Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hey y'all

Before I actually write a chapter.
Yes this is based directly on the book by Shirley Jackson.

No the characters will not be canonical accurate this is a AU fanfic

No this is not wincest

Yes I only watched the movie for Sebastian Stan

Yes this will take a while to get done

Yes I have no clue what I am doing

And please no hate unless it's in a joking manner

Chapter Text

My name is Samuel William Winchester. I am 18 years old, and I live with my brother Dean Winchester. I have often thought that with any luck I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike noise, cats, and washing the dogs. I like my brother Dean, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and I wondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones which would stand forever on put kitchen shelf. We rarely move things; the Winchesters were never much of a family for restlessness and stirring. We dealt with the small surface transient objects, the books and the flowers and the spoons, but underneath we had always a solid foundation of stable possession. We always put things back where they belonged. We dusted and swept under the tables and chairs and beds and pictures and rugs and lamps, but we left them where they were; the tortoise-shell toilet set on our mothers dressing table was never off place by so much more than a fraction of an inch. Winchester had always lived in our house, and kept their things in order; as soon as a new Winchester wife moved in, a place was found for her belongings, and so our house was built up with layers of Winchester property weighting it, and keeping it steady against the world.

It was on a Friday late April that I had brought the library books into our house. Fridays and Tuesdays were terrible days, because I had to go into the village. Someone had to go to the library, and the grocery; Dean never went past his own garden, and Uncle Bobby could not. Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week, or even stubbornness, but only the simple need for books and food. It may have been pride that brought me to Castiel's for a cup of coffee before I started home, but I knew, too, that Castiel would see me pass if I did not go in, and perhaps think I was afraid, and that thought I could not endure.

"Good morning, Samuel Winchester," Castiel always said, reaching over to wipe the counter with a damp rag, "how are you today?"

"Very well, thank you."

"And Dean Winchester, is he well?"

"Very well, thank you."

"And how is he?"

"As well as can be expected. Black coffee please."

If anyone else came in and sat down at the counter I would leave my coffee without seeming hurried, and leave, nodding goodbye to Castiel. "Keep well," he always said automatically as I went out.

I chose the library books with care. There were books in our house, of course; our fathers study had books covering two walls, but I liked fairy tales and books of history, and Dean liked books about food. Although Uncle Bobby never took up a book, he liked to see Dean reading in the evenings while he worked on his papers and sometimes he turned his head to look at him and nod.

"What are you reading, my son?"

"I'm reading something called 'The Art of War', Uncle Bobby."

We never sat quietly for long, of course, with Uncle Bobby in the room, but I do not recall that Dean and I have ever opened the library books which are still on our kitchen shelf. It was a fine April morning when I came out of the library; the sun was shining and the false glorious promises of spring were everywhere, shoving oddly through the village grime. I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft, hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village. From the library steps I could cross the street directly and walk on the other side along the grocery, but that meant I had to pass the general store and the men sitting in the front. In this village the men stayed tongued and did the gossiping and the women aged with the grey evil weariness and stood silently waiting for the men to get up and come home. I could leave the library and walk up the street on this side until I was opposite the piles of rusted tin and the broken automobiles and the empty gas tons and the old mattresses and plumbing fixtures and wash tubes that the Harler Family brought home and - I genuinely believe - loved.

The Campbell house was the loveliest in town and once had a walnut-paneled library and a second floor ballroom and a perfusion of roses along the veranda; our mother had been born there and by rights it should have belonged to Dean. I decided as I always did that it would be safer to go past the post office and the Campbell house, although I disliked seeing the house where our mother was born. This side of the street was generally deserted in the morning, since it was shady, and after I went to the grocery I would in any case have to pass the general store to get home, and passing it going and coming was more than I could bear.

Outside the village, on Hill Road and Old Mountain, people like the Harvelles and the Bradburys had built lovely homes. They had come through the village to get to Hill Road and River Road because the main street of the village was also the main highway across the state, but the Harvelles children and the Bradbury kids went to private schools and the food in the Hill Road kitchens came from the towns and the city; mail was taken from the village post office by the car along the River Road and up to Old Mountain, but the Mountain people mailed their letters in the town and the River Road people had their hair cut in the city.

