Part 5: Hail in the Forecast

Previously in The Vines Inquiry— Frank suffered through an awkward dinner with his parents, before swallowing a gulp of mysterious powder mixed into his water.

Frank was choking. 

He coughed once, twice. His throat felt closed, coagulated. Twin muscles covered in a sticky film struggling to flex back away from each other.

The thing from before, the slippery and glistening flesh blob on his tongue, it had become real; birthed out of his mind and was going to kill him. He pulled on his fists to pound at his chest, but they were numb, bound up in fabric scraps. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Buried. In the conservatory.

With the hellebore…

But then he turned over and fell on the bedroom floor.

Like a whoopee cushion full of puke, Frank emptied his stomach next to the twin-sized bed. A few heaves later and he was able to catch his breath. He looked around the dark bedroom and saw it was his own. 

Something filled his lungs like a puff of smelling salts and he was wide awake. Through one of the house’s myriad unsourceable drafts, the familiar scents wafted through their shared Jack-and-Jack bathroom and into Frank’s nose. Sweaty clothes that were noticeable, but had yet to go sour. The librarian musk of his piles of paperback books. The candle Rosalind insisted Dick burn every night before bed.

“Should I, too?” said Lil Frank, worried that there was a shared body odor betwixt the boys. When Rosalind shook her head, Frank took it as a relief.

Now, the door on Frank’s side of the bathroom was open, but Dick’s was closed off. The draft came through in the gap at the bottom of the door. A worn arc marked the pale green tile where it used to scrape each morning.

Since, dust had gathered on every available surface, observed only by sun-bleached photos of the self that Frank had amputated. Smiling, but never remembering if it was genuine or if someone has merely commanded it, a teen version had greeted each dawn and dusk, unaware of the aging as it came. The four of them—Dick, Harlow, Stella and Frank—all grinned, nary a singular secret knowledge between them. He’d pinned the photo above his desk through what Rosalind called ‘couture plaster.’

His parents hadn’t preserved the room so much as abandoned it to its own devices. A storage unit left to grow fungus that some boy scout ends up having to clean for his “We Tried” badge. It was a declaration of potential given freely to someone who might get it right. 

Frank looked at the pile of ick—mostly alcohol, but some pie—and vowed to clean it…

“Later, though.”

The clock on his nightstand told Frank it hadn’t been long since he’d fallen asleep at the table. Embarrassing, but why not? Put it on his tab! 

He heaved a few more times over the toilet, purging what felt like far more than just the afternoon and evening’s indulgence. Frank couldn’t help but recount what he’d drank as it all came around the bend to say ‘Hullo!’ The random G and T at lunch that seemed like a good idea at the time. Beers. A few stolen sips of Harlow’s marg. A round of tequila shots to make up for those stolen sips. Something blue but cherry-flavored simply called a ‘Lillian.’ It got blurrier after that, but Frank knew he’d had at least a half-glass of wine too. 

“Water…” he said to the toilet. Frank hurled a final time, his stomach thank god tuckered out, and laid down on the frigid tile. He knew it was gross, but odds favored any leftover piss flecks belonging to him.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, onions reeked out of his armpits which had never fully dried since his flight that morning. Probably because his anxiety had never settled. The old patterns had arisen without any comfort.

Frank double-checked the time—eleven p.m.—and debated his final swing at this foul of a day. He didn’t want his parents to think he was (any more of) a mess that drank himself to oblivion each night, but…passing out at the dinner table did give him a clear route to tomorrow morning when he might be able to skedaddle out with a note and weak apologies.

That’s what they deserved, right? After what they pulled at dinner? Not even dinner! Wine and pie when he wanted neither. And he didn’t want to talk about Dick. He didn’t want to be blamed anymore. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t control ice, or temperature or Carlisle Island emergency response times. But they did it all still. So they deserved this: a son who gets drunk and leaves notes and bites his tongue and isn’t honest.

