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A HOME AWAY FROM HOME
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HE BLINKED.
For a second, he was there, wandering the halls he’d once called home. For a second, he’d done it, returned to the lands he’d once ruled. For a second, the world opened, the magic welcomed him home. But in the next second, he blinked.
He was back in his study. Back in the creaky villa overlooking the Caribbean bayside that he’d come to call home. The salt-tinged sea breeze sauntering around him reminded him that this was his reality. Whatever he’d seen in those brief blissful seconds was only a dream—or something like it.
The morning light filtered through the ceiling-length panes of glass. Specks of dust caught in its rays glittered as they fell to the floor. One even came so close as to fall into his hand. It never touched. He didn’t let it. It hovered above his wrinkled palm, trapped in an orb of captured sunlight. Not even the breeze could move it.
He contemplated it with a sad smile before releasing it back into the morning air.
At least I still have that, he thought. Even if just a little while longer.
“Hyrum!” she called from below. “Hyrum! It’s time for breakfast.”
Ms Short was exactly that. A stubby English woman in her late forties, who had worked in the household for quite some time now. She was irritating but efficient. And more importantly, she didn’t ask after the things in the house that weren’t quite “normal.” She was a simple woman, to her credit, and Hyrum had grown quite fond of mocking her lack of curiosity in the many years she’d worked for him.
Hyrum smelled her flowery perfume long before she reached the top of the stairs. He walked easily, despite the density of the air—the density of his bones. He had grown accustomed to it, though he played up aches and pains every once in a while. People might have gotten suspicious otherwise.
He met her at the door, her hand poised to knock just as he opened it. His cold eyes scanned the landing before falling squarely on her.
“Oh, Hyrum. Sorry, sir, ‘bout the screaming and all. I assumed you were ignoring me.”
His lamppost figure towered over her, supported in part by his favourite cane—glazed black wood topped with a golden gorilla head. Hyrum glowered at her from behind a neatly trimmed white beard and tiny copper spectacles.
“I don’t ever ignore you, Liz. I simply choose to acknowledge you at later moments.” His voice was deep like a chasm and equally as cold.
“Oh, Hyrum, you shouldn’t be so uppity at your age. Why, imagine if I took offence one of these days and up and left. Whatever would you do?”
“Replace you,” he replied with a smirk. “I plan to outlive you either way.”
“You should do, bitter as you are. Always the spiteful ones that live the longest.”
“And, Liz, you should make a will.”
“Sounds like you know something I don’t, Hyrum,” she said with a chuckle.
“Possibly,” he replied, “but you know how deals with devils go... I am still waiting for a good offer on your soul.”
Ms Short shook her head. Thankfully, this was her response to anything that seemed to veer from the lines of “normal,” but that didn’t stop him from having a little fun with her. In truth, it surprised him that she stayed on and endured it.
Of all the people that had come to work in the house, she was the only one that lasted more than a decade. As irritating as she was with her boisterous laugh and her whisper that no library would accept, he’d grown somewhat fond of her. If he had intended to die before her, he might have left her something; might have even left her the house. The years had made her family, not blood like the child, but family all the same.
“Where is the child? Not getting into trouble again, is she?”
“No, sir. I sent her for bread this morning,” she said as she descended the stairs. “Though I had to drag her out of that little shoppe of horrors you call a library earlier. I have no idea what she is so fond of in there. All seems like voodoo and black magic to me. Not the thing a respectable woman would be into, if I may say so.”
“Voodoo? Black magic? My little library has you so frightened, Liz?” he mocked as he clunked gracefully down the stairs behind her. The tick of his cane and the clunk of his shoes on the wood echoed through the house like a slow waltz—heavy and graceful, and somehow unequivocally sad.
“I may not believe in them things, sir, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fear them.” She poked out from the kitchen and wagged a finger at him. “Mark my words, that child is too curious for her own good.”
Hyrum smirked. “And I was afraid you had nipped it all out of her.”
The ends of her wrinkling mouth curved into a frown. “Curiosity is a dangerous thing, sir.”
“So is ignorance,” he countered.
The truth was, they were both right. Ignorance vs. Curiosity, a battle he knew all too well. It was the reason he was here, and the reason the child was. But he made a promise—more than a promise, he’d bound his soul, and thus, he too was responsible for the child’s current state of ignorance. He argued with himself many times over about if he should break it, what consequences it might have, and whether he even could. So many in fact, that the taste of the rum he’d used to silence this incessant argument appeared on his tongue out of memory alone. He wrestled with the thought at least once a day, and each day, at the bottom of a glass of this well-aged rum, he came to a single conclusion: his drink needed refilling.
He pushed the thoughts back into the depths of his mind with a sigh and made his way to the dining room. As he took his seat, he thought back to the day the child was first placed under his care. How she had grown these past few years. How much she still had to grow. She reminded him of himself—her passion, her vibrance, her energy—but for her sake, he hoped the rest of his traits were lost in the gene pool.
At some point during this train of thought, Ms Short had entered the dining room. He knew the distant mumbling in his ears was her lecturing him on the upbringing of the child or complaining about the “presence” in the library or something that had gone missing only to reappear where it shouldn’t be. But those were other demons, and he’d long since stopped listening to what she had to say. His mind had drifted as it usually did at these hours of the morning to another time, in another place, in another world. To a feeling in his bones that spoke of change.
“Liz,” he announced, interrupting the day’s lecture. “I shall be expecting company at around three. I would like some coffee and rum sent up to the study three minutes before, and not a moment later.”
With a resigned huff, she added, “Yes, sir, I’ll see to that.”
He turned his gaze to the bouncing young figure at the foot of the garden fiddling with the padlock on the gate. His fingers automatically went to a ring on the middle finger of his right hand as they always did when such thoughts arose. He twisted it absentmindedly, remembering a time when another ring occupied its place.
“I should like not to be disturbed,” he added.
“No, sir,” she replied and retreated into the kitchen to finish the breakfast preparations.
