Fiction

Looking back, I remember a bizarre incident that had happened on the eighth of September, the year 1909. We were sitting in the warm, stuffy Baker Street flat on a rainy day. Holmes had gone to the kettle, and across the room he yelled, ‘Watson, black or green?’

‘Black tea for me, thank you,’ I replied. In a few short minutes, Holmes returned with two steaming mugs as we both sank into the recliners. He handed me the tea and it tasted off.

‘Sherlock…this is green tea?’

‘Yes. I’m glad you noticed. Green tea’s better at night.’

‘But I wanted black-‘

‘You were mistaken, Watson.’

We sat staring out the rain pattered window and out on the dark street, where not a soul stood. Holmes had gone for more tea, but something strange had happened. A man, half dressed, his shoes untied and dangling, holding a soaking newspaper above his head, ran through the street. He had left his yellow taxi in the road unparked. His eyes were wide and worried, and his mouth open, like he was ready to scream. He ran along Baker Street, until he came so close to 221B that he had disappeared for a moment.

Downstairs was a hurried exchange between the man and Mrs. Hudson, who, as usual, let out her disagreeing moan. The man opened our door and ran in. His hair was stringy and shiny from the rain, and he bowed down from tiredness. Holmes came out; his face turned tighter and perked down to face the kneeling man. ‘Goldberg’, he said. The man looked straight at Holmes, clutching his heart and breathing heavily. ‘Holmes,’ he let out, ‘the curtains…have closed.’

‘No! The villa? Watson, take my jacket. We must go right away!’ He ran out the door, and I followed. Goldberg started the car.

We rode in the cab. ‘Holmes?’ I said, ‘What’s happening?’

‘Didn’t you hear? The curtains have closed.’

‘Yes, but what does that mean?’

‘Oh, right, listen Watson; you must hear the whole story. I had been taking a walk in Harrow, on the East side. It had been a long walk; after a while, there started to be less and less homes. At midnight I came to a secluded villa, one surrounded by a large, empty lawn. The curtains had been closed. In the very back I saw a shadow of a man carrying a bag. A large bag, the size of a corpse, and throwing it into a hole. Five minutes passed, and the curtains had opened. The man stared at me, so I quickly turned and carried on like a passerby. I thought about the incident, and again returned a fortnight later. I kept watch by the gate. I saw the killer look out the window, surveying the landscape. He closed the curtains, but I heard the scream. Thirty minutes later, he carried a bag to the backyard.

‘Once again, the curtains then opened. This enticed me – I didn’t know the case, but I knew the connection between curtain and corpse. The midnight hour had come, and I had signaled a cab. And that was Goldberg; my driver and a Harrow native. I told him to come to me if he ever did see the curtain closed. Do you understand it all now?’ I nodded, but couldn’t think of the investigation that was to come.

The taxi had stopped in front of a black cast iron gate, through which I saw the daunting size of a two-story villa laced with a brown frame and marble steps. The lawn around it stretched as far as a football pitch. Holmes, who had very happily said his goodbye to Goldberg, climbed out of the car. The curtains were closed and the lawn bare of people, so Holmes and I stepped on the gate latch and climbed over. We came to the wall on the right side, as Sherlock stared closely at the marble. He looked through a small square window, the curtains of which he pulled aside.

‘John’ he looked at me, his voice quiet and rasp, ‘Climb in.’

Soon we found ourselves in the room, with the shut door in front and the window behind. The room had been covered in drawers, big and small, each wall shining from the glow of hundreds of handles. A reek of gone-off eggs hit my nose.

‘Ehh…W-what is this? A cupboard room? It smells of rotten eggs.’ Holmes had not answered my question. Instead he paced around the room, flicking the wood, muttering ‘maple’ under his breath, and scratching the locks, muttering ‘steel’. Finally, he crouched down on the floor, and like a snake, made his way below a small, rectangular drawer. His pointed nose leaned into the ground, and after a few seconds he turned to look at me.

‘Rotten eggs! Rotten eggs! Are you a fool?’ He pointed his index finger to the sky, smeared in something yellow, and pointed below the drawer, a whole pile of the yellow powder.

‘Sulfur mustard’, he paused, ‘or mustard gas.’

Just then the window had clicked and shut, two hands locking it. There were heavy steps behind the door, which also clicked shut. Holmes continued, ‘Sulfur mustard…under this door…’ He took out his paperclip, peering inside the lock.

‘A jimmy proof deadbolt lock’ He hurried to bend the paperclip in two, and started to unscrew its bolts. I stood silently, not knowing any way I could help him. He now tinkered with the springs, pulling some, jabbing at others with the paperclip. ‘We’ve loosened the lock, now it can be opened.’

