BLESS THIS HOUSE.
___________________ Ned McCann.
The boys watched from the bushes as the old woman pulled her door closed . When satisfied it was locked, she stepped smartly down the front steps and deposited her suitcases in the boot of a Mini Minor. Flicking a marauder from one of her roses, she admonished the rest of the shrubs and bushes to be on their best behaviour, do as the Driads told them, and ordered a light shower of rain for the evening. After waving goodbye, using the extended forefinger and pinkie of her left hand, she jumped into the Mini and toddled down the drive in a cloud of blue, burning oil.
Adam smiled at Rory and punched him on the arm. “Bingo,” he said.
The old woman, going by the suitcases would not be back for a while. And even if she returned for something forgotten, would be no match for two strapping youths.
The boys drove their van around the back of the house. The glass louvres on the laundry window were no problem. A sharp kick on the lock gave them entry to the kitchen.
They ripped out the wall phone, and started on the small portables. Adam brought out a micro wave, a blender, and a transistor radio. Rory packed them away neatly in the back of the van. A large sideboard in the corner of the room gave up a canteen of dully, glowing silver,and everything was going well until a coffee grinder decided to unravel its’ cord, wrap it around Adam’s ankle and trip him. Adam stumbled, and dropped the Stock pot he was carrying.
He had just time to exclaim “Shit!” before his head hit an open cupboard door and he crumpled .
*
When Adam opened his eyes again, he was being attended by an upside down Rory.
“Fuck,” Rory said, wiping Adam’s face with a tea towel. “You gave me a scare there.”
Adam struggled to sit, and Rory propped him upright against the kitchen bench. His head felt as if someone was carving it with a power saw and everything went red, as hot, sticky blood poured over his eyes.
“What happened?” he asked.
Rory padded another tea towel against Adam’s head. “Dunno,” he replied. “I just came in and found you covered in claret.”
“How long was I out?” Adam asked.
Rory looked at the clock, pendulum wagging. “Fifteen, twenty minutes. Thought you’d croaked.”
“Feel as if I still might,” Adam replied. And spewed the undigested remains of a Maxi Burger and Thikshake down his T shirt.
“Come on, mate.” Rory pulled his mouth down in distaste. “I’m gettin’ you to a hospital.”
“No way,” Adam replied. He got to his feet. “This is too good to leave.” he held on to the sink, leaving bloody smears. “We’re gonna strip this place; load up the van, and come back for what’s left.” He bumped into the dresser, smashing a row of Peter Rabbit plates to the floor.
Rory picked up a chipped bowl and turned it around. The bunnies were still committing the same unnatural acts they had on those golden mornings when he’d munched his Wheaties from a bowl just like it.
Where did all all the sunshine go? he wondered.
*
Pushing open the door, leading from the kitchen to the rest of the house, took their combined effort.
“It’s locked,” Rory hoped.
“No!” Adam’s tea towel fell over his eye. “Just stuck.”
They heaved against the door... gradually it opened... wide enough to allow them in... and closed easily behind, as if on ball bearings.
Ruby and Ultramine light filtered from stained glass windows on to a Shiraz carpet, . A fire of pine cones twinkled a shy welcome to them from the low slung grate in a polished, cedar mantelpiece. Beneath a brass topped table set two for tea, as if the boys had been expected, a large, yellow cat stretched and yawned.
In contrast to the colours glowing from the windows and floor, the walls were hung with insipid water colours depicting fabulous creatures. Some had the heads of animals and the bodies of people,others more human shape. These were mostly men, some wearing feathered head dresses, others jewelled collars, and all of them dressed in long, white robes. They smiled a benign smile down at the boys, in contrast to a female of the species who glared a look which by some trompe de l’ oiel seemed to follow them around the room.
A beam of light from a faceted mullion struck a shelved row of polished crystals, and shimmered a rainbow across the wall.
“We’ll have those for a start,” Adam said. “I’ll get a poly bag from the kitchen.”
Rory, still gazing at the creatures from someone’s fevered imagination, didn’t answer.
Adam twisted and turned the door handle, bent down, pulled back the carpet and tugged again at the door handle. “Thing’s stuck,” he grunted.
Rory shook his head from the thrall of the paintings and turned to help him.
Despite their combined strength, the handle would not turn nor the door open. The boys looked at each other, and back at the door. Adam drummed his fingers on the jamb, then gave the bottom panel a hefty kick... an answering thump from the other side made them both jump.
