Gaze Upon My Works And Emote

It wasn’t that the man they’d met, creepy though he might have been, had been the most dangerous thing they’d encountered in their lives. He’d been a little intimidating, a little odd, but he wasn’t bad. Still, he sometimes appeared in her nightmares alongside Mister Spider and the churning ocean. Not that she had many nightmares these days, not with Jon safe at her side, but they happened sometimes and she could never really predict what would set them off.

Take the night before, she thought, hopping on one foot from paver to paver. By all accounts it had been a good day. Dad had taken them to the park and let them loose to run races, and they’d come home tired and happy. The more tired she was, the less likely she usually was to dream, but instead, there she had been, clinging to one side of the toy box while Jon clung desperately to the other, both trying to get on top of it without tipping it over as the waves dragged them through the house, watched by a pair of cold eyes on one side and four pairs of glowing eyes on the other, and a voice calling them all the while from the only other thing floating in the house, the sideboard in the front room. She didn’t even remember their parents being anywhere. Or, for that matter, the cats.

“We have to vacuum when we get home,” she said, her brain, as usual, trundling off down a side path, led astray by the odd word association game that so often followed her attempts to think in a straight line.

Jon, as usual, seemed to know, if not how she’d got to that thought, at least what the complete thought was. “Mason isn’t coming. He said he had a headache and just wanted to lie down. I hope I didn’t get cat hair on him.”

“You know Mason. He’s such a…” Melanie chased the word through her vague association of memories. “Hippo-something. Hippocratic? Wait, that’s doctors. But it’s something like that. You know. He thinks he’s sick when he isn’t.”

“I know what you mean, but I can’t think of the word either,” Jon confessed. “I thought it was Hippocratic, too. Hypocritic?” He sighed. “At least Sophie’s just afraid of them. Mum’s probably cleaned everything up, so we just have to put the cats in our room and everything will be fine. On that end, anyway.”

Melanie hummed. “Petition to make Dad read Paddiwack and Cosy while we dramatize it for our guests.”

Jon’s hum was more thoughtful. “Maybe we should wait for the next company party. The other barristers will think it’s cute. The kids at school will just think it’s odd. Plus we have to recruit Mum to be Sally.”

“I dunno, Dad has a good Sally voice.”

“Yeah, but she has to act Sally, right?”

They were still bickering and debating about it by turns when they reached the final corner. Both of them fell silent, and Melanie found herself holding her breath. She let it go in a rush of relief when they rounded the corner and saw nobody at all standing at the gate waiting for them. Her relief lasted until she yanked open the front door in time to hear their dad call, “Dear, did you hide this gift in the credenza for a reason?”

Jon stopped dead, his eyes widening, and Melanie felt a chill run down her spine as her dream came back to her. She had maybe guessed, in a distant sort of way, what the voice calling to them meant, but honestly, she hadn’t thought about it still being there in ages. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She had thought about it, but mostly in the context of being afraid to open the cupboard because she didn’t want to know if the present was still there.

Not because she was afraid of it, necessarily. Because she was afraid Jon had opened it after all.

“What gift?” Mum’s voice sounded distracted. She was probably trying to frost the cake for the party. “I didn’t put anything in that credenza.”

Melanie stepped into the living room, unease swirling in her stomach, to see Dad sitting back on his heels, looking bewildered as he studied the carefully wrapped present. Its paper still looked as shiny and intact as it has the day the creepy old guy had handed it to Jon. “Then how did it get here?”

“I put it there,” Jon said, somehow keeping his voice steady.

Dad looked up and smiled. “Hey, there you are!” he began, then paused, his brow furrowing. He looked down at the present again. “Uh, why was this in the credenza?”

“So Melanie wouldn’t find it.” Jon accepted it from Dad, then turned and held it out to Melanie with a smile.

She could see the desperate, almost frantic look in his eyes, though. Despite her apprehensions, she took it with a smile. Inspiration struck her, and she blurted, “Thanks! Yours is in our closet. C’mon, let’s go get it while we get changed.”

“I need you to pick up the sticks in the backyard,” Mum called from the kitchen.