The drawer pulled out and he looked at me with a grin.

‘I knew it’, he said, and handed me a gas mask. He pointed to the small gap under the door, to a yellow gas that started to float into our room.

‘Put it on. Quick’, he said.

By the time we had both put on the gas masks, the room had filled with the haze of deadly mustard gas, and I could barely see Sherlock through it, who sat right next to me.

Sherlock pointed at the armchair behind which we sat crouched, and we both leaned in to push it by the door. We sat behind it, motionless and soundless, for about ten minutes, when we started to hear noises behind the door.

‘Eyy. Dead already?’ The muffled voice laughed and yelled a bit louder, ‘Edgar, get the bags!’ The door creaked open, and although nothing was visible through the mist, a dark figure with a gas mask came in the room.

‘Finally got that detective. Knew he was up to no good those two times by the road.’

By the time Edgar had come back with two body bags, the dark man had started to walk through the room, looking side to side through the mist. His temper started to rise, and I heard the coarse whisper of ‘Where are they?’ come out under his breath. Sherlock nudged my shoulder, showing the door, and bending his fingers to show three, and two, and one, until we silently started to crawl out.

Holmes had made his way out first, and I followed around the corner of the step.

‘WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE’D THEY GO?’ the man yelled, and his foot flew at the armchair we had just been crouching behind.

Behind the stairwell, we spied on him as he crashed open the door, pacing through the hall. The sound of a cocked rifle flew through the cold air as he walked out with a Remington rifle and a lighted cigar dangling from his mouth.

‘Sir,’ Edgar had started, ‘I thought I told you where to smoke.’

‘Look up at the ceiling of the second floor. Notice the yellow-brain stains.’ Holmes whispered in my ear.

‘I’ll stop once we’ve gotten our detective’, the man said. The mustard gas still floated through the air, and had spread through the whole house, where very little was visible. Edgar sighed.

‘You look inside all the rooms, I’ll check the perimeter.’ Edgar paced through, checking the rooms one by one, when suddenly his gaze fixated on the stairwell.

Once again, we crouched down low, and crawled around the stairwell, the butler slowly looking around. I had rounded the corner, and even turned back to look at Holmes, who had been following me. But he wasn’t.

He had paused, scratching his finger, the one that was in sulfur mustard.

‘Holmes’, I let out through gritted teeth, but he couldn’t hear me. Edgar’s tall silhouette continued to grow bigger as he came nearer, and when he had just stood in front of Holmes, I couldn’t watch. My eyes had shut.

I had heard a piercing shriek, followed by short, heavy breaths. Edgar’s foot had stumbled over Sherlock’s bent pose, and now Holmes had bent over the fallen butler, whose arms flailed mercilessly. Holmes covered his hand over Edgar’s mouth, as he slipped of Edgar’s mask.

‘Not a peep out of you’, he said, and threw the gas mask far into the drawer room. Edgar had run off to the room as we quickly made our way up the stairs. We walked through the hall to the first door, at which Holmes took a right through a small corridor, and we had come to a stone door.

‘Watson…limited time, limited time…’ he showed me the hall, and I leaned out to keep watch. Once again he closely examined the insides of the padlock, bending the paperclip into a cross shape and slowly sliding it into the lock.

A shot rang through the house, and had hit the ceiling of the second floor. The sounds of four feet hitting the stairwell and the ravenous cries of the two men had completely worn me down.

‘Hold your breath’, he told me, as he took both of our gas masks and threw them down the hall, ‘that will stop them for the extra moment we need.’

Holmes opened the stone door, slipping the paperclip back into his pocket, and climbing out onto the balcony. We sat crouched for a moment.

‘Look! The gas masks!’ one of the voices said. ‘Another wild card…check the room at the end of the hall.’

But none of that had mattered, for Sherlock Holmes and I had already finished climbing down the ladder, and we ran through the rain and to the gate.

‘Excellent, Holmes, excellent’, I couldn’t help but let out as he signaled Goldberg’s cab. The dazing bright headlights rounded the corner from the street, and Goldberg’s wary face pulled up to the street.

We rode in the cab.

‘Holmes?’

‘Yep?’ he replied.

‘Great work, but how did you know about the balcony? How did you know we could go through it?’