“There’s somebody in the kitchen,” Rory whispered, backing away. He stumbled against a small bentwood chair and fell into it heavily. After a moment he screamed.
“Jeezuz,Rory!” Adam whirled around.
Rory sprang from the chair, and looked at it with a mixture of fear and disgust. The bentwood on his bare arms had felt slimy and viscous, while beneath him the seat had seethed and prodded his concavity with a lascivious throbbing. He had just been goosed. And all he could do was point and say “Chair.”
“Whasamadderwifyer?” Adam roared. He was clutching his chest. “Nearly gave me a heart attack,” he said.
Rory couldn’t tell him what had happened, hardly dared admit it to himself. All he could do was point and say “Chair.”
Adam mocked him. “Tabuhl...Katt,” he said. The table remained set for tea, and the cat yawned again beneath it. “Come on,” he said and grabbed Rory by the shoulder.
“Where?” Rory asked.
“Out the front door and ‘round the back.” He put a finger to his lips. “It’s probably the old dear.”
Rory looked fearfully at the closed door. “I didn’t hear her car,” he said.
“Shadup!” Adam cocked his ear towards the kitchen. “ Probably drove up while you were screamin’.”
“She’ll have taken our number,” Rory said.
“So?” Adam cocked an eyebrow. “She’s only an old lady.”
They sloped across the room to a door opposite. Thank God it opened.
They were standing in a glassed in verandah. “Which way?” Rory asked.
Adam sniffed the air both ways, and pulled Rory to the right.
The veranda’s windows were of more stained glass. The boys tried to slide them open, they were fixed. The opposite wall was lined with shelves, and niches. The shelves were stacked with old, leather bound, books tooled in gold. The niches filled with painted plaster saints... and other things not as saintly. There, the head of a bull with four horns, a fox, its eyes flashing, its teeth fixed in a ghastly death grin. A rabbit, who seemed to be snarling. And most incongruous of all, a pelican with an open wound on its breast. A beam of light speared from the window to the wound and made the blood seem to flow. Rory was tempted to touch it, but drew back in case it was. Interspersed between all of this were star maps and engravings of astrological heraldry in web encrusted frames. Rory wetted his finger and wiped the dust from one.
“Gold leaf,” he said.
Adam scratched with his nail where Rory had wiped. “Gold leaf be buggered,” he corrected. “They’re gold.”
The boys looked at each other. “Pay dirt,” they said together.
Beside the prints was a tall, dark niche containing the mummified remains of someone dressed in the habit of a Capuchin monk. Held together by a rope around the breast, the remains were so dessicated the arms swayed in the slight draught of their approach.
The boys stared fascinated. A tattered membrane of skin still clung to the scull, held there by some wisps of hair. There was a slight movement from within one of the empty eye sockets. Their hearts stopped, Their breath stopped. There was no sound, other than the scraping of hair rising on their necks.
A large moth flew from the socket. Battered itself on the walls and ceiling, and scattered mummy dust on their upturned faces.
The boys quickened their step and were sucked into the eye of a whirling cyclone. The shelves bucked, books fell before them and picture frames rattled on the walls. From the little niches, things seemed to slither out, unsheathe their claws and talons, and bare their fangs at them with malevolent smiles. Behind them was a darkness, filled with their most secret fears and weaknesses. Clumping on leaden feet. Goading them forward with prods of nameless horror, until at last they reached the end of the book cases.
There was a choice of two doors. Adam opened the one on the right. It was a small lavatory. After the horrors of the veranda, the soft gurgle of the cistern gave it a calmness and normality. They opened the other door.
Inside, the same yellow cat yawned at them from the room they had left two lifetimes ago.
*
Adam flopped into a couch by the fire. Rory, remembering his experience with the bentwood, preferred to stand. Leaning over the brass table, he knuckled the tea pot. It was still warm. “Fancy a cuppa?” he asked.
Adam was deep in thought. “Must’ve missed the front door,” he muttered.
“Maybe there isn’t one,” Rory said as he poured.
“Course there is,” Adam snarled. “We saw the old duck leave by it.”
“Weird place,” Rory said. A large owl, constructed from woven amber beads, glared down at him from the mantle shelf. He made a face at it and sipped his tea.
Adam rose from the couch. “Wonder if she’s got anything stronger?”
He went over to the sideboard, where there were some decanters. He lifted one,raised it to his lips.
