Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  The half of the attic closest to the stairs had been Andy Gage’s bedroom. The actual furnishings weren’t familiar to me, but something in their configuration was; I could imagine my father, Adam, Aunt Sam, and the others—at best only vaguely aware of each other then—arranging and rearranging the layout in a never-ending roommates’ squabble. There by the window was the folding cot—not a real bed, a cot—where they had slept, maybe looking out at the back garden as they drifted off each night; there by the chimney column was a desk, set up defensively with a clear view of the stairs; there and there, along the sides of the room where the roof sloped down towards the attic floor, were low shelves of the cinderblock-and-plank variety, filled with books and toys and general clutter. I was amazed by how much had been left behind, but I suppose there had been a limit to how much junk my father could take with him to college. The last days of packing must have been especially chaotic, with every half-aware soul trying to steal time to make sure their favorite possessions were included.

  The other half of the attic, the part on the far side of the chimney, was given over to storage. Actually, the division wasn’t as clear-cut as that; as my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I realized that a lot of the “storage” was really just more clutter. It looked like we’d always had a space-allocation problem.

  I hunched down by one of the shelves, brushing dust and dead silverfish from a line of books. I didn’t recognize all the titles, but once again there was a more general sense of familiarity: these books had belonged to someone—a collection of someones—whose tastes I knew. One volume in particular caught my eye: Tales of the Greek Heroes, by William Seferis. I picked it up; on the cover, a princess cowered behind Hercules as he prepared to lop the heads off a menacing hydra.

  I turned to show the book to Penny and found her staring again, this time at the piles of stuff in the storage end of the attic.

  “Too many shadows, huh?” I said.

  “Thank God,” replied Penny, “thank God our house in Willow Grove didn’t have an attic. My mother…I would have gone crazy in a room like this.”

  I thought of joking that I had gone crazy in a room like this, but decided my father might not appreciate the humor. Instead I said: “Do you really think your mother would have put you in an attic room, even if she had one? I mean, from what you’ve told me about her, it seems like that’d be too much like—”

  “Poverty?” Penny shrugged. “Maybe.” Trying for a joke of her own: “She would have insisted on better stairs, at least.”

  “Let me guess: marble steps?”

  Penny nodded. “With gold banisters. And velvet carpeting, so you couldn’t hear her coming.” She smiled, more at her own daring than at the joke itself, I think. I smiled too, and then the dust, which had been tickling my nose since we’d gotten up here, made me sneeze. Something jumped in the shadows on the other side of the chimney column; a box fell off a stack and crashed to the floor. Penny let out a terrified squeak.

  “It’s all right,” I said, fighting back another sneeze, “it’s OK, I think—it’s too small to be a ghost…” I saw a pair of eyes glittering in the darkness, and a bushy tail that swished indignantly. “It’s a squirrel! It’s all right, Penny, it’s just a squirrel…” The squirrel chittered at me, working its jaw like a little old man whose dentures had slipped; then it bolted, exiting the attic through whatever hole it had come in by.

  I went to the box that the squirrel had knocked over. It was full of windup alarm clocks. I took one out and held it up to look at it. “Were these yours?” I started to ask my father, but before I could finish the question I saw, reflected in the crystal, the face of someone standing behind me, peering over my shoulder. Not Penny; it was a young girl.

  A Witness. The Witness, I should say: the same one who’d come up behind me in the house when I was searching under the bed in my father’s room.

  Of course, she wasn’t really looking over my shoulder. The reflection was only an illusion, that faded even as I noticed it—but even after it had faded, I could still feel the Witness’s presence.

  A funny idea popped into my head. I turned around.

  “Penny,” I said, “could you step aside for a second?”

  “W-what?” Penny said, still reacting to the squirrel.

  “Just move over a little.” I gestured with one hand. “I want to try something.”