They deserve awkward dinners and fake excuses and emotional distance.

They deserved it all. But did he?

Frank had always known—err, hoped—that someday they could be there for him. That he would find the right thing to do or say that would transmute his parents into what he’d always imagined they could be. That he could twist himself into a shape that fit their structure.

But you don’t learn that by leaving notes and sneaking away and being scared. He wouldn’t understand what they needed from him by leaving a pile of vomit in his childhood bedroom that “oh my gosh, totally my bad. I swear I meant to clean that.”

This was his house. His home, too. And he wasn’t going to spend his whole life scared of it. 

Okay, yes. He was stuck here overnight and that wasn’t the plan. He was uncomfortable around his parents, and reckoned they felt the same way around him. They all had some crap to deal with when it came to Dick’s death, and just for the sake of safety and theme, Frank prepped himself for the idea that they’d run out of money, too. But, there was no better time of year to rake this stuff out into the light, at least if every movie ever was to be believed.

Why you couldn’t have a nuclear family reckoning on a random weekend in April was beyond him, but apparently, them’s the rules.

Tonight, they were going to tell some truths. Frank didn’t care if he had to write it all out a few words at a time on giant poster board flash cards; they were going to HEAL. Or at least let the wound dry out in the sun. 

He stomped through the halls, an old route from childhood that came streaming back with his new plan and newer pluck. Frank slammed through one of the hallway doors into another exhaling vacuum. It had dozens, if not hundreds, of twins throughout the Big House; a place constructed by the legends of its creation as much as wood and stone.

One of Frank’s ancestors, Vaughn Vines, had made the doors his life’s work. Constructed of ‘good Carlisle pine,’ each door fit perfectly; locking out any light, sound or other matter that might run free through the labyrinthian halls.

Over the years, he slowly blocked off whole sections of the house with slabs of wood that fit so snug, they wouldn’t move even if pushed. With his work done, Vaughn planned to set the final eight doors in place and seal himself, his family, and the staff inside the manor to preside over his minuscule kingdom for eternity.

Luckily for them—though there were persistent rumors his daughter Amber also had a part to play—old Vaughn slipped on a particularly well-oiled plank of wood in the foyer and cracked his skull against a marble table. His children, in their own unique mourning, didn’t have the heart to destroy all of Vaughn’s doors and decided to add swinging hinges instead. The doors moveable barricades remained, blocking out light and noise and leaving many-a-bruise where the Lord split ya on slow walkers.

A Persian rug was laid in the foyer to avoid future accidents and the marble table had been polished. Frank barely noticed the pink stain on its edge whenever he walked by. 

After only two wrong turns, thank you very much, he made it to the second-floor landing. As soon as he passed through the door to the stairs, he heard the crackling fire. Amidst party chatter, Frank felt a low vibration humming through the walls. The moaning of some creature caught halfway between digitization and birth as a swamp golem. Chestnut aromas filled the air along with gliding laughter.

That’s chestnuts, right? What else could they be roasting? Okay, maybe pecans. 

The mild rumpus was coming from the parlor, one of the ‘showrooms’ on the right side of the foyer. Directly across was the sitting room.

“Completely different energy, Francis. You should know that,” Rosalind would say. 

Was this the right time to confront them? I mean to heal… In front of the whole party? Maybe the whole town? But who in Carlisle would come to a soirée thrown by the Vineses?

Wary of a fading bravado, Frank hurried down the steps, plodding on the thick velvet runner to try and announce himself. He quickly lost his pluck and began to creep down the stairs instead. With his back to the wall, Frank listened to the crowded party in the next room.

His mother was speaking, the tail end of a toast. 

“And finally…” Rosalind sounded as if tears were gathering in her eyes. “To us all. To the explorers and scientists we count among our ranks. The artists. The martial artists. Historians. Astronomers. The theologians, philosophers…and even a few butchers.” A chuckle from a few dozen mouths.