We all knew it wouldn’t be long before they let themselves in, and we would have to jump
I am finding it harder to block them out. I had hoped, days ago now, that their knocking would become white noise, like the static of the radio when Father left it on at night, falling asleep in his chair until the station’s broadcast ended, before Mother would come back down to wake him and put away his whiskey. I was able to let the noise swim past me then, as the background sound of a river while on a woodland tramp will be observed, acknowledged, and then compartmentalized somewhere in the mind to be reflected upon later to give life back into a memory, but I can no longer ignore this knocking. It sounds like the shot of a rifle, sudden and punctuating, but the explosion never fades, never dies down. Maybe if it weren’t for that one Knocker, the distinguished amongst the indistinguishable, I would be able to last.
Mother told us we needed to grab as much food and water as we could carry, and quickly. We knew why before she told us. Brother and I could see the shaking window panes, vibrating the wood around them. We could hear the cracks forming, spidering out from where their bony, knotted fists pistoned down upon them. We all knew it wouldn’t be long before they let themselves in, and we would have to jump.
We only had one bucket of water in the kitchen, and that was used for cooking, not drinking, but mother took it anyway. We had few other options. No. We had no other options. It was that, or open the door to go to the pump by the well and let those things in. And I did not count that as an option.
Brother and I raided the cabinets and drawers for anything we deemed useful. Mother had gone up the stairs with the bucket of water already, leaving only Brother and me downstairs. I had bread and two onions, and Brother said he would get the cheese and potatoes. He looked ashen and far off when he told me this, and I realized the potatoes were in the basket by the only window in the kitchen, aside from the door with its glass panes. There were three Knockers at that window alone, although only one was totally visible, the other two on either side only showing loose strands of hair and their fists.
“I can get those if you want to grab the bread,” I offered.
I think he must have predicted my offer because he only half-smiled and turned away to the basket, turning left toward the den instead of right to pass by the window. Beads of sweat were clearly visible on his temples, despite it being mid-autumn, and his fists were clenched. It was obvious that he was trying to keep his composure for my sake. I never liked that sort of thing, but I loved him, so I humoured him.
Grabbing the food should not have taken more than a few seconds, and indeed it was only that for me. I turned and crossed over to where Brother was at the other end of the kitchen to take the bread knife with me when I noticed he wasn’t moving. One hand lay on the brick of cheese, the other floated beside his head in a meek attempt to block out the ghastly visage that lay just beyond the glass. He was shivering, his jaw clenched. I called to him, but I doubt he heard me over the knocking only a foot away from his head.
I looked past him, past his hand, and saw it. The grey fist rapping on the glass, and the greasy black matted hair veiling its face. Rage welled up from somewhere deep inside me. A rage I’ve never felt before. I wanted to throw the bread through the window and lunge at the ghoul, beat it to the ground, slash at its face, wrap my fingers around its throat and squeeze until its eyes popped out of their sockets, and scream at it and all the rest to leave my brother alone! But I didn’t. I pushed the rage down with a slow exhale and grabbed the cheese from Brother’s hand and pulled him to me, away from the window. I held him, humming into his ear, low and soft, like mother used to do when we were little and the thunder shook the house. Brother was little again, and that knocking was thunder manifest.
With bread, knife, and onions clutched to my chest with one arm and the brick of cheese in my other hand, we walked to the stairs, my arm wrapped around Brother’s back, and made our way to Mother’s bedroom. We left the potatoes by the window. Mother met us at the doorway, checked that we had the food and stepped aside. The water bucket was in the back-left corner of the room, next to Mother’s bed. Another bucket, smaller, was adjacent to the door, at the opposite end and diagonal to the drinking water. Mother explained this bucket would be the toilet. It was then we knew we would never get out.
We were told that no one was allowed to open the bedroom window, just as I was thinking it would be good to dump the bucket after every use. Then I realized why we could not open it. We knew they couldn’t get in on their own, and we knew if we opened the window they would begin appearing in the room. I had been in denial in regards to the height of this window, however, thinking surely they could not fly. This window must be too high up for them to simply appear in this room. But that’s exactly what they had been doing — simply appearing. We could not risk opening the window. We were unsure, however, if they would eventually break through the windows downstairs from their constant rapping, which was why we were in Mother’s bedroom at all. We stepped inside and Mother quickly shut the door behind us. Then we waited.
