In The Chamber, 5, and final
Tuesday, February 24, 2004I lay, almost asleep against his shoulder. I coaxed and charmed him until he stopped being mad at me, and now I listened to him breathing in sleep, my cheek warm against his bare skin.
I tried to let myself doze off, determined to continue not thinking. Not thinking about the fact that breakfast that morning had consisted of chocolate covered cherries and green beer. Of the fact that sometimes I found a scuff mark here, a bit of dust there. It was as if the house spirit, for I had given up on believing in servants I’d never seen or heard, was getting tired.
Or perhaps was stretched thin, somehow. Did I make much more work for it? Or was its resources stretched by something else?
I had managed to sweep my mind clean, and could feel myself just on the edge of sleep induced placidity when my husband sat up in bed.
“No!” he yelled, and I fancied I saw a shadow move across the window. “You will not have her.” His words came out as an agonized groan. The lights came on in the room, too bright. I blinked until I could see/
“Joaquin?” I whispered, hugging myself.
He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “You.” He crawled across the bed, until his face was an inch from mine. “You touched the door. I saw it.”
“W...when?”
He pulled away, slightly. “Did you. Touch. The door?”
“Yes.” my half breathed word was covered by his growl of frustration. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of bed, half dragging me behind him. The doors opened before we reached them as we raced down the hall, slamming against the walls. The etched glass doors of the library shattered as they hit the walls. A wind gathered around us as we walked, cold and clammy. He, naked, did not seem to feel the cold, but I, in my thinnest shift, felt it like a blade across my skin. He was muttering something furiously under his breath, words I could not catch. The kitchen door opened, and he pulled me closer to him.
“Women, women you’re all the same.” He spat out.
“I did not open the door.” I said calmly. “I did not put the key to the lock. Because I love you and respect your wishes.”
The kitchen torches lit, and I saw that there were tears on his face. “He's in your head now. It’s only a matter of time.” He threw me into the kitchen and I caught myself on the table just as he slammed the door shut.
He did not come back.
Here is how I lived for two days in the kitchen. During the night, the dark, I huddled in a corner, under a table, scared witless, because, you see, I finally could see the servants. They were shadow against shadow, movements that flickered in and out of the corner of my eye. A flash of phantom knife here, a flicker of peelings falling there, things didn’t float or look as if they were being moved about by invisible hands so much as appeared when I wasn’t looking.
The first morning I had, by some miracle, managed to fall asleep and when I woke I saw a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea placed on the floor beside me. The kitchen itself, a place of perfect order the one time I’d bothered to look at it, was itself somehow dilapidated. There was dust, and one of the widow panes was cracked, a small square of glass broken out. The dry sink was rimed with filth, the pump disused looking. Neither the oatmeal or the tea had any taste. True, it’s hard for oatmeal to have any real taste, and when one is upset food tastes like wet parchment anyway, but still, the complete absence of flavor, the nothing that sat on my tongue, was disturbing.
There was a blanket, half mangled, but clean, draped on one chair. It had not been there the night before. “Thank you.” I said out loud, before wrapping myself in it. I stuck my head through the largest of the holes, then ran my fingers up and down the horribly scarred table. It was filthy, and so I looked for a bucket, and worked the water pump. Nothing.
“If you get this pump to work, I’ll clean the kitchen. Fair trade?” There was silence, but a few moments later, when I tried the pump, it gurgled deep inside itself. I worked it until finally water, rusted but useable, came out. A few more pumps and the water ran clean.
When he comes for me, at least he’ll find me useful, I thought. Once in awhile I checked the door carefully, just in case he’s unlocked it and left, but it was stuck fast. I attacked starting with the table.
In some ways I wish I hadn’t.
The kitchen tells a story. I can not tell you what it is, but even I have an idea.
The filth covered axe shoved under the sink. The table, covered in dark brown blotches that look like rust in the scores the axe made, where the wood was fresher and lighter. The corner of the table was sheered off by the axe. I found it laying underneath.
The blotches are every where, layer upon layer. The stone of the floor, the counter top, the bowl of the dry sink, are all stained. Some of it comes up dark flaky brown on my cloth, clotted with dust.
The big, heavy fireplace is perfectly clean except for a light layer of dust, and the lack of ash just makes me feel sicker.
