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DUPLICITY
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THE BREWING STORM REMINDED Savara of a similar one many years ago, the last great storm, the day she first arrived at the house.
Thunder rolled through the blackest of clouds as lightning spliced the heavens. The downpour flooded the roads, creating waterfalls on most of the hills. The winds howled agonisingly through the streets, plucking trees from the ground in its wake.
People would later speak of it as a once-in-a-lifetime kind of storm, something almost supernatural. It wasn’t a day Savara chose to remember but, walking up to the eerie house, the mounting wave of darkness behind it, flashes of it forced their way into her mind, regardless.
Someone cradled her, trudging through the rain and mud up to the house. Blink. Ms Short appeared at the sound of the doorbell. Blink. Someone was yelling as she waited in the hall. Blink. Dripping wet and catching a fever, she stood shivering before her estranged uncle. Moments later she was showered and in bed.
Only later did she find out that her parents had died that same night in a terrible accident that should have killed her too—but didn’t. Her childhood, aside from those flashes of jumbled memories, was a blur.
Despite the mounting downpour, the house looked jarringly still from the street. The only lights she could see were those of her uncle’s study, high on the second floor. Savara could just make out a shadow shifting around through the window.
“Looks like Ms Short went out for the evening and forgot to leave the lights on,” Savara remarked.
“We must be in for one hell of a storm...” said Jasper with a quiver in his voice. “The wind seems to have ripped the lock right off the door.”
The wooden barn door swinging restlessly in the breeze summoned her like an outstretched hand, reeling her towards it. “You’d think my uncle would have heard it, at least.”
Savara didn’t even realise her feet had taken to following it when Jasper shot a hand out and tugged her back. “Sav, something doesn’t feel right,” he said as he eyed the gate behind them longingly.
“Jasper, you worry too much. You said so yourself, the wind must have broken the lock.” She tried tugging her arm free, but he only tightened his grip.
“It’s not just that. Haven’t you noticed the power is out in the other houses on the street?”
“Maybe the outage hasn’t reached us yet.”
“Sav, I don’t think that’s it. I can’t describe it, but I’m getting a bad feeling.”
“Oh, so now you’ve decided to believe in bad feelings?” she replied irritably.
Jasper, being the incomparable know-it-all that he was, was never particularly inclined to believe in things he couldn’t see, which added an uncomfortable weight to the statement. She didn’t want to admit it, but she felt it too. What started out that morning as an inkling, a twitch, a little buzz in the back of her mind, had blown into a howling gale as vicious as the one around them. Regarding the power, it felt as though the house were sucking it from everywhere else, pulling it to the study, but she knew she could never explain something like that to Jasper. Her free hand hovered over the pocket containing the strange package, unconsciously remembering some of the day’s other unsettling moments.
“Besides, the rain is picking up. You can either wait here in the rain or come with me.” Savara pulled herself free and made for the door, feeling relieved when, out of the corner of her eye, she spied him follow—reluctant, but follow all the same. The nerves in her body tensed, causing her to wonder how much of it was a mirror of him and how much she owned.
Life in the garden was out of commission. The little yellow butterflies that usually danced between the swishy blades of long grass were gone. The chirrups of the tree frogs had been silenced. The sounds from the rest of the town, few as they were, had faded too. Everything was a blur of raindrops and white noise, except for the slow, repetitive bang of the door in the wind. Savara took a deep breath and, feeling Jasper’s disapproving glare on the back of her neck, entered the darkened kitchen.
The room looked as it always had, but the evening light that distilled in from the windows cast shadows over everything, adding an unfamiliar duplicity to an otherwise familiar world.
“I think I’ve seen enough,” Jasper whispered and tried to make for the door, but she caught him by the collar. “Nope, of course not,” he mumbled to himself. “Because my completely rational fear of the dark means nothing to you.”
“Jasper, shut up and come here,” Savara chided him, unwilling to admit her own fears of the dark, especially when it came to this house. She had spent the better part of six years in the eerie old house, listening to the creaking floors and the wafts of sea breeze that moaned like ghosts through the halls. Not even the occasional disappearing-reappearing objects raised her hairs.
But the dark—this dark—was different.
At the sound of a thud from upstairs, Jasper shot her a terrified glance. “I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Sav, did you not hear that?”
“So, you want me to go up on my own?”
“I don’t want you to go up at all! I want you to come with me. Outside. Up the street. Possibly to the police station.”
“I need to check on my uncle, Jasper.” She dug around for a weapon. “It would be helpful to have a big, strong man at my side,” she mocked to hide her hesitation.
“Very funny, Sav. When have I ever claimed to be big? Or strong? And if it helps my case, man can be up for debate too.”
“Shut up and take this,” she said, holding out a wooden spoon.
“For what?” Jasper replied in an agitated whisper. “To cook dinner for whoever it is before they kill us?”
“Jasper, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Me? Ridiculous? I am not the one waltzing up to a bad feeling with nothing more than a spoon.”
Smack! “It works fine.”
“Ouch,” he moaned, rubbing the lump appearing on his forehead. “Fine, Sav, and on your head be my funeral.” She picked up a rolling pin for herself and made for the hall. Jasper followed hesitantly, still rubbing the growing bump. “Can we at least turn on the light?” he whispered irritably.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Just in case...”
“Of what?” he growled fearfully, but she decided it best not to answer.
The hall didn’t receive any of the light from the other rooms. Savara gulped down her fears and followed the wall to the base of the staircase. Footsteps too swift to be her uncle’s sounded overhead. Curiosity pulled her forward, as the fear in her body and Jasper’s fought it. She knew the house well, imagining the layout in her mind and avoiding the occasional side table and coat rack. Jasper bumped into them all.