“Sherry!” He spat it out in disgust, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and heaved the decanter at the wall. It smashed into one of the paintings. The glass, frame and sherry spattered image fell to the floor. The painting was of the disapproving female.
Adam picked up another decanter and sniffed it. Rory steeled himself for another outburst. It was Brandy and met with Adam’s approval, for after a sip, he took a hefty slug.
“We’d better get out of here,” Rory said.
“After I’ve had a shit,” Adam replied.
Rory was incredulous. “She’ll be phonin’ the cops,” he said.
“There’s no phone,” Adam reminded him, “and we didn’t hear anyone comin’ or goin’. ”
“What about that thump?” Rory asked.
Adam turned and gave the door another huge kick. The wood around the lock splintered... and the door floated open.
The kitchen was empty, and beyond it their van sat waiting on the gravel. Except for the chortling of magpies, there was silence.
“I’m goin’ for that shit,” Adam said. He backhanded the decanter to Rory. Rory caught it, just. “Finish packin’ up the van, we’ll come back for the rest.”
Rory took a sip from the decanter, and screamed. It was only the cat fawning against his leg with penile erect tail.
“What’s the matter now?” Adam turned from the door.
Rory put the decanter down gently on the sideboard, and gave the cat a dirty look. “Nothing,” he said, “just hurry up.”
*
Adam lifted the lid. He sat down and looked around him at the pale primrose walls, the pale primrose curtains, and the matching Laura Ashley toilet roll cover. He could imagine the old woman having pale primrose shits, pre packaged in pale primrose polythene. If he could have found her room, he would have left a nice hotty in her bed to snuggle her feet against on a cold winter’s night.
Beneath him, the pale primrose toilet bowl became soft, malleable. It began to move and sway like a live thing. Adam’s eyes opened wide with alarm, and wider still with pain as an intense, hellish suction began to drag at him. He gripped the sides of the bowl, and his fingers sank into it. He tried to rise, but the pedestal had the grip of a miser and clutched his ankles as if they were golden sovereigns. The suction beneath him increased, until little by little, his intestines were dragged from him. The sharp, tearing agony took his breath away. His attempts at screaming choked him, increased the agony, and forced more out.
His mouth became an elongated O as his tongue was ripped down his throat. The pale primrose porcelain melded itself to his thighs in the cold grip of Death’s claws. His body shrunk into itself, and Adam’s still pulsing organs were hauled from his body in a bloody rush. His eyes burst into their sockets, his ear drums shredded, their combined fluids poured down his face, across his hunched shoulders... And this was as Rory found him.
*
Two days later, the old woman began brooming the mess of shattered crockery from her kitchen floor. As she had driven home down the lane, the chortling magpies had told her all. So, it was no surprise to her and could have been worse. The Bunnykin plates could be replaced. Willow pattern, she thought. Or a plain, robust Ironstone.
She picked up the smashed portrait of one of her spirit guides. “I’ll do you another one, dear,” she said, glancing at the ceiling. She was a very short tempered guide, fussy. A larger painting with more elaborate frame, and a votive candle would perhaps mollify her.
As she swept, the old woman mused on the efficacy of spells and curses. She slapped herself on the wrist for being so slack as to only protect the front of the house. The words of her old Master, written with fingers of blue flame on her graduation diploma, came to mind. “HAS A GOOD GRASP OF THE ESOTERICS, BUT MUST BE MINDFUL OF DETAIL.”
Och well, she thought, I’ll put it down to still learning.
*
Now for the mess in the toilet. It would have to be re painted. Blush white perhaps? And the other youth? She looked across at Rory standing in the corner, hands folded across his chest. Gibbering, incontinent, his mind seemed completely gone. Pity. He looked such a pet. Now there’s an idea. She had enjoyed a fox, snake, and even polly the Pelican. Wonderfully obedient familiars and pets. But never a human. Yes. He could be her familiar. Washed and combed out, he would do quite nicely.
She chuckled her fingers in the bulging crutch of Rory’s faded, blue jeans. “And he was so pretty.”
A chill wind scattered some leaves over the boys’ van.
The old woman blew her breath across Rory’s lips. There would be no need for the electric blanket this winter, she thought and reached into her bookcase for The Bumper Book of Spells.
THE END.
Ned McCann. 15 Church st. BALMAIN. N.S.W. 2041. AUSTRALIA.
2573 words.