‘Aha, yes, you see…’ and he had started. ‘I had first noticed the smoke stains on the ceiling, those that I had shown you. They were yellow-brown. Do you remember the man when he had stepped into our room? Before all else he had turned angry. He had not seen us yet, but the yellow smoke reminded him of his smoking addiction. So he kicked the chair. We had snuck out, and then he came out with a cigar. Much to Edgar’s discontent of course, but his adrenaline had been at a high. You see, Edgar had noticed those cigar stains long ago, and so our man was forced to smoke outside. But he was too careless to go outside through the front door, since the stains came from the second floor. Hence the balcony.’

‘You saw all of that from just a few minutes? Holmes, how do you do it…’ I shook my head. There was just one last question.

‘Of course, today those curtains had closed for us. He wanted to get rid of you, Holmes. But what do we have to prove all of that. To prove this attempted homicide?’

‘Watson, Watson, think!’ out from his pocket he took out the paperclip. ‘The clip that is bent to the exact second floor entrance. There’s not a better piece of evidence than that.’

Soon after Goldberg had drove us up to 221B Baker Street, and he looked at us from the front seat with a grin.

‘If the curtains ever do close, I’ll let ya know.’

‘If they ever do…once again, thank you, Goldberg.’ Holmes said, and I shook his hand. He had been of great aid this midnight.

The door behind the house had closed, and at the sound of it Mrs. Hudson came out.

‘Oh heavens! Where have you been? Who was that? You need some tea! All wet and cold…’ she stumbled off into the kitchen, and soon Holmes and I sat in our armchairs once again, staring out the rain pattered window and onto the dark street.

 

Ivan Budanov lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He enjoys writing and programming, as well as playing ping pong. He has traveled all over the world, and loves exploring different cultures.

I breathe slowly; I don’t want the bad lady to catch me. I am frightened of her. She yelled at me this morning, and I didn’t like it. This time, I have hidden under the bed, hoping they won’t see me, that they will just go and leave me here. Alone.

My name is Edmund. I woke up this morning to be told that I had just been in a terrible car crash in which both of my parents had died. I didn’t cry, I couldn’t cry for someone I couldn’t remember. Even now, I try really hard to feel something for them, but I can’t.

The nice lady had said that I had amnesia, which she explained to me patiently. It is a medical condition in which due to an accident, traumatic experience or something like that, you forget everything.

I know she must have said the truth because I don’t remember anything. I only know that my name is Edmund Osbourne William, and that I am ten years old, and come from Manchester, England. Or that’s what the good nurse told me.

I like the good nurse. She came back again, just a while ago, to give me clean clothes and some cleansing supplies. I understood when I saw myself in the mirror, with my scruffy hair, dirty cheeks, and wrinkled clothes. When I came out, the good nurse said I looked very dashing, but the bad nurse cut her off before she could say anything else. Her withering glare before leaving sent me straight where I am now, under the bed…

Even now, as I hear their footsteps fading away, I can’t relax. The bad nurse might come back, so I’d rather not move.

It’s really dark under the bed. The slimy floor is full of dust and there is eerie writing on the bedspring escape, break free. It gives me goose bumps. Idiot the person who did that, I hate him, I don’t want to be where he was.

I scurry out and hide under the warm duvet. I can see the daylight from here. Clutching the covers is like touching mummy’s hair. Did I like touching my mum’s hair? I don’t know, but it feels good now… I am never coming out!

The door opens, and I first peek and then rush out. It’s the good nurse. I hug her. She smells good, familiar.

“Where were you?” I notice my accusatory tone as I mumble.

“I am sorry I took so long. I just couldn’t find the things we needed.”

“I was worried.” I look downwards as I speak.

“Ohhh, puppet, don’t worry. If something happened to me, I would immediately call you for help. You would get someone to help us for sure. Let’s see, who could that be? Maybe the National Emergency Number. I always have their number in the office by the phone, just in case.”

“Yes, that makes sense.” My hair gets out of place as I nod strongly. We have a plan just in case. I like that.

“Anyway, why were you hiding sweetheart?” She asks with a warm and contagious smile.

“I was scared,” I say pretending to look out the window.

“Why where you scared?” She surrounds me with her protecting arm. Maybe a bit too tight, but I don’t mind. She is on my side.

“I was scared of under the bed.”

“Oh! Don’t be scared. There is nothing down there.” She doesn’t look, so I don’t believe her. “I know what we can do, why don’t I bring some paper and colours so you can draw?” I clap my hands in joy. Anything the good nurse suggests must be fun!

She laughs, and gets up.

“I’ll be back in a second.” I know somehow she means it. She really won’t take long.

Alone, I get bored. It is the typical hospital room, dull and solitary, with nothing to do. An old TV set hangs from the ceiling, but the remote is nowhere in eyesight. There is a window to my left, with a view to the world below. Unfortunately, I can’t wave hi to the good nurse sprinting through the garden because it is sealed shut. I lie back on the stiff bed and stare dejectedly at the ceiling, not even the sound of a passing car to distract myself.

