The Galston House

by Marc Layton

  "Can't say I like this," he blurted, waving a hand at the displays. "Reminds me of that nursery rhyme we used to sing as kids" Clarence raised a hand in an attempt to stop Din from reciting the playground ditty, knowing it would be somewhat less than comforting for the new occupants, but it was already too late.

  “Pins an’ needles quick quick quick,

  Grab your knives and grab your sticks,

  Old Man Knewl is out round town

  To snatch you up and pin you down," quoted Din in slow, sing-song drawl, the final syllables leaking away into quiet of the house itself, echoing in that strange way buildings have when they have been uninhabited for a while as if they have somehow forgotten how to deal with sound. There was a long pause during which nobody spoke.

  "Charming," said Clive dryly, removing one of the frames to take a closer look at the tiny carcass. Possessing no radar for people’s emotions and therefore detecting none of the sarcasm laced through Clive’s response, Din decided to press his luck and continue.

  “Used to scare me half senseless that song. Mary Seawell still sits out on her porch every night just in case, you know?" Adrien who had come back up the corridor after briefly exploring the kitchen and was keen to see the rest of the house looked up confused.

  “Folks ‘round here has long memories for bad stuff. Like the whole town holdin' a grudge or somethin'," Clive caught Clarence's eye as the Sheriff rested a huge paw firmly on his deputy's shoulder.

  “Think that might be enough there, Din. Maybe let the folks move in before we start givin’ em the willies with your stories, huh?’ Din looked up at Clarence and was advised by the look in his eyes that this was unquestionably the best course of action. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be Din’s stories that would first unsettle Clive. That was the coffins.

  They were small. No bigger than an average shoebox, lined up in a row in front of the fireplace in the dining room. Each tiny coffin was made of pine, and both carefully and elaborately crafted, the interiors lined with red satin and velvet.

  There is always something unsettling about a small coffin, thought Adrien. It's an object that, if life were fair, shouldn't exist. No life should be cut short before it reaches adulthood. Luckily, the occupants of the coffins had reached maturity, though this didn't make them any less unsettling. In four of the six boxes, arms folded across their chests, with a long withered flower held there and legs pinned through the fabric to the wood of the coffin itself, were four, slender limbed frogs.

  “What in the hell?” asked Adrien aloud. The framed displays she could just about understand, gruesome as they were. But this, she regarded as something else entirely. She was right to.

  There was something unquestionably different about these hideous little offerings. Something offensively incongruous about a frog being placed in what should be the vessel for a loved one, something almost blasphemous about the act of affording a frog such a reverential resting place, it didn't belong there, taking the place of a human being.

  She and Clive hadn't tried for kids yet. The time hadn't been right. They both had a vaguely agreed notion that it might come in the future, and in some ways, finding this house and settling in seemed like the first step toward the more rooted and static lifestyle that might allow for children.

  But while she may have had no children of her own, Adrien had been there when her friend's son Mika had died. He had been six months old, and the loss had nearly broken her friend. She remembered being at the funeral and seeing the tiny coffin, not even large enough for both parents to carry it. She remembered thinking then, that such an object shouldn't exist. That it was beautiful and yet repulsive in what it meant, what it did. She looked again at the coffins and was thankful that her back was to the others as tears welled in her eyes.

  “Cooool!” said Din, lifting one of the macabre effigies and holding like a box containing a barbie doll. He looked over at Clive, who, having seen Adrien surreptitiously swipe at her eyes, moved closer to check on her. He’d seen the action a thousand times before, after fights, when she’d read an article or seen a film that made her quiver. She had hidden her face but couldn’t hide from him. He placed one hand lightly on her shoulder.

  “You okay?” he asked to her back as she, without turning, or speaking, nodded furiously. This was a conversation for later.

  "Hey, you folks min' if I borrowed one of these?" Din interrupted, still holding one of the coffins. "The guys at the station will freak if they see this.” Clive didn’t even turn.