That was the first day. Right now is the third, although I do not know what time it is, if it is day or night. There are no windows in the basement. Everything that happened that led me to be this rat in the cage of this house, separated from Mother and Brother, happened yesterday, the second day.
I sit here, in my basement, back against the brick wall, pen in hand, with only four pages of paper left to write on. I can’t write on both sides, as the ink bleeds through. My hands and dress have ink smeared on them, and I can hear Mother telling me to wash up before dinner. “You are going to have to change to your night dress early again tonight. Jesus save you. It’s like we got two imps mucking about with how many times your brother and you are always changing into something clean.” I don’t have a lot of time left. The four candles I lit are already half gone and I have only four pages remaining. I know what will happen once the candles die, but I can’t bear thinking about it. I’m writing this so I don’t have to.
I remember my first time going out with Brother and Olly very well. It was one of the best days of my life, filled with intrigue, adventure, and camaraderie. It was 1916, and the war was still searing its way across Europe and slowly making its way over to America, like a virus being transmitted to wayward souls on coal ships via the German U-Boat. Mother was sure that the sinking of the Lusitania off our own shores would incite the American president to attack Germany, but at that point, it hadn’t. In fact, aside from the disaster at Gallipoli, where Father lost his life, the war hadn’t yet left much of an impact on our land. This left Brother and me relatively ignorant of the true scope of the war, allowing us to retain what was left of our childhoods intact. Mother encouraged this to the greatest extent that she could, giving Brother respite from his chores on occasion so he could experience the good in the world too. And she finally allowed me to join him on his romps with Olly.
He came home one afternoon for dinner and announced he had found an old riverbed, mostly dried up, with only a small stream running through the centre of the once-large river. Mother acted surprised and gave her full attention to Brother, but thinking back on it now, I think she knew very well of the old riverbed. I, of course, listening intently to Brother’s story, begged Mother to join him the next day in rediscovering it. She was reluctant at first, but seeing my elation at discovering new lands, which was what stories are made of, she gave in.
The next day Mother insisted Brother do half his chores before he and I went out. He did without complaint. He knew better than I the stress put upon Mother by the role of playing two parents. Once he finished, he and I set out on my first adventure. Brother retrieved Olly from her stable and I followed them into the woods just behind our house, west of the field. We tramped along, Olly in front to stomp down any juniper and ivy in our way, for what seemed to my small mind to be a long time. I remember smelling the blue-eyed grass and lilies along the way, and they kept me contented. The blue-eyed grass was Mother’s favourite flower. Father used to pick those for her on occasion. Not on any special day or time, but just whenever the mood struck him, so it was always a surprise to Mother and it always solicited a kiss. I wanted that. I still do. I’ve never been kissed by another, not like that.
But we romped on, Brother talking forward and backward to Olly and me and generally confusing me with who he spoke to, as neither one of us answered him. It was beginning to get tiresome, though, and I asked Brother if we were there yet, wherever “there” was. He said we had already passed “there” and were now in a new country of sorts, “roaring explorers, adamant converts to the Great Adventure,” by his own words. I admit, this did instil a feeling of foreboding in me, as I did not recognize any of the trees we ambled past, but I also felt an excitement and an anxiety over what was to come, what treasures we would find, if any there were to be found. I had read stories of old Vikings pillaging their way across our land long ago, stealing through the sea and into villages unaware such a people even existed. Those people are all gone now, but Brother convinced me there were lost treasures left behind by those heathens for us to find, and he believed those treasures were all around us. The problem was, the wood was so thick as to not even allow an arm through without a gouge. What we were doing was following an old trail, Brother said, left behind by the Vikings, which only heated his fire even further. I was caught up in his enthusiasm.