“Why did you put me here, Joaquin?” I opened the pantry, fearing what I’d find. Save for one smeared blotch in the middle of the floor, the place was clean. Food...jars of preserved things, vegetables, smoked meats hung in perfect order. This place was clean. He put me where the food was, I realized, but why? So that I would not go hungry, of course, but...did he mean me to stay here until he came for me? Did he think something would happen to the house spirit, and I would have to fend for myself?
No lunch came, nor did dinner. The sun light faded and was not replaced. I fended for myself with cheese and meat I cut with a small sharp knife. I drank water, and wondered what the new day would bring, praying that the night would bring nothing. My prayers were answered, mostly, though in the distance I could hear anguished howling, punctuated sometimes by some thing shattering.
I slept on the counter in the pantry that night, wrapped in my ragged blanket. The knife stayed in my hand.
The next day breakfast was laid out on the table, thin slices of white and yellow cheese alternated in a many petaled flower pattern with sliced of pale green fruit. A pitcher of pale peach juice sat in the center. “That’s pretty!” I said, yet when I reached out to pluck a piece of cheese from the display it crumbled to dust in my hand.
Breakfast: dried fruit, a little smoked ham, water.
I cleaned up, then scrubbed on the walls, ignoring the spots of irregular brown that splattered them.
The night was silent.
Still, Joaquin did not come.
The next morning a pitcher of boiling water was set out for me. It remained hot as I prepared a little tea. I ate from a jar of stale little cookies and stared at the door. My keys were on my dresser, yet even so it didn’t look like you could lock or unlock the door from this side. In fact, there was a sort of bar set across the door, that pulled back when the latch on the other side was turned.
The axe was in the corner, cleaned of the worst of the mess, it’s cream colored handle spotted with many finger shaped prints. She hefted it, a sense of dizziness coming over her. She went to the door and lifted it to swing, and the kitchen came into focus. She turned and looked behind her.
There were four of them, dressed in the same colors, serviceable gray for servants, a bright blue for the family’s crest. A man, his haggard looks belying the strength in his scarred hands...the hostler, she thought, and a glance at the heavy boots proved that he was the one who took care of the stables. A young boy with dark hair, his ears sticking out like saucers. A flat cheasted, scarecrow of a girl, her dull straw hair almost all hidden underneath her tightly drawn scarf. An older woman, her face like leather, her hair like wool. They all stood perfectly still, hands folded in front of them, as if lined up for inspection.
The hostler’s eyes lit up like flame. “Be bold,” he said, it was almost fatherly, the way he looked at her. The flames dulled, and he disappeared, the fire passing on to the boy.
“Be bold,” he said earnestly. The fire passed on. He, too, was gone.
“Be bold,” the girl said, a flicker of flirtation in it.
Now only the housekeeper was left. She stared at me for a long time. I recognized pity in her eyes, along with the flicker of flame. “Be bold,” she said. She started to say something else, but she, like the others, faded.
I took the axe to the bar.
When I walked out I half expected to see Joaquin, drawn by the noise. No one sat at the table, though a book and some dishes lay scattered upon it. The food looked like offerings left for mice, so old and desiccated it looked. I looked down at the axe in my hand, then turned around and put it back in the kitchen. This was not a fight for it.
I put the blanket around myself like a stole, and back straight, I marched out of the dining room.
She was beautiful, the woman who stood near the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the rail. She wore a white dress, beaded and embroidered lavishly in red, and a velvet coat that pooled onto the pale marble below. She wore her rich black hair pulled slightly up, graced by a ruby tiara. She had a chocker of rubies, and rubies dripped from her wrists and from her elbows. As I got closer one ruby drop fell to the steps and splashed, and as I got closer I realized that the line around her neck, her elbows, a couple of her fingers and wrists were all made of blood. The embroidery became splashes of blood, and she dripped, calmly staring at me, on the marble of the white stairs. The only rubies she in fact wore were on her ears and in the crown.
I stood only a foot from her. “Hello,” I said.
Her mouth almost lifted. Her expressional almost mocking, amused, but only slightly, as if she had not the energy to gather any more.
I walked up the steps, scraping the wall to put as much space between me and wife number one as possible. Only her eyes moved.
“But not too bold.” She said. I looked at her, and realized that her hair was not half pulled up, but shorn on one side, as if it had been between the blade and the flesh. I kept going, and her head turned. “Lest your heart’s blood grow cold.” And then she laughed. “God knows mine did.” She fell to pieces then, whatever had been holding her together vanished, and she lay in a pile, her head rolling down the few steps and coming to a stop near the door.
