Chapter 23
"V.F.D…," the young girl said quietly to herself.
Her mind chewed on these three letters for a long moment, watching as her hometown came into view on the flat horizon, a phrase which here means a place of one's birth or early life or a current fixed location.
"What does it stand for?"
"Volunteer Fire Department," Mr. Caliban responded.
The name did not sound particularly scary or sinister to her; she knew that such organizations existed, especially in small towns or hamlets where there was no official fire department. The town near the Fidelis Fjord was one such place. She'd even read about these teams of individuals in her local library when researching the history of her town. It didn't seem very special or important, at least not in the way her driver was making it out to be. If this organization was so important, why was there a long aphorism or motto to go with it? And why were so many people she allegedly knew, apart of it? It certainly took all kinds of volunteers to put out fires, but why would there be codes and other mysteries surrounding it and evidently her life.
The yellow cab passed a sign saying:
Welcome to Arcanum
Town of the Fidelis Fjords
In standard but bolded lettering and coloured in a rich shade of blue to match its nearby fjord.
Holly S. knew the sign very well, associating it with her hometown. Often whenever she and her father had gone to the city or another miscellaneous location, she always felt great comfort when she'd see those familiar words. This meant that she was going back to a safe place and it was as if the sign was welcoming her back to where she truly belonged. However, this time was much different. There was no feeling of warmth or security filling her being as they passed the familiar sights of the Arcanum's Main Street that included several clothing shops, a market that mainly sold freshwater fish, a few restaurants which were water or sea-themed, a post office, a movie theatre, a small motel, a general store, a photography studio, a synagogue, and a printing building. The loss of this feeling perhaps was due to her entering the town alone, without her father, or that she had just recently become aware of a grand and shadowed conspiracy surrounding her and many others' lives. Nevertheless, as the taxicab drove down the street of her hometown, she felt nothing but a sense of dread and coldness that shook her to her bones.
How Mr. Caliban knew where she lived was another unsettling component, but one she chose to ignore for the time being; assuming either K.S. or her father had given him the direction. Her mind goes back to the thoughts of who K.S. was in relation to her or her father. Was he or she a friend or a foe? Were they relative she'd never met? Was it possible that her mother survived the poisoning and was now living under a different name, trying to communicate with her daughter?
While the final question was extremely unlikely and felt like false hope to the young girl, a phrase which here means having feelings about something that might not be true.
While hope is never a bad thing to have in one's life because it is what allows many of us to get out of bed in the morning, false hope can be a dangerous thing because it could lead to delusions of an unreality, misleading information, and unnecessary sadness. I can think of a leader on a certain island that tells his followers that this land is the only safe place and gives them false hope that it will always be safe so they can leave their previous lives behind. This is a misleading statement that is delusional and misleading because I know as well as any that a place can not be safe forever. Eventually, poison, time, marauders, or fires can appear at any moment and that place is no longer considered safe for one to live and forget about a previous life. Another instance where falsehoods of hope are dangerous would be my own feelings that my beloved Beatrice somehow managed to survive that dreadful fire and was secretly working to contact me to find her children. It is all clearly a figment of my own mind and has to lead myself to perilous and unnecessary sorrow as every beautiful woman I see passing me by in a taxi cab or on a trolley has me staring at her longer than would be appropriate and causing me to begin weeping in a public place.
Holly's thought of false hope gave her a brief moment of reprieve from the grief she was feeling over the loss of her beloved mother, but as the darkened windows of her empty home came into view, the cold reality of the death saved her from delusions and misleading information, but alas not from unnecessary sadness.
"Home sweet home," the girl said to herself as the yellow cab finally came to stop in front. This rather cliché phrase often puzzles me as a home can never be considered sweet in taste except for the fairy tale in which two children encountered a homemade of various sweets, which led them to be menaced by an elderly cannibal. A home cannot be sweet, if not fully safe or inhabited by cannibals.
"I assume that you have a key to enter?" Mr. Caliban inquired quietly. His softened tone conveyed to Holly S. that he understood how solemn the occasion of returning home alone and was attempting to be respectful.
With shaken steps, the girl exited the cab and slowly made her way up to the doorstep, walking over the familiar creaking wooden porch that her and her parents would sit out on to watch the sunset in a blue hued over the fjord and surrounding mountains. She could also recall summer nights in which she would practice her violin on the porch to avoid going to bed early or staying in the stifling hot house.
Her fingers dug into her shoulder bag while tucking her violin case under her other arm until she grasped the cold hard metal of her key.
With much hesitation, she unlocked the door and entered.
It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloom in the home. Very little had changed since she had last left the safe place and that feeling of warmth and comfort washed over her, no matter how brief it was going to be. The scents of old wood and seawater were still present as well as the faint perfume always worn by her mother. It did not matter how long the woman had been gone from this world, her fragrance remained pungent within the walls. It did not give Holly a sense of false hope but made her believe that her mother was always present in the home they loved and shared.
Holly S. began walking through the house, turning on all the lights and make the place feel a little more inviting, even though I know that it is always the persons inside that makes a dwelling inviting or uninviting.