“Okay,” Jon and Melanie called back in unison. They ran into the bedroom and shut the door.

The second they were alone, Melanie turned to Jon, fighting down the panic. “You’re not going to open it, are you?”

“Of course not,” Jon said, but she could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

Melanie pressed forward. “I’m serious, Jon. This thing scares me. If you open it, I just know something bad is going to happen to you. It was talking to us in my dreams last night.”

Jon’s shoulders slumped. “Yours too?”

Melanie hugged Jon, impulsively and quickly. “So what are we going to do? Steal the lighter while Mum’s not looking and set it on fire?”

“I don’t think that would work. I’m not sure this would burn.” Jon stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Melanie with a small grin. “But Mum wants us to pick up the sticks in the yard.”

Melanie was going to ask what that had to do with anything when the same thought that must have struck Jon struck her. Slowly, she smiled also. “And Dad said yesterday it’s a good time to garden.”

They changed into their play clothes and faked loud squeals of delight as they figured out whose pockets would hide the gift best. It wasn’t a particularly big box, so eventually they were able to tuck it into the front of Melanie’s dungarees without it being visible. They ran through the dining room and out to the backyard to begin their chore. Melanie was already betting it wouldn’t matter; it was cold and drizzling lightly, and the sky looked awfully dark on the horizon, so the party was almost certainly going to be inside. Then again, maybe Mum just wanted them to pick up the sticks before the next round of rainstorms knocked down more. Either way, both of them dutifully collected sticks until they had an armful, then headed over to the pile by the shed to dump them. It put them neatly out of view of the kitchen window.

Melanie looked around, then pointed to a spot along the fence line near the house. “There.”

Jon frowned. “Why there?”

“’Cause there’s nothing special about it.” Melanie didn’t know exactly why that was so important, but she felt very strongly that it was.

Jon, however, nodded slowly. “So we won’t remember where we buried it. And it’s a part of the yard we don’t play in much, so we won’t hear it…calling from underground.”

Melanie frowned. “You think it would do that?”

“Remember that story Dad read us at Christmas about the man who killed someone and buried him under the floor?”

“Oh, right, and he could hear his heart beating, but nobody else could?” Melanie considered for a minute. “But we didn’t kill anyone.”

“No. But it’s not about murder. It’s about feeling guilty and knowing there’s something there that shouldn’t be.” Jon kicked at the dirt, then picked up a bigger stick. “Let’s hurry before Mum comes out to check on us.”

Melanie picked up a stick, too, trying not to think about the makeshift paddles from last summer. Something about the set of Jon’s shoulders said he was thinking very hard about not thinking about that, too. Neither of them said anything as they got to work. The ground was soft, and even with the drizzle it took surprisingly little time to get a decently sized hole. Melanie pulled the gift out of her dungarees and dropped it unceremoniously into the bottom.

“Right,” Jon said. “Now for the hard part.”

“What—oh.” It hadn’t occurred to Melanie that without the wide, flat scoops of actual shovels, they would have a harder time filling in the hole than they had had in hollowing it out. “Well, let’s do our best.”

They tried with the sticks, but in the end, they had to scoop it with their hands, trying their best not to get too dirty. Melanie reckoned there wasn’t much help for it, though. She was already hearing their mother scolding them about how they would need to take a bath before the party and they’d best hurry up about it when Jon said, suddenly, “Do you hear that?”

For a moment, Melanie wondered if their mother actually was scolding them. Then she wondered if the package was calling out to them. Then she actually listened, and she heard what Jon had actually heard—a high, frantic mewing.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” she called.

Jon made the little hissing noises he made to call Paddiwack and Cosy, then meowed. The desperate, frantic mewing came again, and Jon nodded. “Okay, that works better. It must be a baby looking for its mummy.”

“She’ll be back, won’t she?” Melanie asked, a little hopelessly.

Jon didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. They both knew what the statistics were on stray cats and how likely it was that the kitten, wherever it was, was an orphan. It had probably had siblings at one point, too, but unless they were with it…

Melanie meowed, too. The kitten reacted by mewing again. Jon squatted down and meowed again. When the kitten responded, he pointed. “There!”

