“Confess to a crime that you didn’t commit?”
“It’s because of my past that we’re here in this church waiting for more of the colored pegs to fall.”
Nathaniel pressed against the door frame listening intently.
“Please tell me you’re not working for Jonas,” Lucas asked. “Please . . . please tell me.”
“I can’t promise anything, Lucas.”
“What are you saying?” Lucas asked.
“You deserve better.” The sound of a chair scraping against the floor signaled Icarus’ departure.
“Icarus . . .” Lucas said. “Icarus, wait!”
But Icarus was already out the door leaving Lucas alone in the room. He nodded to Nathaniel as he walked by.
Nathaniel stood in the doorway of the Sunday school room looking down at Lucas who sat with his face buried in his hands. He silently approached the table and sat the guitar pick in front of Lucas who was not aware that he had company.
*
Annette had wandered from the interrogation room to a lounge where muted sunlight from an open window struck the yellow-colored walls and peach-colored carpet. A slight breeze brushed the curtains. A sad-looking Bradford pear tree could be seen outside. Much had changed since she had been in this room last. It had been in this lounge, and in this same wedding dress, that Annette had waited for her wedding. It had also been the same room where Fiona had entered and handed Annette an invitation back to the department as one of the Nine Greatest Muses.
Annette stood at a tarnished wardrobe mirror where she studied her current reflection. Her wedding dress in the limited light seemed to lose a bit of its magic. The hoodie was in her hands which she clutched to her chest. She reached into the pockets in hopes of finding a clue to the culprit’s identity. There were three trinkets: a small cube of blue billiard chalk and two wedding rings that she didn’t recognize from someone else’s wedding. She looked up and noticed Adam standing behind her smiling in the frame of the mirror. Excited to be in his arms, she turned to find that she was the only one in the room and that Adam must have been a fabricated trick of her imagination.
*
Icarus found himself in the same classroom in which Annette had earlier interrogated. He was saddened that it was empty and hinted to a missed opportunity to plead guilty. He studied the faded children’s storybooks. The blackboard in the room had begun to crack. Cobwebs hung from the unkempt ceiling. Feeling dejected, he sat in one of the seats. He contemplated his misadventures in the Underworld and how they had blackened his soul. He thought of Lucas and his love for him. He thought of Persephone and his love for her. Icarus wished that he didn’t have a heart and that he was incapable of loving.
Icarus caught sight of a single white flower. He picked it up and studied the petals of the asphodel. Seeing this flower reminded him of Persephone.
He was too distracted by the flower’s petals to notice that he was no longer alone. The apprentice’s foreboding figure crept behind him and raised his arm with a candlestick from the sanctuary’s altar. He dealt a blow to Icarus’ head disuniting his victim’s vision and consciousness.
*
On the afternoon where Jonas was writing on Nathaniel’s cast Jonas’s eyes locked onto the retrieved copy of Dorian Gray. But Jonas didn’t said anything to Nathaniel about the book. Jonas’ personal threat was presented in the message he had written on Nathaniel’s cast. When Jonas capped the red Sharpie marker and left the room Nathaniel reviewed the message. It stated the name of his painter who had murdered him back in 1808 and also in 1924. By the time Nathaniel looked up from the cast the insidious reincarnation of his painter had closed the door sealing Nathaniel into his book-riddled cell to recuperate in distressing immobility.
CHAPTER 19: SISYPHUS’ SURVEILLANCE
The one-storey house with grey siding known as 252 Sisyphus Hill was appropriately named for the plodding gradient on which the dwelling, and the surrounding neighborhood, rested. Though the yard’s patterned shrubbery had been upgraded throughout the shifting decades the house’s exterior, with its single car garage and concrete driveway, had remained firm in the testament of its own structural history.
