Author's note: Sorry for the delay. And the biggest thanks to my betas who told me twice that something was still missing in this chapter even though I was impatient already. You helped me making it a lot better.
When we come home (Daddy's car in front of the house) I notice (amount of rain drops on the bonnet tell me it has been standing in the drizzling rain for more than three hours. So they came here with the 10 o'clock ferry) that they took their time to unpack (five now empty bags means they intend to stay for a long time) before looking for me. What did they do after arriving?
Oh.
The evidence wall is intact again. Some of the information is connected in different ways than before I tore it down in despair. In one case, the new arrangement makes a lot more sense. The uppermost sheet is only slightly above my eye level (Mummy's doing then).
I can't help but give her a surprised look. She smiles. "I like what you did. It's good to see that your brain is starting to work again," she says and then turns around to make coffee. It goes unsaid (but is understood) that I will start working on the graves again.
When Daddy comes back (has been searching for me on the land-side of the island judging from the dirt on his shoes) there is some emotional (and completely unavoidable) hugging but far less than I feared. He ends it with some manly shoulder clapping and I pretend not to notice how relieved he is to see me being (relatively) fine.
Coffee is served and Daddy starts with an (also unavoidable) extremely detailed report of their journey here. After a while (they have just reached Belgium in his tale) Mummy leans over to me and whispers (so loud that Daddy can hear it), "Now you wish you could just tell him to shut up, right? "
It is a tactless remark. Both Daddy and I cannot help it but giggle. I think this is the first time someone manages to treat my problems with humour.
###
Mummy loves German breakfast. Hence my parents start their first morning on Amrum with finding a café that serves breakfast, dragging me along without asking.
(It was easy to deduce that they think I am too thin. I try to sulk about being forced to eat but it is difficult to do a good sulking when you don't speak at all. Nobody notices that you are sulking. So I stop with it halfway and enjoy having my parents here instead.)
They do not order for me at the restaurant and let it go uncommented that I order by pointing at the menu.
Daddy is happy just to be on holiday (as always). Mummy is interested in each and every person around us (as always). She shares her deductions with us right away and (as far as I can tell) they are spot on (as always).
Then she makes a mistake with one of the girls sitting at the other table. (She mistakes her calloused hands for the hands of a horse rider while in reality she is a coach-woman.) (Understandable mistake. I only know better because I listened to her talking to a friend some time ago.)
I shake my head in disagreement.
Mummy doesn't understand why and goes on about the horse riding.
I try to disagree non-verbally again and fail to make my point.
Breakfast is served before I can get angry.
###
Over the next few days we quickly establish a routine. We go out for breakfast together and then I work a little on my evidence wall (managing to determine the identity of three more sailors). There is lunch. Afterwards I go outside on my own or with one of my parents. When one of them joins me, there is tea (or coffee or cappuccino) to go on the beach or at a café. At night there is dinner that I sometimes skip to stay outside. I always slip into bed as late as possible. (No chance of falling asleep if I am not really really tired.) Sometimes in the wee hours one of them sneaks into my room to cover me with a blanket or to pet my head.
###
"Baby steps" Daddy tells me gently every time I achieve something that would not be worth mentioning if I were all right.
On a cold but sunny day we happen to sit in the kitchen, him and me. It is easy to deduce that there is something on his mind. (I would not have been able to deduce that a few weeks ago. Guess I am kind of healing after all.) He chats about irrelevant stuff, goes on and on about the neighbours and the tourists next door and the friendly people at the little cinema in Norddorf before finally saying what is on his mind. (Kind of.)
"I need to see if the backyard is ready to face the autumn storms that are due to hit Amrum soon. Come and help me."
A blatant lie.
The backyard was the very reason for me to come here. I remember adding it to my (then rather small) mind palace. (More a mind house, really.) (Well, let's be honest. A mind hut.)
The first draft of my mind hut consisted of two only rooms at that time. One for academical knowledge, one for people and deductions. I say academical knowledge. I was six when I started building my hut. Academical knowledge included all facts about pirates, that butterflies were caterpillars once, and how rainbows happen.
