at long last, it's part six of my ghost stories that are not quite ghost stories! in the last one, I wrote there'd be two more, but it turns out there's three! so two more after this one. the song this time is Lake of Silver Bells by Carbon Leaf, and I wish I could tell you what my fascination with lakes is but I have no idea! because it's the 1990s, please imagine the most nineties fashion you can for this one :)
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The Silver Bells
characters/pairings: Canada (Matthew)/Netherlands (Maarten)
word count: 8035 summary: It was supposed to be a simple exploration, but what the journalist and the antiquarian find out on the lake, might be more than they ever anticipated.
also on AO3
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It’s only when a voice startles Matthew that he realizes he’s gotten quite lost. He blinks down at the unfamiliar street while his dog tugs at his leash, then looks up at the man who addressed him.
“You alright?” he’s asking now, lowering the cigarette he’s holding.
“Yes! Sorry, I was… Thinking.” Matthew adjusts his backpack, and the tall stranger quirks his eyebrows minutely. When he takes a drag of his cigarette, his green eyes pierce through the smoke, and Matthew feels a bit self-conscious about having interrupted his break.
He looks up behind the man. “Oh! Is this your shop?”
They are, in fact, standing out front of a narrow antiques store, the sign over the window proclaiming ‘since 1888’. Matthew’s dog sniffs curiously around the doorway.
“It is, matter of fact. Been my family’s for over a century.” Now, the man stubs his cigarette out on an ashtray resting on the windowsill and straightens, which reveals that he’s even taller than Matthew had thought. “Can I help you with anything?”
“I… Hm, maybe.”
“That’s intriguing.” He nods, gaze sweeping over Matthew. Gestures. “Come in.”
“What about Kuma?” Matthew holds the leash of his dog up, and Kuma lifts his great white head towards the man, tongue out. “He’s pretty gentle, but…”
“That’s no problem,” the man assures him, and turns to go into the antiques store.
Inside, the radio is on softly, and though there are many curious items on display, the small store doesn’t feel cluttered. There is no one else in at the moment, and Matthew follows the owner to the old-fashioned register, where the man leans on the dark wood with both hands.
“Alright, how might I be able to help?” he asks. His accent is local, which is probably good.
“Well, I’m working on an article about this town,” Matthew starts, gesturing as if to encompass the whole place. “For a travel magazine, you see? Anyway, I was hoping to learn more about the history of the place, and also to go out onto the lakes, but it’s, well…”
“It’s autumn.” The shop owner nods. “This place turns into a ghost town as soon as the tourists leave. You’re too late.”
Matthew pulls a pained face. “That was kind of the point.”
“I see, I see. And I guess… No, he’ll have closed up shop by now…” As he trails off, the man twists the bleached tips of his hair further up, frowning thoughtfully.
“I think the lakes would be gorgeous now. I’d wanted to take photos,” Matthew adds, petting Kuma’s head absently. He isn’t sure what to make of the antiquarian.
“They are amazin’,” he replies, then seems to decide something and leans forward again. “If you’d like, I could take you out on the lakes sometime. Haven’t used my boat in ages.”
Matthew smiles, somewhat startled by the offer. “Really?”
“Why not?” The man shrugs, although he smiles back slightly. He must be a few years older than Matthew, and seems both completely out of place and exactly at home in the antiques store. “I’ll need to check on the boat first, though, so give me a day or so.”
“Of course, no problem! Thank you, sir.”
The man grimaces. “Please, call me Maarten.”
“Right. I’m Matthew.”
“Good, Matthew, where are you staying? I can let them know when it’s ready.”
So Matthew tells him the name of his bed & breakfast, and Maarten promises to call. With that, he finds himself, and Kuma, back outside the shop on the still-unfamiliar street. Great. Now to find the way back.
The bell of the antique shop chimes when the door opens, and Maarten comes out.
“I… Do have some town maps, if that’d be helpful,” he says. “New ones, even.”
“I swear I’m not usually this bad at directions,” Matthew tells him, gratefully accepting a tourist map from him.
“No, I suppose that’d be a bad trait for a travel journalist. Don’t worry about it, happens to a lot of people.” With a nod and a brief pat on Kuma’s head, he ducks back into his store, and Matthew unfolds the map.
-
The next afternoon, Matthew returns to his bed & breakfast to find the hostess waiting there to tell him he has a message.
“Maarten van Dijk wants you to know he is ready to go out to the lakes,” the woman recites from a slip of paper. “He’ll be at the docks tomorrow morning at nine, unless that doesn’t work for you.”
“That should be fine,” Matthew mutters. “Thank you.”
“Mr Williams, are you sure…” She pauses, then shakes her head. “No, never mind.”
“What?”
“No, it’s nothing. It’s beautiful out on the water. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.” She nods decisively and walks away, leaving Matthew frowning after her.
It must be some smalltown gossip he’s not to know about, he guesses. Shrugging, he goes to his room. He adds his notes from today to his work folder, checks that he has enough rolls of film for his camera, and sets out again. Apparently, there is a local museum.
-
It is a beautiful, clear autumn morning when Matthew makes his way to the town’s docks—well, dock. Only two boats are moored there at the moment, and he spots Maarten on the furthest one, smoking and looking at a map or a chart of some kind. At Matthew’s approach, he looks up. Matthew smiles.
