His father, still standing just out of reach, stepped forward, just a half-step; then he stepped back. His hand was resting on the nurses’ station. Matt thought about asking him if he could look for a clock behind the desk, but that didn’t seem as important as it once did.
“Matt, sweetie, are you okay?” His mother was trying to maneuver herself back into his eye-line. The effort made her duck walk sideways, just a hop or two. Matt recognized the entire scene as this absurd tableau, like an interpretation of a hospital waiting room by Dada. It was surreal, unnatural, and completely stupid. Why couldn’t his father come closer? Why was his mother so close? Why was he thinking about Dada and floor polish?
There was suddenly no color at all in the room, or maybe, more accurately, there was too much color. The colors, the swirl of every color imaginable, bled into each other, creating a mass of light, all-encompassing, searing, completely devoid of shades or intonation, just white, white, white.
Chapter 11
Frau Iver
On a cold, snowy evening in mid-December, the man drove carefully along the lonely mountain road. The icy asphalt, a dangerous pathway, glistened in the light of the full moon. He pulled into the driveway of the log cabin nestled against the side of a snow-covered mountain. He stepped out into the frigid air, under the watchful eye of the woman who stood just under the first tree that marked the end of the slight yard and the beginning of the wilderness.
“Hello?” he called through the quickly encroaching nighttime.
Silence answered his call.
He stared at the woman and could see her gown, long and flowing, as white as the snow, fluttering around her lithe body. He could see her hair, long and silver, like the branches of trees marked by an ice storm, whipping stiffly around her face. But he could not see her face. It was hazy, like the top of a fog-shrouded mountain.
He stared for far too long, and a shiver tore through his body as he realized it was the snow playing tricks on him. There was no woman, so he went inside, away from the cold. But inside, he could still see her, standing amid the ice and snow, lonely and beautiful.
Later, when the vision of the woman had faded somewhat, he stoked the fire and settled in for the night. The snow-heavy clouds filtered the moon so that his room was bathed in a cloudy glow, intensified by the whiteness of the world just outside his door. He found he couldn’t sleep. The woman standing under the trees kept invading his thoughts. Could a woman really be out there in the snow? Was that even possible? At the window, he looked out and saw her. She had moved closer to the cabin, standing just at the edge of the yard where the old willow tree grew.
Her face, still a mask of indistinct mist, seemed to smile an impossibly warm smile as the chill wind whipped and whirled in every direction. Her hair, now somehow soft strands of ice, floated on the night breeze, gently curling toward him like beckoning fingers.
He stared for far too long until he realized she was a lost traveler in need of help. He rushed from the cabin, his bare feet sinking deep into the frozen world, pain lacing his every movement, but still, he kept creeping toward her. She reached for him, her impossibly white hands, palms turned upward, a safe space in the harshest of storms. He touched her arm and felt happy, truly happy, for the first time in his life.
Two days later, after co-workers alerted the local law enforcement, the man was found frozen, lifeless, his arms intricately entwined with the frozen branches of a willow tree.
Chapter 12
A Rough Start
“Is it cold in here, or is it just me?” The Puppeteer laughed while continually pouring beer onto his mouth.
The Toy Peddler held up his hand toward the Innkeeper. “I think I need another beer.”
“Welcome, Frau Iver,” the Sister of Monsters said and smiled, her large black orbs catching the candlelight, looking for all the world like two glistening black moons amid the little girl’s face.
“Are you crying?” the Toy Peddler asked as he took the full glass of dark beer and set it down in front of him.
The Innkeeper smiled a cracked brown smile at Frau Iver, who nodded in return.
“It has been such a long time since we were all together like this,” the Sister of Monsters said, wiping a mucous-tainted tear from her left orb.
“When was that?” the Puppeteer asked, raising his hand as he poured out the last of the beer from his glass.
“We last convened in…” the Sister of Monsters began but found she had trouble conjuring the exact memory.
“It was when the Duality dawned their new facades,” the Toy Peddler said emphatically while he twirled his glass in front of him. “It’s warm,” he said, nodding at his beer. “Do you mind?”