  Penny stepped aside, and I tossed the alarm clock underhand towards the stairs. The clock dropped out of sight into the stairwell, and went banging down the steps, caroming off the walls, all the way down into the kitchen, where it finally came apart. We could hear the crystal breaking, and individual gears and springs scattering across the linoleum.

  We could hear it very clearly. It wasn’t just that the door at the bottom of the stairs was open; the sound carried easily through the attic floor itself. If I arranged to have another alarm clock smashed in the living room or the bedroom, I thought, it would come through almost as clearly.

  “What do you think, Penny? If a little kid yelled for help up here, would you be able to hear it downstairs?”

  Penny blinked nervously, as if wondering whether I was still myself. “I guess so,” she said.

  “I guess so too,” I agreed, and felt the Witness again, like a phantom tugging at my shirtsleeve for attention.

  I went over to the cot. A couple of dresses in my size had been laid out on the mattress as if for comparison and then left to gather dust. Holes had been chewed in the dress fabric, and when I moved the dresses aside I saw that something had been at the blanket, sheets, and mattress ticking too; and all of it was filthy. The cot’s frame still seemed sturdy, though. I tested it with my hands, then sat down carefully.

  “Penny,” I said, “can you do me a favor?”

  “Oh God…you want to go inside again? Here?”

  “I think somebody wants to show me something. I’ll try not to be gone long.”

  Penny’s jaw moved, in a fair imitation of the squirrel—but unlike the squirrel, she didn’t run away. “All right,” she said. “Only please hurry. I don’t like it up here.”

  The Witness was waiting for me as I appeared on the hilltop beside the column of light. She didn’t greet me or wave hello; her sole acknowledgment of my arrival was the look she gave me.

  My father, who was also there, was a bit more expressive.

  “What the hell are you doing, Andrew?”

  The question was rhetorical, but I answered it anyway, my reply edged with an irony that I didn’t fully intend: “I’m learning.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing this here,” my father said. “Not in this house. Back in Seattle maybe, under Dr. Eddington’s supervision—”

  “Well unfortunately we aren’t in Seattle just now,” I said, my sarcasm growing more deliberate. “Maybe we would be, if you’d been more honest with me.”

  “I’m sorry I kept things from you, Andrew. It was bad judgment; I see that now. But this”—he waved a hand at the Witness—“this is dangerous.”

  “She has something to show me.”

  “You won’t learn anything you don’t already know. It’ll just hurt more.”

  I sensed that he was telling the truth, or at least believed what he was saying, but it didn’t matter; I was committed. “Go back to the pulpit, father,” I said. “Keep an eye on the body.”

  “Andrew…”

  “Go back to the pulpit. If this is as dangerous as you say, and Gideon tries to take advantage…well, I don’t want Penny to have to deal with him again. We’ve put her through enough already.”

  He hesitated, wanting to order me not to do this. But the balance of power had shifted between us, and in the end, it was my will that carried. My father went back to the pulpit.

  I turned to the Witness, who still stood by patiently. “All right,” I told her.

  When a Witness shares its secrets with you, it swallows your head. I’d never actually experienced this, but I understood what was involved well en
ough to regard the Witness in the same way I imagine a circus tamer does the lion whose jaws he is about to pry open.

  I made myself kneel down beside her, bringing my ear level with her mouth, just as I would if she were going to whisper something to me. And at first it seemed as if that was exactly what she was doing: she gripped my shoulder with one hand, cupped the other around her lips, and leaned in close. I heard her mouth open, felt her breath tickling my ear, but what came rolling off her tongue was not words but a much broader collection of sounds, background noise from another time and place. The force of her breath increased—too late, I lost my nerve and tried to pull away, but the hand on my shoulder held on implacably—and her mouth gaped wider, impossibly wide, less a human mouth now than the mouth of a bag or the neck of a hood that slipped, flowed, over the top of my head, covering my eyes. There was a moment of suffocating darkness, of terrible pressure—my soul’s skull in a vise—and then—fusion—the Witness and I were one, we are one, we am—

  —I am standing on a lakebank, watching a stone skip across the surface of the water. My weight is on my left foot and my left arm is extended in front of me; I can feel tension in my wrist and shoulder, and the fading impression of a hard, flat object recently grasped in my upturned palm.

