When Adalyn awoke again the next morning, Brahms was no longer in the bed with her for which she was immensely thankful. She hoped he realized that was a one-time thing. She slowly eased herself out of bed and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders before heading out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen.
There stood Brahms in front of the counter, once again preparing food for her.
He turned around when he heard her footsteps.
"I'm feeling a lot better today," she told him, her voice still a little hoarse. "I don't think I have enough energy to do the whole schedule, but I was thinking that we could take the time to do some laundry."
Brahms tilted his head.
"You know, wash all of the clothes? Maybe change the sheets on the beds too?"
Heaven only knew when he had last washed anything.
Brahms turned back to the counter before placing a bowl onto the kitchen table. It was the soup she had been unable to finish yesterday.
Adalyn sat down in front of it. "Thank you."
She slowly ate the chicken soup he had prepared for her, and he seemed pleased when she finished it all this time. He took the bowl from her and began washing it in the sink.
"How about it? Can we get some laundry done? I promise that your clothes will feel so much better once they're washed."
Brahms stared at her for a painfully long moment before he slowly nodded.
Adalyn smiled a little. "Okay, good. Then I need you to get all of your clothes and bring them here so we can wash them."
He watched her again, as if trying to determine if she was attempting to distract him, but then he left the room and went into the passages using the entrance beneath the staircase.
Adalyn used that time to return upstairs and get out of the borrowed pajamas. She went inside the closet and picked out a new pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt, then quickly slipped them on. It felt refreshing to put on some actual clothes, but it still felt weird to wear things that weren't hers, especially when she had no idea what had happened to their original owner.
Suddenly, the secret door inside the closet furiously slammed open and Brahms stormed out of it.
Adalyn was so caught off-guard at his sudden appearance that she let out a scream, though with her voice still hoarse it came out more like a squeak, and slipped on the wooden floor. Brahms's hand shot out to grab her arm and pull her into him before she could fall backwards.
Adalyn took a shaky breath as she craned her neck to look up at him, reminded for the millionth time how much bigger he was than her. "I was just changing my clothes," she told him softly.
Brahms's eyes moved all over her body, and Adalyn direly hoped that he wasn't upset that he'd missed her changing. Getting him to gather his dirtied clothing had been a distraction, not to escape but to be sure that he wouldn't watch her change from inside the walls. She wouldn't be surprised if he did.
"Did you get everything you need to wash?"
Brahms kept his tight grip on her arm and led her out of the bedroom and back to the kitchen where he'd put all of his dirty clothes into a bucket on the floor.
"You can let go of my arm now," she told him.
Brahms looked at her with hard eyes.
"I'm not going to leave."
That seemed to be the only thing that ever calmed him down: assuring him that she wasn't going anywhere. She decided it best not to tell him that she had no idea where to go from here so he would think that she could make the decision to walk out the door at any time. Granted, he could probably easily stop her from doing so, but it was still better for him to believe that she might try it. If he knew that she couldn't leave, it wouldn't stop him from doing whatever he very well pleased with her. At least it seemed to be that if she was somewhat choosing not to leave, he was nicer to her.
Brahms reluctantly released her arm.
Deciding to forget about his behavior and move on for the sake of her sanity, Adalyn quickly tied her dark blonde hair into a braid that flopped over her right shoulder. "All right, let's get started then. I don't suppose you could tell me where the washer and dryer are? They're big machines that spin around so that they wash and dry all your clothes, hence the name."
Brahms moved over to the door on the other side of the kitchen and opened it. Adalyn stepped inside the small room that she had previously thought led directly outside, and there sat a very old washer but no dryer. That was perfectly fine with her. Letting things air-dry would do, but she'd thought for a moment that she would have to handwash all of his clothes, and she really, really didn't want to do that.
"Okay, let's see if there's some detergent around here."
Adalyn searched the tiny space before she came across a nearly full box of laundry detergent in a brand name she'd never heard of.
"Hm, I didn't know people even used powder detergent anymore, or maybe I just need more friends."
She used a measuring spoon inside the box to scoop out some of the powder and dumped it into the washer. Then she retrieved the bucket of Brahms's clothing from the kitchen and brought it back into the really small laundry room. Brahms watched with that incredibly intense stare as she threw some of his clothes into the machine. The powerful scent of sweat and dirt wafted up to her, and Adalyn decided that she was going to run the clothes through the washer twice.
She shut the door and then pushed the 'Start' button on the machine. For such an old washer, it was surprisingly quiet.
"That'll take about half-an-hour to run, so in the meantime, I need to figure out how to hang them up since they're going to have to air-dry. I don't think it's raining, and they'd dry a lot faster if I could hang them outside, so let's do that." She started making her way to the door that led out to the gardens. "Okay, what I need is some kind of thin rope or a thick string. Something really long but firm that I can tie outside to hang the clothes on. Do you have anything like that?"
