Previously in the Vines Inquiry— After surviving the shattering windows in McCroy’s, the gang witnessed Richard, sr.’s resurrection. He once again had performed a ritual to claim Feenuín’s Taste. Harlow was able to get in touch with her mother, promising she was okay even though Lillian had suffered some kind of hand injury.
The gang made their way up to the Big House to prep for their own ritual. Upon arriving, Blevin greeted the manor with reverence while Harlow and Frank wondered what happened to the person that drove a Parks Dept. truck up to his childhood home.
According to Blevin, it couldn’t hurt the gang to be in the same location as a previous ritual in order to “encourage” another one. He pretended to stoke the fire—large like the one in Richard’s office with stone lions on the mantle—while visually cataloging every detail.
Frank had let the whole razor wire trap story slip as soon as they’d taken off their shoes in the entryway and it had piqued Blevin’s fervor. He and Harlow hadn’t even planned on un-booting, but then the librarian did it “in reverence” and they felt like jerks…It was a whole thing.
“Could we maybe go see the wire—.”
“Blevin, no!” said Frank. Also, I don’t know if I could navigate back to that room…He stared at the fire while Harlow paced.
“Now we wait? To, you know.” She drew a line across her neck with her finger. “Do we draw straws, or?”
“A pros and cons list could be a good idea,” said Blevin. “Only one of us can get a Gift at a time. It wouldn’t not make sense to make sure it the most capable person, the most learned…”
“No, no. You don’t get to act like you do and double-negative and then start throwing around words like ‘learn-ed.’”
“I just want the Gift to be in good hands!”
“Speaking of.” Frank pointed towards the fireplace, oddly proud he’d been able to identify them so quickly.
In the fire-lit room, Rosalind’s bruised flesh had flowed right into the shadows. Its mottled texture obscured in the fluttering gradient of burning logs. One was still caught in each of the lions’ jaws, the wrists pierced through stone teeth. Jagged edges of bone and sinew stuck in towards the flames from when she’d had to break them off.
Eyes bright with fascination, Blevin took a closer look and marveled at the stone features. “There’s a little lever,” he said, giggling while he flicked the switch up and down. The lions’ mouths opened and closed. Open. Closed. Frank could see the green-veined glint of alkaline jade at the end of the lions’ fangs. More of that odd stone his family had mined since they landed on Carlisle.
“We don’t have to do that, right?” said Harlow.
“You don’t have to do anything,” said Frank. “I’m gonna be the one ritualizing. My mess, etc. etc.”
Harlow pursed her lips like she was about to argue, but couldn’t summon even a polite refusal. “Sounds like a plan. We should lock the doors. You know I don’t run in general, so I def don’t wanna run for my life from your mother. She stopped liking me when Dick and Stella broke up and now she’s had years to fester.”
Frank rubber her shoulder. “Oh, babe. I’m not sure she ever really liked you all that much.”
She sneered, shut the twin doors that led to the foyer and set their brass bolt locks in place. The skinny metal rods slid home easily, docking into ports drilled into the wood floor and a catch above the doorframe. Harlow locked a second door off the parlor that opened to a downward staircase. A third door, one of the manor’s signature swinging gateways, had no lock. She batted at it, pawing like a frustrated cat.
Before an eerie silence could take too firm a hold, Frank spoke up. He knew in situations like this—where madness was the only path they’d left themselves—you had to keep moving. Otherwise it was already over, like when he decided to get off the train in Times Square rather than waiting for the local line. If he let himself pause too long, suddenly he had matinee tickets for Aladdin and was ordering the pre-show prixe fixe at Bubba Gump.
“My dad did his throat both times, so safe to say he’s a fan of Taste.”
“Not if you ask the velvet drapes in here,” said Harlow.
“My mom got the hands. Someone got the lungs. That’s Breathe and Feel. Which ones are left?”
Blevin reached into his backpack and pulled out Grandpa Rochester’s recruitment book. “Traverse, Protect, See and Hear.”
“See, eyes. Hear, ears.”
“Traverse…feet?” suggested Harlow. “Legs?” The boys nodded. “That’s it. I need a drink before anyone loses a limb.” The boys nodded again.
Three drinks later, any passerby looking in through the windows (surely minutes away from freezing to death) would never guess they were wrapped up in a demonic plot.
“No, no, no. It wasn’t the same as Entrapment!” pleaded a sloshy Frank. “The wires, like, sprang out at me and they were all sharp. And I was wearing a vaguely-festive sweater. I was not equipped with a catsuit.”
