March 20, 1812
After years and years of the uneventful, it was almost a Natural Rule that in the little town of Clumberry nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary was ever likely to occur. Tuesday morning rolled around and, to no one's great surprise, it was very much like the Tuesday a week before it, and a week before that. The air was still tinged by an icy March wind, the sky was still mottled grey and heavy with clouds full to bursting, and Jane Callow-Tott was still just as utterly miserable as always.
This last rule was not in fact generally known, but rather something that Miss Callow-Tott held quietly with her wherever she went. Even so, it wasn't hard to see that the girl was unhappy. Indeed, her unhappiness seemed to manifest itself in everything she did. It was in the muted, meek tones she used when dealing with other people (as if she were apologetic for daring to speak to them at all). It was in the way she slouched her shoulders and cast her eyes to the ground as she walked down the lane. It was even in her handwriting; small, pinched, ineffectual, seeming to scream out from the page, "Don't look at me! Don't notice me! Leave me be!"
Indeed, it wasn't her fault. Jane had been raised by a distant relation, an Aunt Prudence, who had taken her in as a very small girl after her parents had both died "of a chill." Of her parents, Jane could recall nothing. It was as if they had been born as ghosts and had died as dreams, the sort of dreams that fade upon the instant of waking. And so Jane's childhood days were spent with a woman who was exceedingly rich, given to putting on airs, and always smelling as if she had bathed in the latest French perfumes. Aunt Prudence was only interested in fashionable things and, as Jane was far from that, her relationship with her Aunt was severely lacking in warmth. With such a careless guardian to look after her, Jane had developed into a shadow of a human-being; someone quick to obey, slow to question, and a little inclined to think badly of herself.
When Jane was younger, she would make-believe that her life was a fairy tale. She fancied herself a little orphaned princess sent to live with an evil relative, who would in the end get their just deserts once a wonderfully gallant prince arrived on a white horse, declaring his undying love for her and rescuing her from despair.
But as Jane grew older, and began to see the world for what it truly was, it dawned on her that there would never really be a happy ending, would there? Her parents would remain dead and gone. And she would never find her Prince - Indeed, who would ever notice her enough to whisk her away from her life of woe? She would probably end up a governess, or a lady's companion - as her Aunt was quick to impress upon her nearly every other day.
For Jane was just a bit too tall and awkward to ever truly be thought attractive. She was all elbows and knees, never quite looking as if she belonged in the body she'd been given. No, no, at eighteen years old she was just a mouse of a girl with stringy brown hair, too many freckles, and dull grey eyes to match the dull, dull grey sky above her.
On the Tuesday morning of the twentieth of March, Jane had been sent on an errand by Aunt Prudence. Mr. Hapgood at Hapgood and Waverly's had a new dinner-service ready, and Aunt Prudence was so very tired and not at all in the mood to go into town just for plates and teacups, so she sent Jane along. Aunt Prudence insisted that Jane walk instead of drive into town in the barouche-landau, despite the assertion by the coachman, Jacob, that, indeed it would be no trouble at all. Aunt Prudence couldn't bear the thought of the gawky little thing riding in her coach, for the entire world to see, and so it was left to Jane to walk the miles and miles to the shop instead.
Jane didn't mind so much. Despite the cold, she enjoyed any chance she could have to be away from the stodgy, stale atmosphere of Doors Castle, the great estate in which her Aunt, a widow, lived. It was scarcely a castle (in the romantic sense), more a house with a great many rooms and servants. Even so, it still felt like some large, stone-turreted edifice from a bygone era. It was too big and too empty - all dark corners and quiet rooms and tallow candles casting eerie shadows in places one mightn't have expected a shadow to be. Long walks like this gave Jane a chance to be away from the darkness, to retreat within herself without incident, to let her mind wander as far away as she let it dare.
As she walked, she first thought about her parents. She tried to envision her mother's face. She had no idea what the woman had looked like, and there were no portraits of her to look upon. All she knew was that her father had been named William, her mother Catherine. She fancied a woman with smiling eyes, soft ringlets of yellow curls, a sweet voice. In her father she imagined a kind, sensitive, wise man; tall, and with a noble countenance. After a little while these imaginings began to make her heart ache, and so she busied herself with studying her surroundings, instead.