The residence had seen numerous visitors since its completion in the 1950’s. It was first home to a custom door maker who, for twenty years, prided himself on his exquisite work on various richly-contrived ingresses. That is until one late evening, while working in his basement workshop, his eyes settled upon a singular door that had not previously been there. It was vertically propped atop a stack of other unhinged doors staring at him with conviction. He inspected it thoroughly wondering by whose mind the design had derived. The door was no different than any other door except for an inauspicious bronze dandelion keyhole. What made this keyhole so anomalous was a blue light shining from the other side which wouldn’t have been so baffling if the door was attached to the wall. The detached door was standing upright atop other doors causing him to question his sanity. The door maker had lost his son years ago and, on seeing this door with its keyhole, he wondered if it was a doorway to the afterlife. He wondered if, by opening the door, they may be reunited. In an irritating rage, the door maker rattled the knob. He clawed at the keyhole with his tools and, eventually, his own fingertips until they bled. The door maker could hear his son’s voice on the other side calling to him which raised his urgent efforts. When he took an axe to the wood of the door, the blade barely nicked the surface. The door maker eventually doused the door in gasoline and set it on fire. He laughed senselessly as the flames licked the lustrous wood. The flames stretched to the other doors in his workshop bringing the room to a radiating blaze. While the extra doors rotted, the door with the keyhole remained intact. As he sat on the floor collapsing into a state of inconsolable grief over his son’s death and the door’s reminder of it, the flames consumed the room around him.
In his last few moments the door opened of its own volition. The blue light spread across his figure mixing with the orange, red and singing yellowed flames. In seeing the light, the door maker understood its mystery. There was a spared shard of wood from the wreckage of another door which he held in his burned hands. He extracted a pen from his pocket and scribbled a simple message onto the contours of the wood detailing the door’s meaning. The door maker found his metal toolbox. He secured the piece of wood within and fastened the lock. As he held the toolbox an overflow of white asphodel petals respectfully ushered him through the door. The door closed again.
Intermittent renovators were contracted to gut the ashen remains. They finished the basement, replaced damaged beams and installed new insulation and carpeting so that it covered any evidence of the door maker’s demise. But even though the checkered past was enclosed, there was still the vague disappearance of the residence’s tenant. Neighbors on the street believed the house to be polluted by its ambiguity.
An unsuspecting, family moved into the house in 1987: a prosecuting attorney named Thomas, his second wife Justine, and their two sons, Jonas and Nathaniel. Throughout their adolescent years, the house was there to shelter them. It watched as the boys grew harshly into young adults. It was intrigued as they developed their own separate hobbies of destroying, and repairing, library books. It cradled Nathaniel through weeks of recovery in which his broken femur slowly healed. From the house’s perspective, Nathaniel often sat staring at the cast praying that he could heal his leg the same way that he was able to mend Annette’s books. Despite Nathaniel’s prayers, his leg healed in its own expansive time.
When Nathaniel was able to walk with the aid of crutches he fled to the root cellar of his great aunt’s farm where he repaired the copy of Dorian Gray. Once the pages were reverted to a spotless state, Nathaniel found the stamina to repair another book that had been in worse condition – the burnt ashes that had once been Les Misérables. Between the months of May and November of 1999, Nathaniel worked indefatigably to repair her library book. In that time, his leg also healed giving more satis
faction.
Alas, Nathaniel wasn’t lucky enough to hand the book to her. The hapless hero discovered that she had married Lyle. Luck was not on Nathaniel’s side even after as Jonas exploited his step-brother’s talent. Jonas intentionally damaged Dorian Gray over and over. He ruined it with grease stains, spilt wine, shears, wet cement, sharp tips of sewing needles, a paper shredder and lawn mower. Each time Nathaniel, who by then developed an intense obsessive compulsive disorder, repaired the library book without giving Jonas the benefit of showing him how his work was administered.
The boys drifted apart. Nathaniel received his education in Library Sciences at the local community college and lived in his childhood home during the first and second year. Jonas moved to another college out of state where he earned his own degree in Earth Sciences. Though the boys rarely met in the two years that passed, they encountered one another during school holidays.
