Doug flickered his brilliant blue eyes over my face, locking them on mine for a split second before sheepishly looking away. He grunted a greeting, and awkwardly bent over to his feet to untie his shoes. Doug was a rather large man, and had a white receiving hair line, revealing a tanned, sun kissed head. However, he had quite the impressive looking beard. His gruff appearance looked a little out of place in Claire’s perfected and organized home.
“Hey, love. How was your day?” Claire casually questioned from the back of the kitchen.
A slight roar erupted from through his vocal chords, and I realised that he was clearing his throat before he spoke. “Alright. Yours?” His voice was like a rumbling thundercloud, elegantly rolling through the sky in a soothing, yet rough fashion.
Claire looked up at him from the counter with a smile that lit up her delicate, winkled face like a radiant snippet of sunshine. “Good, dear. Could you set the table for us?”
He tossed his mud coated boots out the front door, which let in a gust of chilly air to circulate around the room. I shivered in the kitchen chair.
I cautiously rose from the chair, and moved to the opposite side of the table, suddenly aware that I had no idea where any of the utensils were, or any appliances, or any of the stories, laughs and memories passed in that very room. I was completely oblivious to the newly unfolded world set before me.
“Um, Cl- grandma? Where do you keep all the cutlery and stuff?” I uncertainly asked.
“Here,” Doug gruffly answered from behind me, his low voice rumbled into my ears.
I whipped around; where Doug slid open the drawer, revealing a set of neatly arranged, shining cutlery. He smiled, and gave me a nod before breaking his gaze. In that brief moment of interaction, I wandered into his bright eyes, and wondered exactly what made him, him.
“I got it tonight, you just sit down,” he told me.
I nodded, rubbing the side of my face, and stammered a word of gratitude, then sat back down into my seat where I could watch the procedure of supper being prepared.
And then I became detached, and utterly lost, frozen as I trembled in the unknown, like a tiny glowing candle, vulnerable to the wind. I couldn’t release the forever building tension. Hours of journeying away from the bitter sweet memories only seemed to bring them closer.
Supper occurred; a nice hot bowl of chilly, as according to Claire, it would warm a soul on a cold day. It was beautiful, and greatly satisfying. The table was implausible, although incredibly simple, with a new yellow table cloth and an autumn ornament. My grandparents were absolutely everything one could wish for; caring and immediately accepting.
Yet my thoughts couldn’t restrain from wandering further down that awful path into the weary mist, where one could completely loose themselves. I felt myself slipping through there, slowly, and my mind becoming more and more detached.
I looked up from the table for a moment, only to catch Claire’s wink. I smiled at her, and continued on inside.
“Okay, you’ll have to be careful on these stairs. I personally think they’re too steep, but Doug says they’re fine. I don’t trust them though. Just be careful with them,” Claire explained as she led me up the stairs. “This was your father’s room when he was a boy, but Doug and I redecorated it for you as soon as we knew you were coming.”
“Oh, thanks. You didn’t have to do that,” I answered as we made it to the top of the stairs, which seemed perfectly straight and even to me, and stepped into the hallway. It was all open, as only seen with a thick layer of musty darkness that swirled around me like a dark snake. The wide open rectangular space of neat, simple darkness only consumed us further as we made our way to the last door on our left.
Claire didn’t respond to the lighting, as she could probably see wonders in the thicket of dark, only by a trembling thin line of light of the slipping sun, desperately streaming through the quiet windows. I put my head down to mind my footing over the lusciously soft deep green carpet.
“Sea,” said she. “You don’t need to thank me for a thing. We want to do everything we can to make you comfortable, now that we have the chance.”
She opened the door, letting it creak open with a slow moan, and then whipped towards me, her eyes suddenly eternally open and deep, slowly filling with a heavy sorrow. “It’s just the circumstances that are killing me.”
I nodded slowly and watched her step inside, hesitantly following her, stepping forwards with my bag. Diffidently, I emerged into the room, submerging into a different kind of sanctuary.
Claire flicked on the light switch, which flickered into a slow showcase of tired, coughing light, until the room was wholly illuminated.
I took careful steps over the old dark hardwood floor, and slowly moved over to the brilliant white carpet blanketing the middle of the space by the bed for warm feet. The bed looked like it came from an elegant doll house with its fancy vintage looking rails, and perfectly made with an old orange quilt. On the opposite side of the room, a tall dark bookshelf stood empty and begging for something to hold, begging for pages of life to fill its soul. The fair sized area was all painted together in this strikingly modest, yet perfect picture, and all in the smoothest colour of sweet tangerines.