I was always puzzled that the people of the village, living in their dirty little houses on the main highway or out on Creek Road, smiled and nodded and waved when the Bradburys and the Harvelles drove by; if Ellen Harvelle came into Crowley's Grocery to pick up a can of tomato sauce or a pound of coffee her cook had forgotten everyone told her "Good morning," and she said the weather was better this day.

The Mills house is newer but no fine than the Winchester house. Our father brought home the first piano ever seen in the village. The Bradburys own the paper mill but the Winchesters own all the land between the river and the highway. The Shepherd of Old Mountain gave the village it's town hall, which is white and peaked and set in a green lawn with a cannon in front. There was some talk once of putting in zoning laws in the village and tearing down the shacks on Creek Road and building up the whole village to match the town hall, but no one ever lifted a finger; maybe they thought the Winchesters might take to attending town meetings if they did. The villagers get their hunting and fishing licenses in town hall, and once a year the Harvelles and Bradburys and the Hills attend a meeting and solemnly vote to get the Harler Junkyard off Main Street and take away the benches in front of the general store, and each year the villagers gleefully outvote them. Past town hall, bearing to the left, is Winchester Road, which is the way home. Winchester Road goes in a great circle around the Winchester land and along every inch of the Winchester Road is a wire fence built by our father. Not far past the town hall is the big black rock which marks the entrance to the path where I unlock the gate and lock it behind me and go through the woods and am home.

The people of the village have always hated us.

I played a game when I was shopping. I thought about the children's games where the board marked into little spaces and each player moved according to a throw of dice; there were always dangers, like 'lose one turn' and 'go back four spaces' and 'return to start' and little helps, like 'advance three spaces' and 'take extra turn'. The library was my start and the black rock was my goal. I had to move down one side of Main Street, cross, and then move up to the other side until I reached the black rock, when I would win, I began well, with a good safe turn along the empty side of Main Street, and perhaps this would turn out to be one of the very good days; it was like that sometimes, but not often on spring mornings. If it was a very good day I would later make an offering of jewelry out of gratitude.

I walked quickly when I started, taking a deep breath to go on with and not looking around; I had the books and my shopping bag to carry and I watched my feet moving once after the other; two feet in our fathers old brown shoes. I felt someone watching me from inside the post office - we did not accept jail and we did not have a telephone, both had become unbearable six years before- but I could bear a quick stare from the office; that was old Mr Crowley, who never did his staring out in the open like other folks, but only looked behind blinds or from behind curtains. I never looked at the Campbell house. I could not think of our mother being born there. I wondered sometimes if the Mills knew that they lived in a house which would belong to Dean; there was always so much noise of crashing tinware in their yard that they could not hear me walking. Perhaps the Mills thought that the unending noise drive away demons, or perhaps they were musical and found it agreeable; perhaps the Mills lived inside the way they did inside, sitting in old bathtubs and eating their dinner off broken plate sets on the skeleton of an old Ford car, rattling cans as they ate. And talking in bellows. A spray of dirt always lay across the sidewalk where the Mills lived.

Crossing the street (lose one turn) came next, to get to the grocery directly opposite. I always hesitated, vulnerable and exposed, on the side of the road while traffic went by. Most Main Street traffic was going through, cars and trucks passing through the village because the highway did, so the drivers hardly glazed at me; I could tell a local car by the quick ugly glance from the driver and I wondered, always, what would happen if I stepped down from the curb into the road; would there be a quick, almost unintended swerve towards me? Just to scare me, perhaps, just to see me jump? And then the laughter, coming from all sides, from behind the blinds in the post office, from the men watching in front of the general store, from the women peering out of the grocery doorway, all of them watching and gloating, to see Samuel William Winchester scurrying out of the way of a car. I sometimes lost two or even three turns because I waited so carefully for the road to clear in both directions before I crossed.

