Jan Urban | Author

THE MANOR

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We woke in darkness that smelled of smoke. We struck a match. In that little light the walls had narrowed and we hoped they would narrow even more and we would slip through them like nothing.

The light from above was yellow. We climbed towards it. The staircase to the attic had collapsed in the fire, so we tied a rope to an anchor we found half-buried in the cellar sand. We threw it upward and watched the dust drifting down like grey snow. Then one of us tried to climb. Perhaps he had been up there before and wouldn't admit it. Many of us hid things. Many fell climbing to the attic. The girl who counted said it was four. Someone said they wanted to fall. Or the rope let them go.

That was just blame.

Upstairs, three beams of light slanted from the roof holes to the floor. In them, particles swirled. We wished to climb the ropes of light, find a way out, but our hands were weak and thin. Only longing remained, and the empty ropes hung as if waiting for something. Then we stopped talking about them.

The wasps nested where the beams joined at the top. Not once did they sting us. We hated them. One of us said we went there only to find something to hate. That was true. Even if we spoke to wasps they never spoke back.

"Always staring," Adele said. "Won't mind their own business."

The wooden beams were still too hot and rough. Splinters found our skin or we found them. We blamed the wood, blamed ourselves, blamed each other—the wasps drove us mad.

They never died. The nests never fell. Even though Adele said they never stung, we thought they deserved what came next. The hate poured through us. We watched them slip through the roof hole with such ease, so carelessly, and we too wanted in, wanted out, but it was no longer possible.

The boy who always threw first, brick in hand, hurled it at their nests, and we followed.

Still we tried to like something. We liked climbing the chimney most. Our feet cut into the grooves between the bricks. In the opening, there was light. The rustle of birds. Distant clouds moving.

We climbed the chimney. We fell.

We climbed again. Two of us didn't get back up.

By dusk the light above the chimney reddened.

We climbed once more—and saw them, tiny figures moving between the trees below. I knew those shapes. I had been running from them.

"Up broken," Adele said. "Down unbroken."

We didn't believe it.

Once we climbed up, some of us died of blistered burns. Then the girl who counted closed her lips and stopped counting. Without her numbers, the falls felt bottomless. And the wasps wouldn't sting. It could only mean we didn't exist and we were not meant to exist. In that madness we forgot what we came looking for. So we examined our skin, eyes, ears, hair, fingers, afraid the truth was not meant to be discovered in the attic.

When we pulled splinters from our skin, the hate left us feeling nothing. We found flaws on each other. Bruises. Dry dirt. Black and red wounds like charred mouths that could not speak.

"Nothing else to see," Adele said. Light touched her. For one moment, she looked like herself.

The voices from below were getting closer. That scared us more than anything. We had to get underground.

We tore dry twigs from the pine outside and entered the passages below. This was our attempt to find ourselves, to find a way out.

We burned them. The branches crackled. The needles hissed. But we remembered other flames—dusty, choking with ash. With that memory we crushed the burning twigs. We remembered why we distrusted fire. So we remained in blackness that hurt. Huddled like birds, our touch the only light. We felt our bruises through it. From their size we knew that our pain was the same.

"The bruises," Adele's voice came from the right. "All we have left."

We lit only matches. When cold air pushed through the tunnels, bending the little flames, we returned quickly. A storm was approaching or was already there. Some thought the storm had been there before us, but we couldn't think what came before. We only knew we stayed away from our homes until we wondered why no one noticed—or perhaps we never wanted them to, and later didn't care.

It came to us underground. The voices from above were getting closer. We hugged each other. The embraces were like straitjackets. We realised the map wasn't worth even a piece of the old newspaper we found scattered about. The one who drew maps tried to draw the sketch with his broken pencil, or perhaps only pretended.

He said the manor, you see, doesn't follow the rules of maps.

The girl who counted pressed her crusted lips and asked, did you count everything correctly.

He looked at her and said it doesn't follow the rules of counting either.

He snapped his pencil in two and dropped it.

"Maps mean nothing," Adele said.

So we walked without them.

We were children, nothing like wasps. Or perhaps we hadn't been children. Maybe this was all there was. For a while again, we lived in the manor like ghosts. We collected things—pieces of mirror, buttons from old coats. We carried them room to room and the one who threw first, hand bruised brick-red, flung them at the windows. Windows were barred with thick pines. Nothing could pass.

We had always been in the manor, the manor always in us. What mattered were the walls, tall and pale above us. They bore the scorched tongues of flame. We felt the rooms would close on us completely one day. Before then, we enjoyed their playful good will, though we feared they wanted to trap us, play with us like with little things. In large rooms with only brick-edged holes for windows. The bricks so loose they often fell off with thuds. They lay scattered through the manor with children's shoes and our footprints. Every day the sun brought them and carried them away.

"Not mine," Adele said quietly.

We scratched our names on the walls with nails found in sand our feet sank into. The girl who counted bit her lip and said there were too many names. No one would ever find the names. Or the nails. The soot-black stains from the fire kept them hidden.