“We didn’t do much to the space to be honest, besides giving it a good clean out. We did, however, paint it. Your father had it a stocky blue colour, but Sherry told us you liked orange better. Besides, it was chipping and ugly and all that,” Claire explained, taking a sweep of the room, and placing her hands on her hips. “Is this okay with you?”
I turned back to her, breaking my gaze of the space, and nodded with a tight smile.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s wonderful. Thank you, so much. For everything,” I whispered, but immediately regretted.
“Your welcome, Sea. We were happy to do it,” she said with a beam. She then broke the small graceful moment by abruptly turning out of the room, leaving me enclosed in its walls. “I better let you sleep then,” she said. “You must be exhausted. “
I nodded. “Thanks. Good night, grandma.” She nodded, blew me a kiss and left, closing the door behind her.
I suddenly felt alien in the room alone. I felt as if I were a dark charge in such an oasis.
Ignoring the strange feeling that lingered around me like a foul smell, I changed into a pair of old sweatpants from my bag and clambered inside the bed. I pulled the tangerine coloured blankets over me as like a shield, and waited for sleep to capture me.
***
I awoke to the pattering of rain falling against the window.
I groggily lifted the covers off of my face and sat up, looking around the room, at first a little confused of where I was. Once I regained the memories of last night, I smiled and pushed the blankets away.
Despite the murky haze of a slightly rising sun, I felt utterly aware and awake in the new world. I broke out of the warm covers and padded over to the window with my bare feet shuffling over the cold floor. I pulled the curtains out of the way to peer at the glittering raindrops scattered all over the surface of the glass. Faint rays of sunshine glazed over the world before me, revealing the morning sun shower.
I quickly pulled on a pair of old tight jeans and a loose grey t-shirt, and then opened the drawers of the old dresser to pile some of my other clothes away. To my surprise, they were already occupied with assorted shirts and things, which I assumed were Claire’s. I stared at them for a moment, before shutting it closed. My duffle bag stuffed with varied objects and book lied at the foot of the bed. It stared up at me, longing for attention. I moved towards it, awkwardly fumbling with the zipper to breathe life into my precious miscellaneous objects.
I began stacking the bookshelf with my old faded copies of my favourite novels, but only a few. Something in the air made me come to an abrupt halt, and feel cold in my skin.
With the cold air breathing down my back, I slowly turned my neck to the left to glance at the clock. The hands positioned themselves in the perfect angle on the face of the clock, reading eight o’clock. I slowed my suddenly heavy breathing, careful to listen for any stirrings. Of course, because I was in a different home, there were.
I hurried out of the room, content that for once, I wasn’t alone in the break of a new day. Descending down the stairs and arriving in the kitchen, I fixated my eyes on Claire, alone at the table. She looked quite blissful that morning, though her hair was frazzled and was still in her nightdress.
“Good Morning Sea,” she said.
“Good morning.”
“Doug just went to work a little while ago, and I usually wake up with him. Although, you don’t have to, you can sleep for however long you want. To an extent, of course,” Claire explained when we rounded the corner into the kitchen. She rummaged through the cupboards for some cereal. “And I work with a small baking business in town.” She said distractedly.
I sat down at the table, unsure of how to act then, or what to say. “That sounds quite nice,” I mused.
Claire brought out a box of unopened cereal, and placed it on the table before searching through the fridge for some milk.
“Is cereal okay this morning? We ran out of eggs.”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Cereal’s great,” I replied.
“Okay.”
She handed me the milk, and I began to casually make conversation as I poured the liquid into the perfectly un-chipped bowl. “What’s your baking business like?”
Claire laughed and graciously replied. “Oh, it’s great! It’s just a small little shop, hardly noteworthy, but some people seem to really enjoy the things we prepare there. We have our regulars, and they all especially love our desserts. And we cater, but we’re also open as a little shop where anyone can walk in and eat to their heart’s content,” she rambled on, pleased that I had asked. I was too, though. I smiled as she went into details about the other bakers.
“Sally’s a real nice girl, but you have to watch out for Lucinda. She’s a piece of work, that one,” she groaned, rolling her eyes.
“The place is right by the beach, you know, by those shops just at the lakeshore?”
“Oh, I see. It must be lovely.”
She nodded. “Yes, I quite like it. I'm not working my shifts today though; I thought that we could do something. Explore maybe. What do you want to do?”
I shrugged, not wanting to make the decision.
“Would you mind seeing the library then?” she hesitantly suggested.