The creak of the door announces her. She has brought colours, glue, scissors, paper… Even glitter! But I don’t see a blue felt tip. How disappointing, I was expecting it. Blue is my favourite colour.

“Told you I wouldn’t take long.”

She sits next to me, and together we start drawing pictures, and cutting out shapes. The good nurse even teaches me how to do a snowflake! She says, at Christmas, this room is going to look so good Santa will never want to leave!

I’m having such a good time, that I almost forget where I am till the door slams open making us jump.

“Janice, I need your help with a patient” the bad nurse barks.

“Okay I’ll… I’ll be there in a second” the good nurse stammers while thrusting everything into a folder she has brought.

“Do you really have to go?” I whine grabbing her wrist.

“Why don’t you sign this so I know it’s yours?” I nod eagerly, and use her felt tip to write my name on the folder.

“I remember how to write my name!” I gasp, and drop her felt tip under the bed.

“I’ll be back soon.” She does not notice what just happened. She is already rushing out, without looking.

“You! Be a good boy!” The bad nurse says it staring at me closely, and I notice my eyes getting wet. Her garlic breath is unbearable. As soon as she leaves, I go to my safe place.

This time, the memory of the darkness and weird writing returns with a vengeance and without thinking, I run out of the room to get the good nurse. But she is nowhere to be seen.

I am alone in a long corridor. Its worn out magnolia walls are scraped in too many places probably from the trolleys that bump into them. Poor maintenance or lazy staff I guess, because no one is around to help me. The pictures on the walls are faded infantile prints like the ones in the old black and white movies mummy liked … mummy liked movies?

I get distracted. At the end of the corridor the bright colour of the exit doors catches my attention. She is likely behind them, but before I can cross them footsteps stop me. If they find me out of my room, they will punish me for sure.

Fortune is on my side as the nearest room is empty.

“When will we give James’ son the next dose?” The bad nurse’s voice makes me shiver.

“This evening, with dinner.” She is talking to the good nurse. “We don’t want to take any more risks, leaving the window open almost meant his escape. Thankfully, we stopped him before he could jeopardize everything.”

“Definitely. The rage in his eyes when he looked at you … It was surreal. It was a miracle he didn’t hurt you.” The bad nurse sounds baffled.

“I know.”

The double doors banged shut, their voices fade away. I wait. And I wait for a few more instants. Finally, I hold my breath, and without looking I run back to my room.

The good nurse is at risk. I have to protect her. The good nurse said so. It seems there is only one thing to do, and she did not dare to ask me to call the Emergency Number. Probably she was concerned about me. She mustn’t know of my mission, for she doesn’t like me doing risky things.

I slowly drag myself off the bed again, and cautiously walk out of the room toward the red doors. I hold my breath, and dash through them with my eyes closed. What I find doesn’t surprise me.

Warn out walls, faded pictures, and this time, a bright red sign hanging on the navy-blue door: personnel only sign. I don’t care about limits when it comes to the good nurse.

I swing the door open. Old black and white photographs of hospital staff on the dirty magnolia walls. Most likely they are now deceased or rocking their nineties in some retirement home, but one knocks me off my socks. In the middle, in between a man and his wife, and with two small girls to his right, there is a boy like me. I mean, almost exactly the same as me when I saw myself in the mirror. Only that the boy looks older than me with curlier hair. Not to mention he is more in shape.

I start looking in the cabinets’ drawers. Nothing. I look around and notice a round table. There are only a few papers in here. But they are all about me.

I pick up one of the papers and I read every word twice, before skimming through the rest of the papers and simply run out with them. The Emergency Number doesn’t matter any more.

The corridor is cold, and threatening, and the need to hide too strong. I find myself getting into one of the patient rooms, rushing under the bed. I’m not worried that its patient might rat me out, because now I know there are no other patients in this hospital. Only me.

Suddenly, this darkness is welcome, it’s safe. So they’re alive… They’re alive! They were looking for me. After three years, my parents were still looking for me! I try remembering them, but there is only blackness. Why would anyone do this to me?

And the good nurse not being good after all… My cheeks burning. At least the bad nurse was bad.

I toss and turn, cramped under the old bed. A sudden but useless realization stops me frozen. So I am James’ son and the “dose” is for forgetting!

Unfortunately, darkness is not blinding down here. My eyes stubborn, can’t avoid reading some of the news I took. It says I had disappeared after wondering off on a family trip, never to be seen again. The article was written a year after my disappearance, but I saw more in that drawer, the most recent being a couple of months ago. The article also included a contact telephone number.