Brahms looked in the direction of the door underneath the stairs then looked back at her.
Adalyn rolled her eyes. "I'll wait right here for you. I promise I won't move."
He waited another few seconds and then walked towards the hidden entrance to the passages.
Adalyn really, really wished she knew where she was. She'd been given so many opportunities to get the heck out of here and yet she couldn't use any of them because she didn't know where the stupid mansion was.
Brahms finally returned with a large spool of hemp string and handed it to her.
"This is perfect."
She stepped outside into the gardens in her bare feet and Brahms followed her. She then looked around at the pretty space and tried to assess where the best place to hang up the wet clothes would be.
She decided to tie the string around some of the pillars along the stone walkway. There were several of them she could use which provided plenty of places to hang up the clothes.
"This should work," she mumbled to herself.
Adalyn pulled out some of the string and tried to tie it as high as the could onto the nearest pillar so that the clothes wouldn't touch the ground and undo all of the much-needed washing.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be really hard to tie a good knot with her arms straight up. The knot kept either undoing itself or it wasn't tied tight enough to keep the string from sliding back down the pillar.
Seeing her struggling, Brahms came up behind her and reached above her to quickly tie a firm knot that kept the string securely in place against the pillar.
"Um, thanks," Adalyn said, put off at the sudden invasion of her personal space yet again. "I didn't realize you knew how to tie knots." She cleared her throat and quickly moved out of the uncomfortable and dominating position. Then she unrolled the string and moved over to the pillar directly across from the one Brahms had tied to the string to. "Can you do the same for this one now? The string has to be nice and tight so it can support the weight of the clothes later."
She wrapped the string around the pillar, and then backed away to allow Brahms to tie it off.
"Shoot, I forgot to get some scissors to cut this."
Brahms pointed behind her. Resting near a worn metal bench was a pair of old hedge clippers.
"I guess that'll work. Hold this."
She handed him the spool of string and then retrieved the hedge clippers. She briefly thought about injuring Brahms with them so she could escape, but not only could she literally not go anywhere even if she did escape, that just seemed cruel of her. The worst thing Brahms had done to her so far was not allow her to leave the house and flip out when he didn't know where she was. It was weird, but it really didn't warrant her hurting him like that.
She used the hedge clippers to cut the string on the second pillar.
"Okay. Now let's just do that a few more times so we have plenty of places to hang things up."
For the next hour or so, Adalyn and Brahms hung up pieces of string all around the garden until it looked like some kind of bizarre maze.
"Careful where you step so you don't run into any of these things," Adalyn laughed lightly.
What a sight that would be.
"The clothes should be done now."
She went back inside the house, wiped her feet on the mat just inside the door, then stepped back inside the laundry room. The cycle on the washer had finished, so Adalyn poured in some more detergent and let it run again.
Brahms just continued to stare at her from the doorway.
Adalyn didn't know which was worse: his constant silence or the creepy childlike voice.
"How about we play a game?" she asked, attempting to appeal to his childish side while also hoping to help herself.
Brahms curiously cocked his head to the side.
"You ask me a question, any kind of question at all, and I have to give you an honest answer. And then I'll ask you a question too, and you have to give me an honest answer. And then we go back and forth. Does that sound fun?"
Brahms didn't answer her. The whole silent act was really starting to get on her nerves. How was she supposed to know for sure what he was thinking or what he wanted?
"Okay, how about this? I'll only ask you 'yes' or 'no' questions so you don't even have to say anything. And then instead of asking me a question, I'll just tell you something about myself. You know, it'd be a way we could get to know each other. Like…" She swallowed and then quickly finished her sentence. "…like friends."
Brahms's eyes lit up at the word 'friends'.
"Why don't we sit down in the reading room while we play the game and wait for the washer to finish?"
She decided to take the lead for once and walked out of the kitchen and into the reading room. The cracked porcelain doll awaited them and Adalyn wished she'd suggested another room, but it was too late for that now. She was lucky she'd gotten this far.
Adalyn sat down onto the long couch and crossed her legs. Brahms repeated her pose on the other side, and she couldn't help smiling at how out of place he looked on the nice furniture.
"Okay, so…I guess I'll start us off. Let's see, something about me…my favorite book is Les Misérables. It's incredibly long and it takes forever to get through, but I've read it three times. It's the only book I like that was written before the 1950s. Okay, now let me ask you something." She had so many questions she wanted to ask him, but having to phrase it as a yes-or-no question meant it was going to take forever to get all the answers she needed. She decided to start off simple and work her way up. "Let me try to guess your favorite color. Is it…blue?"
Brahms shook his head.
"Green?"
No.
"Yellow?"
No.
"Red?"
Yes.