Frau Iver smiled a misty smile and brushed a white hand along the glass, and frost crystals began to form.
“Much better,” the Toy peddler said and drank happily.
“The new facades,” the Sister of Monsters said. “That would have been sometime in the 17th century as the humans mark time.”
“We weren’t all here for that.” The Toy Peddler pointed toward Frau Iver.
The Puppeteer, still pouring a constant stream of beer, offered, “That’s right.” A sinister smirk appeared in the painted lines of his thin false lips. “She was off with—oh, what was his name? You know, that guy who refused to die. Arnold? Aardvark? Something like that.”
Frau Iver’s misty smile turned downward, and the room grew chill. The fire sizzled as if a fresh rain had kissed it.
“Don’t tease Frau Iver,” the Sister of Monsters chastised. “If you get her angry, we will all be stuck here for months trying to dig our way out of the ice.”
“Sorry, dear.” The Puppeteer offered a false nod of contrition and beckoned for more beer.
Frau Iver turned her head away suddenly, and her icy locks slapped the Puppeteer’s face. A red, blistering sheen painted his nose for far longer than he would have liked. He hopped onto the table and slapped his wooden hands down near his feet. The table shuddered, and the glasses convulsed and prepared to spew their contents toward Frau Iver.
“Stop that!” the Sister of Monsters shouted, noting that the Puppeteer’s ability to imbue inanimate objects with temporary life was just as impressive as the Toy Peddler’s sack and Frau Iver’s winter touch. “We do not have time for a skirmish of any kind.”
“Now I remember why we don’t get together more often,” the Toy Peddler said. The momentary distraction had caused him to pour beer down the front of his body. He sighed as he dabbed at the stain with a cloth napkin.
Frau Iver sat indignantly, her head still turned away from the Puppeteer, who pressed his hands into the tabletop. The glasses pulsed in and out, accumulating their contents in the ever-expanding bases, then squeezing them toward the rims. Everything else was still. The Innkeeper inched toward the back room, looking for an easy escape from the fight should one break out. The Sister of Monsters pursed her lips in anger and pushed back from the table. “The First Story has gone missing!” she screamed into the tense silence.
Frau Iver’s indistinct eyes darted toward her. The Toy Peddler’s head shot up at attention. The Puppeteer gasped, and the hollow sound of the sharp intake of air into his wooden chest filled the room. The Innkeeper stepped back toward the counter and cocked his head to listen.
“That’s not possible.” The Toy Peddler absentmindedly slid his hand into his pocket and held tightly to the corner of the magic cloth.
“The Chittering Underground told me,” the Sister of Monsters said as the room settled back into a tense silence.
“What do we do?” the Puppeteer asked as he climbed back into his chair and pushed a half-full glass of beer away.
“That is what we are here to decide,” the Sister of Monsters said.
Frau Iver turned back to the table and placed her impossibly white hand on the tabletop, her palm turned up toward the Puppeteer. He held his own hand over hers and nodded. The Innkeeper poured more drinks.
> “How do we begin?” the Puppeteer asked without a trace of frivolity or sarcasm in his wooden voice.
“We need to examine the stories for clues,” the Sister of Monsters said. “We should begin with the change in the Dualities, the new facades that the Toy Peddler mentioned.” She held out a hand toward the Toy Peddler.
“What good will that do?” the Puppeteer asked, the seriousness of his tone even more unnerving than the empty laughter.
“The retelling of the old stories is the only hope we have of solving this mystery,” the Sister of Monsters declared. “We keep a lookout for discrepancies, changes in the telling.”
“And that will tell us who took the First Story?” the Toy Peddler asked.
Frau Iver nodded, almost imperceptibly, and the Puppeteer agreed.
“Yes,” the Sister of Monsters answered. “I think it is our best hope.”
“So, we each tell the stories according to our perceptions, and the rest of us compare our own perceptions to the telling. Is that it?” the Puppeteer asked. A faltering resolve painted his hollow voice.
