A Matter of Agency
by Eldritch Thrum
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
A remnant of warmth emanated from the hearthstone, stinging the ornate, coagulated wound on the palm of his left hand. Yet he held it there, as though seeking counsel from the hard, indifferent surface.
“How many, again?” he asked, closing his eyes to imagine the whole of the house from the mere fragment he touched.
“7200.”
“Does that include the basement?”
“And the attic, yes, sir. It is more than enough square footage for your family, Mr. Riber. More than enough, unless your plans have changed, in which case I would have to make edits to the forms, and that would—”
“Babe, this has everything we need,” Telah interrupted, “and it’s more beautiful than Mr. Moen described!” She stared at her husband, knowing that if only he would look into her eyes, she could persuade him.
Kael turned, avoiding his wife’s gaze, and ran his palm over his mouth, exhaling slowly to ease the throbbing along the connective tissue. They had seen so many houses over the past two weeks that all but this one had lost their distinction, and it had already consumed more than two hours of their morning.
Although a modest Carolean-style manor house centered within 90 wooded acres, having endured countless exterior restorations and only practical interior upgrades, it was far more than they would need; yet, despite his hesitation, its charm — from its shedua wood flooring and leaded beveled glass windows, to its spiral columns and seven chimney stacks — was intoxicating.
Telah watched Kael imploringly, rubbing the wound in the palm of her right hand and shifting her weight from one foot to the other until at last he spoke.
“I’m sorry!” he said, his eyes soft and forlorn. “The house is perfect, I know! I just—”
The agent, an aged but vibrant man, stood erect and cleared his throat. “Of course, the four of you must come to your own decision in your own time, Mr. Riber, and I am prepared to stand with you when that time is known, but I must remind you that two weeks ago to this day, you rightly sought my agency with the gravity of one whose decision was firm but whose time for acting on it was rapidly diminishing.”
Kael, unsure of how to express the fear that burdened him, lowered his head and slowly ambled toward the fireplace.
Seeing that his words had deflated his client, the agent slightly altered his appeal. “Forgive me. I am, of course, the Ribers’ humble servant,” he smiled, “here to effectuate — not affect — your decision. Whether indeed this is the house you all wish to claim, we must nonetheless move forward with zeal and zest, as my father used to say, but with haste, I must add, Mr. Riber, with haste, for this is the thirtieth day of the month, and the Lender has already pre-approved you.”
The agent clasped his hands behind his back, walked slowly to the window nearest the front door, and allowed his words to resonate within the silence that followed. As he did so, his muted phone vibrated from within the shallow pocket of his brown wool pants. He kept it at his hip as he read the text from a trusted colleague, who indicated that three other families had scheduled to view the house that afternoon and that one of the families would most likely claim it should the Ribers not.
He prudently returned the phone to his pocket and stared into the autumnal expanse of trees that enclosed the property. Inches beyond the glass hovered a convolvulus hawk-moth, a species the agent had encountered with each showing and whose ashen, rhythmic fluttering always entranced him.
Telah, who had learned to interpret Kael’s subtle body language, looked over her shoulder at the agent. “Mr. Moen, could Kael and I have a minute?”
“Of course,” he replied dully, forcing his eyes to blink. “Perhaps I could locate the children for you? I believe they ventured from the koi pond to the attic, which I find tends to be the most alluring space for imaginative children.”
“That’d be great, actually. We could use their ‘zest and zeal’!”
“Indeed!” the agent replied, heartened by her buoyancy despite her husband’s disquiet, and walked out of the room, an eclipse of hawk-moths hovering in his mind.
* * *
Telah waited until the ascending sound of the creaks had become little more than a padded thump overhead. “So what’s wrong?”
“We’ve never had a house this nice,” Kael murmured, though loud enough for her to hear.
Knowing this was not what troubled him, she merely tilted her head and frowned.
“All right,” he sighed, “it’s not the house. It’s... It’s the moment... looming.”
“Okay. I mean, I get it. We’ve been waiting for this ‘moment’ a long time now, but we first talked about claiming before we even got married! Remember?”
“Look,” he pushed through a whisper, “you of all people know this runs deeper than that for me.” For an extended moment, he stared at her, potent images drifting through his mind — the rapturous bonfire service in the woods where he first met her; their quiet, moonlit wedding in a clearing beyond those woods; the birth of their twins and the ancient sacraments they received from their congregation — images that washed in and out of focus until the one he had been struggling to suppress at last emerged: the shadows of eight dangling, lifeless feet cast against the spandrel in his parents’ home.
“I know it does,” she said.
Her words startled him. He opened his mouth but could say nothing.
She reached out, gently turned his face toward her own, and moved her fingers through the thick black strands of hair that covered his jaw.
“Kael, listen to me. They did what they were meant to do, just as this is what we’re meant to do. It’s part of who we are, of what we were destined to be: a family, forever. If this isn’t the house, then tell me and we’ll find another one. But Kael, claiming a house is the only way we can do what our family is meant to do. It can’t not happen. Okay? We’ve always known this.”