He and Harlow laughed while Blevin tried to be subtle taking notes. Frank hiccuped, his second vodka battling with his third, just as the radio cut in. They’d turned it on—a hulking wooden box shaped like a cathedral set beneath one of the windows that looked out onto the manor’s circle drive— when the first started pouring, but so far, no Call.
“It’ll be nice. Tunes. Carols. Christmas,” said Harlow. “Plus, last time the Call came through the jukebox. Let’s give the ole girl a leg up.”
It was mostly static, but as minutes turned to hours, there was no amount of liquor on Carlisle to ease the growing anticipation.
Harlow adjusted the knob, trying to find a signal. Finally, clarity.
It was the local station that operated out of a ten-by-twelve brick cube on Bramford’s campus. With all the students gone on break, Emmeline Brattle (the doctor’s mother) usually took it over.
“And that’s what we’ve got on McCroy’s,” said the widow Brattle. She spoke as if on the telephone with her husband of fifty-four years, since murdered. Frank didn’t even know how he knew that. He thought he would have forgotten it along with all the little good things about home.
Shit, he thought. Realized. Home.
“Surgeons are working on everyone as best they can up at Hughes House,” continued Widow Brattle. “Toni Porter called down a little while back to let us know that Ros Vines and her team are gonna work through the night. No names have been released yet, but… Well, if you know any of your kin was up at the diner tonight, maybe call on the hospital. And for those of us who are safe and happy with our own families, why don’t we all put a prayer or two out for everyone working to help those fine folks, hmm?”
There was dead air. A long breath while Brattle chewed on what she might say next.
“Before I go, I just want to say. Well, Emmy, it’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? I know how some of us feel about the Vineses. Up in that house. What their boy did. And with the way they… None of that matters, does it? One good deed doesn’t… All I’m saying is, they’re working hard. I’ll update when I can. And Merry Christmas. Here’s something that should lift all our spirits.”
“Jingle Bell Rock” started and Frank couldn’t help but think of pebbles packed into the center of snowballs.
“Pretty bold,” said Blevin. “About your parents. Not exactly an accurate portrait, academically speaking.” Harlow raised an eyebrow while she topped off her glass.
“My guess is she’s trying to cover her bases so that they don’t strangle her with a microphone cord in the morning,” said Frank. “Honestly, the fact that so many people know not to trust them is comforting. Makes me think we’ve got a good shot.”
Blevin shrugged. “I just always thought of them as…popular.”
“Says the wannabe cultist,” said Harlow. “Does town gossip not reach the library? Or do that few people want to talk to you?”
She and Frank locked eyes, their tongues twinning with unexpected venom. Was it the liquor, or had Anger merely found easy prey? A log popped in the fireplace. Blevin stared at it, unblinking. His face contorted like he was trying to smile.
“I— I need to go to the bathroom.” He headed for the swinging door.
“Blevin, wait. We shouldn’t split up.” The larger man turned on a dime and stabbed his finger at Frank.
“Your parents are good people!” Blevin’s words punched, iron stamps into leather. “They want to do good things. They help people. They ask important questions. They want to make discoveries. And changes. And look around you, Frank! Look at all of this. All the things they give you. This mansion. All the books. The knowledge. All you had to do was take it!” His face was red hot, outdoing the fire. “Everything is right here, just waiting for you. Served to you. On a platter your grandmother got from her grandmother.”
“Blevin…” said Harlow.
“And you just make cracks at it. Make fun of it and run away.”
“Stop it now,” said Frank, calm. “I think we’ve all had a little too much to drink.”
“Because you’re so much better than them? Because you know everything? What Because they liked Dick better than you?!”
Frank could feel Harlow vibrating by the radio, seventeen retorts ready to fire across the way as soon as he gave the okay. “Blevin—.”
“No wonder! He cared. He tried to meet them where they are. All you’ve done since we met is be all mad and superior. But you didn’t do anything when you were here. When you left! I probably know more about your parents than you do at this point, and I promise, you haven’t written any letters or made any calls. They’re so rotten, but you never spoke up!”
Blevin wiped his face with the back of his sleeve, bloodshot eyes never glancing away.
“You have everything I have ever wanted and you put your nose up! I know how I sound sometimes. I know I can say dumb things, but no one has ever made me feel as stupid as you.” He turned away, exhaling deep, and marched towards the foyer.
