The Something Beneath the Stairs, No. 2

Thanks, again, for all of the lovely reviews on the last bit.

Ah, and a handy-dandy link to the first section, in case there's any inconsistencies or other forms of vileness: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?t=16507

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Mr. Willoughby, Regarding the Boy Next Door

I’ve been here atop this hill for eighty years.

I could tell you about the way the water licks the side of the hill at spring tide and is perfectly straight at neap; about the priests and heathens next door and the Starkweather murders in town. About babies born and babies buried, ships capsized and Spanish gold, and all you want to hear is about that fool boy with the sleepy eyes, like a cat’s?

Bah, I never could quite understand the curiosity about that family- they were nothing but foreigners, strange folks with their heavy tongues and English that sounded like a fish flopped up on a shore. And that boy? He was always hurting himself, doing odd things like climbing into trees and walking out to the edge of Solomon’s Lick, where the waves would knock him senseless. A regular ape.

That daughter though- she was something. The most beautiful creature eyes could behold. I had it in my mind to marry her, but some other fool foreigner beat me to the Church- swept her right off her pretty little feet, he did.

…ah, all right. The boy. That day, he came walking up the hillside to their little house in the side of the knoll, dragging his foot behind him like a bum. I see it’s tied with a woman’s scarf- a real nice one, indigo with fancy weaving upon it.

“What’d you do this time, boy?” I yell, and he stops- looks at me like the fool foreigner he was.

“I tripped on a rock and missed,” he says, pointing to his foot, like it’s the most natural thing.

I sputter something about him and walk back into the house to fix myself some tea, the real strong stuff the Chinamen enjoy.

Here’s the thing about my house, see- the windows are positioned such that the other houses down the hill can be seen. I’m no peeper, but I’m a curious sort. Like that boy, of course, but with a strong American mind instead of porridge up in there.

And there, in the window down the hill, is the mother, yelling some gibberish and waving the scarf about in her arms, and the beautiful daughter holding the son I wanted so dearly. The boy stands there, a sticky red spot growing beneath his foot, spreading across the wood like good wine spilt.

That’s when I went hunting. There’s ducks in the pond to the north; big fat ones, too. I’m not some fool foreigner- watching people bleed in their kitchen’s ain’t something I’d elect to do.

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The Second Account

Annabelle is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.

Her back aches so, and the ropes beneath her cradle her, swaddling her body within several layers of thick blankets. She drifts in and out of sleep, awoken only by distant seagull cries and the peals of boats’ horns.

There are a lot of things she should be doing- cleaning, studying, reading, praying- a list that runs through her mind several times, the ‘ings’ sounding more and more revolting with each repetition.

Before long, there is a knock at the door.

Annabelle rouses herself and sits at the top of the stairs, waiting for the Aunts to greet the visitor. The front door is opened.

It is nearly night outside- a humid summer dusk, wrought with the noise of crickets and reeds and cicadas burrowed in the dirt of the hills. “Hello,” says a voice- a male voice.

“How can we assist you, young man?”

“This is for your daughter, ma’am,” he says. Annabelle peers around the banister to see the boy with the cat eyes, holding a paper package wrapped roughly with twine. “She did me a great kindness, yesterday.”

He’s barefoot, the heel with the gash wrapped in new, clean bandages- perhaps from the doctor.

The boy pulls back the twine to reveal two pies, warm and fresh from the scent, and a few sticky pastries unknown to Annabelle. “Did you make these?” asks one of the aunts, smiling.

A pause. “…no. My mum made me bring them, actually.”

The Aunts’ faces fall in unison, and he is hasty to explain, “I would like to thank her in person, though- is she around?”

“Why, yes,” they say, grins reapplied like faded rouge. “We’ll make tea, and we shall eat your mother’s lovely pies all together.”

“That sounds excellent.”

He is quick to invite himself inside, and Annabelle leaps back into her room in order to avoid being seen. Her heart is beating audibly; when she presses her palm to her chest, her ribcage undulates ever so slightly. “Annabelle!” comes the call up the stairs, sweet and harmonized, like a choir.

She composes herself, smoothes her skirt, and steps down the stairs gently. The normally placid wood is suddenly slippery and dangerous, and threatens to send her flying, face-first, into the wake of the cat-eyes boy below.

The Aunts have disappeared into the kitchen, and cat-eyes boy is looking at Annabelle strangely.

“So, you’re Annabelle, miss?”

She puts on the false smile that the Aunts use quite often, and nods vigorously. “Yes.”