“Good morning.”
“Mornin’. Come on board.” He jerks his chin and stands up to steady Matthew when he steps from the dock down into the boat.
It’s a small vessel—Matthew doesn’t know nearly enough about boats to know its actual name—painted a muted orange that fits right in with the autumn canopy. He sits on a bench so he doesn’t fall.
“Alright. Anywhere in particular— Hey, where’s your dog?” Maarten asks, pausing in untying the boat from the dock.
“Oh, the hostess of my B&B takes care of him if I can’t take him. I’m not sure if it’s safe for him, or if he could scare the wildlife.”
Maarten mumbles something as he sits at the back of the boat to start up the motor. After the initial roar of noise, it settles into a gentle hum as they start to drive away from town.
“He’d probably be fine, but you’d be the best judge of that,” Maarten says. “Anywhere in particular you want me to take you?”
“I don’t think so. You know the lakes, presumably.”
“Yeah. We’ll just do a loop around. Give a shout if you wanna stop somewhere for pictures or something.”
Lake is really a generous term for the waterways they start making their way through. While there are open areas every now and then, a lot of the place is marshy, leaving only relatively narrow swathes of deeper water for Maarten to drive his boat through.
“I used to go sailing a lot,” he tells Matthew. “But you can’t really do that around here.”
“No, I suppose not.” He has to duck out of the way of a tree branch full of golden leaves. “You used to live somewhere else?”
“Not that far away, by one of the larger lakes. Before I took over the shop from my mother.” He gestures ahead. “Left or right, Matthew?”
“Left.” Towards the sun.
“Exciting.” When Matthew turns to look at him, bemused, Maarten huffs a laugh but doesn’t say anything else.
By ten, they reach a solid patch of land that actually has a small, sandy beach, where Matthew asks to stop.
“Can I get off here?” he asks. “Just for a moment.”
“Sure.” Maarten looks over at the beach, and frowns. “God damn it. They’re havin’ parties again.”
Matthew watches him stalk over immediately after securing the boat to a tree and start to pick up trash from the sand, furiously putting it into a garbage bag he pulls from the pocket of his windbreaker. Somewhat charmed by this side of the curt antiquarian, Matthew takes a quick photo of him doing that, and makes a note of it in his flipover notepad, but then sets about doing a little circuit of the island they’re on.
The autumn colors are stunning in the sun; he really doesn’t understand why more people don’t come out to the Lake Valley after summer’s end. Although he’s read that many birds live in this area, he doesn’t find any at the moment—possibly, the noise of the engine scared them away. Or possibly Maarten’s grumbling as he comes up behind Matthew, garbage bag slung over his shoulder. It’s pretty filled.
“Stupid kids,” he says. “It’s one thing to party somewhere dangerous, but then to leave your trash everywhere too…”
“Dangerous?”
“Would you know the way to town from here?” Maarten asks, and Matthew shakes his head, understanding where he’s going with that. “No. Now imagine that, but in the dark, and you’re drunk and possibly high, and eighteen.”
“Did you ever get lost?”
Maarten raises his eyebrows, looking amused, and says, “No. I know the lakes. Not saying I didn’t do the other things, but not out here.”
“Well, that’s fair. I grew up in the mountains. You don’t do that out there, either.”
“I can imagine. Mountains terrify me.” He looks up suddenly, frowning. “Did you hear that?”
Matthew didn’t hear anything in particular, but he follows Maarten as he walks to the islet’s shoreline, on the opposite side of where the boat is, and watches him squint into the distance. There is another relatively open space here, although hemmed in on both sides by tall trees, bent over the dark water like a tunnel. The sun frames Maarten’s silhouette as he listens intently, head cocked.
“Some sort of bell,” he mutters.
“Like a church?” Maybe, one is tolling somewhere in a town. There doesn’t seem to be any wind, but Matthew knows that back home, sounds could echo off the mountains for ages, so who knows what this flat land could carry?
Maarten shakes his head. “Closer to a shop bell. Hm.” He spends a moment longer looking out over the water, then turns to Matthew abruptly. “Didn’t mean to interrupt your work, Matthew.”
“Oh no, it’s alright. Should we go find that bell?”
The antiquarian blinks slowly, lips parting as if he hadn’t considered it.
“Maybe we should.”
Although Matthew still can’t hear any bells, he’s content to sit in the front of the boat and look around while Maarten steers them towards the supposed sound. They pass underneath the arched trees and into an open area, filled with sunlight.
And there, on the shore of a larger island, hidden behind trees, Matthew sees a building. It looks fairly old, but in good condition, with walls of multicolored stones and a roof of red tiles. A large weeping willow dips its yellow leaves into the water next to the building, where there is a small wooden dock. Matthew turns to Maarten, notepad at the ready, to ask him what the building is, but the man looks baffled, green eyes wide and fixed on the little island.
“That’s where it’s comin’ from,” he mutters.
“The bell?”
Maarten startles, looking as though he forgot Matthew was there. He nods, though.
“You don’t hear it?”
“No.”
