“Right! Right! Right! The job. You’re here for the job. The caretaker job.” He whispers that last part like he just remembered that there was a job.
“Yep. Caretaker. But…” I look over my shoulder. “Maybe I should just come back tomorrow.” Or never. “It’s late and—”
“Let me give you the tour real quick. Then you can decide if this is for you and if not, you don’t need to bother coming back tomorrow.”
This is the first reasonable thing he’s said, so I don’t have a polite way to get out of it. “OK. Sure. Show me around.” I pretend to look at a watch that I am not wearing and add, “But I’ve only got ten minutes. My friend is expecting me and it’s a long drive, so—”
He looks up at the faint glimmer of leftover sunset still shining through the stained-glass window and then nods. “Ten minutes is plenty of time. Follow me. I’ll show you the grounds first. Then the caretaker cottage.”
“Cottage?” I was picturing a room. A bland, institutional room that could double as a patient bedroom in one of the many psychiatric hospitals I’ve been in over the years. Not a cottage.
Just the word ‘cottage’ conjures up images of roaring fires and… I don’t know. Wooden cupboards. Maybe a tea pot on an old stove. And shutters. Lots of windows with shutters.
“Yes.” He beams at me. “The cottage comes with the job. And it’s completely private. And secure,” he adds, holding up a finger. “Inside the walls.”
“Oh. Nice. What did you say your name was again?”
“We’re going to go down this way. Watch your step, now. These stairs are old. Not up to code. People tend to trip on them because they are shallow and you can take three or four in one stride, but it’s best to be careful and only take them one at a time.”
“Gotcha.”
I follow him down the stairs, which truly are baby steps. And there are like a thousand and one of them. There are no lights on in the open room at the bottom, but there are lots of them outside in the… what do I call it? Sanctuary backyard? The windows go from floor to ceiling and that is at least thirty feet, so there is lots of glass for that light to leak through.
I don’t exactly know what a sanctuary is supposed to look like, but the first word that comes to mind as I gaze around, taking it all in, is… cathedral.
“Oh, yes,” the boy-man says. “It’s impressive, isn’t it? I remember the first time I saw this place too. I was so stunned, I couldn’t think straight.”
“Yeah,” I absently agree as I try to see it all at once. There is so much stained glass in front of me, there might be an entire story up on the windows. There is also a second grand staircase, much like the one we just came down, but off to the left. Then a third one, off to the right.
“This place must be huge,” I say. Then I start to worry about the job. Taking care of a cathedral feels like a very big thing. “How many caretakers do you have?”
“Just you.” He beams. “It’s all yours.”
“Well, not yet.” I laugh.
He plays with a silver ring on his finger as he pauses in front of a large door that leads outside. “Right. First things first.” He opens the door for me and waves me forward. I pass through and find myself in front of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever seen. And the lights? They are lampposts, but they are gas. Like… the olden-days kind of shit you see in Williamsburg.
I’m just about to comment on the gas—I do not know how to take care of gas lights—when I notice this isn’t actually a garden. “Is this a… cemetery?”
“We prefer to call it a sanctuary. Come. The cottage is this way. Let’s pick up the pace.”
He hurries up a pea-pebble pathway that leads to a top of a hill, and then we go down, towards the back wall of the grounds. I look around as I try to keep up, because he’s practically running again. Huffing and puffing his breaths. Very, very focused on his mission to show me the cottage.
This means I can’t really study the sanctuary. But I can tell this place is not like any cemetery I’ve ever seen before. All the graves are huge. They are all like little houses. Like… tombs.
Right. Like tombs, you idiot.
Soon enough, we reach a small building. It’s not exactly the cottage I pictured up in the cathedral. There is no thatched roof, no shutters, and no window boxes with bright-red geraniums poking up. But it’s quaint. A small brick building—maybe a carriage house back in the day—that has four very tall, very skinny windows facing the front, two on each side of the entrance.
“Here we are.” My guide stops and nods his head at the door as he once again fidgets with the silver ring on his pinky finger.
The door is obviously made of the same old, heavy wood the front doors were. And there is that poem again. A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone. A man, a girl, a place of stone. A tick of time, a last mistake, keep them safe behind the gate.
“Why don’t you go inside? Take a look around while I take care of something just on the other side of the wall before it gets too dark.”
I look at the door. Then back at him. Then all the way back to the main building, which feels very far away at the moment.
This guy is up to something. I’m not sure what, but he’s gotten me out here, with no one around. No one even knows I’m here except Pia, and… Oh, wait. That hot guy who greeted me out front. “Hey, where’s that guy I saw out front? Is he the current caretaker?”
“Uh… guy?”
“The shirtless hot guy on the second-floor balcony?”
“Oh. That’s Tomas.”
“Tomas.” I whisper his name before I can stop myself. “Nice name.”
“Yeah. Uh, no. He’s not the caretaker. I’m the current caretaker.”
“So he’s not leaving?”
“Oh, no.” Caretaker guy laughs. “He’s not going anywhere.”
I nod, smile—try not to smile too big, actually—then say, “OK. I’ll take a look around.”
He lets out a breath, then smiles, turns on his heel, and walk-runs his way around a towering green hedge.
Yeah. He’s weird. But he’s leaving. So who cares, right?
Plus, now that he’s gone, I feel better. About everything.
Life is gonna get better.
I can just feel it.
CHAPTER TWO - PIE
When I turn back to the door, I feel drawn to it. Like a moth to a flame.
And like the doors out front, the design is intricate. Vines engraved into the antique brass wind their way around the knob and down the plate. This motif even continues onto the aged, dark wood of the door.
When I open the door, I step into a dark room that smells faintly of cinnamon.
“Hmm. Lights. Where would the lights be?”
I feel along the wall, find a switch, and two dim sconces flicker on, filling the small space with a warm, amber glow. But it’s literally a flicker.
Gas lamps inside? That’s weird, right? I mean, I can see the whole ambiance thing for outdoor lighting. But in your house? Isn’t that a fire hazard?
I’d like to consider this more, but then I actually see the room. “Wow.” I pause in the tiny foyer and let my eyes wander across the space and then I say it again. “Wow.” Only this time it comes out as a whisper.