“We need to tell Olly.”
Brennen raised a brow.
“Would it be fair to ask what it is we need to tell him, lass?”
“Fair, yes, but redundant,” his wife crossed her plump arms.
“Ten years we’ve kept him… Why now?”
Dagmar slammed her palms on the solid oak table, “Because I said so!”
“That’s enough, mother,” Astrid said, punctuated by a loud snore from the loft above. They all looked up and remained silent for a moment, assured Oliver was still out.
Brennen looked sheepishly at his wife, “You’re the boss, my rose, of course, anything you say shall stand.”
“Father has every right to know our reasons.”
Dagmar sighed, “It’s that Alistair. You’ve more trust in him than I, and you’re a fool for it. Whyever did I marry such a fool as you?”
“Bahah we all know it’s because I’ve got a way with my tongue, my salty, sweet little-”
“STOP! Stop,” Astrid interrupted the moment her mother began to blush and lean in towards her husband, “I can’t watch whatever is about to happen. You two are disgusting, and we’re getting side-tracked. Mother’s right. Alistair knows too much, and he’s too unpredictable. He’ll only become more so as he effectively becomes a teenager.”
Astrid lit a cigarette.
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke up here, my dear, it’s bad for your brother.”
“...fine.” she curled the lit cigarette onto her tongue past a sharp set of canines and swallowed with a hiss.
“Trying to intimidate your own old man now my delicate fluer-de-lis?”
“Al and Olly have become close,” Dagmar ignored him, “It’s better he hears it from us than him. Trust is built on honesty.”
“And it can easily be swept away,” Astrid interjected, eyeing her left index finger, “...and never rebuilt.”
“Alistair has been honest about himself with Oliver, more than Oliver’s own family has. It’s time we put an end to that.”
“Right then,” Brennen said, “So how do you propose to tell him Queenie abandoned him here in the care of people she knew full-well were a couple o’ Scandinavian blood-drinkers?”
“What’s a ‘Scandinavian blood-drinker?’” Olly blinked, standing in the doorway.
The Smith family sat, frozen, at the table, all eyes on Oliver.
“What?” he asked sleepily, “Some kinda’ new drink?”
Dagmar smacked Brennen in the back of the head, hard.
Astrid pulled out a chair for her younger brother, “Sit down, Oliver.”
In the week since Father Allen left town the sky seemed to have opened up to dump a relentless tumble of snowfall. Although the children in town seemed to never get enough of it, the rest of the world came to a screeching halt as the snow drifts topped nearly two meters.
Snowed in, and with little else to do, Sabre could take her time to marvel at it. She'd never seen so much snow. It was like she was living on a different planet.
Earlier that week, when the sidewalks were still passable, Wendy and Astrid had taken her to the second-hand store, and she'd piled her cart high with a hodge-podge of mismatched clothes. When she'd asked where Earnie was, Astrid said he'd had family bussiness to attend to. Wen casually added that he hated shopping for clothes anyways.
Although there was certainly no lack of reading material, new outfits to try on, and people to call and chat with, Sabre could feel herself geting restless. She baulked at it at first, flipping through her phone. She'd never had so many saved numbers in her contacts list; Officer Darrow, he didn't count, Alistair Dirk, he didn't count either, but the rest... she smiled; the list went on, Earnie Wren, Wendy Duffy, Astrid Smith, Oliver Crown, Marcco's Pizza, The Misssion, Brennen's, The Fairy Wren, Rohda Campell, Jasper Campell, Lewis Campell, The Campell Clinic and Reasearch Facility, Tember Price, she had NO idea how THAT one got in there. The urge to go out into the world and be a normal person was pulling at her harder than ever before.
So this is what cabin fever is? thought the same girl who'd been in an actual jail cell up until just a few months ago.
She eyed the poor old radiator as it was gasping it's dying breaths, an old race horse, pushed to it's limits, ready to give out at any moment. If it did, she wasn't sure which horrible fate she'd choose; she could freeze to death, or she could talk to her landlord.
Her anxiety had crept in slowly as the days passed, compounded by the fact that she'd gone with little to no sleep most nights. Her insomnia was getting worse by thee day. It frustrated her. Up until last week, it had steadily improved. The night terrors that had plagued her since her mother's death had been receeding.
But ever since Al had done... well something to her, be it drug or poison or hypnosis, all the horrifying shadows that she'd managed to keep at bay had lept back up to engulf her.
But ever since Al had done... well something to her, be it drug or poison or hypnosis, all the horrifying shadows that she'd managed to keep at bay had lept back up to engulf her.
