid for talking to a house but not stupid enough to stop. There’s a shiver in my jaw, as if my teeth want to chatter, and the wind has turned my sweat clammy. The door remains serenely shut.
I flex my left hand. The cut is mostly healed now, and it seems a shame to split it back open, so I bite my lower lip until I taste salt and meat. My fingertips come away red.
I’m about to smear my own blood across the lock like some ancient cultist blessing a household when I hear boots on the steps behind me. I drop my broomstick and spin around to find Arthur Starling displaying his particular habit of turning up when I’m doing something especially embarrassing.
He’s wearing a long dark coat of the kind I’ve only seen in spy movies and on the covers of pulpy mystery novels, his hair stuffed messily beneath a high collar, his face flushed with fresh air. He’s looking down at me the way I look at the hellcat when she gets her claws stuck in the screen, as if he can’t understand how he got saddled with such a piteous, hapless creature.