Grace House: The Trial of Obscurity

by Rob Summers

Chapter 26 The Verdict

  Reason was in a fury. She passed through the kitchen in what seemed like three strides and had hold of the basement’s doorknob almost before the door slammed behind Bits. She threw it open, flicked on the light, and plunged down the stairs.

  In the basement floor the trap door was open and the scaly tail just disappearing down the opening, for Bits had taken the ladder head first. Reason snatched a lantern type flashlight from a counter and a huge screwdriver from some wall hooks, the latter to use as a weapon. She followed down the ladder, skipping the last four rungs by jumping to the floor, and in the process nearly bashing her head against a brick wall. She found herself snarling, almost screaming with fury, and forced herself to be quiet and listen. The sounds of Bits’ retreat came from a room beyond one of the looming doorways. She ran after him, desperately determined that he should not escape, not in a house full of children.

  In a few moments, still running with the light shining ahead of her, still hearing Bits just ahead, she had taken enough turns to realize in the back of her mind that she was lost. She was sweating too, for it was very hot down here. As for the size of the underground level, it was beyond all expectation, beyond credibility. She was sure, at any rate, that it was far larger than the floor plan of the house above.

  And it was not empty. As she ran and gasped, she passed dim objects which she took no time to examine and dim figures which might or might not be alive. One of these figures reached for her, or perhaps merely fell toward her, and she hit at it with the side of the lantern and staggered on.

  She had given birth only a week before. She soon had to stop with her sides aching and her small legs trembling as, over the sound of her own breathing, she tried to listen. To her surprise, she heard again the scrape and rattle of Bits’ reptilian claws on the concrete floor, not far off. When she walked toward the sound, it moved off slowly. With sickening clarity she realized that she was no longer chasing, she was being lured. Still she followed him, walking now. A few times she turned her light to the side to examine what was in these rooms, but she soon stopped that. Worst was the gigantic carnival game wheel, hanging in the air, turned by an invisible force while it clattered and creaked. When it stopped turning, the dirty rubber pointer would indicate one of the smudgy numbers on the rim. But it did not stop, and she was not sure which of the numbers was hers nor whether she wanted to be so pointed at. She could not burn it out of her mind, even when she had left it far behind.

  A time came when the clatter of the claws stopped and she knew that Bits was waiting for her. She was in an empty passage and approaching a doorway on the right side. She paused just short of the doorway. All her anger long since had drained away. She was afraid.

  Reason raised the screwdriver in her right hand and, slipping sideways, shined the light in the doorway. It showed her a small room with no exits and, against the far wall, Bits. The clothes were gone, he was all scales now. Scale and claw and fang and lizard eye. She stepped in and faced him.

  “I’ve never seen such an idealist,” he said. “I always said, Reason, that you would be tripped up by your idealism. It puts me in mind of our junior year when you were accused of cheating on that history test, of stealing the answers, and you wouldn’t name the actual cheaters. You lost an A because of that, and yet I do believe you actually thought better of yourself because of it. You thought it was noble and wouldn’t listen to a thing I told you. Not I who hang on like a sprained ankle, as you so wittily put it. But see what happens now, my dearest. Here you are, the noble defender of the young and weak. Do you know what happens now?”

  Reason kept her light on the creature’s near eye and the screwdriver raised. “I—I think we have some kind of fight,” she said.

  “No dear, that would be non-aesthetic. You’re so much smaller and weaker than I am. So much slower too, you can’t get away from me now. But remember, I love you. I’ll let you go if you just bring me something, a little thing.”

  “What?” she asked.

  Bits reached out his shortened arms with the hard little claws at the ends. “Bring me your baby. Put it in my arms.”

  Reason backed up a step and extended the screwdriver a little farther.

  “Now dearest, don’t be stiff. A baby is worth nothing, you know. Nothing to you anyway, after all your expense and care. Just go back to the house, I’ll show you the way. Then tonight bring it down here to me. Promise me that, and I’ll let you go.”

  Reason began to back out the door.

  “Don’t think you can get away without the promise.” Bits scrabbled after her. “If I don’t have Wisdom, I’ll have you. After all, you should be mine. You should never have left me after high school, darling. ‘Surely that hour foretold sorrow to this.’”

  He came a little too close, and Reason, jabbing at him, met the side of his head with the screwdriver blade. He bellowed and hissed, but did not leave her. Her retreat continued. Beside her and behind her were the army of presences, the things and beings that she had passed on the way there. Some of them made sounds—scrapings, mutterings—once the churning of the carnival wheel—but she dared not turn away from Bits to face them.

  Her heel met some small object and she half stumbled. Anticipating Bits’ lunge, she jabbed with the screwdriver again, and the blade met him sharply just below the snout and slid up across an eye. She ran backwards a few steps, but Bits, writhing and croaking, did not advance. For long moments she waited, soaked with sweat. When he came again, she raised the screwdriver and the dance continued. Now Bits was bleeding from his eye.