The room for deductions …
Unpleasant memories surface. Holidays when I was seven. A thoughtless deduction about how Daddy smelled one day. Mummy crying, Mycroft frantically trying to pick up the pieces after she left to sleep in a hotel for an unknown number of nights. Little Sherlock not understanding why everybody was angry at him. Mummy and Mycroft had taught him how to deduce, hadn't they? So why were they furious at him for deducing about Daddy and the Bird Girl in the dunes?
I see Little Sherlock hiding right here in the backyard. Watching Daddy leaving every day to talk to Mummy. Returning every day, still feeling guilty and sad. Little Sherlock is sitting on the bench all day, crying. Mycroft, twelve at that time, is staying with him. Trying to tell him it wasn't his fault. (Not really. Somehow.) Stroking his back. Comforting him.
Then I see Mummy and Daddy in the backyard, both kneeling in front of Little Sherlock. Explaining that they are sorry for being angry. Telling him that Mummy will move back in and that Daddy will never smell like the Bird Girl in the dunes again. The little boy is slowly starting to feel loved by them again.
That night, he includes the backyard in his mind hut. Just in case. One never knows if there might be a need for refuge one day.
Across the lawn I observe another version of myself watching Little Sherlock and his family. He is in his early twenties. Worn out, thin. Dull hair. Cold turkey once more. Desperately looking for a place to sooth his soul to make it through withdrawal. Remembering the refuge he spent so much time in as a pupil surrounded by idiotic class mates.
Only now do I realise what Daddy must have seen all along. In real life I haven't been in the backyard yet. Why not?
Another unpleasant memory. Me dying, trying to find refuge to prevent shock and death. Opening the door to the mind palace backyard only to find Mary pointing a gun at me. This was the last time I tried to open that door.
Before I can hesitate, Daddy gently pulls me out of my mind and through the real door.
Passing it feels weird. So many times I have tried in vain to open that door inside my mind palace. Just stepping through now seems surreal.
"This is where we found you that summer when Mummy and I were done being idiots," Daddy muses. "I always thought it was your favourite place around the house."
Of course it was. I remember telling him about my mind palace once, explaining how I use real places that have a meaning to me and reconstruct them in my mind. He knows the significance of this place. Does he connect my avoidance with my state of mind?
I am sure he does. This is why he is watching me closely as I look around. The view to the beach is breathtaking. You can see the sea in the distance behind the dunes, hear the waves hitting the shore. It was low tide one hour ago and you can watch the high tide rolling in again.
Just standing here brings a peace of mind I have lacked for so long now. My troubled thoughts are gently blown away by the autumn breeze. My stomach relaxes suddenly and I realise only now how tense it has been for a very long time.
Daddy approaches me. "Not just a baby step this time, right?" he asks.
When I nod, he places his hand on my shoulder. We remain standing like this for more than an hour before going in again, freezing but strangely fulfilled.
###
"You really should talk to this horrible woman at the supermarket," Mummy fusses one day when she comes home from shopping. "She is always so impolite. If something bad happens to her because you talked, it won't be a great loss."
I try not to be amused by it.
###
What really bothers me is that Mummy is wrong about things more often than she used to. (Is she getting old?) She once mistakes a harbour seal for a grey seal. Another time she wrongly deduces that the local doctor has three children instead of two.
And then, one night she gets into a discussion with Daddy concerning the first settlers on Amrum. They (correctly) agree that there are Neolithic traces to be found. Unfortunately, their knowledge of the finer sub-categorisation is limited at best. It is understandable that Daddy claims the pottery belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (though he does not know this term. He keeps calling it Neolithic before pottery) while Mummy resolutely (and wrongly) insists of them to be from Pottery Neolithic B.
(They are from Pottery Neolithic A of course. I have looked at them extensively.)
"The nice man at the museum said even they don't know for sure," Daddy tries to make peace.
"Well," she tells us, "didn't you look at the spearhead? Compared to others we have already seen, they must be dated back to 5,000 BC. Pottery Neolithic B."
(She is right about the date but forgets to consider that Pottery Neolithic B started later up here in the north of Europe. They are from Pottery Neolithic A.)
"How can you be so sure?" Daddy asks with that little smile reserved for Mummy being brilliant when he himself is wrong.
Mummy is unstoppable anyway. "Oh come on, Sig. Even an idiot can see that they are from a Pottery Neolithic B culture."