In the middle of the street I came out of the shade and into the bright misleading sunshine of April; by July the surface of the road would be soft in the heat and my feet would stick, making the crossing more perilous (Samuel William Winchester, his foot caught in the tar, cringing as a car bore down on him; go back, all the way, and start over), and the buildings would be uglier. All of the village was of a piece; a time and a style; it was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and feed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and unpleasant, the Rochester house and the Winchester house and even the town hall had been brought here perhaps accidentally from some far lovely country where people lived in grace. Perhaps the fine houses had been captured- perhaps as punishment for the Campbells and Winchesters and their secret bad hearts?- and were held prisoner in the village; perhaps their slow rot was a sign of the ugliness of the villagers. The row of stores along Main Street was unchangingly grey. The people who owned the stores lived above them, in a row of second-story apartments, and the curtains in the regular line of second-story windows were pale and without life; whatever planned to be colorful lost its heart quickly in the village. The blight on the village never came from the Winchesters; the village belonged here and the village was the only proper place for them.

I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

I had a shopping list for the grocery; Dean made it out for me every Tuesday and Friday before I left home. The people in the village disliked the fact that we always had plenty of money to pay for whatever we wanted; we had taken our money out of the bank, of course, and I knew they talked about the money hidden in our house, as though it were great heaps of golden coins and Dean, Uncle Bobby, and I sat in the evenings, our library books forgotten, and played with it, running our hands through it and counting, stacking, and tumbling it, jeering and mocking behind locked doors. I imagine that there were plenty of rotting hearts in the village coveting our heaps of golden coins but they were cowards and they were afraid of the Winchesters. When I took my shopping back I took out my wallet so that Crowley in the grocery would know that I had brought money and he could not refuse to sell to me.

It never mattered who was in the grocery. I was always served at once; mr Crowley or his pale greedy mother always came right away from wherever they were in the store to get me what I wanted. Sometimes, if their older worker was helping out in school vacations, they hurried to make sure he was not the one waiting on me and once when a little girl- a child strange to the village of course- came close to me in the grocery Rowena pulled her back to roughly that she screamed and then there was a long minute while everyone waited for Rowena took a breath and said, "Anything else?" I always stood perfectly straight and stiff when the children came close, because I was afraid of them. I was afraid they might touch me and the mothers would come at like a flock of taloned hawks; that was always the picture I had in my mind- birds descending, striking, gashing with razor claws. Today I had a great many things to buy for Dean, and it was a relief to see that there was no children in the store and not many women; take an extra turn, I thought, and said to Crowley, "Good morning."

He nodded to me; he could not go entirely without greeting me and yet the women in the store were watching. I turned my back to them, but I could feel them standing behind me, holding a can or half-filled bag of cookies or a head of lettuce, not willing to move until I had gone out through the door again and the wave of talk began and they were swept back into their own lives. Mrs Mills was back there somewhere; I had seen her as I came in, and wondered as I had before if she came on purpose when she knew i was coming, because she always tried to say something; she was one of the few who spoke.

"A roasting chicken," I said to Crowley, and across the store his greedy mother opened the refrigerator case and took out a chicken and began to wrap it. "A small leg of lamb," I said, "My Uncle Bobby always fancies a roasted leg of lamb in the first days of spring." I should not have said it, I knew, and a little gasp went around the store like a scream. I could make them run like rabbits, I thought, if I said to them what I really wanted to, but they would only gather again outside and watch for me there. "Onions," I said politely to Crowley, "coffee, bread, flour. Walnuts," I said, "and sugar; we're very low on sugar." Somehwere behind me there was a little horrified laugh, and Crowley glanced past me, briefly, and then to the items he was arranging on the counter. In a minute Rowena would bring me my chicken and my meat, wrapped, and set them down by the other things; I need not turn around until I was ready to go. "Two quarts of milk," I said, "a half pint of cream, a pound of butter." The Harrieses had stopped delivering dairy goods to us six years ago and I brought the milk and butter home from the grocery now. "And a dozen eggs." Dean had forgotten to put eggs on the list, but there had only been two at home. "A box of peanut brittle," I said; uncle Bobby would clatter and crunch over his papers tonight.