The manor whispered we were hollow. Already gone.

"Wounds still bleed," Adele said, worrying us more. "Won't heal."

We watched the blood.

"Not meant to," she said.  

We weren't sure of anything anymore. The weak fire in the tunnels beneath showed we'd never been sure of anything. The manor gave up on us. We fought everything. Lost everything.

Our faces were terrible, twisted by anger toward our parents. Or it was something more than anger—hatred. The hate was there. In our hands. In our mouths when we spoke.

"The hate wants to become us," Adele said. Again and again.

When many stopped listening, she added, "We created it. They did nothing wrong."

That enraged us.

She continued speaking until she didn't speak anymore. Her name was Adele, but looking into her hard eyes, we couldn't say it. We didn't like saying names. Names hurt to say. No time for healing. Only exploring, play, hate.

Adele's words, whatever they meant, we wouldn't accept.

We wouldn't accept the unacceptable.

Listening to Adele we feared we became everything we didn't want to. We heard a rustle of leaves and feared becoming them.

"We have hate," Adele said. "But not faces. We have no faces left."

Someone said without our faces we were nothing but also everything.

Adele said, "The thing you say means absolutely nothing."

We sat in silence thinking about her words, thinking something was preying on us. The manor or Adele.

Somebody asked, what if we were born like this, and only came here to find out how?

"We choose what to accept," Adele said.

We heard the rustle of leaves, footsteps, far away, deep down or high above. We hushed, thought deeper, realised we despised ourselves for it. Hate devoured us, took what we had left, stole like a bandit. There it was walking away—the bandit's footsteps on leaves, right there!

Nobody was happy but nobody cried. No tears to show, none to see. That day we cared only about wasps, roof beams, light beams. Embraces. When we held each other we were afraid. And sometimes wished to smother the other one.

We walked and walked, never wanting to stop and breathe because the breathing wasn't there, and maps weren't there either. We didn't wish for places anymore. Nothing to understand. A beam from the sun was only a beam from the sun.

We only needed the sun to find us every morning.

"Last time we saw light," Adele said. "Wasn't salvation."

The manor knew it with us and we believed we knew it with the manor. We believed this as people believe in God. Sometimes when we descended below we prayed in silence while others screamed. The one with the cough only coughed.

Underground we lit matches and watched each other without blinking because our faces had changed. Sometimes we wore each other's faces, sometimes faces belonging to none of us. Wind blew sand into our eyes. Or perhaps we needed that sand and its pain. Our eyes would take in anything rather than see. We kicked sand and it rose in clouds and stung us.

"Prepare for the worst," Adele said. "Only prayer left."

She was right. Nothing else could help us through the night. When the sun disappeared, we shivered. Shadows pooled on the floor like black water.

Bodies lay in them.

We never spoke of them, only avoided them, sidestepping hand in hand. Demons or ghosts, we didn’t know. Children without flesh. When we passed, they breathed without sound, sobbed, sighed as if remembering their past.

The faces were the past.

What we were, we never spoke about. Nobody would understand what we spoke. Words broke when we tried to use them. We preferred no words exist anymore because none should. We had no words even for the blood, oh, the blood from Adele's head.

"The fire took us," she said.

The one who threw things —he threw the brick. I wanted to throw it myself. It opened her scalp, blood pouring on her face. Someone pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Ugly, burned at the edges. He placed it on the wound, causing greater sobs.

Then Adele calmed and rose from the blood like a ghost we wished not to see.

She said, "I'm tired. The voices. Get it over with."

So we did. They had found the manor. Our hearts froze. Someone thought to call out, see if our voices still worked, could reach anyone, and something snapped in us. We came to ourselves. Cruel light made us see, or perhaps we drew the sun to see what it had done, what it had revealed.

Adele sighed, "So sick of the stillness!"

The voices of our parents invaded the manor, coming closer like a threat, or perhaps we were the threat and the parents were the light, or perhaps—

We'll keep looking forever, we heard them say.

We hushed, pressed ourselves to the walls like half-shadows. Except for the one with the cough, who couldn't. Smoke still leaked out of his mouth.

"They don't see us," Adele said. "Can't."

We turned away from her, wanted to silence her—the house was full of bricks. The boy who threw first reached for one, but let his hand fall, only brick-dust on his fingertips.

Adele looked at me with her blazing eyes and smiled.

"Tell them," she said.

I blurted words out. Unsure if anyone heard, I said we must accept the unacceptable.

Adele stared at me.

"Not that. What you did."

The parents moved through the manor like fishermen with nets. We met in the ashen light of the morning.

"Nine," the girl who counted whispered through cracked lips, though there were only six of us left.

Someone said we would never return home.

"Even if," Adele said with quiet eyes, blood dried black, "we're not who they knew."

And I said we would never speak again of what we know. What I did. Matches like tiny orange flags. Mother's hands. Teaching me to strike, to fear nothing. My memory—mine! Who are you to touch what is mine?

The parents shuffled and searched. They said only what we knew they would say.

They said look at this.

Here.

Nothing.