#none of your faves are straight and that most definitely includes tandy frickin bowen #master thief #manipulator of light #and (in my mind anyway) disaster pansexual #happy pride y’all
So i’m editing Silence Falls and that, of course, comes with much re-writing. Have an excerpt from the newest version of chapter 1! Tell me what you think! If you’ve read the original version, you should tell me which one you like better.
In the depths of the forest, deep beyond human eyes and ears, something stirs. A dark something, full of animalistic rage. Unseeing eyes and toothy maw buzz with flies and the stench of decay.
Slowly, it climbs to its feet. It’s awake, and it’s hungry.
-o-
Kari
Kari stares up at the thing in front of her. It looks a bit like a house, built by someone who had, perhaps, never actually seen one. At once it is too small, too tall, and leaning a bit to one side. There are turrets where there should be none, oddly placed windows, and a wraparound porch that seems to rise and fall as it pleases.
It doesn’t look terribly sturdy, and Kari gets the vague feeling that the house shouldn’t really be possible at all.
From behind her, a deep voice says, “Ah, the ancestral home.”
Kari grins, and turns back to her brother. He’s leaning against her old mustard yellow car with his head tilted back, looking up at the house.
“What do you think?”
He shakes his head. “Looks like it’s about to collapse.”
“But…”
“But what?”
Kari raises her arms to the sky. “But it’s ours.”
Liam raises an eyebrow. “Technically it’s yours.”
“If you live here, it’s yours too.”
“I’m not sure I want it.”
“Where else are you going to go?”
Liam thinks, then sighs. “Yeah, fair.”
Kari pulls the house keys out of her pocket with a flourish. They still have the little yellow tag from where she got them at the lawyer's office. She says, “Let’s look inside.”
Kari’s first impression is dust. Lots of dust, on every surface and thickening the air. It makes sense, but she begins to feel, finally, the enormity of what she’s done. The last few weeks have been something of a whirlwind. She’s been moving purely on instinct and fumes and now she’s run out of both. Now she’s just standing in this empty old house thousands of miles from home, with no furniture, no job, and no idea what to do next.
“Shit.” She says.
Liam waves dust out from in front of his face. He sneezes once. He says, “Goddamn.”
“What did I get us into?”
Liam gives her a sharp look. “You’re not freaking out, are you? That’s my job.”
Kari takes a deep breath which, given the state of the air, leads to a prolonged coughing fit. When she’s done, though, she draws herself up. “It’ll be fine. We just need to open some windows, get some fans on. Maybe there’s a shop vac here somewhere.”
Liam shakes his head, but dutifully follows her further into the house. The wood-paneled walls give a strange sense of stepping backward in time. It’s so strong that Kari imagines she can almost feel it slow and reverse, then start back up again.
The little round living room is shaped almost like a bubble, with windows that seem almost convex but can’t be, really. The dust has taken quite a liking to the shag carpeting, it puffs up in plumes with every step they take.
Kari struggles to open the ancient windows while Liam paces around the room, peering at the artwork on the walls.
“Can we take these down? They’re kinda creepy.”
Kari, having only gotten one window halfway up, huffs, “I don’t know, Liam. Can you help me, please?”
Liam bobs in front of the old photograph. “I feel like it’s, like, watching me. Like it’s eyes are following me, you know? Scooby-doo style.”
“Liam!”
“Yeah, i’m coming.”
“Help me with this- no, you get that side. Alright, on three.”
Fully opening the window has a strange affect on the house. Everything seems instantly lighter, and the air begins to move. The dust drifts towards this portal to the outside world and, with it, Kari’s worries begin to fade. They can do this, she’s certain. It’s only a house, after all.
“What in the hell is that?” Liam’s voice trips down the steep stairs.
Kari is standing between the two rooms on the second floor, having had time to explore neither of them. Liam has already ascended to the top, and now she follows quickly.
The top floor is only one small room, round as can be with a high pointed ceiling. The floor is old wood, with four light squares where bed posts once were. Next to each one of these four squares is a metal plate with a sturdy ring attached. Liam gestures to them.
“What is that?”
“Looks like… I don’t know. Secures something to the floor, I guess.”
“Yeah thanks for that genius insight, Sherlock.”
“How should I know, Liam?”
Liam shrugs and huffs. “Creeps me out. Does the other room have this?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to check before you decided to have a fit up here.”
“Let’s go see.”