"The Winchesters always did set a fine table," that's what Mrs Mills, speaking clearly from somewhere behind me, and someone giggles and someone else said, "Shh." I never turned; it was enough to feel them a there in back of me without looking into their flat grey faces with the hating eyes. I wish they were all dead, I thought, and longed to say it aloud. Dean said, "Never let them see you care," and "if you pay attention they'll only get worse," and it was probably true, but I wished they were all dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the MacLeods and the children, lying there crying in pain and dying. I would have then helped myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs Mills as she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true. "Its wrong to hate them," Dean said, "it only weakens you," but I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.

Crowley put all my groceries together on the counter and waited, looking past me into the distance. "That's all I want today," I told him, and without looking at me he wrote the price on a slip and added, then passed the slip to me so i could make sure he had not cheated me. I always made a point of checking his figures carefully, although he never made a mistake; there were not many things I could do to get back at them, but I did what I could. The groceries filled my shopping bag and another bag besides, but there was no way of getting home except by carrying them. No one would ever offer me help, of course, even if I would let them.

Lose two turns. With my library book and my groceries, going slowly, I had to walk down the sidewalk past the general store into Castiels. I stopped in the doorway of the grocery, feeling around inside myself for some thought to make me safe. Behind me the little stirrings and caughings began. They were getting ready to talk again, and across the width of the store the MacLeods were probably rolling their eyes at each other in relief. I froze my face hard. Today I was going to think about taking our lunch put into the garden, and while I kept my eyes open just enough to see where I was walking- our fathers brown shoes going up and down- in my head I was setting the table with a green cloth and bringing out yellow dishes and straws in a white bowl. Yellow dishes, Ithought, feeling the eyes of the men looking at me as I went by, and Uncle Bobby shall have a nice soft egg with toast broken into it, and I will remember to ask Dean to put a shawl across his shoulders because it is still very early spring. Without looking I could see the grin and gestures; I wish they were all dead and I was walking on their bodies. They rarely spoke to me, but only each other. "That's one of the Winchester boys," I heard one of them say in a high mocking voice. "One of the Winchester boys from the Winchester farm."

"Too bad about the Winchesters," someone else said just loud enough, "too about those poor boys." "Nice farm out there," they said, "nice land to farm. Man could get rich, farming the Winchester land. If he had a million years and three heads, and didn't care what grew, a man could get rich, rich. Keep their land pretty well locked up, the Winchesters do." "Man could get rich." "Too bad about the Winchester boys." "Never can tell what'll grow on the Winchester land."

I am walking on their bodies, I thought, we are having lunch in the garden and Uncle Bobby is wearing his shawl. I always held my groceries carefully along here, because one terrible morning I had dropped the shopping bag and the eggs broke and the milk spilled and I gathered up what I could while they shouted, telling myself that whatever I did I would not run away, shoveling cans and boxes and spilled sugar wildly back into the shopping bag, telling myself not to run away.

In front of Castiels there was a crack in the sidewalk that looked like a finger pointing; the crack had always been there. Other landmarks, like the handprint Jack Kline made in the concrete foundation of the town hall and the Edlund boys initials on the library porch, had been put in times that I remembered; I was in the third grade at the school when the town hall was built. But the crack in the sidewalk in front of Castiels had always been there, just as Castiel had always been there. I remember roller-skating across the crack, and being care not to stop on it or it would break your mothers back, and riding a bicycle past here with my hair flying behind; the villagers had not openly disliked us then although our father had called them trash. Our mother told me once that the crack was there when she was a girl in the Campbell house, so it must've been there when she married out father and went to live on the Winchester farm, and I suppose the crack was there, like a finger pointing, from the time when the village was first put together out of old grey wood and the ugly people with their evil faces were brought from some impossible place and set down in the houses to live.