The skies chose that moment to open up, shifting from a light drizzle to full on rain. Melanie didn’t care. She squatted down next to Jon and followed his finger to see a tiny, bedraggled scrap of dirty fur scrabble its way out from under the privet bush in an absolute panic. Melanie tried to speak as gently as she could without being drowned out by the rain. “Hi, baby. It’s okay. We’re here. We’ll take care of you.”

Jon shrugged out of his jacket. Melanie was going to ask him why when he suddenly pounced, falling to his knees with a squelch as he threw his jacket over the kitten. After a moment, he sat back on his heels, clutching the bundle to his chest. “I got it! I got it!”

“Good! Let’s get inside!” Melanie took Jon’s elbow and helped him to his feet. She grimaced at the mud all down his knees. “Well, at least we can explain the dirt away. Hurry up!”

They ran inside, dirty and dripping wet, and carefully left their shoes at the door, for all the good it would do. Mum shook her head at them in obvious despair. “Look at you! You’re going to need a—what do you have there, Jon?”

Jon unwrapped his coat to display the pathetic little scrap, its fur sticking up in all directions. It screamed loudly. “It was all alone under the bushes, look, Mum. It can stay, can’t it?”

The kitten cried again. Before Mum could say anything about it, Cosy came into the dining room, ears pricked and tail erect. She made the mrrrp sound she often made when Jon or Melanie was in distress, and the kitten responded with another pathetic mew. Cosy rubbed against Jon’s ankles, purring up a storm.

Mum sighed. “The universe appears to have given you a gift…Antony! Can you grab the carrier? We need to take a run to the vet.”

Two hours and two baths later, even Sophie was kneeling in the circle with their other classmates, party games forgotten as they cooed with delight over the kitten, who had proved to be an orange tabby under the mud. Paddiwack and Cosy were supervising from the top of the cupboard as Jon dangled a bit of string in front of the kitten for him to pounce on.

“What’s his name?” asked Art, who was lying on his stomach with his chin resting on his hands. He didn’t see very well except up close and his parents hadn’t taken him to the eye doctor yet.

“Skimbleshanks,” Jon said, pronouncing the syllables carefully.

Diane, who Melanie didn’t like all that much but had invited because otherwise they couldn’t hand out the invitations in class, wrinkled her nose. “What kind of a name is that? Why wouldn’t you call him Marmalade, or Lolly, or Sweetie?”

“Because he probably came from the railway,” Melanie said. “You know. Like the poem.”

“There’s no such poem.”

“Dad,” Jon called, twisting his head around, even as he passed the string to Toby. “Can you read us the poem about Skimbleshanks?”

“Of course.” Dad smiled and went over to the bookshelves. All the children turned to look like it was story time at school as he settled into his armchair and cracked open Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

Melanie squeezed Jon’s hand and smiled; he smiled and squeezed back, and they settled in. It was looking to be a good birthday—they had their friends, they had their family, they didn’t have to fight anyone over games, and they had their newest member of the family.

The trouble was that there wasn’t much for them to do inside. They didn’t have any puzzles, hadn’t brought any toys with them, didn’t know how to play chess and weren’t allowed to touch the set anyway for whatever reason. There was the telly, but when Grandmother Sims—no, Mrs Sims, Melanie wasn’t supposed to call her Grandmother—had realized that they’d got the idea for their adventure from a television program, she’d forbidden them from watching it until she was satisfied they would understand that just because they could see something, even with real people climbing around it, didn’t mean it was actually real. Which pretty much left them books.

Melanie hated reading. She didn’t dislike books in general—she loved being read to—but actually reading herself, she struggled. The words seemed to slide around on the page and escape easy comprehension. Mr Dumphrey, their teacher that year, had been very helpful and given her a few tricks, but it still wasn’t easy like it was for Jon and she still hated it. Jon could skate through a book in almost no time flat, but when they were reading on their own, he would linger over pages, rereading and savoring passages before moving on. He was also, luckily for her, more than happy to read out loud to her when she asked him to, and they’d read a lot of very good books like that.