  “You’d best let me show you the way out of here,” he said. “You’re backing away from the house, not toward it. If you don’t come to terms with me, you’ll just go on and on endlessly till you drop.”

  “No, you’re forgetting something as usual,” said Reason. “Long before that, the lantern battery will give out. I’ve been calculating this situation of ours from every angle, and I’m way ahead of you. ‘The genius served by the dullard’ indeed! You’ve always been about thirty I.Q. points shy of me, and you know it, Bits.”

  “That’s as may be. I’ve never prided myself on mere mental wattage. But the question remains as to what you’ll do when the batteries fail.”

  “If you’re lying and I’m going in the right direction, then before that we’ll come to my friends and my husband.”

  “Your fair weather friends and your jailbird husband will have been much too frightened to follow you down here.”

  Reason had no answer. They moved on. Presently, the beam of another flashlight came from behind Reason and rested on Bits, a spot of brighter light in the midst of Reason’s wider, dimmer circle. Loud footsteps approached her from behind. For one moment, the lizard seemed very small beside the towering man who, in a great arc, brought down a shovel on his head. Bits dropped at once and lay still.

  Reason turned her light and discovered Dignity beside her with the shovel in his hands. He looked terrified.

  “Reason, am I glad to see you!” he said. “I was supposed to be partners with Truth on the hunt, but we got separated. I’m lost actually.” He picked up his flashlight which he had let fall in his attack and shined it on Bits. “What have you been doing to him, Reason? He’s all torn up. I know I didn’t do all that with the shovel.” The side of the lizard’s head was bleeding from a puncture wound, and his left eye was a hideous, bloody mess. Dignity tried to laugh. “Honestly, Reas’, you’re a killer.”

  Reason suddenly hugged him. “I don’t know about that, but I’ve got no legs left. Cousin, carry me.”

  Dignity sat in an easy chair among family and friends in the living room of Grace House and watched Reason receive another pillow from Love. His cousin was sitting up on a nearby couch and seemed half recovered already.

  “No, I don’t care how many clocks you show me,” she said, “I know I couldn’t have been down there only half
an hour. It had to have been days at least.”

  Love lifted Reason’s wrist, showing her her own watch. “Now do you believe it?”

  “No.” Reason took a drink of tea. “But however long it was, I was oh so glad to see Dig’ and then to see Truth and Grace and Joy after Dig’ had carried me for a while. And then daylight!” She looked around. “Where’s Truth?”

  “He’s bandaging Bits’ head,” Dignity said.

  “Bits is alive!”

  “Yeah, apparently I didn’t hit him hard enough. When we went back and found him, he was a human being again, and breathing. We had to carry him out, picking up his clothes along the way.”

  “Let’s kill him,” Reason said quickly, and then put a hand to her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “Actually, it would probably be for the best,” Grace said from the doorway. He came in with Truth, who joined Reason on the couch.

  “Yet instead of ending his misery, we simply called a cab to take him away,” continued the old man. “But he broke away from us outside and ran off on foot and without a coat. At any rate he’s gone, due to the exploits of the cousins. Hail to Reason the dragon fighter! And hail to her stalwart squire Dignity!” Everyone in the room laughed and applauded. Faithfulness brought Wisdom to Reason, who took him on her lap.

  “Now I know preparations have to resume for the party tonight,” said Grace, “and that some of you who are in the Embassy choir may want to meet about last minute matters. However, Bits’ sudden departure from the courtroom left unresolved a matter of utmost importance to at least one person here. Obscurity, would you come here, please?”

  From some corner Obscurity came and stood by Grace.

  “When the trial was interrupted,” he said, “the defense was finished. I had no closing statement to make. What about the prosecution?”

  Reason looked up from her baby. “All done, Ambassador.”

  “Then all that was required was a verdict, and we don’t need to reassemble in the courtroom for that. Your Honor, what do you decide?”

  Dignity stood and drew Grace aside. “If I declare her innocent,” he whispered, “can I still throw her out of the house?”

  “Come now, Dignity, of course not.”

  “But I’m the judge.”

  Grace gravely shook his head. “No, to banish her you’ll have to declare her guilty.”

  “Can I still do that? Despite all the new evidence, I mean, I can just say ‘guilty’ and she’s gone?”

  “You could. I didn’t lie to you when I said you are to decide. Yes, despite all evidence, you may do as you see fit.”

  Dignity nodded and went over to Obscurity. Everyone was watching and waiting. He looked at her lovely face. She smiled at him. This was not going to be easy.

  “The verdict on all counts,” he said slowly, “is not guilty. The accused is innocent.”

  Reluctantly, he joined the applause.

  Part 4 The Dilemma of Power