“JASPER!” she hissed.
“Sav, help! I’m tangled in something, and I can’t see where I’m going. Turn on a light, will you?”
The house was spooky enough in broad daylight. In the almost pitch blackness of the stormy evening, that spookiness transformed into something downright menacing. She slid her fingers around the wall at the top of the staircase until she heard a satisfying click.
“Hurry up, I can hear someone shifting around in my uncle’s study.”
“S-S-Sav...” stuttered Jasper.
“What?”
Savara imagined that Jasper had tripped himself up on the carpet or knocked something over or, being Jasper, a combination of the two. The last thing she expected to see was Jasper tangled in a lifeless body.
The world paused. Her heart skipped a beat—or three. Ms Short.
Savara put a trembling hand over her mouth quickly to keep herself from screaming, while everything inside her wanted to bring the house down. Her knees buckled beneath her, forcing her to prop herself up on the banister to keep upright.
“It’s a body,” Jasper began with a high-pitched crack in his voice. “It’s a body, it’s a body, it’s a...”
“I know...” she squeaked, frozen with dread.
“Help,” Jasper whispered, but her feet wouldn’t move. “Sav!”
“I’m coming...” Savara gulped. Tears raced down her cheeks, but she felt nothing, not even the wood beneath her feet as she made her way feebly down the stairs. Jasper continued his panic, but she heard nothing but the sound of her own shallow breaths. Even her voice sounded like an echo. “I’m coming,” she repeated after only two rungs, and then on every other rung until she reached the landing. All the words in her vocabulary had been replaced by those two. “I’m...” she sniffled as she helped him up from the floor and stared down into the terrified glossy eyes of the woman that had been like a mother to her for the better part of her adolescence.
Ms Short had a certain feel to her, like a leather coat against the howling wind, suffocating but protective. Now she felt like nothing—less than nothing. A chair warmed by its last occupant felt more alive than she did.
“Sav, we need to leave,” Jasper hissed. “Now.” The hand that still held tight to the wooden spoon had gone white under his force. “Sav,” he repeated when she made no move to follow, but his voice sounded distant. “Sav!” he yelled as he shook her, trying to snap her out of her daze.
“She’s...”
“Dead,” he said, finishing her thought. Her lips wouldn’t form the word, but hearing it lit a fire in her. “We need to leave.”
“I...” Savara bit back the tears that had already stained her eyes red. “We can’t.”
Jasper’s entire face blanched. “You’re insane.”
“My uncle,” she pleaded, still unable to form a coherent thought longer than two words.
“Is probably in the same state.”
“Please.” The word more breath than sound.
“Shit.” Jasper paced about the landing, punching the air with trembling fists. “Shit, shit, shit, Sav.” If he was about to cry, he held it in, but the pallor in his face shifted into frustration. “You can’t be serious.”
Swift footsteps sounded above, bringing her world back into focus and the words back to her lips.
“I thought you dealt with dead things all the time,” Savara replied, trying to make light of the situation and flush out the terror running through her veins. She looked away from the corpse, afraid death might leap into her eyes and drag her down next.
“No, no, no...” Jasper hissed, wagging the spoon in the air. “I work with things that have been dead so long they don’t look like they’ve ever been alive. I saw her alive and well this morning!”
“Jasper.” She used her pleading voice. “My uncle is the only family I have left.” Jasper eyed the door longingly, but finally consented when she added, “Please.”
Savara knew it was a bad idea. She knew she’d probably condemned them both, but her uncle was her blood relative left. She couldn’t just leave, especially not after hearing footsteps that might be his. If he were in trouble and she could’ve helped but didn’t, she’d never forgive herself. With the rolling pin in hand, she crept upstairs, avoiding the creaky rungs. Jasper followed close behind, the spoon in his hand only moments away from snapping.
The sounds grew louder as they reached the door. Shifting papers, opening drawers, swift footsteps. At least it meant that whoever or whatever it was hadn’t heard the raucous downstairs. The element of surprise was still on their side.
With shaky hands, she managed to twist the handle. Her muscles contracted when she heard the release of the lock. She exhaled softly, opening it wide enough to peek through without being seen.
Uncle Hyrum’s dainty veined hand dangled limply over the side of his favourite armchair. Move, she thought, willing his skeletal fingers to twitch. Get up. Please get up... But all her willing was in vain. Memories of long nights in empty houses flashed before her eyes.
In her mind, she was fifteen again, her uncle had disappeared, leaving her at the mercy of the house as it whispered its sinister stories, only this time she couldn’t hide under the covers ‘til morning.
The time between each second stretched on eternally as she waited. Waited. And waited until it eventually became clear her uncle wouldn’t be making noise any time soon.
Still, the stepping continued.
Savara knew she should’ve run, but the ripe concoction of fear and anger coursing through her fixed her in place. She nudged the door open just wide enough to slip through, managing to creep behind the settee unnoticed. Jasper had tried to pull her back, but her body was on autopilot. Finally, her teary, terrified eyes turned to the intruder.
He could have been a tower in another life.
Swathed in a dark, hooded cloak that had long since been in fashion. His calves forced themselves against his lower pant leg. His boots looked like they could kick through concrete, as though he himself were built from cinder blocks.
She no longer thought of Jasper behind the door. Her uncle’s corpse gave her the strength to stand, but her feet didn’t carry her out. A strange power took over, sending her tiptoeing towards the man, rolling pin in hand, as her arm raised to strike.
