I remember that cramped room well, cluttered with things that the rest of the house did not want, and lit continually with a single gas lamp and a smattering of stubby candles whose use had already been long availed of before I ever got them. From time to time I look back and wonder why I was given such a luxury as light at all, when my father, such as the man was, was dually convinced that I was both witchspawn and bastard.
They were shouting again, my parents. They shouted continually, and I used to imagine, had they not, I'd have never learned to speak; except that, when I was very small, I remember my mother used to come and sit beside my cradle. She never looked at me, not once, but she would read to me, and occasionally she would murmur things I did not understand.
'Oh my baby, why did you have to die? Oh my poor dead Erik…'
And sometimes she would croon lullabies in her soft motherly way. Once, just once, I lifted my juvenile voice with hers.
It took her a moment to understand the source of the new sound, but as she did she fled sobbing from the room, and did not return for days. It only took me the once, to learn to hold my tongue.
My father, it seemed however, had no such inclination for he would shout, it seemed, whenever it pleased him to do so. It pleased him quite a bit.
As was often the case that evening I was the topic of his nightly tirade.
"God, Nicole, why didn't you just let the doctor do his work?"
There was no reply from my mother, the never was. Or perhaps she simply spoke so softly that I could not hear her. Nevertheless my father continued eagerly.
"You visit his grave often enough! Would it even make a difference if it were a bundle of blankets up there? Blankets don't eat as much!"
"This is madness, keeping a monster in my house! Whose is he, Nicole, what beast did you take to bed to produce that thing? Tell me and I'll kill him."
For some odd reason towards this part of his diatribe I always began to feel a bit nervous. Perhaps this was because he had a tendency to dash up to my room, clutching my mother to his wrist, pull my mask off and beat me while shouting 'Look, look Nicole, look at our beautiful son!' while she curled sobbing in a corner. Occasionally he would bring a mirror with him.
I strained my ears, already sharp from practicing the same, to listen for any indication that my father might wish to pay me a visit. Fortunately there was none, he merely continued on his merry lecture.
"It must have been a corpse. Only a night with a cadaver would produce such a beast! Or was it Satan himself! Tell me Nicole, tell me and I might show you some mercy!"
Now I quite nearly wished that he had come upstairs. The sounds of a scuffle and my sobbing mother were as always, too much to bear. I had seen him do it one night, undoing the lock on my door and sneaking to the stairs. I saw him, and, unable to contain my fury and dismay, he had of course, discovered me.
I often wonder how much of my ugliness is natural deformity and how much was beaten into me during my formative years. It doesn't much matter, but I wonder just the same.
I would not be spying on my parents' marital bliss this evening however. I stood up, no longer huddling against my small bed, and crossed the room. I had tripped on the loose floorboard a few times, before prying it up in a fit of anger. That anger dissolved quickly however, when my child's mind decided what a wonderful hiding spot that board might be. I had often sneaked down to my father's library in the middle of the night, full of fear of discovery, but after that I had sneaked the books back up with me and immediately found the long and silent days alone much more bearable
It wasn't merely books that spot held though, nor were they what I had gone to fetch in my flight from my father's caterwauling. Escape into books was one delightful thing surely, but lately I had been working on a retreat of a more physical sort. Finished the night before, I had been planning to wait for a more opportune maiden voyage, but I simply could not stomach my father's voice that night.
The room in which I was kept had once been, and I suppose in a sense still was, used for storage. That meant there were boxes of things like clothing, which people had long forgotten about. I'm not certain anymore just how I was inspired to tear that clothing up and make a rope of it. It was really more tied than woven, and looked like some sort of patchwork snake that had been eating rats, but it would, I judged bear my young weight, and it was finally long enough to reach the ground.
The room I lived in was windowless, but the room beside it was not, and was never used for anything in particular. I might have been able to sneak downstairs and out the front door without anyone noticing, but I might not. And besides, by child's mind was drawn to the adventurous notion of escaping down a furtive rope, just as normal boys might play at being pirates or robbers. In the midst of the quite real situation of my virtual imprisonment, there was still an element of game in my mind.
And so I picked the lock of my room with a hairpin dropped long ago by my young mother, and crept with rodential stealth into the room across the hall. In the next room I gazed longingly out the window at the night. I so rarely saw the outside. Tonight I was going outside.
I wound the rope several times around the doorknob of the closet, opened the window as silently as I could manage, and with some due ceremony, tossed the rope outside. I knelt on the windowsill, and fought back a small wave of vertigo as I peered downward. I took a breath, and taking hold of my rope, began to lower myself down the side of the house.
It was precarious business, but I, as I am told most small boys do, picked up the knack for climbing quite quickly. It thrilled me a breeze blew across my shoulders. Before I had only felt musty drafts. I felt giddy with then liberty I had stolen for myself. And then I came to a nasty realization.
I had forgotten to account for the fact that there might be other windows, that my rope might dangle in plain view of my father, and also, that I would have to leave the rope where it hung while I had my adventures, and that anyone might easily come across it and discover what I'd done. Should I go back, then? Climb right back into the window and hide in my room, where I was marginally safe?
I thought that I ought to, but my logical mind could not convince my heart to return. Not yet. Not when I had only just gotten my first taste of fresh air.
It was great luck that my rope did not, in fact, attract any unwanted attention as I climbed down. Such windows as I did pass were covered by drapes, and the rooms seemed empty. I couldn't even hear my father shouting from outside. The rope also, was only the slightest bit shorter than I had hope, and I let go and dropped the last foot or so, landing crouched.
I stood, and adjusted my mask, making certain that it completely covered my features. I was well enough informed that my face would make babes cry, women weep, men hit me with things, etcetera, and had no desire to see this happen on my first evening.
And so it was that I set off down the road.