“Odd.” He frowns. “Do you mind if we go…”
Of course, Matthew doesn’t mind. If nothing else, a mysterious building that even a local doesn’t know about will make an interesting little detour in his article.
Maarten drives the boat to the dock and ties it to a post there. Before he disembarks, he pushes on the wood, but it seems sturdy, so he climbs off the boat and starts walking to the building. Matthew follows, camera at the ready.
The building has two floors, and the windows are small but quite clear—Maarten is peering through one, his sharp nose nearly against the glass.
Following a gravel path, Matthew walks around the building a bit. There are even flower boxes on some windows, all empty right now, and the place seems deserted. Around the corner from the boat, on the short side of the building, Matthew finds a door. A small bell hangs over it, gleaming in the sunlight as if newly polished, that would surely chime if the door opened, but the door is locked. A name has been painted on the wood in elegant, white cursive.
“Does this mean anything to you?” Matthew asks Maarten as he walks up. The man blinks at the name.
“Yes.” He frowns, bemused. “Van der Meer was my mother’s name.” He tries the door handle and runs his fingers over the silver lock. “I think I… I think I might have the key to this place. At the shop.”
He meets Matthew’s eyes, and both of them are equally intrigued.
-
Of course, Matthew absolutely has to come with Maarten when he goes to try out the key that he has at his antique shop, the next day. Having explored the museum, there isn’t a whole lot else left to do in town, anyway. He leaves Kuma with the B&B hostess again, having no idea what is inside the building.
The key is the same silver as the lock on the mysterious building’s door, but more than that, it’s shaped like a small bell.
“It’s always been there,” Maarten explains as he maneuvers his boat through the waterways. “In the register. Always thought it was for something that was sold ages ago. Kept it just in case.”
“Very curious,” Matthew says. He can’t wait to see if it works.
When they get to the door, Maarten reaches up and trails his long fingers over the name on it.
“Fifteen years,” he mumbles. He lifts the key to the lock. Hesitates. Matthew waits patiently; he might need a moment. But then, Maarten turns to him and holds the key out.
“What?”
“Go ahead, Matthew.” A hint of a smile flits across his face. “Isn’t that what journalism is all about?”
“Eh, not my kind.” Matthew takes the key from him and releases a long breath. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He pushes the key into the lock, sharing a look with Maarten when it fits, and then, Matthew slowly turns it. Without a hitch, without a creak of age, the door unlocks.
“Who’d have thought?” Matthew breathes. With a hand on the door handle, he looks at Maarten again.
“I wonder what this place is,” the antiquarian says. “I wonder if my mother knew.”
“Let’s find out.”
The door opens with, as expected, the gentle chime of the bell overhead, and they make their way inside. It’s warmer here, the sunlight lighting up the space in bright yellow beams, dust swirling. The interior of the building doesn’t match the outside; there is geometric wallpaper, shades of brown and green that remind Matthew of his childhood home, and a heavy wooden desk that incongruously has a Bakelite telephone sitting on it, along with a thin, leather-bound book.
Maarten lets out a long breath.
“Looks almost like a reception,” he says, walking slowly over to the desk. “I’ve got a phone just like this at the shop.”
“Phones are antiques already?” Matthew asks him while he is cautiously opening the little book. Maarten chuckles, not looking up.
“Curiosities. Look at this.”
It does seem to be a log, maybe a ledger, of some sort, Matthew sees. The first entries are in old-fashioned cursive he has a hard time reading, but Maarten points the words out with ease, along with a date: 1888. The same year his store was founded.
“So maybe… Your family came to the area then?” Matthew guesses. “One person opened a shop, another opened this…”
He gestures vaguely around. Maarten hums.
“Might be.” He carefully flips to the last page that has entries, the handwriting more modern, listing expenses in ballpoint pen. 1978. Fifteen years ago.
“What does this mean?” Matthew wonders, as he pulls his notepad out to take some notes about the place he’s found himself at.
“I… Have no idea. Let’s look around.”
They stick together as they make their way to a door off the left side of the entrance, and find themselves in a well-appointed kitchen, again with green tiles just like there had been in Matthew’s parents’ house. It’s spacious, a large table taking up most room.
In the sunlight, the space looks inviting. Matthew can imagine the guests of this place having breakfast here. He’s stayed in a lot of inns and hotels and B&Bs over the years he’s been a travel journalist, and would be quite happy if they looked like this.
“Huh,” Maarten is saying, having pushed aside one of the striped curtains beneath the kitchen counter and taken out an ornate serving dish. “There’s one just like this at the shop. 1870s, very good condition.”
“Odd.”
“Not necessarily. They were pretty popular.”
They continue their exploration of the building by going out into a hallway behind the possible reception desk that spans the length of the ground floor. Matthew counts six doors in total, but when they try them one by one, they find them all locked.
“Alright, where would you keep the keys?” Maarten wonders.
“At the reception, surely.”
The keys are indeed in a drawer of the desk, all on one big ring; some have the same little bell-shaped handle. That reminds Matthew.
“Do you still hear those bells?” It’s how they got back here, after all.
Blinking, Maarten shakes his head. “It stopped when… I think when you opened the door.”