The thing was that Jon didn’t like rereading books. Or, no, not disliked, but it bored him to already know where the book was going, or to feel like he’d read it before. Melanie didn’t mind, and in fact often preferred to reread old favorites because she could usually pin the letters down easier, and she counted herself lucky that Jon was willing to reread books, or finish books he clearly didn’t like, if she asked him to. For her. In return, she’d sat through him reading a couple of books he liked a lot that she didn’t care for, because it only seemed fair.

But Mrs Sims didn’t exactly have a vast library of books, and Jon and Melanie had already read them all. (Well, not exactly all of them. Mrs Sims mostly seemed to read the same three or four authors, and even Melanie hadn’t been desperate enough to ask Jon to read her another one of those.) They didn’t bring books with them because books made their suitcases too heavy to carry on their own on the train and they couldn’t count on the aunt they were being put in the charge of to help them, and it was a long way to the library if they walked (Mrs Sims didn’t drive and taxis cost too much money, she said), so they usually only went once every summer.

Surprisingly, Mrs Sims had actually hit on a solution.

“There,” she announced, dumping her latest pile of books onto the floor of the living room. “You ought to find enough in that to last you the rest of the visit.”

She swept out of the room and into the master bedroom, leaving the door open, and a few moments later they heard the opening notes of one of her stories coming from the telly. Melanie scowled in that direction, then turned back to Jon. “Did you hear an or else in that, or was it just me?”

Jon wrinkled his nose. “It’s not just you. We’ll have to read slow. Come on, let’s see if there’s anything juicy in this lot.”

As solutions went, it wasn’t a bad one. Mrs Sims had decided to simply waltz into the nearest charity shop, buy up all of the books on sale for less than a pound, and bring them home for Jon and Melanie to pick through. Once they had read everything they wanted out of it, she would take them all to a different shop and begin again. Melanie reckoned it wouldn’t last for long, since there were only so many charity shops in Bournemouth within walking distance, but maybe it would work for a couple of years yet. This, however, was the third lot she’d brought them, and her tone of voice had definitely left the impression that she had expected this to hold them longer.

It wasn’t exactly their fault, since she wasn’t looking at anything other than the price. The first batch had been mostly soppy romances and a few battered classics, so hadn’t held them long. The second lot had been more interesting, including a particularly gory horror novel she would never have permitted them to even look at while at the library, let alone check out, but even so they had gone through everything inside of a week. It was clear that Mrs Sims was not prepared to indulge them much further, so they had best set aside a good stockpile and read slow.

At first glance, it didn’t look promising. At least half of the titles didn’t have pictures on the cover, which usually meant they were some sort of dry, dusty textbook. Melanie picked one up and squinted at it hard, trying to make the letters make sense, then gave a frustrated growl and held it out to Jon. “I can’t even begin to make this one out! What’s it called?”

Jon took the book and puzzled over it for a moment, which surprised her, then flipped it open and skimmed it before shaking his head in obvious relief. “It’s in Latin. I think. I recognize this phrase from one of Daddy’s law books, anyway. We could try to work it out, but I don’t think it’ll make much sense.”

“That’s okay,” Melanie said, relieved. She wasn’t completely stupid. “Anything good over there?”

“This one has a dragon on the cover.” Jon held up a thick book with a fancy script on the title, which probably meant it was long and tricky to get through. Might hold them for a while. “It’s called A Darkness at—Seth-a-non. I think that’s how it’s pronounced. It must be a made up place.”

“Are you sure?”

“There are dragons, Melanie. It’s not in England.” Jon set it aside in the for later pile and reached for another one. “Oh, this one’s a cookbook, never mind.”

Melanie picked up a book with a black cover and bright writing, which might mean a horror book. The cover showed a pretty girl with long, flowing hair. She was about to read the title aloud, or try to, when she saw the author’s name and dropped it. “Nope. Not that one.”

Jon picked it up curiously and dropped it just as quickly. “I don’t know if she has that one. Maybe we should bring it to her later. She might want to keep it.”