Adalyn hoped that wasn't because red was the color of blood. "Red. Okay. Back to me. My favorite color is purple. How about your age? Are you…30?"
No.
"31?"
No.
"32?"
No.
"Am I going in the right direction?"
No.
"29?"
No.
"28?"
Yes.
"I'm 26. You're only two years older than me. Have you lived here your whole life?"
Yes.
"Then the portrait above the staircase…are those people your parents?"
Brahms didn't move to answer her question.
"Right. It's my turn. Um…I've lived in four different houses. My dad used to have to move a lot for his job, but when I got to high school, we stayed in the same house until I moved out for college. Anyway, the portrait? Is that you and your parents?"
Yes.
"They seem so serious. My mom and dad are people who always find an opportunity to laugh. I've always been really close with both of them. They're good parents. Were yours good parents?"
Brahms started to nod, then started to shake his head, then stopped altogether, and Adalyn guessed that he genuinely didn't know the answer.
"Did they love you?"
He nodded, but she could sense some hesitation behind the answer which only made her even more curious about who he was and what had happened to get him to this point. She was never going to get anywhere asking questions like this, but at least for now, she was getting something.
"It's so quiet in here," she said more to herself than to him. "It's too bad we don't have some way to play music."
Brahms lifted himself up off the couch and walked over to a wooden case that she then realized was a record player. He placed a record onto it, then carefully let down the needle onto the black disc.
She jumped when loud opera music filled the room, and Brahms quickly turned it down to a more tolerable level.
Adalyn smiled to herself. Given the mask he wore, the burn scars, the living behind the walls, and his apparent love of opera music, Brahms kind of reminded her of the Phantom of the Opera. She thought about mentioning that to him, but then she recalled how the Phantom had treated the object of his affections, Christine. Maybe better not to give him any ideas.
Brahms sat back down onto the couch, mimicking the way she had one leg crossed and the other knee bent up.
"So you like opera music?" she asked.
Yes.
"I'm more of a pop kind of person myself, but I like a lot of different things. Have you…always lived inside the walls?"
No.
"When did you start? When you were young?"
Yes.
That would explain why part of him seemed to be stuck in childhood.
"Did you decide to do that?"
No.
"Did your parents make you?"
Yes.
Adalyn wondered what kind of parents would force their young child to live inside the walls of a house for twenty years. Nothing could possibly justify that. She wondered what had happened to them since they weren't in the house now. Maybe Brahms had gotten tired of them forcing him inside the walls and killed them.
"When I was a kid, my dad took me out on trips to the local park and taught me how to ride a bike and throw a frisbee. I can't imagine not going outside for years on end. Why would they make you do that?"
Brahms didn't answer, and she knew that he wouldn't since it wasn't a question he could answer 'yes' or 'no' to.
"I'm…really sorry that they did."
Brahms tilted his head, as if confused by her sympathy towards him.
"Did they make you wear a mask too?"
No.
"You decided to do that?"
Yes.
"But why?"
No answer.
"Are you…scared? Is it a way to hide?"
No answer.
Adalyn smiled a little. "Do you wear it to scare off intruders like the guys I was running from? Because if so, I think it worked. Lucky for me."
Brahms looked down for a short moment and Adalyn could almost imagine him smiling behind the mask.
"…Would you ever consider taking it off in front of me?"
Brahms's eyes hardened, and he quickly put a hand to the porcelain face.
"Okay! That's a no. Don't worry, I'm not going to make you take it off if you don't want to. It scared me at first, but not as much anymore."
He slowly relaxed again.
"Speaking of things that used to scare me, you know the whole reason I'm here in the UK instead of back home in the US? I was working this really, really horrible office job. They had me putting in at least ten hours of overtime every single week because people kept dumping their stuff on me so they could go off on vacations. And then both my supervisor and my manager constantly found things wrong with the work and blamed me for all of it even when it wasn't my fault. I cried in the bathroom about twice a week because I was so stressed. I worked there for five years and I hated almost every single second of it. So finally, I worked up the courage to quit and never looked back. This trip was supposed to be…a way for me to spend the money I'd earned working so I could feel like at least something good came out of being in that place. And here I am."
Brahms tilted his head again. He was probably confused. What would he know about job-related stress?
"You know, I've never even told my mom why I hated that job so much or what it did to me. You're a good listener when you're not dragging me around everywhere. Even if you probably don't really understand everything I'm telling you."
Brahms bashfully looked down as he fiddled with his hands.
"Did someone used to live in the room I've been sleeping in?"
Yes.
"A sister?"
No.
"Your mother?"
No.
"A relative?"
No.
"What's left?"
Brahms once again stood up from the couch and picked up the porcelain doll. Then he cradled it in his arms as if it were his child.
"Um…a…babysitter?"
No.