That makes Matthew shiver. He was willing to accept that Maarten just has better hearing, but that seems like too weird of a coincidence. He quickly jots it down in his notepad. Maarten looks closely at one of the bell-shaped keys, frowning.
“Still wanna try these?” he asks.
“Well, we’re here now, aren’t we?” Matthew shrugs. It’s just an old… Inn, or hotel. If it’s haunted, it wouldn’t be the first place he’s encountered, he thinks. Tourists love ghosts.
One of the bell keys fits a room labeled with the number one, and just as expected, it is a cozy little hotel room. Dust swirls in the sunlight here too, but there isn’t actually much at all on the nightstands or the little vanity, and it smells just fine—Matthew swears he detects the faintest hint of potpourri. The bed is even made with cheerful floral linens.
“This is nice,” Matthew says, but when he looks at Maarten, the man is frowning. “Maarten?”
“It’s getting really strange, now.” He walks over to a small wooden table that’s next to the sink in the corner of the room. “I’ve got one just like this.”
“At your shop?”
Maarten looks at him and nods, expression baffled.
“So there’s more than one.”
“That’s just it. There shouldn’t be.” He peers at the table closely, even kneeling to inspect the underside. “And it doesn’t look like a replica. If it is, it’s a damn good one.”
“So…” Matthew isn’t sure what to make of that, so he winds up his camera and snaps a photo instead. The click of the shutter makes Maarten look up at him. He’s right in a beam of sunlight, and his green eyes are bright. In his mint green windbreaker and sensible hiking shoes, he looks amusingly out of place.
“Well,” he says, standing, “let’s try those other doors.”
He hands the key ring to Matthew and gestures for him to go ahead.
The other five doors yield two more hotel rooms, a bathroom with a few shower and toilet cubicles, a laundry room, and, lastly, a set of stairs. The rooms also yield a plethora of random items Maarten recognizes as being at his shop, apparently never having sold—which he only now seems to realize is odd. A delicate glass lampshade here, a painting there; even a bulky transistor radio in the laundry room.
The two of them stand at the bottom of the stairs for a while. The steps are steep, wooden, and bathed in darkness; there’s another door at the top. Maarten takes a deep breath, shoulders heaving.
“I don’t know if I want to go up there,” he says. “Not… Yet.”
“Alright,” Matthew replies, even though he’s dying to learn what else this strange place holds. He is a journalist, after all. But something in Maarten’s deep voice makes him hold his tongue. The antiquarian clears his throat, turning to him.
“Maybe we can look around outside.”
Around the inn, there is an overgrown garden. Apart from the old weeping willow, there are pine trees and wild hedges surrounding barely-visible cobble paths that lead through what once must have been neat flowerbeds. They even find some benches, and a fountain, and a small, mostly-intact greenhouse. There are some markers still in the ground around, indicating which plants grew there.
“I bet this was lovely,” Matthew says, taking a picture of the moss-grown greenhouse. “They must have used their crops in the kitchen.”
“Yeah. That’s nice. You know, my mother was always…” Maarten sighs. “She was always gardening. I helped her often when I was little.”
“Do you think, now, that she was here?” Matthew asks, following him back towards the little dock, and Maarten looks up at the building, eyebrows drawing together.
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe, she never left.”
-
They make it back to town, and Matthew is surprised to find that it is dusky. It was still sunny when they left the inn, but he supposes they lost track of time out on the water.
Standing on the dock, Maarten looks down at him, clasping the back of his neck.
“Thanks for coming,” he says. “I appreciate—hm. I’m sure you got a lot of, uh, writin’ to do. So I’ll—how long are you staying?”
Matthew only has his room for three more nights, but he says, “However long I need,” and Maarten lets out a long breath, nodding.
“I’ll walk you to the B&B,” he offers. “Or… You know, I think we stayed out longer than I thought. Are you hungry?”
“Pretty hungry.”
“Let me get you something to eat,” he says, a hesitant smile tugging at his full lips. Matthew bites his own lip and nods slowly. He still isn’t entirely sure what to make of the antiquarian, who’s friendly and open one moment and impossible to read the next, but dinner is always good.
Maarten takes him to get fried fish from a takeout place, and they eat it at the lakeside, while Matthew obligingly recounts some stories about places he’s visited for his job. When the food’s gone, they walk to the bed & breakfast, where Matthew turns to Maarten on the small step out front of the old building.
“Are you going back tomorrow?”
“I think so. Will you come?”
“As I said, however long it takes.”
“Hm, of course, journalism.” Maarten smiles slightly. “I think you could probably bring your dog, right?”
That would be nice, so Matthew tells him as much, and promises to meet him at the dock.
-
Kuma sits quietly enough in the boat, but he’s excited when they disembark at the inn’s dock, sniffing around the walls and jumping eagerly when Maarten opens the door. The antiquarian has brought a large backpack, which, he showed Matthew on the way, contains a serving dish identical to the one in the kitchen, as well as some smaller items he says are the same as one found at the inn.
Once in the kitchen, Kuma immediately lies down in a sunbeam, stretching happily, and Maarten puts his bag on the table to pull the dish out.
“What the hell?” he mutters.