  "Take them all if you want. They'll be going out with the trash later." Although she had her back to him, Clive felt Adrien smile.

  Later, the two officers helped the new occupants clear the place of the thick dust, scatterings of broken glass, cobwebs, and debris that find their way into any house shut up for an extended period of time.

  The pair never approached the upstairs or, to Clarence’s great relief, the cellar, but limited their assistance to the downstairs rooms and helped to carry the couples scant belongings into the house from the van. As Clarence's internal clock began to signal that the time was approaching mid-afternoon, he felt the tug toward the door becoming more vigorous and with it, the same nagging sense of guilt. Guilt that before the sun sank behind the eaves of the house, he would be long gone and this couple, these good people, hoping to start a new life, would be alone here, in the dark. He hoped as he and Din departed, that there would be no need to go back to the house.

  At first, Adrien and Clive's first night in the house was perfect, precisely because it was so perfectly 'them.' While it may not have seemed much to an outsider, the simplicity and significance of their actions, the shared rituals and understandings that bound them together in their own little world, a world they had created together, was exactly right.

  Once Clarence and Din left, marching down the gravel path toward their car, with a haste that seemed almost to border on running, Clive had fished in his battered rucksack and from some unseen depth produced two tins of Heinz tomato soup.

  Adrien had laughed until she cried and throwing her arms around his neck, kissed him heartily on the mouth. After heating the soup on the small gas stove they had carried with them throughout their travels, they sat as they had so many times in hostels and dives, cross legged on the floor, facing each other on the bare floorboards of the dining room and ate with two spoons from the same pan.

  As she ladled spoonfuls of hot soup into her mouth, Adrien felt its warmth mingle with the glow she was already feeling. How, she thought, does he always know how to make me smile? It's like a superpower—his secret weapon. Soup, particularly this brand of soup, was the ideal choice.

  They had eaten it their first night living together as students, the night before they set off on the traveling they had done for the past three years and during their first Christmas together. As always, their little ritual would be seen as strange by others, but to Adrien, the symbolism of marking a new beginning with an old tradition was just right, it married their past to their future because it meant something to them. It was their tradition, and it belonged to them alone.

  Just as they belonged to each other.

  Later, as the sun threatened to set, the house quietly began to fill with shadows. The rooms themselves seeming to shrink as the light that had pushed valiantly against the walls, holding them back all day, finally ebbed away, yielding its resistance and allowing them to close in toward each other.

  Not that Clive or Adrien noticed. They were too busy dragging their mattress and some linen upstairs, placing it awkwardly onto a sturdy wooden bed frame, though the quickly encroaching darkness was enough to force Clive to take a corner one-handed in order to flip the light switch on the way into the bedroom.

  "Electric works at least," he said as the mattress wobbled, and he was forced to retake a two-handed grip.

  Adrien had selected which room would be theirs without consultation, the decision being made by her act of merely walking into that room while carr
ying her end of the mattress. Clive had no say, but also no objections. Instead, he smiled to himself, happy to see her so giddy with excitement, taking charge and occupying that place in her mind between the house as it was and the vision she had of it. Choosing a place to sleep he knew, was the first part of moving toward her vision. He had no objections. Except for the closet. That had to go.

  It stood in the corner of the room. Though at around six feet tall, in dark heavy wood, it seemed to Clive that it loomed rather than stood. Even struggling with the mattress, he had noticed it immediately. It had leaped forward when he switched on the light as if it had been waiting there, crouched, anticipating their arrival. Clive examined the piece again.

  Two large doors, with drawers below. His mind darted instantly to the story he'd been told of Lynn Seawell, of Albert Knewl crouched inside the closet and how he had emerged, spindle limbed and all in black, moving with the careful articulation of arachnid stealth. For the first time, seeing what was, he knew, a simple piece of furniture he felt an irrational pang of unease, that, had he been pressed, he may even have allowed himself to call 'fear.'