“Yes, that’d be perfect,” I confirmed with a smile.
I watched a grin widen across her face, lighting up her sparkly eyes. “I knew you liked to read. We do have a library and a big at that. I'm sure you’ll be impressed.”
I nodded and shared her smile again.
“All right then. We’ll go after breakfast. But we can’t be too, too long. There’s a man who contacted me through Sherry, wanting to talk to you,” she informed, getting up from the table.
No collected memories could be retrieved of whom she spoke of. Trying to keep the sudden anxiety out of my voice I asked, “Who’s coming over today?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know exactly, and I wasn’t too happy when he called last night, but apparently it’s mandatory. He’s just somebody just making sure that you’re settling in all right. A social worker, I'm assuming.” Claire briefly answered, not seeming too enthused with her monotone voice.
I lowered my glaze back to my bowl.
“You’ve apparently met him before you came. His name is Samuel, I think,” she said.
It became evident with the sound of his name ringing through my ears, and I could remember his brief visit at Sherry’s house. I had no response to that, or any emotions of the event whatsoever. I only wanted things to be finished.
“Oh.”
Silence then hovered over the room, but it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable. It was nice being able to enjoy the morning in each other’s company.
“Finished?” she asked, eyeing bowl of soggy pieces of cereal.
“Yes, thank you for breakfast.”
She chuckled at my response and reached over to grab the dishes.
The day unfolded into a pleasant one, with the breeze in a playful mood, smelling of sweet light grass and coiling rays of light. The neighbourhood stretched out modestly, revealing tiny undiscovered glories of the world before us, and was newly cleaned with the wash of the clear rain. Small remnants of that rinse deliberately slipped off the slick pine needles that towered on nearly every property, and fell on out heads with a pat.
Much of the space was silent, other than the occasional song of a bird. There were no other wanderers or explorers such as us, making the luscious scene our own, although a little lonely, and slightly less open.
Claire was extremely accurate about the library. It was massive, and quite mysterious with its tall bricks, and clinging vines of ivy crawling up the side.
A small murmur of bewilderedness escaped my mouth in a whisper.
Claire chuckled, and led me up to the front doors.
On the inside, it was just as remarkable. The whole room was vintage with dark coloured furniture and an old classic fireplace in the front corner. I could sense the character the place had, and just how special it really was.
Readers scattered over the large space, hidden amongst worlds of words and ever connecting statements of adventure and understanding. It was evidently, and remarkably, the most perfect place to spend a wet morning in.
Claire pointed to the alley of tall long bookshelves, telling me that they were all fiction. From suspense, mystery, romance to horror, they had genres of all kinds. I nodded, soaking in all the information of the place.
“Oh, and the historical, non fiction sort of stuff is all upstairs. And yeah, that’s it, in a nutshell,” Claire said. “I’ll just be here looking for a nice romance, okay?” she pointed to the back corner of the room, and I nodded.
“Okay then. I’ll just explore, and see you in a little while,” I murmured to the walls, for Claire was already absorbed in the shelf in front of her.
I walked over to the floating staircase, where I noted that the old building must have been a house at some point. The style of the staircase looked to be popular for wealthy families to have in their homes back in the day, and the fireplace also looked original.
I hopped up the stairs and griped onto the railing for my irrational fear of falling down the slippery carpeted steps. Despite my cautiousness, I nearly slipped on the smooth carpeting at the top. Quickly, I regained my balance and stepped onto the second level.
I felt myself smile as I scanned the room. It was wide open and full of built in shelves, with others that standing proudly in the middle, filling the room with silent screams and statements of pouring words.
I quickly scampered towards them, and I even caught myself humming a little. Taking out books seemed like a normal thing to do now, a normal routine to fall into, in such an unfamiliar, unexplored place.
Soon, I emerged back in time, into the lives and worlds of others, and soaked in each experience with the highest and most willing of diligence. The familiar tranquillity of the activity soothed my soul, and reality lost its grips on me.
I had a pile of books in my lap, and was flipping through a book about different atrocities that occurred in the last hundred years. In a different dimension of absorbing bits of information, I was awoken.
The sound of a dragging window sliding open entered my ears, and a dull thud echoed throughout the room.
I froze, looking up from the book in my lap, and paralyzed in fear.
A presence was felt, and stirrings from the opposite side of the room occurred. I couldn’t see anything from my location, as the old shelves of books blocked my view, but I could feel one’s presence just as strongly as sight.
A dark figure was seen through the tiny slit between the shelves from my angle. A dark figure as slippery and elusive as a nightmare.