Having retrieved the other dish from the cabinet, Matthew turns to see that the two now don’t match at all. In the boat, the serving dish had glinted in the autumn sun, but now, it’s dull and tarnished. Especially next to the nearly-pristine one from the kitchen. Both Matthew and Maarten stare at the two items, dumbstruck. Maarten’s other items have similarly been affected, become rusted or tarnished.
“That’s not normal,” Matthew eventually breathes. “I think this place is haunted or something.”
Maarten shakes his head. “There’s no such thing.” He meets Matthew’s eye, frowning. There is, Matthew notices, a thin scar on his forehead that disrupts his furrowed brow slightly.
“Then what’s happening?” Matthew asks. Maarten opens and closes his mouth. Breathes out slowly.
“But it feels…” He looks down at Kuma, who tilts his head quizzically, tongue lolling out of his mouth. “It feels nice.”
It does. Matthew sits on a kitchen chair in the sun, scritching Kuma behind the ears, and he can hear birds outside, the breeze rushing through the branches of the weeping willow.
“You really don’t know anything about the history of this place?” he asks. And then, the more obvious question occurs to him. “Wait, what happened in 1978?”
Maarten leans on the table. He wets his lips and flexes his long fingers against the light wood. Hesitantly, Matthew touches his forearm, and the antiquarian looks at him.
“My mother disappeared. October, 1978. That’s when I came back, took over the shop. I was barely twenty.”
“I’m sorry,” Matthew says softly. Kuma makes a small noise and rises up, padding over on the tiled floor to push his shaggy head against Maarten’s leg.
“She left this note for me. Said she’d gone out… To the lakes.” He shakes his head, smiling bitterly, although he reaches down to pet Kuma.
“And her name is here.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what to think, Matthew.”
“You don’t believe…” Matthew wants to say ‘ghosts’, but it seems a little insensitive now, so he trails off, gesturing around, at which Maarten smiles bemusedly.
“I think, if I were to get haunted, it’d have happened before now. You don’t wanna know how many people insist their antiques are full of spirits.”
Despite the strangeness of the whole thing, Matthew laughs, and Maarten smiles, looking down at the tarnished silver dish.
“I don’t know what this place is, but I know I want to keep looking,” he says. “Guess I should thank you for asking to get out here in the first place.”
“Happy to help.” Matthew realizes he is still touching Maarten’s arm across the table. He leaves his fingers there, and neither of them move.
-
The B&B hostess seems concerned when Matthew mentions going out to the lakes with Mr Van Dijk again.
Yesterday, they had done some more exploring of the garden and found a generator, which Maarten said he couldn’t make heads nor tails of, but Matthew was pretty sure was still in working order, given some fuel, and they’d both agreed that the greenhouse looked usable given some cleaning.
Kuma never seemed concerned, and that is honestly good enough for Matthew; his dog has great instincts about dangerous places. The hostess, though, as she’s serving his breakfast, frowns and shuffles her feet.
“Tomorrow is your last day here,” she cautions. “Surely, there are better… Ventures?”
“Don’t worry, I will write a great review of this place,” Matthew just says, which is, of course, not a reply to her question but does seem to placate her. And he has written a solid draft of his article already. It doesn’t mention the mysterious inn on the lake.
Before he goes to the dock, Matthew stops at the local post office to send his draft off, along with his photo negatives. What to do tomorrow, is another question.
For now, they make their way through a foggy morning to the inn—Maarten mentions that he’d wanted to let Matthew take a swing at driving the boat, but not with visibility so low. That would be nice, Matthew thinks. He’s only ever been in charge of rowboats, or the occasional canoe.
The generator does, in fact, work, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, so do the inn’s electric appliances and lights, even if they are all pretty old.
With the fog clearing, Matthew and Maarten go around opening windows and doors and taking stock of what exactly is in the kitchen and the bathroom. Then Matthew, much to his delight, gets to climb up on the roof to check the tiles and the chimney, and Maarten said he’d go see what he could do about the greenhouse, but instead he’s by the wooden ladder every time Matthew checks, keeping an eye on him.
And that is also nice, really. People don’t tend to notice him much. It is useful as a journalist, sometimes, getting to be an observer, but other times, it’s good to know someone’s watching. Especially if that someone is a handsome, mysterious antiquarian.
He smiles gratefully at Maarten when he gets back down, and the man ducks his head, clasping the back of his neck.
“All good up there,” Matthew adds. “It should be safe to use the stove.”
“I don’t actually know how,” Maarten says slowly.
“I do! My family has a cabin up in the mountains with a wood stove just like it.”
“Great.” Maarten smiles, a little melancholic, but doesn’t say anything else. Hesitatingly, Matthew reaches out to briefly clasp his upper arm, then turns to go inside.
Later, as they are cleaning up the greenhouse a bit, Matthew mentions that he only has one night left at the B&B, and that makes Maarten pause in his scrubbing one of the glass panes overhead. He’s straddling a stepladder, and peers down at Matthew with his hands resting on his strong thighs.
“Feel like I’ve kept you from your work,” he eventually says.
“I got plenty done,” Matthew assures him, pushing his glasses up. Outside, Kuma is happily playing around in the garden, probably getting his white fur unreasonably dirty. “Besides, I’ve kept you from yours as well, then.”
