The Beast at the Door

by Althea Blue

  Below, Ada entered the garden from the back door, armed with a bucket and spade. Clearly she was intending to weed the garden. Although Patience had never been much interested in growing things, since her experience in the woods she’d developed a fascination with recognizing edibles. She’d found a book on different kinds of plant growth and was working at memorizing everything that grew in the British climate, just in case. For a while she watched Ada crouch among the neat rows of plants, digging carefully and depositing greens in her bucket. Finally, it gave Patience an idea. If Ada was likely to be occupied for a while, then Patience could do a bit more exploring. She didn’t dare descend the stairs, she had promised multiple times not to, but the upper floors had only been mentioned in passing. Ada said most of the rooms were closed up, and there was nothing of interest up there, but at this point Patience would be interested in just about anything new. She listened carefully for any sounds coming from downstairs, and checked again to make sure Ada was still working intently, then slowly and carefully climbed the narrower set of stairs leading to the second floor.

  At the top, her stomach churning with nervousness, Patience nearly turned back. The last thing she wanted was to make Ada angry with her. Ada was the one who provided food and shelter and friendship and Patience could afford to scorn none of those things. But she threw her shoulders back and convinced herself that she would just take a quick look around and then return to her room as if nothing had happened.

  She peeked into the first room. White cloths covered all the furniture, giving it a slightly sinister look. She expected the floors to be dusty, and to have to watch where she stepped so she didn’t leave tracks, but there wasn’t a bit of dust anywhere she could see. She lifted up one cloth to reveal a round card table marked out for some game, and a second revealed a billiards table. Clearly Ada’s employers didn’t spend much time in the games room. The next room held a large bed, made up with a thick duvet, and a door off that led to a ladies’ dressing area. A cupboard held women's clothing, all several years out of fashion, making Patience wonder about who had inhabited the room. Had the owners of the house been gone long enough for fashions to have changed so completely? That wasn’t possible, because Ada couldn’t have been there that long. This trip was doing nothing but confusing Patience, and she almost returned downstairs.

  She hesitated in the corridor, her head swiveling towards the stairs and then away again. She decided to check out one more room at random. Closing her eyes, she spun around and pointed, a popular way of making a decision when she was small, and when she opened her eyes again she followed her finger to the room at the very furthest end of the hall. The door was closed firmly, like all the others, but was not locked. Patience expected yet another bedroom or sitting room but the open door revealed something quite different.

  Counters lined all four walls, breaking only for the doorway. She wasn’t sure what they were made of, something that definitely wasn’t wood. She touched it, and felt a hard but smooth surface, mottled in color. It didn’t feel like stone or tile or anything she would have expected, it was too smooth. But that didn’t hold her attention for long because what the counters held was much more interesting.

  On one wall there were all kinds of jars and bowls and containers of different colored liquids, lined up at the back of the counters to create work space in front. Shelves above held more jars, some of them in colors she’d never seen before, not even in the paintings of the museums she had attended. A second counter was covered with hundreds or thousands of pieces of metal in varying shapes and sizes. Tools and parts hung neatly from the wall above that counter, some simple ones that she recognized from home, but many were more elaborate and she couldn’t imagine their uses.

  She recognized the tiny cogs and wheels and springs from an accident Mason had once had with a clock. Well, he had said it was an accident, anyway. Patience had had her suspicions he had just wanted to see what made it go. But her father had spanked him and sent him to his room for three days. It was one of the few occasions that Patience had had to sneak food to her brother, instead of the other way around. He still wouldn’t admit to having done it on purpose, even to her.

  How he would have loved to see this place!

  Pushing her sadness aside, Patience went to the longest counter, the one that ran under the window. As it faced the back of the house, the curtain was not fully drawn and bright light filtered into the room through it. She stared in amazement. There were all manner of creations. Some she recognized as toys, things she had seen in toy-shops as a child, or even in her own home. She picked up a baby doll that cried when it was lifted upright and whose eyes closed when it was laid down. She’d had a similar doll when she was young, although this one seemed much more realistic. The face was not china, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Some kind of leather possibly, it resembled human skin too closely for her comfort. With a slight shudder she replaced it exactly where it had been.

  Then her eyes fell on a cat. For a minute she was sure it was real, and she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before, but it didn’t move, even when she cautiously stroked its back. Another toy. She picked it up and turned it over. A tiny key poked up from its belly. Patience had seen clockwork toys before. There had even been an automaton boy who could write his name at an exhibit the last time she had been in London, so she turned the key a few times to see what the cat would do. When it stretched out its paws she put it back on the table and watched in amazement as it started to clean itself. Then it got up and walked over to the edge of the counter, and then turned around again and mewed in her direction. It paced back to where it started and turned around a few times, tail swishing, until it seemed to find a comfortable position. Patience reached out to stroke its fur again and the thing purred. How extraordinary. If she hadn’t seen the key she would never have been able to tell that it wasn’t a real cat. It seemed to go to sleep and she moved on to another item.