Without the escape of sleep, Sabre could feel her sanity slipping. Out of the corner of her eye she'd see a snake slither up the wall but when she'd spin around to look, it was gone. It had never been there to begin with. On top of it all, she knew he was just below her, one floor, maybe two, ready to burst through the kitchen doors at any moment and cut her down, torture her, eat her, sell her bones... or God knows what else.
And he was, in fact, snug in the basement, willfuly oblivious to the nightmare scenarios that plagued his upstairs neighboor.
Al was curled up on a moldy quilt that on the bare concrete floor under the single blue flourecent lantern that hung in the empty room. He was just dozing when his neck prickled at the sound of a heavy groan from somewhere in the building, high above him. His yellow eyes flickered open, suddenly alert, when he heard one of the eaves of the roof high above him give way. An ancient oak board that bared the weight of the snow on the sheet-metal roof had finally lost the battle, and with it cracked wickedly before landing with a heavy thud.
Shit! SHIT! Al fumbled for his densures.
From above he heard a muffled yell. He turned up the light and grabbed for his contacts, as bones cracked beneath him and his ankle joints gave a turn.
The roof! It's got to be the roof. Did cave in? My books! Al paused to steady his hand as popped in his contacts, his mind a jumble of frantic thoughts, The girl! Is she okay? DAMNIT, where are my clothes??
Given the weather, Al hadn't planned on leaving his room for a while, and having to do so in a hurry was a nightmare of his own. He caught sight of his hands as he pulled them through the sleeves of a crinkled flannel.
Fuck! My hands! He didn't have time for this, Gloves! Gloves, where are my gloves!?
Her tore through a small pile of clothes until he found two gloves. They didn't match. He didn't care. He pulled them on as he bounded up the spiral stairs. He cursed the locks for slowing him down. Once at the door to the attic he threw himself at with a heavy thud. At the same time he heard another muffled grunt. He tried the door knob, knowing full-well it would be locked.
"Arrghhh!!!" He cried out in frustration.
That subborn bitch! This is all her fault! If she DIES- Al froze mid-thought; a little demon settleing on his shoulder began to whisper in his ear.
If she dies... Then... the bridle would be of no concern, right? None of this was his fault after all. Just a happy little accident. He could just... sit back, pretend he hadn't heard anything. Right, right, Al began to nod to himself, just let nature take its course... do what he SHOULD HAVE done at the beach weeks ago...
He snapped his head back to attention at the sound of another cry, this one louder, somehow more desperate. Al suddenly realized she was calling his name.
"Mr. Dirk! Umph!" she was struggling "Anybody!"
He hesitated.
"Alistair!"
She was calling out to him. His heart suddently pinched and twisted in a most unfamiliar way.
He heard her continue to grunt and scrap and shove at whatever had her pinned down. She was fighting it.
"Fuck!" Al swore under his breath and lept back downstairs.
A few miles away, at the other end of town, stood Marie Mullins' Boarding House, which was attatched to the local library. Anne Simmons couldn't think of a place she'd be happier to be snowed in at. Although she'd had a room at the boarding house since she'd returned to town, she spent little time there. The unexpected winter storm had forced her to take a break from the office, and perhaps she had needed it. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was so close to something big, but just couldn't seem to nail it down.
"Excuse me, Perry!" she called out pleasantly as she hefted a pile of text books on to the front desk to return them.
All USELESS, she thought, giving the books a toxic glare, as if they had been prisoners she'd tortured for information, and they'd given her nothing.
"Comming! Just- Just one moment!" Perry Mullins called out from somewhere in the endless labyrinth of the back book room.
"Anne!" he emerged grinning from the door frame, "Done with those already?"
She nodded curtly.
"Ah well, I'm not surprised," he said as he began aimlessly flipping and stamping, checking each book back in and setting it on the cart, "You've checked a few of these out before. Must be good reads."
"Yes," she lied, smiling, "but Perry, I was hoping you'd help me find something. There are two Anthropology text books in the catalogue on the computer, but they're not on the shelves. I'd noticed it a while ago actually, and I'd been waiting for them to be returned, but they haven't showed up."
"Oh? Is that so?" he peered curiously through the thick lenses of his bifocals.
It wasn't like Perry Mullins to loose track of his books. He was well-known for hounding and harassing people that had over-due books until they'd returned them or paid for them. He rubbed the auburn stubble on his chin.
"Let's go have a look at the card catalogue then shall we?"