  I stagger, off-balance. The stone skips, and skips, and finally sinks, just a skip or two shy of a big mound of sand and gravel that forms an island in the middle of the lake. As I steady myself, ripples spread out from the skipping-stone’s splash points, forming a chain of expanding concentric rings.

  These are some of the things that I know: This body of water in front of me is called Quarry Lake. It is fed by a trio of creeks that trickle down from Mount Idyll to the northeast, and it feeds, in turn, a larger stream—Hansen’s Brook—that flows west for several miles to Two Seasons Lake. The sand-and-gravel pile has no official name, but I think of it as Devil’s Island. Right now, in bright sunlight, it doesn’t look very devilish—just barren—but I know that under moonlight or in morning fog it is a different story. Also, though it doesn’t seem that far to swim, I know that getting to or from the island is actually quite difficult: the waters of Quarry Lake are deeper than they first appear, and shockingly cold even in summer.

  Besides my detailed knowledge of the lake and the geography surrounding it, I know that I am eleven years old, that my given name is Andrea Gage, and that I live in a cottage set back in the woods behind me. I know that I am very unhappy there, and I know why.

  These are some of the things that I don’t know: What day it is. What time it is. What I was doing two minutes ago. What I was doing an hour ago. What I did yesterday, or the day before that.

  Why I am scared.

  Actually, I do know why I’m scared: because something very bad is about to happen. But the exact nature of the something, how I came to be aware of it, and what, if anything, I’ve done to deserve it—all of that is missing information.

  I scan the lakebank and the line of trees that border it for some clue to what’s coming. There’s nothing obvious, but when my eyes light on a particular stand of tall flowering shrubs—shrubs that mark the beginning of the path that leads back to the cottage where I live—my whole nervous system jumps. I stare at the shrubs, searching for someone hiding among them, a face peering out through splayed branches. I see nothing. But I know what I’m afraid of now.

  It’s when I turn away and resume scanning the tree-line that the call comes, a singsong cry that echoes on the lake:

  Yooooooooo-hooooooooo…

  My gaze snaps back to the shrubs in time to see a branch rustling. I still can’t see him, but I’m sure he’s there now. I wait, half-paralyzed with fright, for him to step out and show himself. He doesn’t, and the cry is not repeated.

  Time passes. I can feel him watching me, waiting for me to make a move. I start to get mad, hating being toyed with this way, but my anger dissipates in the knowledge of my own helplessness. Next my knees get weak; I want to fall down, to beg him to come out and get it over with, do whatever he’s going to do. This feeling also fades, although it takes longer. What I am left with, finally, is a kind of stubborn fatalism, a sense that I must try to escape, even though it’s not going to do any good.

  There are, I know, three ways out of here: the path that leads back to the cottage where I live; the trail that goes up and around Mount Idyll; and the path that runs beside Hansen’s Brook all the way to Two Seasons Lake. Of these, the Mount Idyll trail is the best choice for an escape route. Steep and rugged, it favors small spry people over big lumbering ones. It also forks and doubles back a lot, offering numerous opportunities to outwit as well as outrun a pursuer. If I can make it as far as the first split in the trail, I should have no trouble getting lost; and while I cannot stay lost forever, still a reprieve is better than nothing. Maybe he will get bored, waiting for me to come back, and decide he doesn’t want to do it anymore. Or maybe tonight will be one of those rare nights when there are guests over at the cottage, everyone on their best behavior; maybe he’ll drink too much at dinner and fall asleep right after.

  There’s just one problem with the mountain trail: to get to it I will have to walk east along the lakebank, going right past his hiding place. It’s not really possible to go the other way around, and even if it were, by the time I waded across the mouth of Hansen’s Brook and beat my way through the thick undergrowth that renders much of Quarry Lake’s north bank impassable, he would have strolled over to the trailhead himself and be laying for me, laughing at my feeble attempt to evade him.

