Page 5 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Three

Asleep in an Unquiet House

The darkness breathes in and out, softly sighing.

Up ahead is the only light: a candle, held by a girl.

She’s pale, skin practically white, hair blending and bleeding into the darkness around them.

In the flickering, desperate illumination, she’s small and fine-boned, plain-featured except for her bold eyes turning up sharply at the outer corners.

Her face is a determined mask over absolute terror as she moves forward, unable to see beyond the tiny circle provided by her candle.

The flame is sputtering, about to go out.

But she keeps walking without hesitation. Out of sight, taking the light with her.

The darkness shifts. It becomes contained in four cramped walls of rotting gray wood that lets in weak, smoke-filtered light.

A sour prickle of anxiety permeates the tiny shed as a freckled, red-haired girl tries to gather several mewling kittens into her arms. Every time she has almost all of them, they tumble free and she has to start over.

“Please,” she whispers with tears in her vivid brown eyes as she looks over her shoulder at the door. “Please, he’s going to drownyou.”

Sometimes things can change. With a very great amount of effort, an apron appears over the girl’s dress.

She laughs with relief as she quickly loads all the kittens into her apron and runs out of the shed.

The light outside cuts through the dream, splitting it in two, so bright it hurts, so loud it turns into a roar.

The ocean, roiling and gray and infinite. A girl is sitting on a rock, perched as pretty as a picture, staring at the infinite waves. She’s soaked in blood.

No. No, thank you.

Spinning, spinning, spinning into the arms of a tall, pale boy. His eyes are as blue as cornflowers. He has full lips, cheekbones like monuments, and a charmingly boyish nose in the middle of such striking features. He’s dazzlingly, distractingly beautiful.

Until he opens his mouth. Tar sludges out, sticky and black. He’s choking on it, silent tears streaming down his face. His chin is stained, then his chest. The tar pools around his feet, reaching for everything around him.

No.

A different boy prowls ahead, mouth cruel, eyes narrowed, stalking through an endless forest of perfectly straight trees.

In his hand is a knife. Whatever he’s hunting, it doesn’t sound like something scurrying, or something on four legs.

It sounds like someone running. There are cries, too, soft, pathetic ones. Soon he’ll catch up, and then—

Blood. Blood is better. At least the blood was only on the girl.

And there’s the ocean, too. The ocean is nice.

But the girl, sixteen, maybe seventeen, tall with light brown skin and long black hair and gray eyes so round they look like the smooth stones of the shoreline, isn’t looking out at the waves.

She’s looking down at something beneath the rock she’s sitting on.

Her dress is soaked in blood. Even her feet are dyed red, like she’s been wading through the stuff. But she doesn’t move toward the water to wash it off. She keeps staring at the space under the rock she’s perched on.

“Have you heard the story of the Fool and the Bog Mansion?” she asks.

Her voice is low and melodic, soothing in the same way the waves are.

“There once was a man who had only enough food to keep from starving, only enough peat to keep from freezing. But he wasn’t starving, and he wasn’t freezing.

One night he had a dream. In this dream, he was a wealthy man who lived in a beautiful mansion.

It felt more real than real life, because he wanted it more than he wanted anything he already had.

He became convinced the mansion was out there somewhere, waiting for him.

Leaving everyone who loved him, he wandered into the wilderness in search of the life he now felt was his due.

One night he came upon a peat bog with a light burning deep beneath it.

He dived into the brackish, hungry water, tangled in roots and plants and dead things.

And there, beneath the bog, he found it at last: his mansion.

But the roots and the plants and the dead things had hold of him.

He was stuck. He couldn’t get back up, and he couldn’t dive any deeper.

All he could do was stare at what he was owed until he starved and froze to death. ”

The girl lifts a hand and points. There, at her feet, where there should be only shoreline, is a pool of murky water. And somewhere deep inside, a light burns. A red light, behind a circular window, in the middle of a black, quiet house.

“I think it’s been waiting for me all along.” She looks up at last, and her eyebrows, fierce and expressive, draw downward. “What are you doing here?”

“Am I real?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I never know. I’m just visiting.”

“Me too.”

“Whose blood is that, on your hands?”

The girl on the rock shrugs her broad, sharp shoulders.

“I don’t know yet. We’ll find out soon.” Her head is tugged downward, the lure of the house beneath the water too much to resist. But then, surprisingly, she does.

She turns toward the ocean as though noticing it for the first time. “You can sit with me, if you want.”

She sounds tentative. Almost hopeful. She’s not as striking as the boy, but she’s lovely in a way that triggers a shiver of warmth and longing. If one can get past the sight and scent of so much blood.

At least no one’s vomiting tar or killing kittens. It’s as good a place as any to spend the night. Dreamers can’t be choosers.