“I’ve wanted that too,” said Frank. Blevin’s outburst had cleared the slurry from his tongue. His voice was clear, stern; a surprise. “What you think all of this is. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Blevin laughed to the ceiling. “You have it and still can’t see.”
“I have decoration. An ad, and fear. A very limited time sale.” Frank was surprised at his candor, but knew he at least hadn’t wasted the drink. “You think this is done up for Christmas? The Vines Family Productions runs year-round, Vinny. And let me tell you, if someone forgets a line— they’re cut. There is exactly one way to be a Vines, and my family is not the kind that stays quiet when they think something’s wrong. So, I guess you can put that in your notebook as another way I’m not like them.”
Blevin turned around, his brick face softening, but Frank couldn’t stop. He’d stepped on black ice and didn’t even want to stop.
“Duh, they liked Dick better! But that doesn’t change who they are, or what I am. You think if they liked me better I would have noticed more? You think I would have said ‘Hey, maybe it is a good idea to care about other people?’ ‘Cause then you really are dumb. Then you really think I’m a much better person than I am.”
Blevin looked over Frank’s shoulder. He heard Harlow shift her weight back and forth. The room was alive, warm, and utterly still. Frank had broken that slippery ice, fallen right through the surface into waters that were neither friendly nor pretty. Blevin inhaled, ready to spew something else. To spit in Frank’s eye while the dark water froze his corneas.
“I just think you could be, Frank.”
No, it wasn’t spit.
It was CPR.
Frank looked around the parlor, the set that had been up since Dick died. He fought it. The truth, the forgiveness, that Blevin was trying to push into his lungs. Of course he didn’t deserve it. Blevin was right.
He hadn’t come home in twelve years. Then his parents invited him, and he turned his nose and ditched them to get drunk so he could do some more nose turning. But that suited them fine, didn’t it? His parents didn’t want him home for the holidays. They wanted him here so they could show him, once and for all, that he was wrong.
That it was a man-eat-man, demon queen world where the only sane path was to look out for yourself.
“That’s not what they want,” said Frank. “I am not what they want.”
Blevin’s hand flinched at his side like he was holding back from reaching out. His eyes filled with tears; a child’s disappointment of not finding what they wanted most under the tree.
“I’m not sure if they really wanted kids,” said Frank. “I’m not sure what kind they wanted. But I know they didn’t want me.”
Blevin’s lips parted, but no sound came. Frank felt Harlow moving towards him, a warm lamppost beckoning him from the woods.
“It’s taken me a long time to realize that. And it’s gonna take a lot longer to deal with it. Granted, learning they’re demon worshippers is helping; but it takes time. And I need more than however long we have left before the New World begins. So, yeah. I’m selfish, but at least I can use that as motivation to stop them from drowning us all in the twilight hallway.”
“Midnight stone hall,” correct Blevin.
“Oh, whatever.”
Blevin sniffled and nodded, both arms clutched around himself. “I really think we should hug now. I think it’s appropriate.” Frank rolled his eyes, but opened his arms. Crushed by Blevin’s embrace, he heard him muffle something into his shoulder.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” said Blevin.
Harlow hugged them from the other side, squeezing out whatever air was left.
“Y’all. Breath. The lungs. The lungs are already taken,” said Frank.
Harlow skipped back over to the radio and her drink. “More music! Louder!” She turned up the volume and leaned into the season, watching the snow fall.
“Harlow, the party’s over here!” said Blevin, wholly back in the mood.
So is he a Labrador, or a goldfish? thought Frank. Then, Oh god. Can the Inquiry put animal brains in human bodies? He turned to Blevin, scanning for patchwork scars.
Blevin just smiled back and said, “We should pull out our old yearbooks!”
Harlow stared out the window, her eyes narrow and searching the white out. “Frank. I’ve just had a thought.” She took a big sip of her drink, vodka on the rocks due to “a criminal lack of Lillet Blanc” in the liquor cabinet. Drunken-lazy with her joints loose, she leaned back against the window, giggling. “Since when does Carlisle have a Parks Department?”
She laughed again and threw one thumb cartoonishly over her shoulder towards the grey truck outside. Frank and Blevin laughed with her, not getting the joke but that sort of buzzed where it doesn’t matter.
Behind the boys, the swinging door that led deeper into the manor opened with the whine of a ship about to be taken under.
“Harlow,” said Frank, the humor eradicated from his voice. “Did you lock all the doors?”
Her jaw hung slack as she stared at the space between the boys’ skulls and spoke in a gravely whisper.
“Not all of them could lock.”