I managed to make it to my bedroom without further incident, where I began to pull my warmest dress out of the cupboard, then stopped. Instead I pulled out the dress I’d married him in, and slowly, bit by bit, dressed myself in my finest things. My most beautiful jewelry, the intricately embroidered shawl. I decorated my hair as finely as I could, and applied the most carefully enhancing layer of make up I could. My fingers twitched to put on the heavy waling boots in case I decided to run for it, but knowing they’d look amiss, I grabbed my soft slippers instead.
When I was done I looked just like the woman he’d married.
The library was a mess. The dome was shattered, books scattered everywhere. I crunched and slithered through the room until I got to the study. The painting had been ripped from the mantle and thrown aside. In the direct light from the sun, I realized that the hunters had the faces and hands of foxes, and that the creature on the spit was a man. “We’ll have to burn that,” I muttered, and made my way back, and back up the stairs.
He was sitting in the middle of the music room, the wind blowing in and twanging across half broken strings. He looked up at me slowly. “There you are,” he said, off hand, as if I’d wandered off somewhere.
“You look like you smashed your face into a glass cabinet.” I said, and he did. Cross crosses of scratches covered his face and hands. Three lines that looked like claw marks stuck out amount the brutal purple collar of flesh that decorated his throat. Dried blood pooled in the shell of one ear.
His eyes looked out into the distance. He didn’t seem to even see me. “I think,” he said, after awhile, “That you should go and visit your cousin. It will do you good, to be away for awhile.”
“I don’t want to.”
He eyes focused, and he looked at me, with that searing look he used to grant me. “I was not making a suggestion.”
I stepped forward, wanting to keep his attention, wanting to keep him. “We should both go. Together. It doesn’t matter where. You can run your business fine anywhere.”
His eyes unfocused again, and he drifted away from me. “I can’t leave. Not for long.”
“Why not?”
“I am the house.” he said, and then buried his face in his hands and laughed, a soft, angry chuckle that was half sob, half acceptance.
I placed my hand on his head. “I really do love you,” I said, then sighed. “Right then. It’s up to me.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked me as I left.
“You’ll see.” I said, “Lock door.” And it did as I bid it.
The axe was where I left it, and so was wife number one. I shuddered both times I past her, and hoped she’d be gone, when I got back.
The door was where I’d left it, but it was different. The wood was scratched and splintered, and some one had written nasty words around the frame with a nail or a knife. The voices were loud inside my head, the whispered beating in time with the drum of my heart, but they did not need to urge me to take the key to the lock. The door opened slowly.
The odor was nearly over whelming, death and animal mixed together. things lay scattered everywhere, balled up and stained dresses of bright cloth lay in piles...sapphire and ruby, one of them a wedding dress. Gnawed bones mixed with shattered plates. Next to the room’s only window, Joaquin stood, dressed in perfect black mourning, polished boots and starched white cuffs. He turned to me, shutting the book he held in his hands with a snap. A fine mist of fur covered the back of his hands, and climbed up his neck, surrounding his face in a soft fuzz. His finger nails were quite longer than he was in the habit of keeping them, and his teeth were very sharp when he smiled.
“Well, then,” I said. “I am pleased to finally be meeting the rest of the family.”
He smirked at me. “I knew you would come.” He threw the book aside. “They always do.” He walked closer, and my hand tightened on the axe. He rested his paws on the back of a chair. “Tell me, what did you expect to find? More fine jewels, more fair wonders? What did you expect to find in this room that made all of the other treasures seem so inadequate?”
“I found what I expected.” I said. “A monster who preys on the innocent, who enjoys chopping up the servants just because he can. I revile you, and I want you out of my house, and away from my husband.”
“But I am the house,” he said, feigning shock.
“It is time, then, for some remodeling.” I hefted the axe and struck the wall. I was rewarded by a pained scream that was barely muffled by my own as the shock of pain ran up my elbow, but not from the monster who I shared the room with.
He smiled, all his sharp teeth glittering. “He came out first,” he said, “and he’ll die before me.”
I pulled the axe from the wall.
“Appreciate that.” Joaquin, the real Joaquin, was leaning on the door frame, one hand holding his shoulder.
“What are you? What is he?”