  Patience was so absorbed by the trinkets and toys she found that she forgot where she was, and forgot that she had meant to return to her room after only a few minutes. She turned keys and watched a dozen or more creations go through their paces, always real enough to fool an onlooker. Some were clockwork and others seemed to have systems powered by things she had no idea about, but the operation of them all were simple and she considered what uses they had. She was right in the middle of examining a round creation that seemed to suck air in through vents on the bottom, though she wasn’t sure for what purpose, when she heard an indrawn breath behind her.

  She spun around to face Ada, who wore a look of utter betrayal. Patience’s heart missed a beat. She'd known that Ada would be angry if she found out Patience had been exploring, but this didn’t look like anger to her. Beyond the betrayal seemed to be stark terror.

  “Ada, I...” she broke off, really having nothing to say to explain her behavior.

  “Go.” Ada said, quietly. “You need to leave.”

  Patience walked past and out into the hallway. She preceded the other girl down the stairs and started to enter her room.

  “No,” Ada stated, starting to sound agitated. “You need to get out. Go. Don’t come back.”

  Patience stood stock still and stared at the girl. “Leave the house?” she asked, tears springing to her eyes.

  Ada’s own eyes were already filled. “You have to leave now! Take the cloak and get out. I told you. I told you that you could stay as long as you stayed on this floor but you didn’t… you went... you have to leave!” at the last word her voice rose until she was shouting at Patience. “Go away! I don’t want you here anymore.”

  Patience took a step towards her, her arms outstretched. “Ada, please, I did not mean to...”

  “GO!”

  The last word was a command she couldn't contradict. Patience fled down the stairs, grabbed a cloak from the hook beside the back door, climbed the wall where she’d gotten into the garden on her first visit and fled into the woods, tears streaming down he
r face. She ran until she couldn’t breathe and then sank to the ground, gasping for air and pulling at the cloak to cover every part of her. Then she curled into a ball and wept.

  Chapter Nine

  Although it hurt her heart terribly to see the house where she’d been happy for such a short time, the pain was worse when she wasn’t near enough to feel its presence. Patience scouted out the area around the house until she knew it as well as the floor of the interior she’d spent so many days exploring. The woods were close enough to the house's wall that if Patience climbed a tall tree she could see over into the garden. From this perch she watched Ada enter and leave the house, tend the garden, feed the chickens and kill and skin the small animals that got caught in her snares.

  Sometimes she told herself it was wrong to watch without Ada knowing she was there, but she felt magnetically drawn there day after day. She also discovered a small village nearby. Although she didn’t enter the village, for reasons she never tried to explain to herself, she could see some of it from the edge of the woods where she felt safe. She noted a market day once, where people came to buy and sell goods from temporary tables made out of rough-hewn planks or from blankets laid on the ground.

  It was cold in the woods, and even with the warm cloak, she still spent more time than not shivering. Once she tried to build a fire, she’d read that there was a way to make a spark by rubbing two sticks together but it certainly didn’t work for her. She wished she’d taken some matches when she’d fled. She’d grown used to being warm in the house. Constant chill just added misery to her loneliness. In truth, she missed Ada’s companionship more than the warmth or the food, which was why she kept close to the house where she was no longer welcome.

  At least she wasn’t having as much trouble finding food now, thanks to her study of the horticulture book from the library. She knew what was safe to eat and even in this late season there was food around, though it wasn’t terribly appetizing. She ate only when the hunger pangs reminded her to, but they didn't come that frequently.

  She did tend to fall into weeping fits for no particular reason and she knew she felt lonelier than she ever had before, even lonelier than when she’d first run away. Feeling close to someone, even for a short time, had been so new and wonderful that Patience despaired when she thought she might never find it again.

  She wondered if women got married simply to stop the lonely feelings. Even a husband one did not love would be someone to talk to, to share space with. She started to feel like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be married after all, just not to Gabriel. She knew that a marriage such as that would leave her lonelier than ever, even if the man was right beside her. To him she would not be someone to converse with or share ideas, her role would be more like that of a dress or a piece of her mother’s jewelry, something to show off for a while and then put away in a cupboard or a box until it was needed again. Even being lonely and cold and miserable in the middle of a forest somewhere (she still had no idea where she was, she’d never gotten around to asking Ada) was better than that.

  At least here she was a person.

  She was sitting on her favorite perch in her favorite tree, watching the dark clouds build up worryingly when she heard the beast roaring from the front of the house. With nothing else to lose she decided she would have a good look at him and see if she could figure out exactly what he was. She circled the house, staying as close to the woods as possible until she found a place she could view him clearly, but was still out of his sight. She watched him pace up and down in front of the window a few times, then stand and roar, and then return to pacing. He repeated these actions several times and then the curtains closed him from her view.

  Patience stayed where she was. Something was ticking in her brain and she needed to think. Because of this, she was still in position when the front door opened and the creature stood framed in the opening, roaring again. Then he left the door for a few seconds and returned, back and forth. He looked like he was pacing, exactly as he’d done at the window, but it wasn’t as visible because the door was a narrower opening. He stopped to roar again and then was gone.