They walked past the rows of books to the huge cabinet that contained rows and rows of countless little index cards.
Sheesh, this place really is stuck in the last century, Anne thought fleetingly as she handed Perry a scrap of paper with the titles she was looking for, Ah well, at least this would tell her who'd had the books last.
"Hmm... Odd," the librarian said quizically, and he went back to flip through a row of cards again.
"Odd?"
"Oh, it's just that the card for this title isn't here."
Anne rolled her eyes. What was she expecting of an aging librarian trying to keep track of thousands of books.
"Hm... not this one either."
That suddenly got her attention, "Wait, what? Neither of them?"
"It is odd," Perry tusstled his hair, "I feel like the titles are familiar... but hm... with their cards missing in the catalogue, it's as if they were never here. Are you sure we actually carried these books?"
"Yes!" Anne said, somewhere in the back of her head she could hear a faint little bell, it was always just a little inkling, some sort of instinct she couldn't explain, "Look, here, see, they're in the computer system."
She hurried him over to the computer desk she'd been working at and showed him. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and squinted at the screen. Sure enough, the titles were listed in their inventory.
"Well," he shrugged, "Must be some sort of glitch."
"A glitch?" Anne was trying to keep her tone even keeled.
"Yeah, I mean, honestly, since last year when everything went all sideways with that virus, I'd trust my card catelogue over what a computer says any day of the week," he turned back to the front desk, "Sorry, Anne."
"Are you serious?? It's obvious someone stole these books from you!" finally losing a bit of her composure,
"Hm. Yes, it's possible, as upsetting as the thought may be..." he grumbled, his brow furrowing, "Maybe I'm losing my touch. But... there's no need for you to be so upset on my behalf Anne, though I'm touched. Have you tried looking for them online?"
Of COURSE she had, that's what made this whole situation all the more frustrating.
She managed a pleasant goodbye through her clenched teeth and headed next door to the boarding house. Once again, she was left with a bitter taste of frustration that she couldn't shake. Jumbled pieces of a puzzle she was desperate to solve, now scattered to the wind.
Al flipped open the heavy tool box in the storage room and grabbed a cordless drill and a hanful of drill bits. He darted up the stairs once more.
He gave another pause, Fuck. If Ainsleighn ever found out about something like this... she'd tear me to ribbons.
Without another hesitation he took the power tool to the hinges of the door with lightning speed and accuracy, as the screws began to tumble and roll every which way on the floor. He skipped the last two, opting to just tear the rest off it's hinges, and with a grunt he threw it to the side.
The kitchen seemed untouched. He hurried through the bedroom door to see open sky and a small mountain of snow that had flooded into the room. Two huge oak beams had snapped and let the miniature avalanche in.
"...you..." a weak voice called.
He slid the snow-covered bed across the room with startling force. It slamed against the opposite wall, knocking books off their shelves. He saw her. Only one protruding arm was visible under all the snow, and it looked as if she'd been clawing and digging at it frantically, the tips of her fingers raw. The rest of her was covered in snow that was bleeding bright red from where her back must have been, pinned down by one of the heavy oak planks.
Suddenly frantic himself, Alistair began digging her out of the snow 'till he sould see her face. Her lips were blue and her eyes half-lidded and foggy.
"Hey! Hey!" he gave her face a gentle slap, "Can you hear me? You see me?"
Sabre looked up, delerious, "You...?"
"Shit," he hissed as he continued to dig her out, and cleared the snow from where one of the oak boards had shattered, pinning her to the floor, its splintered edges digging into her back just below her shoulder blade.
"Go," she rasped, "Get help. You can't lift it."
"The hell I can't," he retorted.
Sabre managed to rolled her eyes, So this is how I die, huh? At the hand of some stupid boy and his pride.
She knew full well that nobody short of an olympic body builder could heft that beam and all it supported. She was half-way through formulating a new plan, hopfully before she lost consiousness completely, when suddenly-
the wieght was gone. The beam had been lifted from he back.
She tried to turn back to look. Shreiks of pain jolted though her body in protest. Sabre groaned loudly, but she was just able to see Al launch what was likely a 700 kilo oak beam over his head through the hole in the roof down to the street below, where it landed with a crash.
What the...? Her vision blurred, What the FUCK was that?
She heard distant shouting. Unfamiliar voices. Familiar Voices. She heard the faint echo of someone clanging up the iron staircase. For a time, all she could see was white, and that's when she let herself, exhausted, slip under. He last thoughts lingering...
This wouldn't be such a bad way to go...
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