"Not a babysitter? Um…"
She recalled the schedule and rules listed on the two crumpled pieces of paper as if they were left behind for someone specific. Put that with the image of him cradling the doll…
"Oh, a nanny?"
Yes.
Adalyn didn't understand why Brahms had needed a nanny if he was 28 and living inside the walls. Had he made his presence known to the former nanny? Had the doll somehow been a part of things?
And most importantly, what had happened to her?
"Greta," Brahms said sadly.
Once again, Adalyn was a little put off by the fact that he spoke, again with a voice like a child, and it took a minute for her to realize what exactly he'd just said. "Greta. That was the name of the nanny?"
Brahms nodded and slowly put the doll back down before sitting onto the couch.
Clearly, Greta had made quite the impression on him. His eyes looked so sad and lonely that she almost made a move to comfort him.
"Do you miss her?"
Yes.
Adalyn hoped that she wasn't serving as some kind of weird replacement for Greta because the fact that she was no longer here and all of her stuff evidently still was didn't give her much confidence in her current predicament.
"Was Greta the one who gave you that injury on your stomach?"
Yes.
"…Did you hurt her?"
"I didn't mean to!" he said quickly, his voice still high.
"Okay, okay. I'm sure you didn't."
Adalyn had so many more questions about who Greta was, why she'd hurt him, what he'd done to her, and what had since happened to her. She wished that she didn't have to stick to yes-or-no questions and she wished that she could just ask them all quickly without having to interject facts about herself in between.
"I'm…going to go check on the washer. It shouldn't take long, but you can come with me if you want."
Like she predicted, Brahms refused to let her out of his sight and stood up to accompany her to the laundry room. Adalyn wasn't sure that playing that 'game' had been such a good idea because now she just had a thousand more questions. But at least it had given her just a little bit more insight into who Brahms was and hopefully how to deal with him until help arrived.
If help did end up coming before something happened to her, she wondered what they would do to Brahms. Would they even be able to contain him? With all the passages in the house and his incredible strength, would he kill everyone who tried to restrain him and leave Adalyn completely defenseless again? Would he hurt her then? Would he hurt her before then?
Adalyn shook her head. If she thought too much about that, her anxiety about the whole situation would shoot through the roof. She decided that the best thing she could do was simply take things day by day.
"All right, so since we don't have a dryer, we're going to have to let these all air-dry. Do you want to help me?"
Brahms's eyes lit up a little at the idea of her welcoming his help instead of him forcing it on her.
Adalyn pulled some of the wet clothes out of the dryer. "Okay, grab the rest that are in there."
He reached in and took out the remaining clothes.
"Now we'll go outside and hang these all out on the lines we put up earlier."
She made her way through the halls and out into the gardens.
Brahms carefully watched her put his wet pants and shirts and sweaters onto the tight strings all over the garden. He repeated what she'd done with the clothes in his own hands until all of his clothes that had been in the first load were hanging all over the place and lightly blowing around in the soft breeze.
"All right, now I'll put the rest of the clothes in the washer and then let them air-dry too. We'll bring them in tonight and then you'll have nice clean clothes to put on."
She went back to the washer, Brahms right on her heels like usual, and put the remaining clothes in before starting a new cycle.
Adalyn picked up the now empty bucket his clothes had been in. "I guess I'll wash this so I can put the clothes back in here after I fold them."
She moved the bucket over to the sink and used a dishrag to wipe the inside of it down before using a towel to dry it off.
Adalyn stood back up and yawned as she rubbed her hand over her face. "I'm still not feeling 100 percent and playing that game kind of wore me out, so do you mind if I take a short nap?"
Brahms's eyes looked down as if he were disappointed. But then he quickly moved over to her and easily hefted her up into his arms.
Adalyn cried out in surprise and quickly clutched onto him. "You-You don't have to carry me again! I'm just a little tired, I'm not going to pass out or anything."
Brahms didn't answer and just continued carrying her up the stairs.
Well, if this was what it took for him to allow her to sleep for a little while, she supposed there was nothing else for her to do but just let him carry her. It wasn't like he was hurting her.
He walked into the master bedroom and carefully set her down onto the bed and pulled the blanket up.
"Thanks," Adalyn said. "When the machine stops, I need you to just pour a spoonful of that powder I used into the machine and press the 'Start' button. Do you think you can do that?"
Brahms nodded.
"Good. If I'm not up when it finishes running for the second time, you can come get me, okay?"
Brahms lightly ran his thumb over her cheek which made Adalyn tense a little. Sure, he hadn't really hurt her yet, but the soft touch didn't really make her feel like he had the purest intentions in mind. Or maybe he did, and she was just overthinking it. But better to overthink it than to let him take advantage of her before she realized he was doing it.
Thankfully, Brahms finally moved away from her and walked out of the room, softly closing the door behind him.
Adalyn sighed heavily and then closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.