She passed the sitting room in which the couches and chairs sat untouched, with a lovely table in the centre of the room with withered flowers that had not been tended to since she had left. It was adorned with a painted fireplace, an ornate grandfather clock that ticked away the minutes and hours, several family portraits and various forms of art collected by both her parents. Her father and mother admired the works of various painters and sculptors and placed various masterpieces in the home. Secretly her mother mentioned that she hung the pieces throughout the home to cover up the hideous wallpaper that she never got around to replacing. As the girl ventured further into the home, she passed the kitchen and dining room, the place where meals were made and once enjoyed and where her mother once hosted company… the company that ended up taking her life. Since the death, the rooms scarcely accommodated anyone except Holly and her father.
On the left side, behind the staircase leading to the upstairs bedrooms, was her father's office, which still remained cluttered with books and stacks of paper. Now that Holly knew what she knew, she wondered how many of those papers and documents talked about the organization of V.F.D. Perhaps all of them had secrets to tell.
However, instead of going to find answers, the girl travelled to her favourite room in the back of the house. The music room. With a border of faux gold paint at the top of the walls, the music room was where Holly felt the most at home. It contained a grand piano positioned near the back window which looked out at the beach and magnificent fjord waters. "A view to inspire," her mother often called it. Other various instruments adorned the walls and art inspired by music. A harp stood in the corner near the velvet blue curtains and an upright piano was placed against the back wall. On the left side of the room, next to pale blue wallpaper that her mother had always hated and wanted to change, were two shelves filled with books of various shapes and sizes, the majority of them about music and there were also theory books and sheet music neatly organized according to genre and composer.
The girl can no longer hold back her tears as she placed her violin case on a nearby desk. There were mixed feelings that I cannot fully describe in this chapter because it would be too long depressing for most readers. But I assure you that not all the tears the girl shed were sad or one of the false hopes in her mind. She went and opened the windows again to let the refreshingly cool breezes enter her domain and fill her body again. She did find the place to be sweet in memories rather than in taste and comforting as it was her home, back in her town.
She managed to take several moments to think and contemplate what had led her to this moment. Her stomach did turn as she thought of her friends still back at the boarding school, and her father who had seemingly vanished, even though it was not the first time. The only difference was that Holly knew her father was doing something important and why he took such trips.
…
The girl sat at her mother's grand piano for a long time, to the point where the skies beyond the Arcanum were beginning to gray and darken with the coming night. She could hear Mr. Caliban walking about the home. She had watched as he brought in her remaining bags and then spent what felt like hours of the telephone. It confused her why he had not sought her out at all, perhaps he was giving her the desired privacy she required.
Thoughts filled her head that the man who escorted her home was now charged with staying until either her father or K.S. came back. A small wave of false hope filled her again as she hoped that her father would return and bring the many answers, she so craved to know. But if it was not her father, she hoped that it would be K.S. who would bring similar solutions. Perhaps they were going to go collect the Baudelaires and the Quagmires and bring them to a safe place that was not filled with unpleasant little girls who tap-danced, treacherous villains disguised as gym teachers or selfish vice-principals who mocked his students and played the violin terribly.
The moments of unreality were not dangerous, but extremely misleading and unnecessarily sad; unbeknownst to her as three of her friends were heading to unsafe place at that very moment and two others were in an even worse situation. However, she would not know this until the newspaper would land on her doorstep the following day.
The thoughts of music had the girl gazing at the beautiful instrument she sat next to, polished to perfection and looked almost too delicate to touch. Her mother took great pride in her instruments and had taught her daughter to respect and care for them as well.
"They are extensions of ourselves so we must treat them as such," the woman would say.
Holly held back tears because it felt as though her mother's voice was echoing in the home. She felt compelled to fill the room with music to drown out the echo and make the domain feel even more like home.
She stood up and opened the bench which she sat upon, knowing that some of her mother's favourite music books were kept inside. To her surprise, she found a piece of sheet music taped to the underside of the seat. It was loose and not kept in a book or folder like all the others. There were other books in the bench, but this sheet piqued her interest. It was old, dusty, and worn as if it was used many times, unkempt, unlike all the other music sheets.
What was stranger still, was there was only one line of music, the rest was blank. Very unusual… perhaps it was a composition her mother was never able to finish.
The thought was sad, curiosity got the best of the young girl and she removed the sheet, placing it on the appropriate stand and prepared to play.
The notes were simple and rather straightforward; something that I could possibly play under duress.
It was only when the music hit her ears that Holly S. recognized the tune. She'd heard many times in her young life, most often after she had gone to bed. She would hear the simple tune coming from downstairs once and then after a long time, she would hear it again. The sparsity of the tune confused her. If this was indeed music that her mother was writing why would she only play it…
As soon as she finished the last note, a loud noise was heard behind her. She turned and to her great shock, a door within the floor of the music room was open, leading down into a darkened space beneath her home.
A/N: A new chapter. Family secrets are slowly being unveiled. Holly is lucky that she has the meaning of V.F.D. told to her while it took the Baudelaires 5 books to learn it's meaning. The name of Holly's town has a special meaning and I challenge you to find it out. Thank you for all your continued support.