“Do you have a better idea?” the Toy Peddler asked. The sincerity of his question caused the room to fall into an eerie silence that was far worse than the tension.
“Please,” the Sister of Monsters whispered. “Toy Peddler, your memory seems the most intact. Tell the story.”
“ All right,” the Toy Peddler began. “As I recall, it was sometime in the year 1656…”
Chapter 13
The Dottore
He came to the city gates dressed in black robes and a black hood that hid his horrible face. The gates were closed to him, but that meant little. His bony hand reached out and pressed against the metal portcullis. Splotches of red, orange, and brown sprung forth, radiating out from the bone in swirling patterns of corrosion, digging deep into the iron until it was nothing but ancient dust at his feet. The gate stood open, and he stepped forward, his black robes slithering along the cobblestone streets.
His eyes, mere bony sockets, peered at the devastation all around. The streets littered with the dead and dying, the smoke of fires raging out of control, and the taint of sickness painting every surface greeted him like old friends. He would have smiled had he lips to do so, but the bony protrusions above his teeth offered no glimpse into his emotional state.
The stench of decay hung heavy in the air, a grotesque bouquet of welcome. The gently falling rain did nothing to dispel the putrid atmosphere. In fact, the damp added a layer to the scent that he hadn’t considered in all of his years wandering the paths of the dead. It was a heady scent, earthy and rich, while still maintaining all of the horror he could desire.
He stepped forward, his heavy traveling boots sliding ever so slightly along the ooze-covered stones of the streets. It was a sensation he relished, slogging through the castoffs of life, the puss and bile that had so recently been a living being. His heart, if he had one, was beating strong and happily.
A thick, black cloud of smoke wafted along a side street, sending rancid tendrils in every direction as it moved inexorably along the unseen roads of air. He turned and followed the black air. A cry, a sobbing, filtering cry off to his right pulled his shrouded head, and he watched as a young woman, no longer a girl, but only barely, wept weakly, propped up against the bricks of an apothecary, the windows of which had been bordered up in a vain attempt to keep out the sick.
It was a cruel joke that would have made him laugh had he the ability to do so. A woman crawling through muck and mire to reach what she could only have hoped was possible salvation, to find the doors and windows shut tight. It was macabre and disgusting, sad and ironic, horrific and— She let out a brief, gurgling sob and grew silent. The man knelt, his shrouded face so close to hers now that he could feel the last breath on his bony cheeks as it left her body. It was exquisite, this suffering.
The apothecary, meagerly protected by porous boards that would offer nothing against the illness, stood as a beacon in this cesspool. He touched the front door, and the wood grew black and crumpled into soggy heaps at his feet. He stepped inside.
More corpses, more death, more decay. It was a cornucopia to one such as he. His robed legs carried him, nearly weightless, through the aisles of herbal remedies that were as ineffective as the boards. He paused before the large counter that separated the store from the storeroom and gazed at the doctor, who was dressed in the latest fashion—a bird’s head constructed of leather with glass portholes for eye sockets. It was horrific; he adored it.
His bony hands reached out and took the mask by the curved-down nose, and he lifted. A slight crunching sound escaped from the very tip of the nose. He turned the mask around and peered into the deep shadows. Fragrant herbs, dried flowers, and perfume filled the leather beak. How ingenious, he thought, and how completely ineffectual. He looked at the lifeless eyes of the mask’s previous owner. They were black and oozing an inky substance. He mimicked asking permission and nodded when there was no response.
Without lowering his hood, he slipped the mask onto his skull. One thing more was needed. Of course, he thought and looked at the hat in the man’s hand. He must have taken it off just before he could no longer do such things. The hat slid snuggly over the hood and the mask. Soon, the Dottore walked from the apothecary, fully garbed, to continue his inspection of the tragic scene before him.
Chapter 14
Something’s Not Right
“The Dottore?” the Toy Peddler asked. “Why is his name the Dottore?”
“It’s Italian for ‘doctor,’” the Sister of Monsters answered, obviously lost in thought.