One spring break lead Jonas back to Sisyphus Hill. It was during this visit that Jonas rediscovered and held the copy of Dorian Gray that he had left in his room.
“Show me how you repaired it,” Jonas ordered Nathaniel.
“Going on about that, are you?” Nathaniel sighed, consulting a textbook while staying ahead of the class work. “I’ll show you if you bring Annette here.”
“Come with me and we can show her together!” Jonas ordered.
“I’m not going back to the Slocum house,” Nathaniel told him.
Jonas sneered, reaching for Nathaniel’s textbook. Nathaniel shot him a look. Both knew that, no matter what Jonas intended to do with any book his actions would be thwarted by Nathaniel’s ability to repair it. Nathaniel tried to be humble about his gift, but it were these moments that he relished the idea of his power. In attempt to gain control, Jonas visited Annette’s residence in a last exertion to discover Nathaniel’s secret, but was discarded by Lyle. Jonas knew upon returning to his childhood home empty-handed, and having heard Nathaniel say in a condescending tone “What, couldn’t get her to follow you?” that his tactics for being in command needed to change.
For the remainder of the spring semester, Jonas was granted a medium that he, to a great extent, required. She was a noticeably beautiful young woman with luxurious brown hair and bright blue eyes. Jonas licked his lips and felt his pulse quicken. He approached her and smiled warmly. The woman, who looked no older than twenty, also smiled. It appeared that they had met before, with the look of recognition that had spread across their faces.
“Hello,” he told her. “My name’s Jonas.”
“Hello,” she told him. “My name’s Roberta.”
Her face was almost uncanny to that of Evangeline’s back in 1808 and Jonas was instantly convinced it was her. He let out a genuine light-hearted laugh, keeping his devious agenda to himself. Roberta genuinely laughed in kind. It was on that day that he began to court the young woman believing her to be the reincarnation of Nathaniel’s love. They formed a relationship and he proposed to her several months later. He wasn’t sure if he loved her or not but the point was that Jonas had successfully stolen someone from Nathaniel’s story. He thusly regaining the sense of control over his rival.
Jonas and Roberta were married in the backyard of Sisyphus Hill that summer. As Nathaniel looked at his step-brother’s wife, it had been clear that he too, understood what Jonas had noticed. Nathaniel also believed her to be the reincarnation of Evangeline. As Roberta passed by Nathaniel along the aisle, they stared at one another for several seconds. There was a sudden look of recognition in her eyes which they both couldn’t ignore. By then it was too late. Nathaniel turned his eyes to the ground and Roberta shifted her eyes to Jonas, realizing her inaccuracy.
The house, in witnessing this, brought a shadow over the congregation hinting to its surveillant nature.
Nathaniel moved out of the house shortly thereafter into his own apartment and dismissed the house and its memories. He visited it on remote holidays. It was on those visits that Jonas brought his two children: Ajax and Josiah. They were good kids and affectionate towards their uncle Nathaniel who had impersonally embraced them. On family visits Roberta stared at Nathaniel and initiated occasional conversation. But Nathaniel had grown cold, shying from her contact, physical or spoken.
As Nathaniel’s nephews played in the backyard one spring afternoon, Jonas stood beside his step-brother. Jonas cracked a beer while stating casually to Nathaniel: “Kinda makes you wish you would’ve shown me how you repaired Dorian Gray, doesn’t it, Broccoli?”
In the following months, Nathaniel’s mother developed a malignant cancer and passed leaving Thomas to live in the empty house by himself. As he had never maintained meaningful relationships with either of his children, Jonas and Nathaniel hardly visited. Eventually, Thomas too passed and willed the estate to Jonas who, with his wife and two children, took residence. The “love” that Jonas and Roberta shared vanished. With the victory over Nathaniel having lost its allure, Jonas felt less compelled to make love to his wife and, therefore, busied himself with his work as the local meteorologist. His attention drifted to the days of his childhood with the unanswered questions regarding the repaired library books. He often talked about those years to Roberta and regularly referred to Annette and how he had tried to fix her. Roberta felt that she was living with another woman. Hearing Annette’s name brought her blood to boil.