“I don’t know why she likes those.”

“I don’t, either.” Jon pushed the book away with the Latin book and mumbled, “For all she says we’re not supposed to confuse fiction and reality…”

Melanie paused, turning that over in her mind for a moment. “You reckon that’s why she won’t let us shut the door?”

Jon shrugged one shoulder. “I dunno. I tell you what, though, I’m not going to eat any powdered doughnuts if she offers them to us.”

“You’d better not.” Melanie wrinkled her nose at him and went back to rummaging through the pile. A slim white cardboard volume caught her eye, and she tugged on the corner. “Oh, look, she found one I can read all by myself, isn’t that nice of her.”

Jon looked up with a frown. “You can read just fine on your own. It just takes you longer. Maybe if you read some of these to me we can make them last the rest of the summer.”

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

“I wasn’t joking. What’s the book called?”

Melanie pulled the book free and held it up. It was very obviously a children’s picture book, which even at her reading ability she’d outgrown, with a simple black drawing of a spider accented with a red bowler hat. The words were on the cover like they had been written there, not printed, and to her surprise she could read them fairly easily. “A Guest for Mister Spider.”

She opened the book, curious, to see a book plate indicating it had originally come from a library of some kind—not the Bournemouth Library, but one she couldn’t quite make out properly. She turned the page and beheld a drawing of the spider, wearing his bowler hat, standing in a living room. There weren’t even as many words on one page as in Paddiwack and Cosy—actually there weren’t any words on the first page. Jon scooted over next to her as she turned the page slowly until she found the first words. “Knock, knock. Who’s there, Mister Spider?”

It was a simple book, of the sort used to teach a simple lesson, although Melanie had no idea what it was meant to teach; the words weren’t all that simple, as words went, and Mister Spider certainly wasn’t very appreciative of the gifts his neighbors were bringing him. Her stomach turned and her voice shook when she got to the third visitor.

“It’s Mister Horse. And he’s brought you his son.”

Mister Horse, and his son, were both very large, very detailed flies in dungarees, but the expressions on their faces reminded Melanie, suddenly and painfully, of the way Daddy had looked the night they had first thought Mrs Sims was going to take Jon away—and the way Jon had looked when he’d thought they might want him gone. It was the look of someone who had already lost so much and was about to lose everything, and she moved unconsciously closer to her brother as she read, just confirming he was still there.

There was a door on the last page. It looked so real, so inviting, that Melanie held it up in front of her like there was an actual door there as she read. “It is…polite…to knock.”

Slowly, shakily, she raised her free hand, forming into knuckles, and drew back to knock on the door.

“Well, well, well, what have we here, eh?”

The book was suddenly ripped from Melanie’s fingers—and Jon’s, who was holding the other side. She blinked, gasping in surprise, as the world rushed back in in glorious Technicolor, greens and browns and blues and—

Wait. How had they got to the park?

“That’s not yours,” Jon said indignantly, but he also sounded a little disorientated. Melanie felt his hand slip into hers and squeeze.

She looked up and nearly growled in frustration. Of course. Standing over them, holding the book over their heads like bait, was none other than Andrew Young.

“What, little baby genius reading a little baby book?” Andrew sneered. He was fairly well known in the area, something of a jack of all trades—and master of none—who “did” for quite a few of the widows and elderly folks in the area, of which there were many, billing himself as “Handy Andy”. He’d developed a long lasting and enduring hatred of Jon the first summer they were here based entirely on the fact that Jon was smarter than he was, which actually wasn’t that difficult; there were things lurking at the bottom of the Bourne that were smarter than Andrew was, and more likable and better smelling, too. He was the sort of person disqualified from being the Village Idiot because he wasn’t smart enough for the title, and he compensated for that by being a bully. That his chosen targets were ten years his junior spoke to the fact that he was also a coward who knew anyone older would likely put him in his place.

If he thought Jon and Melanie between them couldn’t put him in his place, he was even stupider than he looked, except that they would get in real trouble if they got caught fighting again.

“Give it back, Andrew,” she said. She jumped for it, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She didn’t know why it was so important that she have it back, but it was theirs.