The bedroom on the second floor has the same strange metal rings in the floor, albeit further apart to accommodate for the bigger bed.
“I don’t like it.” Says Liam.
“You know, it’s a really old house. I bet we’ll find other stuff you’ll like even less.”
“You’re on.”
They do, in fact, find something that Liam likes even less.
“That is the ugliest thing i’ve ever seen in my life.” Says Liam.
“It’s… not great.”
“I don’t- I don’t even know how to describe what emotion i’m feeling. Is it disgust? Anger?”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“How. How does someone look at a blank kitchen wall and think ‘You know what would be great here? A mural of a gigantic chicken.’?”
“I know it must have been one of our ancestors, but I really thought our family had better taste than this.”
“Sorry, did we see different versions of the living room?”
“Alright, good point.”
“I’m- I’m not gonna look at this every day, Kari. I can’t do it. I’m just not strong enough, emotionally.” Liam presses his hand to his forehead, “I feel lightheaded already.”
“Oh stop.”
“But seriously, can we do something about it? It’s… really ugly.”
Kari looks around the room, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek. “We could just go ahead and re-paint? I’m not really digging this off-white anyway.”
“We could do blue. No, lavender. Wait no, sage green.”
“Final answer?”
“Sage green, final answer.”
They sleep on the living room floor. They have blankets and pillows and not much else. Everything that could not fit into Kari’s little mustard yellow car was unceremoniously abandoned along with their old lives in California.
The car itself should have been left alongside their furniture on the curb in front of Kari’s apartment, but she’d been unable to let go. The Mustard Contraption was the first car she ever bought on her own; she knows how to change its oil, how fast she can go before it starts to sputter, and if she turns the radio up loud enough the car sings along. She’d been able to leave people, books and chairs and her bed, her waffle iron, and most of her dishes, but the car was just too much.
Liam hadn’t seemed to mind the drive in the Mustard Contraption anyway, he has almost as many memories in it as she does. She let him borrow it when he moved from their parents’ house to a college dorm, he’s taken it on dates, she’s picked him up from house parties, and there have been more than a couple 2 a.m. runs to get tacos and let him cry about stress and feelings. They drove home together from the funeral in that car. No, the car was much too important to leave, even if turning on the heat makes everything smell like popcorn.
Now, as she looks across the room at her brother, Kari wonders once again if this was the right decision. With nothing left to occupy her mind, doubts begin to creep up out of the shadows. Their whole lives are across the country, jobs and school, family and friends. All the security of knowing a place, of belonging to it and having it belong to you, that’s all gone. Should she have dragged Liam into this? Should she have convinced her brother to move thousands of miles away with her on little more than a whim?
Maybe, maybe not. But what’s done is done, and she remembers vividly the state he was in mere weeks before their departure. She couldn’t have left him like that, and she couldn’t have stayed. At least here he seems a little more like his old self, for now at least.
There is no food in the house. Well, there is a package of sliced ham and a jar of peanut butter from where they made sandwiches during the trip, but the bread is long gone. Kari stuffs a couple slices of ham into her mouth and chews thoughtfully as she walks back into the living room.
“Time to get up.” She says to the pile of blankets on the living room floor.
“No.” Says the pile, and the top of a head of wiry hair ducks further under a blanket.
“I’m hungry, let’s go get something to eat.”
“But i’m tired.” The pile whines.
“Come on, we’ll find someplace with waffles.”
There is silence, and then Liam pokes his head out from under the blankets, squinting and frowning and looking generally like elderly frog. “It’s cold.” He accuses.
“I’ll get you a coat.”
“Fine.” Says Liam. The pile of blankets moves, it grows, it rises and rises until it slips off Liam’s back and onto the floor with a muted thump and he stands there shivering pathetically until Kari goes to get him a coat.
It’s clear that the Walsh siblings are outsiders. Their complexions stand out, sure, but it’s more the fact that they each have on several more layers than the other warmest dressed person that they’ve seen on the main street of Silence. There are so many things to do, people to talk to and papers to sign, things for Kari to get put in her name. There will be more people to call when they get home, more things to sort out, and it’s beginning to wear her down. She slumps down onto a bench and lets her eyes slip closed for a moment.
“This was your idea, you know.” Says Liam, sitting down beside her.
“I know.” Kari sighs, “I just need a minute. Paperwork makes my head hurt.”
“Don’t fall asleep, you’ll freeze to death.”