He extends his hand, cracked and weathered from salt water. “I'm Nicholas.”

Another pause. “I'm rather sorry about yesterday- I shouldn’t have taken your scarf. My mum went berserk, honestly, thinking I stole it from you…it was all too nice, too nice a thing to have been done for me.”

“It’s a scarf,” Annabelle blurts, avoiding the careful, planned answers she had been dreaming up. “It really, really doesn’t matter.”

Nicholas shrugs, looking down at his swathed feet. “It was an incredibly nice thing to do.”

She is temporary stunned, perhaps hypnotized by his strange eyes- from a new angle; they are utterly new, changed. They are harsh-looking, with sharp edges and iris dulled to black. “So…” he says, quietly. “Do you think you could explain to Mum that you did it on principle, and not because I stole it from you? It’d save my sorry arse from a week of Confinement.”

Annabelle stares at him, shocked. “My foot isn’t the only thing that needs rescue, see,” he continues, grinning.

His irreverence is refreshing, she thinks. He is barefoot, hopelessly honest and brazenly uses words like ‘arse’ in polite conversation- the sort of person that is secretly thrilling to Annabelle.

She leads him into the dining room, where there are already six seats set. There are always six seats set- one for Annabelle, two for the aunts. The three seats left over had once belonged to Annabelle’s parents, and one of the Aunts’ fiancée, passed during the Revolution. Nicholas chooses her father’s seat- the one farthest left- and gingerly places his napkin in his lap.

The kettle begins to shriek from the kitchen, and soon the Aunts arrive with a platter piled high with tea and saucers and all of the desserts Nicholas had brought, along with a few left over from the last night’s treat.

“Help yourself, dear,” the Aunts say to Nicholas, politely sipping at their cups. They take nothing.

He looks panicked, and stares at the mountain of food as though it is a dead crab upon shore- repulsive and frightening, yet fascinating at the same time.

Annabelle takes a slice of pie and nibbles the end. It is sweet, made with both cherries and apple and another fruit she can’t identify. Nicholas follows her lead, and together, they eat a mere half a pie.

“My, would you look at the time?” one of the Aunts says, pulling a small clock on a chain from within the folds of her skirt. “It is time for us to go up to bed- now Annabelle, be a good hostess and see that Nicholas returns home safely.”

They turn their teacups upside down upon the napkins, and disappear up the stairs.

Nicholas’ jaw quivers, as though it is going to fall. “It’s eight-thirty.”

Annabelle shrugs. “They don’t like to be up late- they like to be see the sunrise upon the beach.”

He is insistent. “It’s eight-thirty.”

The panic slamming about within her chest has long subsided, and she picks up his empty plate without hesitation. “You can go, if you wish. I’ll be up much later, but I shan’t be doing anything of interest.”

“What shall you be doing?” he asks, following her into the kitchen.

She gestures to the pile of plates and platters gathered within the basin. “Washing.”

He sidles up the edge of the great tub and shoos her away from it with a flick of his wrist. “I’ll do them, don’t worry. Go sit.”

She begins to protest, but he begins to dip the napkins in the rainwater that collects in the tub from the roof, drenching them and wringing them out and hanging them to dry on the cord in the middle of the room. “My sister’s a complete twit, see- when she was looking for a husband, she didn’t want her hands dirtied, so I learned how to do all of her jobs. Mum just makes me do them out of habit, now.”

Annabelle merely sits, slumped against the wall, knocking her knees together and feeling wholly useless. “Don’t do my chores, then, if you loathe them so.”

“I don’t mind doing yours; it’s my sister I mind.” He shakes water off of his hands, and the droplets land on the hard metal with soft lapping noises.

One by one, the dishes are scraped and soaped and dried, and eventually put to rest in neat piles on top of the rickety sewing table in the corner. He then leans against it, resting, a yawn forming in the back of his throat. He covers his mouth, and Annabelle slowly rises.

They stand, staring at different things. “I think I’m going to go home, Annabelle,” he says, smiling wearily. “Thank you, very much.”

Nicholas’ bare feet pad across the wood floor, but just in front of the doorway he stops, and turns to do something highly irreverent and secretly thrilling.

He clasps Annabelle’s wrists with his hands, perhaps too gently- awkwardly, almost. Both of sets of hands tremble as he leans forward, pressing his lips against hers, perhaps too gently.

Awkwardly, almost.

Annabelle closes her eyes and sinks back against the wall, praying fervently as his footsteps fade out and the front door finally clicks shut.