Maarten hums. Wipes his hands on his jeans.
“Where will you be going next, then?” he asks, quite softly.
“Nowhere fast. I mean, if you’re… Not getting sick of me. There’s a lot more here, I think.”
At that, Maarten just gazes down at him with those bright green eyes, as if he’s trying to suss him out. Matthew doesn’t think he’s a complicated person, but Maarten looks nearly bewildered.
“Surely, you got something to get back to.”
“Nothing that can’t wait a bit.” Everyone at home is pretty used to him being gone for considerable stretches of time.
Maarten nods slowly, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Of course,” he says. “Journalism.”
“Honestly? This is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Yeah,” Maarten agrees. And then, “Alright, which room do you want?”
“Which— Oh! I hadn’t…”
“It’s fine if you’d rather not. You know, haunted and all. But it is an inn.”
Actually, that sounds like a very good idea, so Matthew tells Maarten he isn’t picky about the room. Maybe, he’ll let Kuma pick one; he’s got good instincts, after all.
-
It is later than Matthew would have guessed when they return to town, but that’s alright. On the step out front of the B&B once more, Maarten asks him if he is sure he’d like to stay.
“People don’t tend to… Stick around town.” He laughs dryly. “Or around me.”
“Well, maybe they weren’t the right people,” Matthew replies, and shrugs helplessly when Maarten meets his eye, lips parted. The man doesn’t say anything, just nods, and touches Matthew’s arm, before he disappears into the night.
-
It’s easy, somehow, to lose track of time out on the lakes.
One day, Matthew is hauling his luggage into room 3, Kuma unhelpfully racing around his legs, and then another day, he’s taking Maarten into the woods to go mushroom foraging, and then he finally gets to drive the boat, after some instruction, back to town, where the B&B lady looks astonished to see him.
“More reporting to do,” he tells her, on his way to buy some rolls of film.
“More—?” She hurries after him. “Mr Williams, I have received some calls asking for you. Your employers, I think?”
“I’ll be back…” He wants to say ‘soon’, but feels strange putting an end date on his time at the inn. His time with Maarten. “But if my brother ever calls, please tell him I’ve found my thing. He’ll know. His name’s Alfred. Jones, not Williams.”
“Mr Williams…”
The town looks different, now. Less colorful, compared to the vibrant trees and cozy rooms at the inn. Even Maarten’s orange boat seems brighter once Matthew passes underneath the archway of trees. They’ve started losing their leaves, but still hide the inn from view well.
He finds Maarten in the garden plot, digging into the damp earth with floral gardening gloves and narrating, seemingly to Kuma, what crops he could plant where. The dog sits and listens obligingly. He likes Maarten.
Well, Matthew likes Maarten too. He seemed a little… Aloof, at first, but bit by bit, he keeps showing bits of wonder, and when his rare smiles reach his eyes, it feels like some sort of breakthrough.
Kuma notices Matthew first, bounding over to him for pets. Maarten looks up. Smiles. There is a smudge of dirt on his face.
“Town still standing?” he asks.
“Still there. Your store is alright.”
“Alright.” He hasn’t seemed too concerned about the antiques shop. Now, he gestures at the garden and starts his impassioned narration again.
-
Time keeps slipping by, it seems, in leaps and bounds, and Matthew can’t say how long it’s actually been but it’s started to snow, and the lake has started to freeze. They’ve made sure to get enough supplies, in case the waterways become impassable.
“Are you sure you want to stay?” Maarten asks, as he stands by a kitchen window, drying dishes and looking at the cloudy sky, while Matthew tends to the wood stove. His hair has grown, and the bleached ends have been cut off so it’s now all its natural dark blond, though still spiked up severely.
“I don’t see why not,” Matthew tells him, and he turns, holding the dishtowel with both hands.
“You’ve got a job. You have… Family.”
“It’s not been that long, Maarten. If you want me gone—”
“I don’t,” he says quickly. And, softer, barely audible over the wood crackling, “I promise you, I don’t, Matthew.”
“It just feels right,” Matthew says. He knows, when Maarten nods, that he gets it. Something about this place feels like exactly where they’re both supposed to be.
Still, as time slips by and they fall into a comfortable routine, neither of them goes up the stairs.
Matthew doesn’t have a reason not to, but Maarten is apprehensive, and he respects that. It does seem to be his building, after all, even if no official documents can be found in town, or indeed at Maarten’s store, about it even being built.
When Matthew comments on this, one day as they stand on the shore of the frozen lake, Maarten turns to him and looks down over the edge of his striped scarf for a long while, the tip of his nose red with cold.
“It’s yours too,” he eventually says, muffled through fabric. “For however long you want.”
He reaches for Matthew with his bare fingers. Hesitates. Matthew clasps his hand between both of his own and nods silently.
In different ways, he thinks they’ve both been lonely, and this strange place on the lake that seems so oddly suspended in time, so out of place yet completely at home, was exactly what they needed.
The strange place, or, perhaps, the company.
-
It doesn’t seem like a lot of time has passed, but Matthew finds himself learning Maarten’s little quirks; his tendency to sing odd little songs while he cleans, his elaborate bathtime routine, the very particular way he wants things arranged in the kitchen.
