A/N: i am ignoring academic responsibilities and updating this story which owns me spiritually. In other news, this chapter is kind of disturbing? Like seriously, if you are grossed out by certain aspects of the body, maybe squint while you read. Thank you so much for reviewing, I'm all a'blushing that you like my pretentious style. Anyway enjoy the trash! (cuz hooo boy, this one's rly trash)
2: mud
Bennett Hall was where prayer came to die. The walls were encrusted with the husks of weathered skin, women and men whose thumbs had worried over the wainscots until the wood resembled a strange, sleepless eye. Wherever he walked in this grand old house, Elijah felt the remnants of the past, tiptoeing behind him, biting into apples. It wasn't a historical past, with clear foundations, like trees which shoot upright towards the sky. It was like a root growing inwards, a past that had been corroborated but not ascertained, a history that did not really exist, but whose material proof was undeniable.
A living paradox.
He could not find peace for prayer in this den of secrets. The women of the house were kind and polite to him, but they all, servants and cooks included, looked at him through slanted eyes, not seeing him properly, not betting on his survival.
So he went outside to pray, went into town, went into the woods.
That was where he saw his half-brother and his half-sister.
Mikael stood in her grandmother's old chair. It had never been a man's chair, not as far as she could remember, but then again she was so young, so unimportant in the scheme of things. Who knew what that chair had been used for in the past?
Her new father was swirling his glass of bourbon with an almost theatrical precision, watching the liquid slosh against the rim methodically. Back and forth, back and forth. Abby was sitting on the small sofa, the one in the shape of a swan's neck which no one never used because no one in the house could unsee the bird it was meant to represent. Her grandmother had used it to pile newspapers.
She wondered why her mother had chosen that place now, what it meant.
"How old are you, my dear?"
The question startled her. As a child, Bonnie was rarely asked that. People knew, of course, that she was too young for some things, too old for others, but the inquiry was usually avoided, because it harkened back to her mother's shameful return to the Falls, belly-up.
"Nine, Sir."
"She will be ten in two months' time," her mother supplied airily, as if she were referring to an object around the house which had accumulated age.
"Hmm. If you were a young boy, Bonnie," Mikael addressed her directly again, "this would be the time to send you to school."
She felt a tug of fear, sharp and swift, at the thought of that mystical watch-tower, School. She had heard horror stories, children dissolving in tears, red-slapped cheeks, broken pen nibs.
"Please, Sir."
Mikael drew himself up a little, although the bourbon still swirled, clockwise, in his glass.
"Yes, my dear?"
"Don't send me to school."
Her mother made a sound in the middle of her throat, as if she had swallowed up the swan and all its feathers.
Her new father smiled. "Can you read and write?"
Bonnie remembered Astrid's listless, often inarticulate lessons. They sat together in the small library, looking over water-stained atlases, glancing at medicine books and herbariums (her grandmother's private collection, from the time she was a midwife, long before she met the lumber mill magnate), and feeling as if words were not as important as touching the page.
"Yes. A little."
Mikael's smile remained unmoving. "Well, that's not all a young lady should be able to do. Don't fret, now. I am only thinking of the seminary for young girls in Richmond."
"But, Sir…" she trailed off, feeling sweat pool wretchedly on her upper lip.
"Yes?" he asked again, patiently.
"Your…your son. He's my age and he's not in school."
Like a sparrow which flies into the dead of winter against all odds, she flung her words into the blizzard. Mikael's smile turned into a rictus. His eyes shifted left, towards the door.
"Speak of the devil. There he is, lurking. My son." His tone was cajoling, eerie in its stillness. "Make yourself known, Niklaus."
Bonnie cast her eyes over her shoulder. The strange boy was standing by the open door, leaning half in the shadows, his expression like the bottom of a well. His profile, even in the faint light, looked unfinished.
He trod into the room with heavy steps, like a farmhand, though there was something contained about him, as if he knew what would come next.
Her mother clasped her fingers. The beautiful rings she wore on each knuckle clinked like little feet.
"Now, your sister has asked me why I don't send you to school. Tell her why."
Bonnie opened her lips. She wished she could say something nice and good that would make everyone happy. Why were they all looking at her?
The young boy's gaze was dipped in hatred. The muscles in his jaw twitched. Then he turned to his father.
"I'm too bad for school," he spoke swiftly, gruffly. But there was a petulance in his voice, something like a singing rhyme.
I'm too bad for school, too bad for school, too bad for school…
"There you have it," Mikael raised his glass, in salute.
Bonnie watched the bourbon slosh precariously, almost running over.
"Are you too bad for school, Bonnie?" he asked, but not really asked. He was not expecting a yes.