  I stare at the shrubs and try to calculate my chances of dashing past them without getting grabbed.

  I decide that I’ll never make it. The Mount Idyll trail is not an option; I’ll have to try the brookside path instead—a mostly level track on which long legs will have the advantage.

  I start walking backwards, slowly, as if by not running I can somehow conceal my intentions. I know he is not truly deceived by this, but if I am lucky he will play along, and let me have at least a small head start before chasing after me. Then, if I am very lucky, his stamina will give out before my lead does. So I back up—a step; a step; another step—until suddenly a new sound comes, a disembodied giggle that rises and falls as it echoes across the lake. Something lands in the water beside me with a big splash.

  I break and run. The hem of my skirt flaps between my knees, threatening to tangle my legs and trip me; I stub my toe on a rock, stumble, and keep going. I follow the lakebank to the mouth of Hansen’s Brook. I turn left, onto the path that leads to Two Seasons Lake.

  …and pull up short, my way blocked by thorns.

  My first confused thought is of Sleeping Beauty, where the evil fairy conjures a forest of brambles to stop the prince from reaching the castle. But these brambles are dead: dead dried-up rosebushes, their branches tied in bales, dragged down here and heaped with a bunch of old tree limbs into a big thorny deadfall. Some part of me is amazed by the effort it must have taken to construct, the work that went into it.

  It completely blocks the path. There’s no question of climbing over it, and as for going around…when I look to my right, into the brook’s rocky bed, I see something sparkling among the mud-slicked stones, something gleaming and sharp: broken glass. Smashed liquor bottles.

  No escape. The thought comes with such clarity it might have been spoken aloud. I wait to hear that giggle again, to feel his hand on the back of my neck. It doesn’t happen. Of course not, I think: he knows it’s not necessary to chase after me. All he has to do is wait, wait for me to see that I can’t get away, wait for me to give up and come back. Even this deadfall—(how long must he have worked on it? Hours? Days?)—isn’t really necessary. So what if I did outrun him? What if I made it all the way to Two Seasons Lake without getting caught? In the end, no matter how fast or how far I go, I’ve still got to come home.

  No escape. All right then, I give up. I surrender. I’m a little surprised, when I come back out onto the lakeba
nk, not to find him waiting out in the open for me. No matter, though: I know where he is. Head down, I walk towards his hiding place, preparing myself for the moment when he will leap out and grab me.

  It doesn’t come. I’m there now, I’m at the shrubs, and still he hasn’t pounced. I lift my head up, confused: where is he?

  I know he was here—the call, that giggle, I heard them—but somehow now he’s not. My mind scrambles for an explanation: is it possible he forgot about building the deadfall? That he saw how fast I was running and decided he couldn’t catch me, and gave up the chase?

  It’s an absurd notion, but before I can knock it down an irrational hope sweeps over me. The Mount Idyll trail, I think: I can get to it now. I can go, and lose myself, and maybe I won’t come back, maybe I’ll just stay out there in the woods forever.

  Quick, I think, quick, before he realizes his mistake and comes back—

  No. Wait.

  The Mount Idyll trail: of course. He hasn’t given up. He hasn’t gone away. He’s still toying with me, letting me think he’s given up, letting me run a little farther before he finally pounces. The Mount Idyll trail: that’s where he’s hiding.

  Is that where he’s hiding? Uncertain, I look towards the trailhead.

  I see a shadow move among the trees there. It’s him!

  Wait. Wait. Is it him?

  My head’s still in doubt but my feet have decided: I am moving again, through the shrubbery, up the path to the cottage. I run, the woods blurring past me. My toe catches on another rock and this time I do fall down, but it’s OK, I’m back up again in a heartbeat, and the cottage is just ahead now, I can see the backyard gate standing open, invitingly.