He’s a little surprised that Maarten, in return, knows exactly where he’s left his glasses every time he loses them, and how he takes his coffee, and when to pry him away from his latest project so he can eat.
The snow has gone in what feels like the blink of an eye, and Maarten’s crops are doing well, when Matthew finds the man at the foot of the stairs one day, key in hand.
He closes his eyes when Matthew touches his back, pressing his palm to his spine as he’s taken to doing. It seems every time that something slows when they touch. That it gets a little easier to breathe. Kuma curiously nudges Maarten’s leg, which makes the man smile.
He turns to Matthew. “I feel like…” He jerks his chin at the stairwell, trailing off.
“Kuma seems unconcerned,” Matthew says, his hand slipping to Maarten’s arm.
“Yeah. Matt…” He holds the key out to him without another word, and their fingers touch for much too long when Matthew takes it. He doesn’t ask if Maarten’s sure, because Matthew has learned by now that Maarten doesn’t do things he’s not sure about.
He quietly climbs the narrow staircase, the wood creaking under his weight. Kuma waits by Maarten’s side while Matthew fits the key into the lock, turns it, and opens the final door of the inn.
It’s… A room.
Just a room in the same style as the rest of the place, except this one feels lived in. There are books and photographs and paintings. A lounge chair by a modest fireplace, a record player, a large bed behind a beaded curtain underneath the slanted roof. There is even a small gas camping stove with a tea kettle on it. It’s nice.
Matthew pokes his head back through the doorway.
“Nothing unusual here,” he says, and Maarten’s shoulders sag. With a deep breath, the antiquarian starts to climb up too.
Kuma, with a delighted bark, races around the room before immediately lying down on the woven rug by the hearth. Maarten walks around the space, which spans the whole length of the building, fingertips dragging over furniture and windowsills.
“I don’t know what I thought,” he says softly.
Matthew has some ideas, mostly as they relate to his mother’s disappearance, but doesn’t voice them. Instead, he smiles when Maarten turns to him. The man inclines his head.
“Thank you, Matthew.”
“Of course!” He pushes his glasses up. “Journalism, remember?”
At that, Maarten smiles and shakes his head, coming closer. His fingertips now gently brush over Matthew’s wrist, his forearm, and he seems to be lost for words when Matthew meets his green eyes. His mouth opens and closes. Matthew swallows.
“Well, hey,” he says a little awkwardly, “you’ll have an actual living room, now.”
“Hm, we will.” Maarten seems to realize what he’s said, eyes widening. “Or, well—if you want that.”
“I… I do, Maarten.” Matthew touches his chest, running a hand up to his collar. He finds that his heartbeat thrums fast underneath the warm skin of his neck, just like Matthew’s own. “I’d love to.”
Maarten only nods, and when Matthew touches his jaw, he bends forward.
Time seems static for a moment, suspended as though in a sunbeam, and then Matthew reaches up and kisses him, finally and yet so soon. He swears he can hear a bell chime when their lips brush, but the sound is lost instantly when Maarten makes a wonderful, breathy noise and pulls him close, winding his arms around him as Matthew clings to his neck. Just like this place, it feels right, to stand there in the living room, exchanging slow kisses as if they’ve been doing it for years. Maybe they have been, or should have been. That’s what it feels like, in a sure way that makes Matthew shiver.
Slowly, Maarten pulls back to look at him, a flush on his cheeks that somehow smooths all his harsh angles. Matthew smiles, and he laughs softly, ducking his head.
“Glad you’re here,” he mumbles, pressing his lips to Matthew’s temple.
“Yeah. Me too.”
-
They have even more to explore now—each other, for one, but also the room. It becomes abundantly clear quickly that Maarten’s mother must have lived here for a while, possibly after she disappeared. There are photographs Maarten recognizes, of his parents and grandparents, even one of him as a grumpy toddler that makes Matthew laugh and tease him until Maarten kisses him silent. They listen to the records they find in a cupboard. Mostly things from the ‘60s and ‘70s. They open the windows while Maarten smokes in bed, and Kuma claims the lounge chair as his own.
Matthew thinks he means to go visit home, to pick up his things, to see his family and tell them about Maarten—they’ll be so happy for him—but every time, it seems, something comes up at the inn or in town, and he thinks it can’t have been that long anyway, and it doesn’t seem so important for a while. However long ‘a while’ really is.
Maarten starts working in the garden again. Matthew climbs up on the roof once more when a bird decides to nest in the chimney. This time, much to his delight, Maarten embraces him tightly as soon as he steps off the ladder, and just hums when Matthew assures him all is well. He is, it turns out, almost comically afraid of heights, barely able to listen to Matthew’s stories about his home in the mountains without shuddering.
“But I’ll come along if you want me,” he tells him anyway, and Matthew grins. There are so many things to show him.
Sometimes, when Matthew goes into town—Maarten hardly goes after a while—it will seem as though no time has passed at all since the previous trip, but other times, the seasons don’t even seem to line up, and it is disorienting.
But then, every time he gets back, it won’t seem so important.
And sometimes, out there on the lake, he hears those bells just like Maarten said back in the autumn.