  She realized that the creature only exhibited a very few actions. He walked, but each time he paced, the distance covered seemed about the same, whether in front of the door or the window. He would stop and roar, but each time it sounded the same, and seemed to go on for the same amount of time. And he would stand still and move his head, seeming to look around him, but when he had looked right at her in the house, he hadn’t reacted as if he actually saw her.

  These actions never changed. Patience knew from recent experience that pacing back and forth in one place got very boring very quickly. She had learned to alter her steps, to go into and out of rooms, and to change her paces to keep herself from going crazy. If the creature was a thinking being, he would be bound to do the same. And if he was a wild animal, he would not be confined by those same actions. He would likely have eaten Ada and whatever else he could find in the house and then gone looking for another food source.

  Patience's mind proffered the image of a cat that looked real but was wound like clockwork to perform a set of actions. She remembered the way it had walked across the desk and then curled itself up. She had only wound it once, but strongly believed that if she was back up in that room and wound it again, it would perform the same activities in the same order.

  It was like that with the automaton she’d seen in London. It could write its name, but that was all. It dipped the pen in ink, brought it to paper and wrote the same characters, over and over. If, as had happened while she was watching, the paper was not placed correctly, it would write on the desk below. Everyone had laughed at that, and she had drifted off to see another exhibit, but that memory was strong right now.

  The creature must be another toy. Something that needed to be wound up and placed carefully in order to perform. She didn't understand why anyone would create such a thing. The cat was cute and would be an interesting item to discuss at a dinner party. The other toys she’d seen upstairs had been for entertainment mostly, or else they did something useful, but what use could a great, scary creature have? She supposed it might frighten away burglars, should any happen to approach the house when the creature was roaring, but then wouldn’t it make sense to set it up at night, when thieves were more likely to arrive?

  Patience had never heard the roaring at night except for the night she arrived, only in the daytime when Ada was up and about. But never, she realized, when Ada was with her. The creature only seemed to come out when Ada was on the ground floor, and not when she was in the garden either. That would make sense if Ada was the one winding it up and setting it off, but for what purpose? What possible use could a creature like that have except to scare people?

  And it would, she realized. In the time she’d spent in the house, no one had ever approached it. No doorbell sound or knocking had come at the front door, and she’d never heard a delivery boy or caller of any kind. Was that the creature’s purpose? To keep everyone away? It hadn’t worked in her case, but she’d been desperate enough that a quick death at the claws or jaws of the creature had seemed preferable to freezing in the storm. What if no one else was that despairing? No friendly housewife or visiting clergy was likely to want to broach that great a threat just to say hello.

  As far as Patience was aware, Ada never went out the front door. She only used the back, into the view-restricted garden where no one could see in unless they were up a tree. But again, that was something that Patience had started out of loneliness and despair. She already believed the creature wouldn’t hurt her, especially not with her outside the walls. But a visitor would not be likely to want to see into a space occupied by a frightening creature. As far as anyone in the village was aware, no person inhabited the house. Suddenly the restriction on moving the drapes from the front windows made perfect sense. Ada didn’t want anyone to know she was there. She wanted them to think the beast was the only resident of the ho
me so they would leave her alone.

  But why? Did the owners of the house demand this of Ada while they were away? Was it for her protection or theirs? Were there actually employers? Patience suddenly put everything together. Ada wasn’t a servant in the house, her plain clothes and relaxed manners had just made Patience believe that was the girl’s position, because in Patience's experience, Ada hadn't exhibited the training or the formality expected from a well-off daughter.

  But Ada had herself said that her father hadn’t cared if she acted like a young lady or not. He encouraged her to read and think about the things she read. He probably hadn’t much cared about what she wore or whether she observed the proper formalities. And he was an inventor, a creator. All the things in the upstairs workshop were his creations. Just like the tarnish-repelling solution she had cleaned the silver with.

  She suddenly felt terrible for treating Ada so poorly when the girl had been nothing but kind to her. Clearly, she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she lived in the house, but she let Patience stay there, despite the fact that she didn’t know the truth. Her father had left her alone and not returned, causing the girl to fend entirely for herself. And she must not have had anywhere to go. She was managing to feed herself and do the cooking and cleaning without any kind of assistance. Yet there had been flour for bread and sugar and tea and things that couldn’t be grown in the garden. So something must be coming in from outside, unless her supply store was enormous. She wondered exactly how long Ada had been alone.

  Patience was still staring at the closed front door where the beast had departed. How incredibly brave and clever the girl must be, to decide to stay there unaided and to find a way to keep everyone else from bothering her. She moved deeper into the woods, and circled around the back of the house again, musing on whether Ada’s father had built the creature or whether Ada had managed it by herself. Certainly the things on the table didn’t seem to have been abandoned for long. She must still be working up there, with her father away. Patience wondered what else she had created. The questions burgeoned in her mind one after the other. It was impossible to know the truth. Everything in her mind was just speculation. She couldn’t stay away now. She had to know everything.