Nyx (ON HOLD)

Aislingate, Part IV

Adaline already had the door open as I stumbled up the house's front stairs, scooped up my box and my bag, and followed her inside. Though the sun's rays were nearly horizontal at this late hour, the house's vestibule was sunk in a shadow that seemed to stop just at the line of the threshold. I shivered as I stepped into the darkness, and it enfolded me, blinding as water as my eyes struggled to adjust. This was why although I loved swimming in pools, I loathed being in the ocean: the surface would never betray whatever was beneath you, all that water through which god-knows-what could be moving, and you'd never even know.

Here, in this gnarled Victorian mansion, I felt that same sense of dread.

I heard my grandmother moving through the darkness, but closed the door behind me and stayed where I was until the dusk-dark blotches began to fade from my vision. At length they sank away to reveal a high-ceilinged foyer lined with doors on each of its walls. The inlet from the vestibule was wedged in a corner beside a grand wooden staircase with a runner of black carpeting; as soon as I rounded the corner into the foyer proper, I found myself confronting an intricately carved newel post that stood as tall as I did. Rather than being left as a solid cylinder, someone had cut deep into the cherry wood, sculpting it into a series of interweaving tentacles that each culminated in a curlicue on the bottom step. The post's bulbous head was the octopus' mantle, and I stared at it, transfixed by the hewn creature's grotesque beauty.

More clumping sounded from beside my head, and I looked up to see my grandmother already halfway up to the next storey, ignoring the closed doors that surrounded me on the first floor. "S'pose you'll be needing a room," she muttered — and I wasn't entirely sure if she was talking to me or just herself.

I readjusted my grip on the Si Señor Squash box and followed her, keeping an eye on the glittering silver of her hair in the wan light that slipped through the windows. The monstrous white cat still followed her, its tufted ears swiveled back toward me; any other feline might've slowed and accidentally tripped me, but mercifully, it stayed far enough ahead that I could see it over the box's protruding edge, and steer clear.

The staircase led up to a claustrophobic landing and then another flight of black-carpeted steps beyond — and it was at the top of these that my grandmother stopped.

"You can put your box down a sec," Adaline told me gruffly, and I set the thing down on a side table that looked wide enough to bear its weight. She retreated a pace, leaning back so that her shoulders were flush with the door that stood just to the left of the stairs. "This one's mine." She dropped her chin, nodding curtly at a door that stood cater-corner to her bedroom. "You can't have that one, either. But any other one you want."

How many doors were there? It was hard to see much in the gloom, but the L-bend corridor was wide enough for two people to pass shoulder to shoulder. Not counting the two bedrooms Adaline had already indicated, there was one around the corner to the right of the stairs, a second at the bend of the corridor — at a ninety degree angle to the one that was curiously off-limits — and a third fully around the hall's further leg, across from an immense painting that hung beside the bathroom. The three doors stood open, revealing beds with intricately wrought frames of iron or wood, and appointed with bureaus and nighttables that must have been decades old, at least.

The muted roar of the sea was comforting as I glanced between the bedrooms, trying to weigh the unnerving stone hearth in one against the hideous yellowed wallpaper of another. Surely Adaline wouldn't begrudge me some changes, and I wasn't above the hard work of fixing up a room for myself — but each had some unnerving aspect that made me loathe to name any as my desired pick.

It was as I turned back toward the stairs, gnawing my lower lip in consternation, that I saw a sixth door, this one noticeably narrower than the others. It had been behind me before, so I hadn't noticed its existence; it was shut, but as I moved to it, I thought I heard some sort of sniff from Adaline's direction.