That was when Abby spoke up. "She'll do very well. I will make sure of it."
The onslaught from both of them drove spikes of fear into her flesh. They were in agreement. She turned to the only other person in the room who was in her position.
Her new brother had slunk towards the shadows again, leaning against the door with a sardonic smile on his lips. As if to say, they have you now.
She followed him for a few days, trying to catch him alone. Niklaus was alone by virtue, wandering through the darker, spider-webbed corners of the house, climbing up the tallest trees in the woods and not coming down for hours, sleeping in the stable next to the horses, bathing directly in the lake at the crack of dawn. But he did not allow other people to enter that solitary circle. He was taciturn, although not aloof. He was constantly watching. If he sensed you were coming, he'd glare at you and walk away.
It wasn't that his father let him run wild; it was that Mikael expected his son to make himself scarce. Because he was bad.
Bonnie thought she understood. Martha had told her once that her real father must have been a bad man and when she had asked what that meant, the old woman had showed her the blackened nail on her left hand.
"Hit m'self with a hammer here when I was little. Rest of my hand is fine, 'scept for this old bugger. It's never gonna change."
So, Niklaus was like that bad nail, you couldn't change him and you just had to leave him like that. But who had hit him with the hammer?
"All bad men start somewhere," Martha had said.
She cornered him in the attic. She had suspected he would go up there eventually, because no one else would climb up the rickety stairs and risk falling to their death. Only children could do it. Their weight being what it was.
"Please. Please don't go," she urged him as she saw shadows moving quickly towards the trapdoor.
She heard a few jars being upended. A lonely mouse scurried underneath a crumbling hat stand.
"Please, I need to ask you."
She saw a glimmer of eyes, a flash of hands. "What do you want?"
Bonnie tugged at the collar of her woolen dress. "How do you become too bad for school?"
The silence was oppressive, because she knew he was there, watching, listening, thinking.
"Please, I don't want to go to school."
His limbs moved out of the shadows like separate animals. "Say you're sorry first."
Bonnie frowned, not expecting his voice to sound so dry and matter-of-fact.
"Sorry for what?"
"For touching me in front of everyone," he drawled, evincing his displeasure.
She remembered their short-lived embrace, a spectacle meant to lull their audience. She had thought she was doing him a kindness.
And now she had to say sorry.
Bonnie felt her jaw click against her will.
"I didn't want to touch you. You smell," she said tartly, childishly, but with much satisfaction.
"At least I have a smell," he shot back with equal malice, and though she did not understand his meaning fully, she felt the sting.
"Please. How do you become too bad for school?" she repeated, balling her fists into little pits.
"Say you're sorry first," he taunted, coming into the light that sifted through a broken sky window above their heads.
Bonnie saw that his hair was a mess of curls which no comb could hope to untangle. Whereas Astrid constantly tried to flatten hers. For one moment, she tried to imagine being a boy, being like him.
"I'm sorry," she managed through gritted teeth.
"You don't mean it," he replied tersely.
Bonnie closed her eyes. "I'll do anything."
Perhaps it was her shuttered eyelids - the eyes shifting back and forth underneath the thin membrane - that convinced him. Or perhaps he wasn't convinced, just tempted to see what "anything" entailed.
"Come on," he beckoned, pushing past her.
They walked - him a few languid steps in front, her trailing behind, looking over her shoulder in case Astrid happened to call for her - down the wooden path towards the lake. It was a small climb up a hill, and then a lean descent towards the bank, hidden away by sleeping willows.
Bonnie was not allowed to walk by the lake alone. Not for fear of drowning, but for fear of slush and muck getting into her good shoes.
"Take them off," he instructed, nudging his head at her strapped boots.
He stood a few feet away, bare-footed himself, hands shoved in the billowing sides of his large shirt. He looked younger than her, almost. But no, not if you looked into his eyes.
Bonnie bent down and started unlacing.
Dragonflies hummed in the air. It was that time in the afternoon when the sun became one with the sky and everything was a grainy yellow.
He kicked a stone with his foot. "Faster."
Her nimble fingers worked against time. When she was finally released from the grip of leather and rubber, her toes squelched in the mud with glee. It stank of sulfur. The sensation was cool and foreign and pleasant.
It felt like a living creature under her feet. Like a little pet she had uncovered.
"Get down on all fours," he said, leaning against the chalky bark of a willow. His eyes were almost contemplative.
"Why?" she asked, staring at the mud.
"It has to get in everywhere."
Bonnie sucked on her teeth. "Will it hurt?"
He cocked his head to the side. "Nothing hurts. You're just weak."