He straightened slowly, and came towards me. “My father was a man,” he said, reaching for the axe. I resisted his tug on the handle before letting it slide from my fingers. “My mother was a fox.”
“They lured women here,” his twin continued, “to feed the family.” He ran his eyes down my form, and I could feel his gaze is if it were his tongue, tasting and testing and seeing where he’d like to begin eating.
“Is this true?”
Joaquin was looking at the balled up wedding dress. “Yes,” he said.
“But you don’t look like him.” I said, “I mean, you do, but...”
“He shaves,” his brother sneered. “And he leaves you to hunt game in the deep woods. What do you hunt now? Chickens? A stray goat? While I stayed locked up in this room, forgotten like yesterday’s meal.”
“If that’s so, how have your survived?”
“It’s the house. We are the house, the house takes care of us.” Joaquin’s hand flexed on the axe. “There must always be two.”
I tucked my hand in my pocket. The small kitchen knife was there. “I am your flesh.” I said to him. “We swore before God.” He looked at me, and I tried to read his eyes.
“You’ve lived too long with this. You must choose.”
“He can’t choose!” his brother snarled. “His choices were taken from him long ago. Without the house, he dies. Without me, he dies.”
“Because you are the house?”
“That’s right,” He snarled, his fingers ripping open his coat.
“I have a message for you, from the house.” I said, pulling the knife out. “It doesn’t want you anymore.”
Joaquin brushed past me. “I’ll go first,” he said.
Of course, I must have lived, or I would not be telling you this.
The clue was that the house showed itself to me, when I picked up the axe and proved that I was willing to take things into my hands. It showed me the servants, murdered so long ago by my in-laws, and when I struck it, it hurt my shoulder as it hurt Joaquin’s.
I would like to leave the house, sometimes, for I no longer can for more than a few weeks, and I begin to pine, I feel weak and hungry and no amount of food fills me. I see ghosts...the servants at their work, bound to me and the house, and unwilling to go even if I could free them. Sometimes I see wife number one, I see a woman I call sapphire earrings, and both of them shoot daggers at Joaquin, who seems never to notice. Once I saw a woman with wild red curls, beads of amber twined about her throat, and she stood behind Joaquin’s chair, petting the air above his head. When she looked up at me I saw that they shared the same eyes, and she smiled at me, her teeth sharp. Her ear’s twitched and she bounded off, a bush of tail ruining the line of her loose colorful skirts.
“Don’t you see them?” I asked.
“God forbid that it should ever be so,” he shuddered, and I decided not to discuss it again. Even when a man, with hair so black that it was blue, the stubble from his late day beginnings of a beard making his skin cobalt was awaiting for me at the landing, cleaning his nails with a small sharp knife not unlike the one I carried. He gave me a look filled with lust and menace, and took a step forward.
“If you don’t behave yourself, I can have you kicked out, and then you’ll be even less than you are now.” I did not look back to see what he made of these things, but in the kitchen the housekeeper gave me a pleased wink.
I am heavy with child, now, and Joaquin thinks it will be twins. He does not look pleased, and sometimes, when he seems to be happy, his hand on my swelling belly, talking nonsense to me and our children, waiting for one to kick, a shadow will cross his face, and I realize that he is afraid.
I’m not. The house and I have an agreement, and I will do what I have to.
It is what mothers do, in the woods.
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Lots and lots of work, now. The story is over 13,000 words long....kind of long for a short story. I am still a little buzzed from finishing it. The final words coming out, saving the file...I feel like it’s the best short story I’ve ever written, that this is totally the one that’ll sell and make everyone love me.
Now that I know what happens, I need to make sure it’s not too much of a shock. Well, I want it to be a shock, but I also want you to be able to look back through the text and find evidence that will prove that it’s the only ending possible, all the while trying not to make it too obvious. I want the clues to only become obvious after you’ve read it. I like that Aha! effect. I also need to strengthen the connection between the house accepting her, so that the ending becomes more believable. I can get you to believe anything, as long as I prove it.
“God forbid it should be so,” is from the Robber Bridegroom. it’s also in one of Shakespeare's plays, but which one slips my mind. And yes, I couldn’t resist using the rest of the be bold refrain...I rather like it coming from her.
This is the most horrific thing I’ve written, I think. The next step is to edit it, and I’ll try and put it up, edited, with the edits, on it’s own page rather than clogging up the journal. I’ll let it sit s few days. first.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 8:43 PM
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