  "That thing will be first to go," said Clive as they laid down the mattress, pointing with his head toward the closet. Adrien looked first at the bed, checking it was straight. Then, with her hands on her hips at the closet behind.

  "The wardrobe?" Adrien's parents were British, and despite having lived in the United States her entire life, she still insisted on using English terms. Mostly to amuse herself by annoying Clive.

  “Yeah. I dunno, it’s just, with that Knewl guy and all. It’s…”

  "Creepy?" She suggested. Clive stuck out his bottom lip like a child, did his best doe eyes, and nodded.

  "Aww," she said once again, looping her hands around his neck. "I'll protect you," she said. He looked down at the angular line of dust across the front of her shirt and then back up at her and raised his eyebrows mischievously. They made love on the mattress and didn't even bother with the sheets.

  Lying in the afterglow, head resting on Clive’s chest and her hair spilling like a syrupy fluid over his arm, Adrien, looked again at the closet. It was an ugly thing, made uglier by the story, but also by the fact that it didn't quite close.

  The doors, rather than sitting against each other closed flush, peeled from each other ever so slightly, just enough for one door to be further forward so that a gap, one vertical crack of around an inch, was left ajar. Not enough to see inside, but enough to know that it wasn’t really closed. Not fully, not completely. It was the sort of detail, the slightly open door, that would make a child, perhaps a small girl, worry. Worry, that someone or something might be in there, looking out. “You’re right. I think we need to…”

  There was a click, and suddenly the room, the entire house, was plunged into darkness. She couldn't see a thing. She felt Clive sit up immediately, inadvertently pulling a little at her hair as he did.

  "Shit," he said, swinging his legs out of bed. " It's probably a fuse. I'll go see if I can flip the circuit breakers," he paused, "You any idea where they might be?" She shook her head as she sat up and then realized that Clive would be unable to see the gesture in the dark. Which, owing to the fact that the window was still boarded, was total. "No.," she replied, "Maybe by the door?'' She felt a shift as his weight lifted from the bed and heard him begin to pad carefully across the floorboards looking for the door to the room.

  "Hey, be careful, there could be glass on the floor." She heard the boards give an aching squeal as he stepped off of them.

  "I'll be fine," he said, his voice from nearer where she assumed the door to be.

  "...and make sure you wipe your feet before you get back in bed, or you'll bring all sorts of crap into the bed with you.”

  "Will do!" he called his voice further away now, muffled by distance and walls. From the sound of the boards, it seemed he was approaching the stairs. "Be careful going down, you hear me," she said, fumbling around off the edge of the bed looking for her shirt. She found it and slipped it back on. There was no reply, but she heard the faint he haw of pressure on each step as he descended.

  She waited, hoping that within a few minutes, her eyes would adjust to the darkness. From downstairs, she heard a crash and a string of expletives as Clive, somewhat predictably, stubbed his toe.

  She looked around the room, trying to force her eyes to make out the shapes of the furniture. Nothing. The boarded window afforded no light. The darkness was total, feeling somehow like it had a solidity of depth to it, as if, if she were to leave the bed, she might sink into it like water and need to wade knee-deep to the door.

  She blinked a few times, but still, there was not a speck of light. She called out to Clive. She was worried that he might stumble and hurt himself, sure, but she also realized that she was worried about something else.

  She was alone now, in the dark and she didn’t like it.

  From nowhere, the image of the frog coffins, five now, in a row before the fireplace, jumped into her mind, the tiny leathery carcasses, shriveled with age and yet still, pinned in place on their red satin pillows. For the first time, she felt a chill in the air and again called out to Clive. She waited for an answer. Nothing.

  Not only was there no response, but this time, the sound of her call seemed muted, as if it had left her and somewhere in the dark had been swallowed or stifled and suffocated by the still, aching silence.