I hear someone running in the corridor. They must have already realised I am not in my room. My fists close, my heart is bumping in my head. I sniffle, and stop crying before deciding what to do. I inhale and exhale slowly, accepting what’s to come.

When I am sure they aren’t near, I step out, and start walking. I don’t run as it could give me away. I walk as slowly as possible, and it hurts.

I basically stroll in pain to the fire exit. I don’t know how far they are from where I am. If they entered the staircase I’d be trapped.

I peek at the bottom of the stairs, no one. I step down nearly tiptoeing. At the bottom of the stairs, trembling, I push open the steel doors that reveal the lobby.

The door to the outside is closer than I’d have dared to dream. As I approach it, my heart thumps so loud I almost need to cover my ears. The sweat drops stubbornly down my forehead as I continue to stop myself from running.

I want my mummy and daddy. They are a blur, but that’s more than what I had before.. The sweat gets in my eye. It is itchy, and it bothers me. This all bothers me. And I run. The last thing I should have done, but I remember my mother’s laugh.

I am touching the handle, when I hear their footsteps. It is too late to hide, the only way out, is out.

“There he is!” The bad nurse shouts.

I turn the handle and run into the garden. They’re already catching up, though I still try. I try running faster, my legs aching, my voice screaming at my fate.

“Let me go!” I try to break free even though it is of no use.

“Sorry kid, no can do” answers the bad nurse. “The longer you’re here the better.”
“Why?!”

“Because if you never appear then, she— ” the ugly nurse points at the false good nurse with a bitter smile— “will inherit the whole fortune.”

We start our walk back to the hospital, and she does not stop talking. She enjoys it.

“When your grandfather died, he left some money and a couple of properties to your aunt and me, including this hospital. But of course, your father was his favourite, so he left most of his fortune to him. Once your father dies, all the money goes to you. But if you disappear, your mother can’t get the money since she didn’t want to carry the family name. The money will go to my sister here. But of course, you have to have disappeared for a number of years before your daddy declares you dead. So, here we are.” The bad nurse is having the time of her life.

“You aren’t dead yet, because your other aunt here, prefers to do it slowly, for your daddy to pay. So when he is at his lowest… He will have his last breath. You will follow soon afterwards; the sedative slowly accumulating should eventually kill you.”

I can’t even wail as the good nurse pushes me into the room, and forces me to sit on the chair. I try to escape, but the bad nurse holds me. I can see my aunt with a syringe.

“No!” I sink my nails so deep into the bad nurse’s skin that she screams and lets me go. I go straight under the bed, where I will be safe.

Only I am not.

The good nurse’s arm stretches under the bed, and I start wailing.

“Shut up! You, idiotic child!” she snaps, but I keep wailing at the top of my lungs, dodging her arm every time it gets too near, until I corner myself. The bad nurse kneels to help her. Then, I smile.

I finally remember mum and dad. I promise myself that maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but that someday, I will meet them again.

And as I see the good nurse’s hand with the syringe, the last piece of the puzzle fits. The eerie writing was mine, and the blue felt pen is where I left it with the good nurse’s by its side, in the corner. As I feel her arm clutching my leg, I write “603-586-0932.” Mum and dad’s phone number from the paper. My body failing; my mind getting blurrier by the second, I scribble, “She is not good!

 

Malena Bertrand was born in Cincinnati, but soon moved to Spain. As a toddler, she loved memorizing her favorite stories. Soon she started devouring books, and eventually writing her own stories. At ten, she was runner up in the COBIS Student poetry competition; at eleven, she was part of an e-book anthology of short stories curated by Dee White. Her most recent achievement is her first paper publication in Stinkwaves. When Malena is not writing, she loves practicing piano, reading and singing in the shower!

A thousand eyes shine in the light of the lantern, held high above your head. The swirling mists eagerly devour the light, and the path at your feet is lit only dimly, as though by the last fading rays of dusk. There is darkness to either side of the path, impenetrable blackness. Rustles and scratching sounds come from the darkness, and shapes shift in the shadows. Branches snag at your clothes, twisted and gnarled, and you stumble on unseen roots in the gloom.

Lights flash amongst the dark trunks, silhouetting shapes lurking in the trees. Long, branch-like arms hang from bodies perched in long, arm-like branches. Heads turn towards you, baring razor fangs in hungry, mirthless grins. Pointed ears flick back and forth as pointed tongues run along pointed teeth. Long fingers twitch and flex, like nooses come alive. Wings flutter and then are still. The lights in the trees disappear, just as a gust of stray wind blows out your lantern.