The house no longer cared about Jonas or Roberta. It focused on the children in whom the history of the house later flourished.
Josiah became the house’s owner where he raised his own family. Josiah developed into a handsome man with short cropped hair and a fit body. His physique was evident during the night when he held his baby boy while soothingly rubbing the child’s back in effort to coax the toddler to sleep. Josiah had a tattoo on his forearm, a series of stars, which implied his occupation as an astronomer. His young son, Phillip, traced them with his small fingers. The house watched respectfully as Josiah put his son to bed and switched on the mobile of spinning planets.
The house watched as during the Christmas holidays his brother Ajax, who had also developed in the same handsome fashion, would bring over his own family: his wife and newborn son Louis. The house was there as witness when Louis received his precursory Christmas ornament.
Without a doubt, the house had seen a myriad of visitors through the years. At length, the house received visitors even into its present day.
Jonas, playing the role of a “muse-gone-bad,” stood at the study’s fireplace staring at the Weather Wizard. The witch reigned supreme.
“Are you alright?” his apprentice asked. The hoodie was missing but his face was still obscured in the room’s shadows.
“What’s it to you?” Jonas scowled.
“I have the muse you were asking for,” the apprentice offered. “He’s restrained in the basement storage room, per your request.” To which his cohort added “What you’re doing to these people . . . it’s cruel. You know that, don’t you?”
Jonas nodded. On the desk was a toolbox which he opened. Under the light of the desk’s lamp, Jonas took out a piece of old wood. He exited the study and passed the rooms of his victims. Each room was occupied by the clients he had stolen and who were currently tied to their own miseries. They were the least of his concern. Jonas stepped downstairs and opened the storage room. He flipped the light-switch to reveal a squirming Icarus who had been bound to a chair and gagged. There was a bloody wound on Icarus’ head.
“Muse,” Jonas whispered. “I’ve brought you here for information. When I was a boy, I found a door in this storage room a few steps from where you’re sitting. There was a dandelion insignia on this door which was unlocked by a particular key . . .” Jonas held the key to Icarus’ eyes. “. . . Which I found hanging from a wind chime in my backyard. When I inserted it into the lock I opened the door. I expected to find the source of a mysterious blue light. Instead, I found a tiny room with a single wooden lectern. On that lectern was a fastened toolbox which I op
ened. And found this.” Jonas held the piece of wood to Icarus’ face. “See what it says? Can you read it? It says ‘The answer to this door exists with Icarus.’ You see it, don’t you?”
Jonas tossed the wood aside. He removed the gag so that Icarus could answer. “Level with me, Muse. Tell me what you know about this door and about the asphodel flowers.”
Icarus growled the following words: “If you think you’re getting anything out of me about that door, you’re an idiot.”
Jonas grabbed Icarus’ neck choking him. Icarus sputtered, kicking his legs.
“See here, you insipid adolescent. You will tell me about this door! It’s because of that door that I remembered being who I was in a past life and it’s the door that will help me understand for what purpose!” Jonas released Icarus but stayed close. “Tell me about the door or I’ll go after your precious boyfriend Lucas. I’ll bring him here and have him suffer in your place!”
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Icarus hacked.
On that night, both Jonas and 252 Sisyphus Hill leaned in close to hear the stories Icarus had to tell which exposed how the door had come to the door maker and what it meant to the house’s history. The house listened as its moral foundational character in relation to the Dandelion Sisters, the Man with the Three Piece Suit, along with the unexplained Boy with the Kaleidoscope Eyes, was recanted; this information was in conjunction with Icarus’ timeless epic story from Greek mythology and how he had been shockingly integrated. It was a baffling origin story that had spanned for centuries prior, and would continue to spread even through the unremitting lives of Jonas’ grandchildren.
Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 29