It occurred to her after a few minutes of observation that the whole world seemed to be breathing. The frozen wheat fields of Mr. Church's farm became a glittering meadow of gold in the light of the pale, wintery sun. The whistling wind, harsh and cold, became a voice singing sad, mournful songs in an unknown language. The puddles of rain water from the day before seemed to form a sort of writing that Jane supposed she would come to understand in a little while. The blue box in the middle of the road was - Jane stopped walking. There was a blue box in the middle of the road. An object the likes of which she had never seen before.
At the top of it, written in bold white letters, were the words: POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX. What these words meant, Jane hadn't the slightest idea. Individually, they were quite comprehensible, but strung together that way they seemed decidedly curious, like a puzzle with no solution. All she knew was that the box was strange, and it gave her an eerie feeling. Like the fields and the wind and the puddles in the ground, the box seemed to have a life of its own, a life that lived beyond the realms of what was deemed reality, a life that the human mind could not contain…"What silly notions!" Jane whispered to herself as she walked warily around the object. Nothing even remotely identical to these musings had ever entered her mind before and she found it not at all to her liking.
When finally she arrived at Hapgood and Waverly's, the blue box and the queer voice on the wind had all been forgotten, replaced by decidedly less peculiar imaginings. Upon seeing the sign of the shop, she found that her heart began to beat a little faster than was probably the norm. Something in the pit of her stomach also gave a little flip, and then another, and yet another still. The reason was this. Mr. Hapgood had a shopboy who assisted him, a young man named Arthur Greysmith. Arthur was a nice young man, with a ready smile and always a kind word to bestow upon anyone who should enter the shop.
He was, Jane fancied, exactly the sort of young man she'd like to marry.
Before opening the door to the shop she tried to fix the most agreeable smile and demure looks she could muster, but her face fought against the command, as if the muscles there had never learnt such expressions and therefore could only dole out their customary look of timidity laced with a quiet suffering. Jane found, however, that the effort had been in vain, for when she went in, there was no one there at all.
Odder still, the place was in shambles. All over were the signs of some kind of disturbance - broken china in vivid whites, blues, and subtle pinks were strewn over the large mahogany counter that stood to the side of the shop. Several of the display cases, too, had been smashed. And neither Arthur, nor Mr. Hapgood, could be seen.
Jane wasn't sure how to proceed. Had there been some sort of robbery? If so, had anyone been hurt? She felt, instinctively, that she should find a policeman somewhere and alert him to the scene. The queer box flashed into her mind, though she hadn't the slightest idea how it should help the situation. A more dominant part of her wished to run all the way back to her Aunt's house, run up the staircase to her tiny hovel of a room, shut the door, and go to sleep. She was very near carrying out this second option when she heard, ever so faintly, the sound of something whimpering.
Someone, she corrected herself mentally, despite the fact that though she thought of the sound as a whimper, she more readily recognized it as the guttural, wild sound an animal in distress might make. Whatever or whoever it was, it was fairly large. And it was behind the counter.
Jane's heartbeat began to quicken once more - now for an altogether less girlish reason. She was frightened. She didn't know why she should be. It was almost as if something deep, deep within her was warning her to go! leave! don't look back!
But if someone was hurt...
Ever so slowly, she inched closer and closer and closer still to the counter, saying in the loudest tones she could muster (that still came out very much like a whisper), "Hello? Hello? Mr. Hapgood, sir? Mr. Greysmith? Are you hurt? Sh-should I call for help?"
No one answered, but the nearer she got, the more guttural the noises became. Much less like crying and more like growls. When she finally reached the high counter, placing a gloved hand on a spot that wasn't covered in broken china, the sounds stopped. All was silent. Deathly so.
Jane stood on the tips of her toes, slowly peering her head over the counter, terrified of what she would find. But any horror she had been expecting was quite unwarranted, it seemed, because just as she was tipped nearly over the counter, someone stood up very quickly. "Oh!" Jane exclaimed in surprise, stepping back.