You stand, pulse racing, in the darkness, listening to the sounds of claws scraping against bark and feet hitting the ground as bodies leap from the trees with apelike grace. The dry leaves whisper and rustle, the sounds growing nearer and nearer. You can hear them breathing, and every hair on your arms and neck stands up as the creatures approach. You know that you never should have come into the forest.

A bright light illuminates the woods, and you see for the first time that you’re in a clearing. Dark shapes scamper into the trees, fleeing the light, and disappear once more. You turn towards the source of the light. A majestic beast stands amongst the trees, light shining from the twisted horn that grows from its brow. Its cloven hooves paw at the shining white stones beneath.

You approach the creature, one hand raised. It’s looking away, staring into the darkness. You place your hand onto its flank and begin to stroke its soft fur. The beast lets loose a low rumble of pleasure, and you feel yourself relax. Your heart slows to a more normal pace, and your ears stop straining to hear every noise amongst the trees. As your fear diminishes, you realize just how late it is. Your limbs grow leaden as the lateness of the hour mingles with the terror you’ve just been through. You feel lethargic and indolent, content to remain in the grove and pet the beautiful creature that saved you.

The beast’s head swings to face you. Three rows of teeth are bared in a predator’s grin, and its eyes are utterly black. Red blood drips from its matted, tangled beard as its forked tongue darts out to lick its lips.

You recoil and step back, stumbling as your foot slips on the bleached skulls which carpet the ground. You fall, and the beast advances. Its hooves are on your chest, and its face is mere inches from your own. You look into its cold, black eyes a second time.

It doesn’t snarl or growl; it feels no need for such posturing. You and the beast both know who’s in control. You clench your jaw tightly shut, promising to yourself that you’ll face death with courage. You will not scream as it devours you, you say to yourself.

You lie to yourself, and your cries echo against an uncaring sky as the creatures come out of the trees to scrounge for scraps of the beast’s feast.

 

If you’re Sam-not-Samuel Millson, you have been writing since you could hold a crayon. You enjoy reading, writing, acting, second-person narration, and making clever comments at every opportunity. You grew up with The Spiderwick Chronicles and The Belgariad, among many other books, and live in your house’s library. Your name is not Samuel, Samantha, or Samson. Samwise is also not your name, but is acceptable. You currently live in Martinez, California.

My father loved Charles Dickens. More than anything, perhaps. It was a fact of life simple enough for me to understand in my earliest moments of conciousness. Papa is tall, wears glasses, has brown hair, and loves Charles Dickens.

Both my parents were immigrants, my mother from Bohemia, along with her mother and seven siblings, and my father from Russia, alone except for his English language collection. They met on a boat from London and were married in Manhattan in time to live together in the top room of the house my grandmother bought from the state of Minnesota. As Europe exploded into the Midwest, our family spun little webs of nations through the Twin Cities; my father, a doctor, could translate the twenty most common illnesses into German, Polish, and Hebrew, and my mother spent most of her time downstairs speaking rapid Bohemian with her siblings, all of whom remained in my grandmother’s house except for my uncle, Ludvik, who had dedicated his life to the Minneapolis Communist Party and moved across the Mississippi to St. Paul.

The unity of immigration that bound our family ended there, however. In strict accordance to his bible, Great Expectations, my father vowed to bring me up with all the posterity of Miss Havisham raising Estella, which is to say in stark contrast to the carelessly emotive passion of my cousins. When my aunts and uncles sent their children to the big brick public school a few blocks down, my father hired me a tutor whose back he had fixed a few years ago and who believed heavily in the power of censorship. As my cousins learned the alphabet, I learned the detailed lineage of the Romanovs from Mikhail I to Alexei, and that Lenin was likely the first horse of the apocalypse.

Both my tutor and my father also shared the belief that books were the best way to learn about life, and agreed I was old enough to choose my first Dickens story as soon as I was able to string words together into comprehensible ideas. I chose Oliver Twist because it was about a child, but after stumbling through that first reading, decided that Charles Dickens had never been a child.

Regardless of the emotional scars the tale left me, I was entranced by Oliver’s story. One evening in October my grandmother’s brother sent a set of dollhouses from the Old World, mistaking the amount of time it would take for a parcel to reach us by Christmas. My cousins and I spent the evening constructing a little village that, because our oldest cousin, Madlenka, voraciously claimed it was the capital of Bohemia, we named St. Prague. We shared our American-made dolls and invented an idyllic community around the front parlour of my grandmother’s house.