He writes more notes, although he’s not sure what for, and takes pictures he doesn’t get developed. But that’s okay. It just doesn’t seem very important.
In the spring, they finally finish cleaning the greenhouse, and Maarten scolds Kuma for trying to eat some ducklings right before playing fetch with him on the lakeshore as Matthew watches from a kitchen window. He finds Maarten sketching sometimes, most often in ballpoint pen; he does pretty impressive depictions of the inn and the lake, of Kuma curled up in the sun.
In another time, Maarten says, he might have become a newspaper illustrator, and they might have worked together.
Matthew takes to hiking to look at birds, and fishing in the lake while Maarten putters in the garden. Kuma tends to scare the fish away, but occasionally, Matthew will catch something they can eat.
Then, it must be summer, although surely it cannot have been that long. The trees are densely, vibrantly green, and Matthew swims in the lake, splashing around with Kuma while Maarten reads one of his mother’s books on a garden bench. He makes them lunch with vegetables from the garden and tugs Matthew into the shower after Kuma shakes himself off and gets them both drenched.
They discuss many plans in the bed under the slanted beams of the roof, tangled together with the windows open and Kuma snoring in his chair. Plans to go to the mountains—even if Matthew will have to hold Maarten’s hand the whole time—to see Matthew’s family, to raise chickens or maybe another dog. To, one day, re-open the inn. Add ‘Williams’ to the door.
But those are all for later. Right now, Matthew is happy, and it never seems very important anyway.
-
On the day they realize it’s autumn, with the forest quite suddenly a picture-perfect riot of golds and reds, Kuma runs away.
He swims away, in fact, leaving both Matthew and Maarten to hurry after him in the boat. Matthew keeps trying to coax the dog back, to no avail. Kuma seems only to want to get away. He’s going quickly towards town.
Unexpectedly, the boat hits a tangle of driftwood and can’t continue, and Maarten hurriedly drives to shore so they can follow Kuma on foot, still calling out.
“He’s never done this before!” Matthew says, nearly in tears when they can’t seem to get through the underbrush.
“No, it’s—” Maarten jerks, looking up. “Did you hear that?”
“Kuma?”
“No, it’s… The bells.”
“The bells? Maarten, I don’t care about the bells!”
“I—of course.”
They continue to try and find the dog, to find their way off the lake, for what feels like hours. They have no luck. There is always something blocking the way. Brush, or water, or a hole, and Matthew can hear the bells as well, now. They’re chiming from the direction of the inn, and they’re louder than they ever have been.
“Why do you think he ran?” Maarten asks softly. Both of them are sitting despondently in the boat.
Matthew shakes his head, removing his glasses to rub his tired eyes. It’s getting dark. He tucks his knees between Maarten’s, and they sit quietly for a while, the bells chiming.
“I think his instincts told him something,” Matthew eventually says. “Something about this place changed.”
With a sigh, Maarten nods. They drive back to the inn.
It’s as lovely as ever, but seems too silent, now. Maarten traces his fingers over the name on the front door, and sighs again when Matthew embraces him from behind and leans his forehead against the man’s neck.
The bells still sound, now and again, close but not from the building itself.
“You know, I never knew my grandma,” Maarten says. “On my mother’s side, at least. 1948, I’ve been told she left. Grandpa supposedly died in ’63. There are pictures of them here.” He turns abruptly in Matthew’s arms. “I’m sorry, Matt.”
“No. Remember what I said? You’re the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I don’t think that’s what you said,” Maarten replies softly.
“I just didn’t realize it yet.”
He breathes out slowly, eyes closing. Matthew watches him, arms around his waist. Eventually, Maarten reaches up to card his long fingers through Matthew’s unruly curls—longer now, than they ever have been. It’s familiar, the way he brushes over his scalp, tucks his hair behind his ear.
“So, what now?” he asks. “If Kuma doesn’t come back…”
Honestly, Matthew hopes he doesn’t. He hopes Kuma makes it back to town and stays there, safe and sound. He says as much. Maarten nods sadly. Kisses him. They go inside.
They both know that it is their last night, although neither is sure exactly what that means. Matthew orders all his notes and rolls of film, and some of Maarten’s sketches. Maarten diligently updates the ledger and tidies the inn. Maybe, it’ll take fifteen years for these things to be found. Maybe, since Maarten has no more family, they will never be discovered at all.
“You have me,” Matthew tells him, pressing him into the mattress, because, after all, it is their last night. “No matter what, you have me, and it’s been amazing.”
“I love you,” he whispers, and for a brief moment, the bells seem to pause.
“I—I love you, too.” That, at least, is important. Has always been important.
The next day, they consider going out to look for Kuma again, just in case, but a heavy fog has descended on the lake and the bells are louder than ever.
Matthew stands next to Maarten at the end of the dock. Maarten reaches down and tangles their fingers together.
“Follow the bells?” he asks.
“Follow the bells.” Matthew tugs at his hand so that he leans over and kisses him. “Wherever they make take us this time.”
“Journalism, huh?”
“And what a story I have.” Matthew smiles wryly.
“Glad to have been part of it.” Maarten squares his shoulders. Squeezes Matthew’s fingers.
They step forward, off the dock and into the mist.