  She listened for movement. For the sound of feet on board, for the cushioned weight of a step or the whisper of fabric. Nothing. Or, she thought, almost nothing. For as she waited, she began to feel that perhaps, just perhaps, the darkness that surrounded her wasn't entirely empty. That the silence she heard was not merely an absence of sound, but a deliberate withholding, as if there were some conscious effort to hide the sound, to creep and conceal.

  “Babe!” she called “ If you can’t find it, then just let it be, we’ll find it in the morning!” again the sound seemed to dissipate like a pebble thrown in a stream, its ripples peeling out and yet fading, unbroken and unheeded, into nothing.

  She realized for the first time that she could hear her own breath and felt a sudden compulsive urge to make sure that this was not the only sound, an urge to fill the room with noise, to be loud and show that she was there. To hear her own voice aloud.

  “Clive?” she called. From the corner of the room, with a slow, deliberate ease came a low, almost imperceptible creak. Adrien turned toward the sound. Just the house settling, she thought, as the temperature drops, the wood contracting. That's all it is.

  She listened, wishing now for light, to be able to see the walls and floors, to check the corners and measure the shadows. Again the low, whining creak. As if, of a step she thought, or of a door, a small door, like that of the closet, never quite closed, easing gently open.

  “Clive!” she bellowed, louder now and somewhat more desperate. She felt the blood pounding in her temples as she tried to force her eyes and ears to search the darkness, to find something, anything. A minute passed. Then another. Her mind skipped through wild scenarios. What if Clive had fallen, tripped on some unseen piece of furniture? What if he’d found the circuit breakers but had received some kind of shock from dodgy wiring? What if, she danced around the notion, her mind skirting the edges like a tongue testing the edges of a mouth ulcer, reluctant even to allow herself to think about it. What if, she thought, the fusebox wasn't downstairs, but down in the cellar? What if Clive had gone down there, in the dark, alone, and what if, upstairs, she wasn't alone at all? Another sound met her ears, seemingly from outside of the room.

  She kicked her legs over the edge of the bed and fumbled around for her underwear. Finding in the process one sneaker and then the other, which she then slipped onto her bare feet before retrieving her shorts and hastily pulling them on.

  She stepped cautiously from the bed, feeling the weight of the dark pressing against her, the air, now cool, giving a fresh, almost damp caress to her skin.
She stepped carefully, forward, one hand extended like the mummy in those old black and white films, feeling for a surface, an edge. She stepped in the short shuffles of someone moving on slippery snow, toward what she thought was the direction of the door.

  She held out her hand, hoping that eventually, her fingertips would light upon some object that would then give her bearings, help her map in her mind a course towards the door. Finally, she thought, her hands would touch something. Before they could however, something touched her.

  The contact was fleeting, a single instant in which the lightest caress of a finger ran down the back of her hand, and yet, instantly, she knew. Every nerve and fiber in her hand, every synapse in her head knew, knew that this was not some object that she had brushed against. Not some clothing or fabric that she had bumped or nudged. Someone, from the dark of the room, had reached out and touched her. Adrien screamed.

  Somewhere across town, Clarence sat behind his desk and, as he had weeks before, and peered through his window at the sky. Now there was no sun or clouds; there wasn't even a moon. Instead, there was simply night, cold, dark, and blank.

  He shifted in his seat, trying as best he could to ease the weight that seemed since he had left the Galston Place to have been resting on his shoulders. He thought again of that painting. The small goblin crouched on the maiden's chest, pinning her down. He wondered for a flickering instant if a thing like that could crouch inside a closet. The sound of the telephone startled him to the point that he physically jumped.

  "Jesus jumpin' Christ on a bike!" he exclaimed to the empty office. He took a deep settling breath, steadied himself, and lifted the receiver shaking his head. Please don't let it be them, he thought. Please, don't let it be them.

  From the other end of the line, Mrs. Potter's nasal whine shrieked into life.

  "Clarence! Clarence!" she balled as the Sheriff felt a mixture of relief and annoyance wash over him. With the heavy, drawn-out weariness of the harrassed, he settled into his chair to hear the latest complaint.