“Honestly, it’s not that cold.”
Liam shoots her an incredulous look. “There’s a library over there.” He jabs his thumb down the road, “I’m gonna go check it out. Call me if you need me, cool?”
“Cool. I might check out, uh, whatever this place is.” Kari nods to the building across the road to a quaint looking storefront. There’s not much in the way of decorations, but a wooden sign above the door names it, “Autumn Leaf”.
Liam gives a halfhearted shrug and shoulders off to heed the call of books. It’s several minutes before Kari can convince herself to get up off of the bench and set off across the street, but as soon as she does her curiosity feels more like compulsion. She feels pulled, almost, by the little wooden sign. A bell above the door chimes as it shuts behind her. There is an overwhelming feeling of having stepped into a quiet wood, surrounded by trees and unseen by the outside world. It’s almost a physical sensation. Time closes its eyes for a moment.
Kari lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
The shop is small, but bigger than it looked on the outside. Rows of shelves are laden with crystals and decks of tarot cards and bottles of herbs that Kari has never heard of before. One full wall is covered with books.
There is a counter along the wall opposite the books, covered with so many flowers and vines and tall leafed plants that Kari does not automatically see the girl behind it. Tall, with astonishingly silver hair and an odd shine to her skin. The girl does not seem to notice Kari.
She’s not normally for this sort of thing, this mystic stuff, yet she finds herself entranced. She runs her fingers along the edges of the shelves, over bundles of sage and strings of bright beads.
“Hello,” Says a voice, very close.
Kari starts, knocking a jar of rose hips off the shelf. She’s sure it’s going to shatter, but it’s caught at the last moment by a long-fingered hand.
“I’m so sorry,” It’s a voice that pulls warbling brooks to the forefront of Kari’s mind, chirping birds and singing wind, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No I- I wasn't paying any attention, i’m sorry. I got a little… lost.”
The woman holding the bottle rose hips smiles. Her eyes crinkle, her nose scrunches. “That happens here. Time moves a little slower.”
“I feel it.” Kari says, surprising herself, “It feels so peaceful.”
The store feels peaceful. The woman feels peaceful. She has kind eyes. She also has a very pleasant face, with skin as dark as Kari’s own, covered with a smattering of darker freckles. A voluminous mass of dark curls strains every which way. She looks like she belongs in a fairy tale.
“You haven't been here before.”
“No, i’m new in town.”
“Ah,” The woman tilts her head thoughtfully to the side, “I didn’t think i’d seen you around. Welcome to Silence. Welcome to Autumn Leaf. I’m Aimee.”
She extends her hand and Kari takes it, marveling at the firmness of the handshake. “Kari.” She introduces herself, “Walsh.”
Aimee’s hair perks up. “Walsh? As in-”
“Yeah, my great grandparents lived on the edge of town in that tall old house. They left it to me.”
“I was very sorry to hear of their passing. Your great-grandmother made the best lavender jam this side of the Turusa Layline.”
Kari rubs her thumb over her chin. “Never met ‘em, actually. They were kind of… estranged, from the rest of the family.”
“No! Why? Such lovely folk.”
“No one would say. Probably something stupid, honestly.”
“So then, where have you come from?”
“California. My brother and I just moved into the old house.”
Aimee looks at her curiously. She says, “Hmm.”
Kari feels a sudden surge of panic, sure that Aimee is going to ask why they moved, what happened, or why she dragged her brother with her across the country. She’s not ready to tell the story, and not to a stranger. Everything is too fresh.
To her surprise, Aimee doesn’t ask. Instead she says, “You look like you could use a cup of tea.”
At the back of the shop, through several rooms of indeterminate use, is a staircase that spirals up, up, up. Landings are placed strangely and at intervals that make little to no sense to Kari. On the third landing, they stop. A pale pink door opens inward.
Before she steps in, Kari looks up at the remaining stairs. She can’t see the top. It’s baffling, as this is not a tall building.
“How far up does this go?” She asks.
“All the way.” Says Aimee.
The room they’ve entered into is small. The walls, like the door, are a pale pink. There are bookshelves and a couch and a small counter with a sink, a portable heating element, and a kettle.
“This is my reading room.” Says Aimee, putting the kettle on right away.
“How is there a window?” Kari wanders over to the couch, where a large picture window sits behind. To her great surprise, it looks out over a garden, and not the main street.