(No, Pottery Neolithic A.)
Daddy tries to come up with another argument, but Mummy insists, "No, I am absolutely sure. Those remnants came from a culture of the Pottery Neolithic B."
"Pottery Neolithic A."
We all freeze instantly. I never intended to say it loud, really. But I did and now I cannot unsay it. My heart starts racing. My mouth is dry and I cannot swallow. The room is swaying a little.
Terrible things will happen. People get hurt when I speak.
My eyes are burning. I cannot breath. Panic attack, my mind tells me (unhelpfully). I remain frozen for another six seconds. Then I turn towards the door and run away.
The last thing I realize is Mummy grinning a little. It has been a trap. All those wrong deductions, all the little errors. They have all been traps to lure me into talking. Doesn't she know that people get hurt when I speak? But she knows. She made fun of it. Then why did she lure me into speaking?
(Rain is falling, soaking my hair, soaking my shoes.)
I cannot go back. Not now. Terrible things will happen to my parents and I cannot come back to watch it happen. Better come home when they are ... No. Better go home now and wait for them to ... No.
(Can hear the high tide waves roll in. Common gulls. An oyster catcher.)
Mummy and Daddy will ... I cannot even think about it. But they will. And it will be my fault.
(Wet branches hitting my face. Must have taken the road into the forest.)
Why did they come here first place? Why didn't they stay away where they were safe? John was right to leave me. He was right when he took Emmi away from me to keep her safe.
(Fences inside the forest. Signs. I have reached the Vogelkoje. How very fitting. A place of slaughter, brutal death. A place of killing thousands of innocent stupid ducks. How very fitting to end up here.)
I sit down on a (wet) bench. From here you have a good view of the spot where hunters used to club ducks to death. Today this place is a (wannabe) tourist attraction with a cute mascot that tells children all about the blood thirst of their ancestors.
What will happen to my parents now? (So many ways to die slowly inside a house.) Has it happened already? How long will I have to wait outside to come back when it is over?
If I went back now, could I prevent it from happening? Is it too late for that now?
I sit on that bench until it is dark and I start to feel the wet cold that is creeping into my bones. My head is throbbing. (Rightful punishment.)
Rightful punishment.
I finally accept that it is time to receive my rightful punishment. I walk back home, ready to find my parents dead. (Surely with lots of clues for how slow and painful their deaths were. It will destroy me.) My rightful punishment for speaking.
When I turn into our street I see -
Them, alive and fine, in the kitchen. The kitchen window is opened a bit despite the rain and I can hear their voices. Can see them clearly through the brightly lit window.
My mind goes numb. Utterly completely numb. I enter the house and find myself under a hot shower without knowing how I got there. Then I am lying in bed, the taste of sweet tea in my mouth. Then the sun is shining into my room. Then I am sitting at a table at a familiar café. Breakfast in front of me. My parents next to me.
"It was a trick," I whisper.
Mummy looks at me with a familiar little smile, "Yes, it was."
I try to hold her gaze but fail. "Terrible things will happen to you two." My voice must be barely audible.
Still, they have heard me. "Nothing will happen to us," Daddy says with certainty. (I know that intonation. There is no use to discuss things with him when he talks like that.)
I just shrug. Of course something will happen. They will see.
###
But nothing happens that day.
I hover around them permanently (mute again). Ready to face my rightful punishment. But nothing happens the that day.
Or the next.
Or the next.
After five uneventful days I feel a bit like an idiot.
###
"Bitte mit Kaffee statt Tee," I tell the waitress when we are having breakfast on day six.
Daddy beams and pets my arm. Mummy turns away so I won't notice the tears in her eyes.
More uneventful days pass. I talk a little, every now and then. Nobody dies.
It has been a lie. A clever one, a haunting one. But after all, just a lie.
I am a bit sorry that John killed her so fast.
John.
Does he also know that it is just a lie? Surely not. I need to tell him. He has to know.
"I will call John tomorrow," I announce before going to bed. My parents approve, each in their own way.
That night I sleep better than ever before.
Author's note: I have been a bit generous with the facts about the whole Neolithic stuff. Archaeologists will hopefully forgive me.
The Vogelkoje and its mascot is not fiction. It's one of the strangest tourist attractions I have ever seen.