Chapter 1 #2
With each word, his sagging cheeks shake like a hound dog.
Fascinated by their dance, I barely register his words.
Something about being allowed to walk the grounds, but never—wrinkly lips stretched tightly over yellowed teeth—is dangerous in the dark— The words float in from nearby.
I blink trying to focus on something else, but his flapping neck draws me back in.
Did all old people look like this, like forgotten newspaper drenched in rain?
The rooms will be locked and in the morning—watery eyes roll around the sockets like old apples—
Suddenly, Bayard stops, and with a glare, he insists, “It is of the utmost importance you understand and follow each of these rules.”
“Yes,” I say, knowing full well I missed at least half of that.
When we continue, I focus on trying to memorise the layout of the building again.
I’ve never particularly followed instructions well in the past, and I don’t plan on starting now.
I took this job because it seemed easy, and I was told I’d be left alone.
I’m not gonna deny that it does sound a bit like I’ll be locked up in this castle just to do menial tasks.
But even if that’s the case, as long as I’m far away from people while given a roof over my head, I don’t particularly care about the exact details of it.
“For today, you can brush off the tubers.”
Bayard’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts, and I realise I don’t know how we got to where we’re now standing. It seems that we’ve ended up in a damp room with a low ceiling. It’s so cold here, it’s making my skin prickle.
Bayard clears his throat and lifts an eyebrow. “Once they are clean, stack them up neatly over there,” he says pointing to a corner, then hands me a brush and the candle. Before I can say anything, he leaves, closing the door behind him.
The room, a root cellar completely devoid of windows, is dark and clammy.
The dim candlelight barely penetrates more than an arm’s length around me.
The little bit I can see is so dirty, it makes the muddy potatoes seem nearly spotless.
Somehow, the fabric of my uniform is even scratchier in this chilly air.
I walk around looking for a place to sit before getting started on the pile of potatoes so big it looks like it could feed an entire village for a month.
I spot a little half-rotten stool toppled over in a dark corner and drag it over to the pile of vegetables while putting my headphones back on.
The Swans’ familiar broken sounds fill me as I turn the volume up all the way.
I’ve been told too many times to count that loud music will ruin my ears, but it’s the only comfort I got.
I’d rather ruin these ears than deal with the world in silence.
I grab a potato and start brushing for who knows how long. Eventually, my brain turns off, and my body moves on its own. Scrub. Turn. Then scrub again. Place each cleaned potato in a perfectly stacked pyramid inside a wooden box.
The world suddenly comes back. I stop moving, holding a somewhat cleaner potato mid-air.
I don’t know what pulled me out of my automation, but something feels strangely different now.
Since the shrinking candle isn’t doing the best job at lighting the cellar, I push my headphones off, listening intently.
Nothing.
The silence, though… It’s eerie and unusual. Had it been like this before?
I’ve lived in the city my whole life, a place constantly filled with noise, even in the middle of the night. Yet here, there’s absolutely nothing. No dogs barking in the distance, no annoying pop music coming from a nearby store, not even wind howling through the cracks of the windows.
But in the silence of this room, with the door still closed, it feels like there’s someone here with me.
The feeling of being watched intensifies.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I can feel warmth radiating from behind me.
I turn quickly, but all I see is the earthen wall.
Heat rises from below, so I lean down, placing my hand on the soil.
It feels strangely warm and supple. Almost like it’s alive.
I shake my fingers, but loud banging startles me, making me shoot up off the stool.
It clatters to the floor, harmonising with the deafening thuds now reverberating through the cellar.
It sounds like walls being hammered down nearby, the force making little bits of dirt fall from the ceiling.
I protect my eyes from the debris when angry screaming joins the racket.
And then all the sounds stop as abruptly as they started. The silence falling over the cellar is so chilling, it makes me shiver.
As I stand there, startled and confused, a thought slowly crawls through my mind. It starts small and innocent until it anchors itself into my brain, confident and convinced: the thought—no, the knowledge—that this job might be much more than I initially signed up for.