“Yes, I know that,” the Toy Peddler continued. “But why the Italian word? Why not English or Spanish or Egyptian, for that matter? Why did he choose Italian?”
The table fell into a pensive silence as each member of the Council contemplated the question. It was the Puppeteer who broke the silence. “Is that a discrepancy? His choice of nationality? I had always been told he chose that name. Am I wrong?”
It was the pivotal question, the crux of the matter they were trying to answer—how much control did they have in creating, altering, and improving their own stories? The First Story’s theft, the changes in the core stories, and the chaotic fear that gripped them all was making it difficult for them to maintain any semblance of autonomy. They were autonomous—at least, they felt they were—free from control most of the time, not at the every whim of some invisible being whose motives were suspect at best. But the certainty was waning.
“No, you’re not wrong,” the Sister of Monsters responded and then turned to the Puppeteer. “But it is a good question.” They sat in silence a moment more before she continued. “Anything else of importance in the telling?”
“The woman,” Frau Iver whispered; her breath came fiercely and biting. Each of the others jumped without intending to do so.
“Geez, could you warn us before you just start talking?” the Toy Peddler chastised and shook the fear from his head by allowing a shiver to wrack his entire body.
“Since when does Frau Iver talk?” the Sister of Monsters asked, staring at Frau Iver’s indistinct mouth.
“I…” Frau Iver began, her voice icy but more expected. “I’m not sure.”
“There is something amiss here.” The Puppeteer’s voice lacked his usual joviality, though it was hard to tell through the wooden clacking of his jaw.
“The First Story,” the Sister of Monsters announced. “Whoever has it is using it to rewrite the old stories. Even ours.”
“But why begin with me?” Frau Iver asked, her misty hand clutching her cloud-like chest.
“Take inventory,” the Sister of Monsters said suddenly. “Has anything else changed?”
The members of the Council sat still and looked inward. They told and retold their own stories to themselves, silently marking each point of possible contention. They sat for a long time. The Innkeeper was forced to stoke the fire twice while they sat. He retrieve
d all of the empty glasses and washed them. He refilled the glasses and placed them in front of the members. Then he stood and watched as Frau Iver’s hand began to twitch.
Chapter 15
Mrs. Hensley joined them in the waiting room. Matt sat beside his mother, who was whispering encouraging words into the other woman’s ear. His father left, needing to get home to rest before work tomorrow. Matt thought about that a long time. His father left to go to work. The nurses changed shifts, with new nurses beginning their workday. He knew that there were millions of people outside these walls getting ready for bed so they could get up in the morning and go to work. To them, to so many of them, tonight was just an ordinary night. Nothing unusual at all. In this waiting room, it was a different story. Nothing was usual.
The clock, that infernal thing, kept ticking away. He could hear it in the quiet moments. The tick, tick, tick mocked him, baited him, enraged him, but he let it tick. It was oddly comforting that so much of the world was still normal, and the constant tick was a reminder of that. Outside this room, the world was still spinning, and that meant that inside this room, normality would return sooner or later.
“Mrs. Hensley,” a nurse called from the metal doors. “The doctor needs to see you.”
“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Hensley asked. Matt watched her rise, her knees weak and threatening to buckle at any moment. His mother took her hand and stood with her.
“He needs to see you immediately,” the nurse said with a definite nod. She held the door open and stretched out an arm toward them.
“Oh God,” Ms, Hensley cried, tears falling freely. “Come with me.” Matt watched her pull his mother’s arm underneath her own and hold on for dear life.
“Can I come?” his mother asked.
“Yes, fine,” the nurse responded. “Just please, come now.”
They all disappeared behind the metal doors, and Matt sat. The whiteness was again everywhere. Nothing pierced the white. Matt could no longer hear the tick of the clock; he could no longer see the ugly woodgrain of the chairs or the dark-stained nurses’ station or the unnaturally clean floor. There was nothing. Only the hideous, horrible whiteness remained.
The First Story Page 4