“Or what?” Andrew asked, grinning sharply. “What are you going to do, runt, chew my ankles off?” He snickered and brought the book down. “Of course you were reading something like this. Need any help with the big words? A Guest for Mister Spider.” He enunciated each syllable carefully.

His voice trailed off, however, as he opened the book and his eyes locked on the pictures. His jaw went slack, making him look even stupider than usual, and he began to read. And to walk, as if in a dream.

Jon and Melanie looked at each other. On unspoken agreement, they followed him. Maybe the big idiot would fall down a sewer grating and they could catch the book before it went after.

His path took him away from the park and down a street. Melanie wasn’t sure what page he was on until he walked up to the porch of one of the houses and held the book up in front of himself, right over the front door of the building.

It is polite to knock.

Seemingly in a trance, Andrew raised one hand, curled it into a fist, and rapped it against the book. Knock. Knock.

The door opened.

It opened slowly and quickly at the same time, not very far, just enough for them to see a black pit beyond. Thin, spindly black arms reached out of the door, reaching for Andrew. He never had time for anything more than a brief whimper before the arms dragged him into the door and it slammed shut behind him.

“Melanie!” Jon’s arms were suddenly tight around her chest, and he was dragging her back—when had she gone up to the steps? When had she started to go in? They overbalanced and fell over, landing hard on their backsides, and Jon didn’t let go of Melanie as he tried to scoot backwards.

Something inside Melanie snapped, like a tether had been cut. She pushed to her feet and grabbed Jon’s hand, dragging him upright, and they ran. She wasn’t even sure where they were exactly, but they ran as fast as they could away. Away was the important thing. Away from the house, away from the door, away from Mister Spider. She knew he was real, he was in that house, that was where he lived, and if they had knocked on the door then they would have been the more he wanted and they wouldn’t have come out…

“That does it,” Mrs Sims boomed as they burst through the front door, gasping and with tears streaming down their faces and still clutching one another’s hands. “I told you to stay indoors. If you cannot follow such simple instructions, then this door will remain locked unless you are accompanied by me in the future. We will discuss this further in the morning. To your rooms without supper, and not another word!”

Melanie didn’t argue. For once, there was nothing she wanted more than to be in their room, locked in and safe, and she didn’t think she could eat now if she was expected to.

Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when Jon, not even bothering to change into his pajamas, crawled under the bed. Melanie crawled in after him. It felt secure down there, and they snuggled together and clung and tried to stop shaking.

“That was worse, right?” she finally asked. “It’s not just my imagination? That was worse than the boat.”

She felt rather than saw Jon nod. “The boat was—i-it was just us, and it was…it just happened. That—that book tried to take us, a-and Andrew…he saved us.”

“He was an idiot,” Melanie said, her voice watery. “He took something that wasn’t his and he fell into a trap and—he didn’t save us on purpose, Jon. He just took our place.”

“It’s not fair,” Jon murmured. “It’s not right.”

“But it happened.”

“It happened.” Jon’s voice was nearly a whisper.

They lay there silently for several minutes, relishing the fact that they were alive and together and safe, at least for now. Nothing could get to them. Melanie instinctively felt that Mister Spider would be full, at least for now, and that he wouldn’t come after them anymore, but even if he did, he would have to get through the doors and Mrs Sims, and she was tough and chewy enough that she would probably slow him down enough for them to get away.

“We should find out more,” Jon said finally. “Not now. But when we grow up. Maybe, maybe there are scientists or, or people like that who study…scary things. Monsters and ghosts and whatnot. Maybe we can do something like that.”

Melanie turned the idea over in her mind. It made sense. “Then we can prevent other kids from getting hurt. Or other idiots like Andrew from getting taken away. Maybe if we know, we can…fix them. There are lots of doctors who can help people like Mummy, but if there were lots of people who knew what things like Mister Spider was, we’d hear about them, right?”

“Right.” Jon sighed and pressed his forehead against Melanie’s. “We can find out when we get home if it’s a thing already or if we have to be the first ones, but we can do it. We can.”