What The House Forgot

Impossible By Definition Only

There were shards of glass in his back, small ones which prodded like needles into his skin. Victor's first fear was for his clothes; undoubtedly each prick had to rip the fabric before it had the opportunity to hurt him. His second thought, embarrassingly, was his own health and safety. A reordering of these priorities would probably do him well; in fact it might have added a new level of fight or flight that would have avoided this situation entirely. Oh, but Victor had grown weary of confusion. He had gotten bored of what he deemed as supernatural parlor tricks. When faced with a talking reflection, well that seemed to only be the tenth strange thing this week!
The boy pushed himself onto his palm, wincing as minuscule shards of glass embedded themselves readily into his skin. This at least allowed him a vantage point, a method of looking around to check for the ghostly creature which had shocked him. Gone, was he? Or perhaps he was never here at all.
"I don't remember ever being so cowardly," whined a voice from behind, that same croaking voice which had communicated as the voice in the mirror. Victor lurched, nearly dragging himself through the concrete as he swerved to face his adversary. Thankfully, the duplicate Victor did not seem so hostile. The old man was merely leaning against one of the planting boxes, his ancient frame shaking even as he stood completely still.
"Are you real?" was the most logical question Victor could think of. He stumbled to his feet, wincing as he felt his back clench around each one of the shards which had lodged themselves into his skin.
The older man laughed, a wheezing sound which had no earthly equivalent, save perhaps a struggling steam engine on the verge of collapse. He stood up straight, revealing himself to be at least a head shorter than his younger counterpart, though the rest of the features were the same. Their relation was undeniable, even with such a radical difference in health and age. Victor shivered. This would not be so easy to explain.
"I've never gotten an adequate answer to that question, so I hesitate to answer. I am alive, if that's what you want to know," the older man assured. "I very much exist."
"That's..." Victor stumbled upon the word 'impossible' and decided against it. This whole house seemed to be impossible, who's to say the occupants weren't allowed to follow the same set of rules? "...Odd," Victor finished.
The old man's eyes shined, even behind his gritty skin and sagging eyelids could Victor spot a resemblance of charm, that same sparkle in the man's irises that people admired within his own eyes. A certain mischievousness, a look that could not be mimicked so easily. Victor began to remember what Sherlock had mentioned before, on the night which changed their lives. Men with the same name had been living here for centuries, had they not? There had been duplicates for centuries, duplicate names, at least. What were the chances that they were duplicated bodies as well?
"Are you my uncle, or something? Grandfather?" Victor wondered. The older man chuckled, his entire face lighting up into a surprisingly jovial excitement. His body moved with a quick urgency, though thankfully his reflexes were used to pivot towards the opposing planter and lean against that one, instead. With such speed, Victor lurched back for fear of attack. Even with a man so old, he moved with a youthful vigor. A danger that had to be recognized and respected. Feared, if necessary.
"Try again," the man demanded.
"I could go through the whole list of familiar ties. I don't feel the need," Victor complained. "What are you then, just answer it straight?"
"I admire that you have recognized our relation. It's difficult to recognize such things, especially when you're so used to taut skin and perfect hair. It takes a while until your reflection changes to mimic mine." The old man sighed, though he didn't look particularly happy about the revelation. "It takes a couple more decades until you'll wither like me."
"Like you?"
"As me," the old man corrected. His eyes snapped up in sudden seriousness, their gazes met and sent a shiver down Victor's spine. Both Victors' spines.
"That doesn't make sense," Victor complained.
"It ought to," the man sighed. "Because I think you've already figure it out. The house is struggling to keep its secrets."
"What secrets?" Victor demanded, stepping forward with a satisfying percussion of crunching glass. The older man chuckled, though he did not look as intimidated as he ought to. The wind, once so loud as it blew through the empty metal frames, was suddenly quiet. The birds silenced themselves in the trees. The plants were still, even the most delicate of leaves refusing to swish.
"I'm you, Victor," the man announced. The announcement should have been more surprising. Victor, however, didn't blink. "Or rather, you're me. You will be me. And I was once you."
"Time travel?" Victor guessed quietly.
"Worse."
"Clones?"
"Almost."
"Reincarnation." This was spoken as a tired truth, the definitive answer that was waiting at the back of his tongue for its turn in the world. It wasn't a question, rather a defeated little word that would finally force the truth out into the open world. Victor averted his eyes at the silence that followed, unwilling to watch as the older man nodded his head proudly. The younger Victor decided that he had spent too long standing. His knees were beginning to buckle in protest, as his brain was starting to use all the energy that his body could produce just to begin processing the truth of the matter. Reincarnation. He sat down heavily upon one of the tables, bringing it near to tipping as the excess soil sprinkled upon his back.
"I don't like that," Victor admitted at last. He brought his eyes to his counterpart, who was looking considerably sympathetic.
"It's an idea you get used to," he assured. His voice had dropped an octave, as if he had been struggling to keep up his enthusiastic pitch. While Victor's voice had never been deep, the older version had a couple of years of vocal cord neglect to get it down to a respectable level.
"How long have we been...here?" Victor whispered, looking towards the man with some ounce of compassion. He began to realize that there was no other possibility for that man's connection. He was undoubtedly the same, with such resemblances that could not be accredited to mere familial bonds.