Whether it was her touch, her eyes, or the soft strength of her words, the doubt he had been entertaining was suddenly less palpable. He sighed, leaned over, and kissed her.
“Okay. I’ll get myself together,” he said through a subtle smile, and she pressed her hand into his until the identical pattern of their new scars aligned.
* * *
Linnea held the wings of the dead bald-faced hornet between her fingers, looking up for its nest as her socked feet shuffled across the wooden planks of the attic floor.
“It can still sting you, genius!” Aseph shouted from the other end, swinging rhythmically from a cross beam.
She ignored him, stopping instead to pick up a second dead hornet whose tarsal claws had snagged the frayed end of her right sock, near the small toe.
“Whatever, then,” Aseph added, but when he dropped from the beam onto a tall crate nearest the hatch, the reverberation shook the rafters, dislodging the round, grey nest from a beam just beyond Linnea, and his anxiety rose.
She was too far from the hatch, thus too far for him to shield her from harm.
Both paused to listen and watch for movement.
The nest reminded Linnea of a mummy’s head, its brittle paper layers curled and covered in dust, its entrance like a dark, yawning mouth. Yet no sound or stir came, so she slowly shuffled her feet toward it.
“Psst! What are you doing, idiot?” Aseph whispered. “Stop!”
Standing over the nest empowered her. How easily I could crush you under my foot, she thought, or hurl you at my brother. The blue, large-rimmed glasses slipped down her nose, stopped by thick strands of toffee-colored hair. She squatted to watch it more closely.
“Hey!” he continued to whisper. “Is it empty, or what?”
Curiosity spread through her like a warm sedative, pulling her head closer to the nest, relaxing her hands until both wasps slid to the floor. She wanted to place her ear upon it, to feel its frangible texture against her skin. So, pressing her glasses firmly against the bridge of her nose and tucking her hair neatly behind her right ear, she lowered her face against the hornets’ lair.
Aseph watched, unable to swallow.
At first there was only a soft crunch, but once she had poised her head, something slow and deep, like a cocooned pulse, emanated from its center. Linnea lifted her left hand toward the rafters and began to emulate the rhythm of this pulse, furling and unfurling her fingers in sync.
Interpreting this as an all-clear, Aseph lowered himself to the floor, picked up his sister’s shoes, and stepped gingerly toward Linnea, shifting with each creak until, when he was only a few steps from her, he saw her hand clench, and he stopped. “What is it?”
“The beat is gone.”
“What beat?”
Linnea rose and turned to explain but screamed instead at the partial head emerging from the hatch. Aseph echoed the scream and amplified it with a few mild expletives.
Mr. Moen took two more steps until his upper body was revealed.
“Children, I must apologize! I had no mischievous intentions! Did you not hear me ascending the steps?”
The agent, finding he had frightened his younger clients mute, redirected their focus. “Your parents wish for you to join them on the main floor. I believe they are in dire need of your insights regarding this house, but I can see that something here requires your creative closure, as well. Perhaps I can assist you in some way?”
Having lost his only child decades ago to water hemlock ingestion, the agent now found amiable interaction with children of any age emotionally compromising; however, after reminding himself that these were clients, he was able to accentuate his question with an acceptable grin.
“Are we allowed to take these with us?” Linnea asked, cradling the nest in her right arm, cupping the two dead hornets in her left hand.
“If what I suspect is true,” he said, trying not to imagine the face of his daughter in place of his client’s, “then there would be no need to take them. Let me ask you both: Have you each chosen your space within this house?”
Aseph answered first. “We love the attic and the basement. Can we choose both?”
“Well, one of you may occupy the attic or the basement, but not both attic and basement.” When he saw their reaction, the agent felt sorry for them, trying to sympathize with adolescent frustrations provoked by adult restrictions. “That is, unless a concealed structure connects them.”
The twins looked hard into each other’s eyes, hoping the other would have found some hidden passage that conjoined the two rooms.
When the answer revealed itself, Linnea raised her eyebrows and smiled. She placed the nest and the dead hornets on the floor and ran to a low, narrow door in the east corner of the attic.
Aseph followed but called after her, “Yeah, I tried it already, but it’s locked.”
Linnea looked back at the agent, who dangled between his fingers a small copper key. Linnea ran back to him, opened the door, and saw within its darkness a thick wooden ladder fastened to the opposite wall.
“I can’t see where it goes, Mr. Moen,” she said.
“Why not find out? When you do, come find me and your parents in the master living room. I suspect that you may even arrive there before I do!”
Aseph pushed his way past her and quickly descended the ladder. When the darkness at last enveloped the top of Linnea’s head, the agent closed the low, narrow door, leaving it unlocked, and returned the key to the larger set of multicolored keys he kept in the outer pocket of his jacket.
His walk to the hatch was slow, unmindful of all but the rafters overhead, which appeared sturdy, reliable for the purpose of a twelve-year-old. And despite having to rely solely on his memory of the floor plan, he deemed the basement equally conducive to their needs: a labyrinth of small and spacious rooms, overhung by a dark cavity of exposed wiring and copper pipes. Perfect, he reminded himself, for little souls to flit about like moths.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Eldritch Thrum
