☂︎︎ HOUSE OF SHADOWS ☂︎︎ - five hargreeves

* 𝚆𝚎 𝙾𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚂𝚎𝚎 𝙴𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝙾𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚝 𝚆𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙵𝚞𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕𝚜 *

           Realizing that he was not capable of raising the children and continuing with his studies simultaneously, Reginald created a robot named Grace, programmed to be the perfect housewife and mother to the children. They called her Mom as she was the closest thing they had to one.

           Accompanying the artificial intelligence was Pogo. He was an wizened chimpanzee and the Hargreeves' assistant and master of the enormous mansion that they lived in.

           When the children were four years of age, Grace decided that they all needed suitable names. Numbers just weren't good enough. One became Luther; Two was Diego: Three was Allison; Four turned into Klaus; Six to Ben; Seven to Vanya and Eight to Cassidy. Five decided he didn't want a name and that he was satisfied with his number.

           Yet on those long nights, when Pogo and Reginald retired for the evening; when Grace powered down to charge, and the large house filled with shadows and the hollow sounds of silence. The Hargreeves children felt more alone than ever. But on nights such as those, loneliness only persisted till one o'clock for Number's Six and Four. Because after one was when the fun began.

November 1999

Klaus turned roughly in his bed. He had been awake exactly five hours, fifty-seven minutes and fifty-six seconds after his curfew. Not that he was counting.

           For all of the Hargreeves children, curfew was at eight o'clock. And while the majority of his siblings showered, flicked off their lights and fell asleep. Klaus lay awake, flashlight gripped tightly in hand, constantly checking the clock on the wooden stand beside his bed. Only a short while longer till one o'clock.

           The silence was oppressive, weighing down upon the young boy like a blanket. Small sounds like the creak of a floorboard or a gust of wind blowing against the window, seemed magnified in the eerie quiet.

           Klaus tapped his fingers nervously on his bedsheets anxiously awaiting the arrival of his brother, who would accompany him in his trek through the dark hallways.

           Ben, being the kind and caring boy he was, always walked with Klaus, knowing full well of his condition and fear of shadowed and narrow places.

           That day was especially hard on the Hargreeves children; their father had scheduled physical exams for each of them, with the added bonus of testing the extent of their abilities. But while his siblings ran obstacle courses or demolished various objects, Klaus was locked in a small, cold, stone room. He wasn't allowed out and Reginald had forbidden Pogo and Grace to interfere. Seven brutal hours he stayed in that room, crying and pleading for someone to save him.

           Even at the age of ten, Klaus had already begun to question his sanity.

           The wooden door creaked open slowly, and Klaus nearly jumped out of his skin,pointing his flashlight at an unsuspecting Ben, who yelped and stumbled into the room.

  "I'm blind!" Ben whispered, groping his face.

"You scared me!" Klaus hissed, getting out of bed.

           Ben blinked his eyes aggressively for a minute. "I can sort of see now."

           "Can we go, please?" whined Klaus.

           "Yeah, yeah, c'mon. You might have to lead me, my sight's still coming back."

           Klaus rolled his eyes and they both rushed out the door, closing it silently behind them.

           Quickly walking down the hall, they passed their siblings' rooms. Being especially careful passing Five's room as he was the lightest sleeper.

           Each door had a silver number hanging in the center, Two's number was slightly dented in places; Seven's was covered in dust; and Ben's was cracked down the middle.

           Making their way down the long hallway, they were careful not to make a sound. At the end of the stretch of wood floor, a door was cracked open, warm light splitting the darkness.

           A shining number eight hung on the door.

           They both slipped inside.

           Small trinkets were placed on various levels of the bookshelves that lined one wall; a stack of polaroids rested by a battered gray camera on the nightstand; fairy lights hung from the frame of the four poster bed, illuminating the person sitting underneath them.

           "You both are so loud I could hear you with the door shut," Cassidy said, and patted the space next to her.

           Ben rushed over and flopped on her mattress, sighing into her sheets.

           "Why is your bed so much nicer than mine?" mumbled Ben.

           "And why is your bathroom so big?" exclaimed Klaus, walking to the bathroom and throwing open the door dramatically.

           She only shrugged, "I guess Dad likes me more."

           Ben huffed and threw her sheets over himself, setting his head on her lap and eyeing the book she was reading. Klaus emerged from the brightly lit bathroom holding a bottle of lavender lotion.

   "Can I use this?" he asked.

           "Yes, but not too much! I had to buy that one because you used all of my vanilla lotion," Cassidy said, as Klaus squirted it on his arms and disappeared. Ben pulled his sister's book closer.

           "What does it say?" he asked shyly.

           Since birth, Ben Hargreeves had had trouble reading. Although Diego had trouble speaking, he and his siblings stringed sentences together with ease while reading. While Ben struggled to form the simplest words. Reginald required him to take grammar lessons with Grace every day. Although he loved Grace, Ben enjoyed the help he received from his sister much more than lessons. He found listening to others reading allowed him to picture the words in his mind.

           "Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain," she answered, flipping over the cover. "Do you want me to read a page?"

           Ben nodded and she started. It had only been a few minutes before he began to doze off.

           After a while Klaus came out of the bathroom, smelling strongly of lavender. He too lay beside his brother and listened to Cassidy read.

           Rain had begun to pound against the windows and distant thunder boomed from far away. Klaus started to snore.

           Cassidy paused, looking down at her now sleeping brothers. Gently she laid Ben's head onto the mattress and slipped off. She then tucked the sheet around Klaus' bare feet, as he was always afraid that something under the bed would grab them when he least expected.

           With a snap of her fingers the lights dimmed, so only a faint glow coming from the floor below could be seen. She grabbed an extra blanket from under the bed, curled up on the window seat, and fell asleep.

           The gale outside had subsided so only the steady thumping of raindrops could be heard. This was how the three of them preferred the evenings: reading under golden light, and falling asleep to the sounds of thunder.