"Nearly two centuries," the old man sighed. Victor nodded, thinking towards his own life, how it was not the first. How it would not be the last, surely.
"Wait a moment," he muttered, looking towards his counterpart with a tilted, suspicious brow, "Doesn't reincarnation usually mean there's a death before a life?"
"Usually," the man agreed.
"So if I'm here, and you're here...well that's impossible!"
"Impossible by the definition of reincarnation, yes," the old man agreed. "Though I imagine, even definitions are shattered when this house gets its hands on it." There was a certain sadness in his voice, a tinge of emotion that plunged deep into Victor's heart even though he could not understand. Or perhaps he didn't have to understand, and he was just feeling what his other half was feeling? Were they able to share such thoughts, such pains?
"So we're more complicated," Victor declared in a shaking voice. The old man nodded, his scraggly beard bouncing up and down upon his chest as if to reinstate his point. He looked tired. He looked old.
"The house is the catalyst for it all. We all end up here, one way or another. Once we're dead inside of its walls it resets, decides that it ought to start over," the man explained.
"Though it didn't for you?" Victor clarified.
"No, it did. That's why you're here." he reminded him. "It reset, even though I was not dead."
"That's lucky, then!" Victor exclaimed, jumping off of the planter to force some more enthusiasm into this conversation. The old man seemed to stoop over himself in agony, as if bringing this up in conversation was crippling to him. As if every word that passed through his lips cut as sharp as these shards of glass. Victor hesitated, wondering if it was worth comforting himself.
"Have you been with Sherlock yet?" the man wondered, pushing his palm upon the wooden planters to steady himself, clearing his throat to hide the voice which was laced with agony.
"I've uh...well I've been with him in a car, and in a house...so yes?"
"No, no you prude, have you f*cked him yet?" the man growled. Victor blinked, recoiling from the sudden hostility. The man, however ancient, seemed to have a sharp temper. A mere moment of unwanted confusion could lead to such vulgarity.
"I...I don't think that's any of your business," Victor said flatly. The old man laughed, though he seemed to be sharing an inside joke with himself. His hand tightened around the planter, the other balling into a fist.
"It is my business, Victor. You forget that I've already taken every step of your life."
"Well then you already know the answer!" Victor snarled back, deciding to match the man's hostility. If he wasn't going to cooperate, well then what was the harm of reciprocating? Victor knew he could be rather rough around the edges, but if this was where his personality was headed in fifty years, well then he was in serious trouble.
"There's a timeline to these things. There's a schedule. If you've been with him, that's step one. That's when you know it's all going downhill from there," the old man growled. Victor hesitated, opening his mouth to respond with an equally sharp tongue, but he held it, just for a moment. Something did not seem to make sense within his words. Something snagged against the ear, and held up the entire string.
"Step one?" Victor clarified weakly. "Out of how many steps?"
"Aw, poor thing. Did you think it was going to be forever?" the old man spat. "There's an endless amount of steps, Victor! Endless, because it keeps turning in a circle! A never ending, God da*n circle."
"It won't be like that this time," Victor demanded, speaking more from his own hopeful dreams rather than any predictions grounded in reality. How was he to know what the house had on its mind?
"For your sake, I hope not. It's a pain that never heals." The old man snarled, turning his head away for the first time as if he finally could not bear to look himself in the eyes.
"Where is your Sherlock? Where is your John?"
"Dead."
"Should you be dead, too?"
"Yes." The man lifted his eyes, his teeth barred. "And I should like to be." His eyes flashed again, though this time they flashed inwards, as if taking the light from the surrounding greenhouse and sucking it back into his skull. He seemed to be hiding away, tucking into his shell as he realized he revealed too much at once. Thankfully, Victor's response was not needed.
"Victor, where are you?" a whining voice called, the sort of droning yell that came from a most uninterested searching party. Victor's eyes widened, and he turned to his counterpart in fear. The older man seemed intrigued, in fact his heart almost visibly leapt through his ribs, though in Victor's sudden urgency he did not let the reunion happen so fast. No matter what happened between this old man and his Sherlock equivalent, certainly it was not for the modern day boy to meet with such a decrepit and mysterious man. Certainly he ought not to learn the secrets of the house so abruptly.
"Hide, get out of here!" Victor snarled, pushing against the man's chest and finding him surprisingly solid. Well, he had to adapt to living in the woods. Perhaps he was made of firmer stuff than at first expected.
"Come back to visit me, Victor. We have a lot to discuss," the old man insisted, retreating away in a slow, snakelike fashion. He dragged his feet across the ground rather hauntingly, crunching through the glass as if to take as long as he possibly could. Despite Victor's urgency the emotion was not shared, and instead the old man seemed to be taking as long as he wanted with his retreat. Evidentially he wanted to be met with Sherlock Holmes.
"I'll...I'll find you!" Victor called in response, nodding vigorously and scampering away from the greenhouse. He couldn't let Sherlock find this old man; he couldn't allow his beautiful head to become bogged down with the truth of the matter. The heavy truth, which would cast a shadow behind his carefree eyes. How could this be merely the first step of many? How could their love be destined to end, how could it be interrupted at all? Was their destiny really the first part of an elaborate deconstruction?