I inquired about the old riverbed. If indeed we had passed “there” by now, then I certainly hadn’t seen any river bed. He said we’d been following it all along, walking only ten feet or so from its banks, and that I was just too short to see it through the dense wood. Funnily enough, my lack of stature would explain why I could only smell the flowers and not the river, I being so much closer to them than Brother or Olly were.
We promptly came upon an opening in the wood. The trail curved closer to the old riverbed and the trees faded and were replaced by stunted reeds and dried-up old tree carcasses. It was upon one of these many fallen trees that Brother stood, stretching out one hand to the sky and placing the other firmly on his hip, proclaiming the discovery, and thereby ownership of, this small bank and the stream that cut through it. Olly reared up and mimicked his master’s proclamation. He was smiling broadly, cheek to cheek, exuding gaiety and imbuing in me a warmth of such magnitude I must have been blushing. It was so nice to see him in such a state after so long. It must have been the first time seeing him this way since Gabriel.
Brother dismounted the log and said now we should start looking for treasure. He said there must be coffins of gold and silver cups and jewellery buried underneath the riverbed. I explained we hadn’t brought any shovels and this seemed to stump him. He paced around looking perplexed, Olly waning and waxing with the motion of Brother, and I finding a small stone to rest upon. I had just begun making a reed whistle when Brother exclaimed, “Ah-ha!” and ran through the small stream to the other bank and wrestled a smooth, flat rock half-protruding out of the mud and said “Ah-ha!” once more. Olly seemed just as confused as I felt. I walked over to her and patted her as Brother began stabbing at the mud with the flat rock. We watched, waiting for the foolishness of what he was doing to set in, but his enthusiasm never waned, so I found myself in search of a similar rock.
A long time passed. I’m not sure how much, but by the time the sky was turning grey, the riverbed must have looked just like the moon. Even Olly was doing her part, digging her hoof into a mud spot here or there, never a one of us turning anything up. No gold, no silver, no jewels, just mud and sand. Brother wanted to try farther down the bed, but I told him we needed to be home for dinner. He said dinner could wait, only a little bit more. Before I could rebuke him, he had turned tail and run down the bed with his flat rock in hand. Olly, who looked rather reluctant, dutifully trudged on behind him. I had no choice but to follow.
He began digging again about five yards down from where we were, Olly hoofing the mud again, and I sitting on a rock, not wishing to encourage him further. The rock I sat on, however, moved. I bolted up and leaped a pace or two before turning around to see what it was I had sat on. It wasn’t a turtle, like I thought. I took a few steps closer to it, straining to see it in the fading light. Brother and Olly both stopped their digging and Brother asked what was wrong. I didn’t answer right away because I didn’t have an answer yet. I saw that the thing I sat on was squarish and I had sat on the smoothed-over side facing the sky. There were fresh marks in the sand where my bottom had moved the object. I grasped it there and tried to lift it out of the sand, but it wouldn’t budge. I called for Brother to come and help me pull it out and together we managed. It was a stone, little over half a meter long, with very old, very worn-down carvings on all sides we could see.
“Doesn’t that look like one of those Faerie stones, from the books?” I asked.
“Those are just stories,” Brother said.
“But look at these carvings.” I slid my finger down the face of the grey, cold stone.
“Yeah, it’s old, but it’s not real. Old people thought this stuff were real, but it ain’t. Besides,” Brother stood and leaned back on his hips, cracking his back in a way that was satisfying just to hear, “that’s just one stone. All the stories I heard, there needs to be a circle of stones, just like this one. I don’t see any others.”
I protested that there could be others buried beneath the riverbed, as this one was half-buried at the edge of the bed, but Brother waved this off. He said his back hurt now and he was done playing and that we needed to get home for dinner. He looked older then, or perhaps he just looked his age. He had seemed like such a child only minutes prior. The thought of him turning his mind away from our adventure and back to home and Mother and duties left behind by Father’s death at the hands of a meaningless battle broke my heart. I had my old brother back for a few hours, and I don’t think I appreciated it enough, and that left me with guilt that I knew I shouldn’t be feeling. Brother walked to Olly and brushed his hand along her face and kept walking, Olly following in tow. I left the stone shortly after and, together, we made our way home.