My eyes bugged out in realization and panic. I wanted to bolt, but my body wouldn’t let me. An electrical shiver ran down my spine, chilling me to the bones. I felt frozen and boiling at the same time, my forehead and my stomach heated up like there were fiery flames licking me up.
It was a man who had just crawled in. I suddenly realized the probability of the man being one of my dreaded friends from before.
The heat of the room intensified to a horrid degree.
The man stumbled to his feet, and began to pace the room, as if in search of something. I held my breath, watching his every move from behind the shelves, petrified, for I knew that he would see me if he came any closer.
He disappeared behind the cluster of shelves again, and I quietly exhaled. I huddled in a ball, knowing that I should abort the situation immediately, but that would be impossible. The second I moved, I would be seen. If I didn’t, he would most certainly notice me. In other words, I was trapped.
I stayed, frozen in trepidation.
What was he doing here? I couldn’t make sense of his reasons for coming here at all. Except perhaps the thought of him hurting me. Some people don’t need a reason to inflict pain upon another person.
His dark appearance suddenly seemed to materialize from behind the shelves, revealing his self to me from the shadows. The man’s dark eyes locked on mine, pouring into me as if to telepathically shift through my thoughts.
My heart dropped, and shattered into shards of fragile, shaking glass. I whimpered, staring in the frozen moment of dread, and then realized just how silly I was being.
Bravely, I rose to my feet, and tried to steady my posture.
“What are you doing here? And why have you and that other guy been following me around?”
He inched closer, and I picked up the most intimidating weapon I could find to threaten him with. It was the book I was flipping through about the world’s atrocities, which was pretty scary in my opinion.
He laughed at seeing me raise the book over my head, which only angered me further. It was a thick book, and could probably do some damage.
“You don’t have to worry, I'm not here to hurt anyone,” he reasoned with his hands lifted.
“Who are you?” I demanded, slowly backing away.
He shook his head, and pointed to the couch I was sitting on next to the window. “Can we sit down? Then I promise I’ll leave,” he said softly. His voice quavered with the quietest of smoothness.
I shook my head frantically, moving from foot to foot. “My grandmother is downstairs. All I have to do is yell, and she and everybody else will be running up here,” I warned.
He smiled sympathetically. “You don’t have to do that. I just want to talk to you.”
I nodded, as that was also what I wanted. I suddenly had the hungriest desire for answers, as if I hadn’t all my life. He also didn’t look like the kind of person who would want to hurt someone. Although psychopaths do appear to be normal people, and can be as social or friendly as anybody else can. They and could also manipulate people like a piece of cake.
The remnants of my fallen heart thudded for what was left of me.
“I have some of the answers you wish for,” he said, sitting down.
I felt so confused, and stranger danger trainings were begging to kick in, but I couldn’t ruin my chances with discovering something about what was really going on behind the closed secrets.
I nodded, and stood back, looking to him timidly to continue.
It was hard not to stare at him, for he looked so different. He looked vaguely familiar, despite the fact that I had only seen him the other day before stepping into a new life. He had long stringy black hair that parted down the middle of his head, and hung around his face in wavy, oily curls. It framed his pale face and dark coal swirling eyes the way an old picture frame held together the oldest of pictures of a darker past. His nose was small but long and crooked, and his mouth was a dark reddish colour, as if he coloured them himself. He was tall and skinny, and dressed in the same black jacket and black jeans as the other day. He looked out the window at the old vacant lot beside the library.
I wanted to interrogate him of being present the last day, and about the other man from before, and basically about the whole mess. I just wanted him to tell me that it was all a misunderstanding, and that nothing really mattered.
“You know what happened there?” he quietly mumbled, looking down at the parking lot below.
I shook my head.
“Most of the lot used to be a restaurant, or maybe a bar. I can’t really remember, but I think I’ve been there before. Couldn’t have been very good if I can’t even remember it, I say,” he said, waiting for a response.
I frowned, and he went on.
“Anyways, something happened. One day, the place was rented out for a wedding reception or something, since it had a great space to do stuff like that. The kitchen and all that were closed off, and all these nice wealthy people were just enjoying the celebration, until, out of nowhere, the whole place goes up in blazing flames. Nobody knows why, even to this day,” he told, his eyes lowering and saddened.
“It’s a strange thing actually. People all have their theories, but none of them were ever proved correct. Some say it was witchcraft, while more practical people think it was some pyromaniac kid. But me? I have no idea. I just accepted it as a tragedy and moved on.”