Madlenka doled me out two dolls. One wore a faded blue suit and had the pink paint of his face mostly chipped off, and his partner had a red dress and one leg. They lived together near the river, and when Madlenka tossed a little china dog to me to complete the family, the connection between St. Prague and the slums of London was clear.

“Careful, Willa, you’ll break her!” Madlenka cried out as my blue suited doll clashed again against the other harshly. “What are you doing?”

“She tried to protect Oliver, so Bill’s killing her,” I explained.

Madlenka stared at me for a moment, then laughed unsurely. “Whatever you say, ty vole. But if you break her, you’ll have to buy me a new one. With both legs.”

I doubt if she ever thought of it again, but all at once I realized that I was not growing up at the same rate as my cousins. We lived in the same house as each other, shared the same blood, but the public school, crowded dialects, and streetcar stories of my cousins pulled their branches of the family tree into western eruption, while steadfast tradition, Old World lessons, and Charles Dickens held mine close to the heart of the east. I saw my cousins every day, but after Bill Sykes murdered Nancy in my grandmother’s parlour, a continental and impassable divide went up between me and my family.

My consolation prize for betraying Bohemia was my father’s pride. While my cousins invented stories without me, my father and I discussed scenes, characters, lines, plot points I had undoubtedly missed, until it felt as if our upstairs apartment was London in the nineteenth century.

On my fourteenth birthday, my father purchased a brand new set of all of Dickens’ works in chronological order, bound in red, green, and navy blue, with golden letters wrapped tightly over their covers and spines.

“You’ve chosen the path of the heart that never hardens, Willa,” he told me in his doctor voice. “These books will teach you far more than I ever could, and I only expect that you adhere to their reason.”

I ran my fingers over the delicately ridged spines. “One’s missing.”

“Yes, A Tale of Two Cities. You’re not old enough to understand it yet.”

This I accepted, but when I heard him tell my tutor he was afraid I was “impressionable enough to accidentally become a Bolshevik,” the logic lost a bit of gravity.

 

That summer my uncle Ludvik moved back into my grandmother’s house. Ludvik was shadowy and smooth, with greased hair, two clean, black suits that he alternated between every other day, and a gray cap that used to belong to my grandfather. At dinner he smiled and listened but never spoke, except to my grandmother, in a low, thick voice that reminded me of oil. More interesting than his return was that of his son. My cousin Anton was a physical reflection of his father, but what Ludvik lacked in social skills, Anton made up for in abundance. He was sixteen, told stories, taught us songs and poems, wore velvet ties, wrote plays for us to perform, spoke Russian, English, and the mother language, sewed up buttons and rips in his clothes himself, liked orange juice, knew the old Bohemian national anthem by heart, and remembered everything anyone had ever told him. He was ignorant to the ocean between me and the rest of our cousins, and for the first time since I learned to read, I was a part of the family again.

My mother didn’t say anything about the return of her brother, but my father the tsarist made no attempt to mask his discontent.

“As if this country hasn’t been good enough to us. He makes his money on socialism, for God’s sake.”

“Well, he had to move back in with my mother. He can’t be making much.”

My father said “hm” from the back of his throat and turned a page.

One day Anton knocked on my bedroom door before breakfast. “Good morning, Willa. We’re going downtown to the river.”

“Can I come?”

“No, I’m just over to ask your permission. Of course you can, ty vole. Come on.”

Since Anton’s arrival, the twelve of us behaved like young children again, and now under the rising sun and cloud of loving freedom, we filled the streetcar station with copper laughter and the smell of warm hair and wilting flowers. My younger cousins chased each other around newsstands while Madlenka and Anton bought a dozen tickets, the latter smiling at his long lost bloodline like a proud father.

Somewhere near the Mississippi, Anton led us off and onto the streets. I followed him blindly, as we all would, as we all did. We stopped in front of everything interesting- yellow birds in big cages lined against a window, piles of wool scarves imported from Ireland, a machine breathing in cakey circles and exhaling perfectly powdered doughnuts. For lunch we climbed down near the river’s edge and Anton unveiled sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. As Madlenka piped out warnings about the water, Anton and I sat together on a bench under a dark green tree that dyed our skin in shades of emerald and gold.

He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “I won’t offer you one, little cousin.”

“I wouldn’t want one. I prefer cigars.”

He laughed out a billow of smoke. “All that wit wasted on your big empty apartment.” He cleared his throat quickly. “Sorry.”

“It’s true,” I said, for Anton’s approval had made me suddenly bitter for how much simpler his was than my father’s. “It’s like I’m not even part of the same family as you. If I went to school with everyone else, I’d really be your cousin. I feel like a stranger to Bohemia.”