It was Arthur Greysmith, and he was smiling at her.
"My dear Miss Callow-Tott," he said, with a voice that was all velvet and honey, "Did I frighten you? Indeed, I did not mean to do it. How is your Aunt? Well, I suppose? Is that a new bonnet you are wearing? Oh, it does look quite well. The color suits your eyes marvelously."
So much had been said in such quick succession that Jane, overwhelmed by his sudden appearance, the general disarray of the shop, and the fact that someone had taken notice of her eyes, didn't know how to respond. She emitted another little flustered, "Oh!" and then muttered, eyes cast to the hem of her white muslin dress, "I-I'm very sorry - only, I came in to pick up some things for my Aunt and - oh, and she is very well, thank you - I came in and everything w-was smashed to pieces and I heard someone in pain and I thought...I thought...Well, obviously I was very silly because here you are, and indeed you are not hurt at all, only...well, is everything quite alright? " Jane could feel her cheeks redden; she rarely talked so much in an entire day, and she certainly had never said more than five words to Arthur in all the time she had been acquainted with him. It was most unsettling.
Arthur only smiled at the end of her little speech, a smile that was wide and toothy and seemed to suggest that he had too many teeth for his mouth, or perhaps too little mouth for his teeth. "My dear Jane," he began, and she felt her face grow hot at the sound of her name on his lips, "I assure you, everything is in order. Truly, it is. We had a little...accident...earlier, is all."
"Oh, I see. And Mr. Hapgood....?"
"Mr. Hapgood? Oh, well he," Arthur gave a little laugh, "is fine, I assure you. He's in the back room...trying to make heads or tails of this mess. I was sent in to clean things up before any patrons arrived, but just now as I was standing on a ladder to right some things on the upper shelves, I took a bit of a spill. Oh! Don't worry about me," he added, seeing a concerned expression light over Jane's face, "The only thing I hurt was a bit of pride."
"Well, I am glad everything is alright. I suppose I shall leave you to your work then..."
Jane turned to leave, desperate to be away from the piercing gaze of Arthur's green eyes. She knew the longer she stood there, the redder her cheeks would become, the more noticeable the shaking of her hands. But just as she took a step towards the door, Arthur hopped over the counter, taking along with him a few bits of broken china. Jane's eyes widened slightly. She'd never seen him so…athletic.
"Oh, Miss Callow-Tott! Surely, you cannot leave now."
"I cannot?
Arthur smiled. "No, of course not. Mr. Hapgood would like to see you. He is very sorry about your Aunt's dinner-service and would like to discuss the matter with you."
"Really?"
"Oh! Yes! If you would just follow me to his office..." And he took Jane's small gloved hand into his own, and he squeezed it in a tender and altogether scandalous manner. A million thoughts began to buzz like a swarm of wasps within Jane's mind. For one thing, she found Arthur's behaviour simultaneously intoxicating and...confusing. He was a nice boy, yes, but like all the other young men in town he had never showed any particular interest in the likes of her. Indeed, friendly as he was, he had never even talked so much with her. And now, today, he was complimenting the color of her eyes and holding her hand in a most shocking (and delightful) manner. Perhaps he'd hit his head very hard after the fall?
"Miss Callow-Tott?"
Arthur's voice roused Jane from her musings. It was impatient. "I...I think it would be best to send for my aunt in this case." She tried to pull her hand away, but this only resulted in Arthur holding on to it tighter, in a decidedly less tender fashion.
"Oh, but you see, you really mustn't leave. I will not allow it."
"Why?"
"You'll see, my pet. You'll see."
Arthur's face broke out into yet another wide grin, but this one was less friendly than before. There was a hint of malice in it. A hint of foreboding. Then something odd happened. Right before her eyes there was a change in Arthur's face. His usually genial features took on an altogether more sinister look. His chestnut brown hair darkened to black, grew wild. And finally his light green eyes, eyes that Jane had often daydreamed about on lazy afternoons, began to glow blood red.
There was a scream. Then everything went black.