The story must have had a point. I couldn’t see it though, and that confused me. “Who are you?” I whispered while staring at the mesmerising sadness in his eyes. I had seen them before in another’s eyes. It was like I knew them long before my mother died, like they were buried in some section of my mind from long ago, but I couldn’t exactly place it.
“My name, you mean? I am Lincoln. Or, perhaps, something else. I can’t quite say. You can all me whatever you like though,” he answered vaguely.
My eyebrows furrowed together/
He grinned, showing off his yellowing teeth. “I know who you are. Sea Emery, the one and only. You could probably say that I'm apart of your family,” he explained with a sudden boost of confidence.
I was silent for a moment.
“How? What do you mean? Does Claire know about you?” I questioned, feeling frazzled and confused.
He laughed. “One question at a time, love,” he said. His voice was still raspy and light. “I don’t really know how. I just am,” he said.
I became even further frustrated. “Does Claire know about you?”
His face scrunched up in confusion. “I don’t think I know her,” he said.
I searched his face for any trace of a lie, and then decided to ditch the question. “Alright. Why were you following me all this time then?”
He looked up again, and smiled, tightening his face with a foggy happiness. “I was making sure you were okay. Catherine died. That means that other things are going to happen.”
His bluntness stabbed me in the chest, leaving a dull throbbing pain and confusion. I didn’t flinch, but rather stared with an intensified curiosity.
“How did you know that, though? Were you the one at the funeral that talked to Sherry?” I asked, knowing that the answer would piece together a lot if he was clear.
“I just knew. It wouldn’t make sense if I didn’t know!” he exclaimed, to my concern. “But I never went to the funeral. I wasn’t ready, he said. Um, Who’s Sherry?”
I shook my head. “She’s my friend. Never mind. So, who went to my mother’s funeral then? Was it that bald man?” I prodded.
He was taken aback. “Your mother? Do you mean Catherine?”
Exasperated, it became evident that he who I thought had a decently functioning mind, most likely, did not.
“Yes, I mean Catherine. Now, who told you that you couldn’t go, seeing that you knew her. Was it the bald man? You know him, right?”
The man in front of me smiled, and combed his long scrawny twig like fingers through his ratted hair. He smoothed it over after not being able to even comb the matted mess, and continued to smile. “He is a bald man. It’s actually sort of funny, when you think of it.”
I groaned, and paced back and forth. “Okay. Lincoln. You talk to that bald man a lot?”
He nodded.
“Then why are you two following me?”
“I told you. We’re related, and Catherine died, and that means that something else is going to happen.”
“What?” I demanded.
He looked away, at the shelves surrounding us. He shook his head, seemingly absorbed in another world, further away from reality than reading could ever take me.
“I can’t remember,” he murmured, the sweet softness returning immensely to his voice, like the sound of a child.
“Okay then,” I said, staring with a new fear. Hesitantly, I asked, “Do you know my father?”
“Your dad? I can’t remember,” he said, still not making eye contact with me, and only looked out around the room with an intrigued interest.
“Lincoln?” I murmured, trying to be patient and polite. “Why can’t you remember anything?”
He shrugged, shifting his gaze from the books to the window.
“Books are homes, for people who can’t find their own,” he whispered. “And windows are like eyes for people who don’t like to see.”
His voice quivered in the steady smooth stream of quiet words. A shiver of cold ran down my back, and I waited for an answer to my question.
“Something happened. An old man knocked me out with a brick yesterday, I'm pretty sure. Woke up and all I knew was that I needed to see you. Charlie wanted me to see you. And I thought that if I did, it would rejuvenate some memories of what happened to everybody.”
I doubted that he was drunk, for I couldn’t smell alcohol on his breath. But he couldn’t have been telling the whole truth, for there was no mark on his head. Nothing really added up, and only began to subtract what I thought I already knew.
The thought occurred to me that he was telling me a false memory. Perhaps he was trapped in a false memory, and he didn’t even know who he was, except the fact that he was connected to my mother. Perhaps my mother’s death was the trigger of his loss of memory, and this other man, Charlie, I supposed only seemed to care about my business.
Then it clicked.
I snapped my gaze back to him in complete shock, wondering if it was possible.
He looked up at me with a sad smile.
“Sorry I couldn’t help with as much as I thought I could. Charlie really only wanted me to make sure you were alright,” he mumbled. Then he saw my surprised expression and puzzled over it. “Are you okay Sea?” he asked nervously.
I shook my head, terrified and jittery. I bit my lip obsessively, not sure how to form words.
How long has it been now?
“Lincoln? Are you… Are you my dad?”