“Only because you act so much mightier than everyone else.” He didn’t say it coldly. “Everyone thinks you’re better than us.”

“Of course I’m not. No one’s better than anyone.”

“Spoken like a communist, cousin.”

“I don’t really know what that means. My father says politics are only for people who have lived through a revolution and come out without joining the socialist cult.”

“There’s your fatal flaw, Willa. Who cares what your father says?”

“I do!” I said with immigrated indignance.

Anton was quiet for a moment. “Your father doesn’t like me, does he?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t like our family?”

“No.”

“Well, what does he like?”

“Charles Dickens.”

Anton looked at me the same way Madlenka had years ago in my grandmother’s parlour. “Charles Dickens? Why?”

“He’s-”

He turned to look me in the eyes. I thought of the golden letters on the spines in the library, of the nightmares of becoming a pickpocket, of constant competition with David Copperfield, of great expectations hung in our living room and raised daily, of my father, the ghost of approval past, present, and future, and suddenly, in my cousin’s eyes, they were all meaningless histories of someone else’s child who would never fit into the New World, coincidental collections of antiquated letters that could not possibly define this moment, or the way love feels, or family. They were just words.

“- grievously overrated,” I finished.

And finally, Anton laughed.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, ségra. You know what was especially awful? A Tale of Two Cities. Do you like the French Revolution?”

“My tutor doesn’t, so probably.”

“Eat slow and I’ll give you the short version. Don’t tell Charles Darnay, which is just about the most pathetic attempt at glorified self insertion I’ve ever read, by the way. And you can’t care too much what your father thinks, or else I wouldn’t be your favorite cousin.”

After lunch, we piled back onto a southbound streetcar and fell asleep on each other’s shoulders. I thought about the tennis court oath my parents signed in London, and I thought of the tyranny of King Louis the Traditionalist, and I thought if Anton was Robespierre, I would be Saint-Just, and I would follow him to the guillotine or to paradise, and I wished with all my heart that I could have grown up like this.

 

In August, Uncle Ludvik announced that he had taken on a job in Chicago writing for a newspaper. He and Anton would move at the end of the month. I would be alone again.

On their last night in St. Paul, my grandmother and my aunts prepared a holiday meal and threw a Bohemian goodbye. Heartbroken, I tried to summon anger and lay outside in the grass while the rest of my family played charades. It was hot, but the stars were cool in the blue velvet sky, and music drifted out through the open windows. Tonight it tasted like kaleidoscopes and museums and the feeling of relief after you cry.

Anton came and lay next to me quietly. He was the only person I ever met who knew how to just be quiet.

“I’ll run away,” I said suddenly. “I’ll go to real school with you and we’ll be a regular American family and no one will know anything different.”

I could hear him smile. “We are a regular American family, Willa. And there are schools here. All you have to do is ask.” He coughed and handed me a little brown package. “Anyways I got you this.”

It was a dimestore copy of A Tale of Two Cities. The pages were yellow and thin, and the font blurred in some spots, the complete opposite of the secret story my father kept locked in leatherbound idealism.

“You can’t be afraid of what you don’t know, ty vole,” Anton said.

Dependably, words failed me.

Around midnight we gathered on the porch to say goodbye. I had hoped to have something clever to say when Anton reached me, but when he passed from Madlenka’s arms to mine, all I could do was hold him with the warmth of falling asleep on Christmas Eve.

He said one thing, and it was the last thing I heard him say until I saw him the next month in Chicago. “Remember, it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Then he was gone.

As we climbed the stairs that night my father slowed down to speak with me. “You know, Anton told me something tonight.”

“Really?”

“He said tutoring is bourgeois nonsense and that the only way to truly gain an education worth having is by living.”

I looked up.

My father smiled. “What a thing to tell your uncle. Do you think it’s true?”

All you have to do is ask.

“I think I’d like to go to school, if that’s what you mean.”

“Hm. It does seem to do something for your cousins, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

He twitched his moustache in a little circle. “Then it’s settled.”

I don’t love Charles Dickens. I don’t pretend I ever will. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from him, it’s that love is awfully hard to lose. It’s just too big. Love is greater than acceptance, than money, than death, language, streetcar stops, tsarism, my father, Anton, life, me. And always, it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done, and one day and forever there is a far, far better rest that I will go to than I have ever known.

 

 

Kathryn Ward is a senior at Minnetonka High School. She works at the Minnetonka Writing Center and presented her research conducted there at the National Conference for Peer Tutoring in Writing in 2016. Writing has been the backbone of her life and will continue to be in her impending post-secondary education in English. This is her first publication.