"I'm not!" she cried out, feeling like she'd had enough of his attitude. "Watch me." She lifted her skirts and slowly sank down on her knees, thrusting her fingers into the dirt.
It was funny, her feet were cold but her hands felt warm. The hem of her dress trailed down into the muck.
"Lie down," he continued, stepping away from the tree.
Might as well, she thought. I'm already too dirty.
She heard the buzzing of gnats in her ears but she couldn't see them because her eyes were too close to the ground. She let herself fall on her belly in the mud. It was like jumping into a swing. The earth seemed to be dangling her, up and down, up and down. The smell of salt and mire was overwhelming. She rolled on her back and looked up at the swaying branches of the willow.
Her brother came into her line of sight. He stood above her, a sentinel. His eyes surveyed the mess she'd become from head to toe. He almost looked at peace, as if the sight of her filth soothed his temper.
And then he lifted his bare foot. Bonnie gasped, watching his bended knee. The shadow of his leg hung ominously over her frame. She wondered if he was going to step on her, but at the last minute, his foot landed next to her head. He was walking towards the water.
"Get up now."
Bonnie dredged herself up, one elbow at a time. She smelled like rotten eggs.
"Are we going to wash?"
For the first time, she heard him chuckle. The sound was like someone scraping two rocks together. Rough, but mineral.
"No. Are you going to ask more questions?"
Bonnie wiped the grime from her forehead. "I can't not ask."
"If you want to be bad, you just do what I say and stop talking."
She bit her tongue and nodded her head. He wasn't deceiving her, not as far as she could tell.
Niklaus waded into the shallow water until it reached his ankles. Bonnie followed gingerly.
He began to untie his breeches.
The afternoon sun turned its merciless gaze upon them, reclaiming its seat in the sky. The grainy hour had passed.
"What're you doing?" she asked.
"Taking a piss in the lake."
Bonnie blinked the globs of dirt from her eyes. "A piss."
"Let's see you do it. Standing up, that is."
Bonnie almost laughed, scared. "I can't do it like that!"
He shrugged, as if it was all the same to him. "Knew you wouldn't anyway."
Before she could protest, he was already releasing a stream into the water. Bonnie could not look away. She had never seen one before. Had never even wondered what men had between their legs, seeing as she did not know many of them. He was only a boy, though. His penis was a pinkish grey, delicate but fat enough to scare her, and it felt like the center of his badness.
This must be the black nail, she thought ominously.
Suddenly, it did not matter anymore. The day was hot and her grandmother was dead. Her real father was a ghost.
She lifted her skirts to her chest and closed her eyes, focusing on the sensation of release.
It was difficult, unusual and unpleasant, but she persevered. When Bonnie thought of something, she willed it into existence.
When she opened her eyes, a warm trickle of pee was running down her leg into the water.
That was the advantage of boys. They always aimed away from themselves.
He was watching her from the corner of his eye, his gaze was trained on the little river she had unleashed.
His lips twisted into the facsimile of a smile. It made him look uglier. "Now we wash."
Bonnie stared at the murky waters at their feet, tainted by the elements which had rushed out of them. She remembered Astrid scolding her for biting into apples and letting their juice dribble down her chin.
She was a little afraid, but it was exciting to be going this far into the abyss.
"One, two, three," he counted, and his hand suddenly gripped her arm and pushed her down. She clung to him blindly, as sulfurous water flooded her nostrils. He followed after her, lowering himself, like a newborn being baptized.
She spat weeds from her mouth as she came up for air. The water was still shallow; she could almost sit down on the pebbly bottom. The smell of urine filled up her mouth. Her brother was floating a few feet away, staring up at the sky.
"Am I bad now?" she asked quietly, looking at the dirt under her nails which the water had not removed.
He lifted his head a fraction and squinted at her. "No."
"But –"
"Not yet," he added, rising from the water abruptly. "It's a start."
Bonnie smiled to herself. She would be a quick study. Anything to prevent being sent away.
Elijah watched their little bodies in a state of half-undress. Both of them relieving into the water, like mischievous satyrs in a mythological tableau.
He could not look away. The image was too arresting in its horror and yet perfectly quaint, as if nothing else could be expected from his brother. His all-consuming brother, who had tried this trick on him once, had tried to draw him into his web of unconscious destruction and prurience.
Elijah had not fallen.
How had he persuaded that little girl?
Both of them so young and free of sin.
Yet, precisely because they could not be called moral creatures, they were dangerous.
Elijah turned away, praying fervently for his soul.
His. Not theirs.
He suspected already - although his suspicion would only become real years later - that their souls were damned together.