Castiel bought the coffee urn and put in the marble counter with the insurance money when his husband died, but otherwise there had been no change in Castiel's since I could remeber; Dean and I had came in here to spend a few pennies after school and every afternoon we picked up the newspaper to take them home for our father to read in the evening; we no longer bought newspapers, but Castiel sold them, along with magazines and penny candy and grey posters of the town hall.

"Good morning, Samuel William," Castiel said when I sat down at the counter and put my groceries on the floor; I sometimes thought when I wished all the village people dead I might spare Castiel because he was the closest to kind that any of them could be, and the only one who managed to keep hold of any color at all. He was thin and gave off a bright aura and when he had that blue tie (even though it was backwards) it stayed looking bright for a little while before it merged into the dirty grey of the rest. "How are you today?" He asked.

"Very well, thank you."

"And Dean Winchester, is he well?"

"Very well, thank you."

"And how is.... He?"

"As well as can be expected. Black coffee please." I really preferred sugar and cream, because it is such bitter stuff, but since I came here out of pride I needed to accept only the barest minimum for token.

If anyone came into Castiels while I was there I got up and left quietly, but some days I had bad luck. This morning he had only set my coffee down on the counter when there was a shadow against the doorway, and Castiel looked up, and said, "Good morning, Chuck." He went down to the other end of the counter and waited, expecting him to sit down there so I could leave without being noticed, but it was Chuck Shurley and I knew at once that today I had bad luck. Some of the people in the village had real faces that I knew I could hate individually; Chuck Shurley and his family would have stayed down at the end of the counter where Castiel waited, but Chuck Shurley came right to the end where I was sitting and took the stool next to me, as close to me as he could come because, I knew, he wanted this morning to be bad luck for me.

"They tell me," he said, swinging to sit sideways on his stool and look at me directly. "They tell me you're moving away."

I wish he would not sit so close to me; Castiel came towards us on the other inside of the counter and I wished he would ask him to move so I could get up and leave without having to struggle around him. "They tell me youre moving away," he said solemnly. "No," I said, because he was waiting. "Funny," he said, looking from me to Castiel and then back. "I could have swore someone told me you'd be going soon"

"No," I said.

"Coffee, Chuck?" Castiel asked.

"Who do you think would of started a story like that, Castiel? Who do you think would want to tell me they're moving away when they're not doing any such thing?" Castiel shook his head at him, but he was trying not to smile. I saw that my hands were tearing at the paper napkin in my lap, ripping off a corner, and I forced my hands to be still and made a rule for myself: Whenever I saw a tiny scrap of paper I was to be kinder to Uncle Bobby.

"Cant ever tell how gossip gets around," Chuck Shurley said. Perhaps someday soon Chuck Shurley would die; perhaps there was already a rot growing inside him that was going to kill him. "Did you ever hear anything like the gossip in this town?" He asked Castiel.

"Leave him alone, Chuck." Castiel said.

Uncle Bobby was an old man and he was dying, dying regrettably, more surely than Chuck Shurley and Castiel and anybody else. The poor old Uncle Bobby was dying and I made a firm rule to be kinder to him. We would have a picnic lunch on the lawn. Dean would bring his shawl and put it over his shoulders, and I would like on the grass.

"I'm not bothering anybody, Cas. Am I bothering anybody? I'm just asking Mr Samuel William Winchester here how it happens. Everyone in town says he and his big brother are going to be leaving us soon. Moving away. Going somewhere else to live." He stirred his coffee; from the corner of my eye I could see the spoon going round and round and round and round, and I wanted to laugh. There was something so simple and silly about the spoon going round while Chuck Shurley talked; I wondered if he would stop talking if I reached out and took hold of the spoon. Very likely he would, I told myself, wisely, very likely he would throw the coffee in my face.

"Going somewhere else," he said sadly.

"Cut it out," Castiel said.

I would listen more carefully when Uncle Bobby told his story. I was already bringing peanut brittle; that was good.

"Here I was all upset," Chuck Shurley said, "thinking the town would be losing one of it's fine old families. That would be really too bad." He swung the other way around on the stool because someone else was coming through the doorway; I was looking at my hands in my lap and of course would not turn around to see who was coming in, but then Chuck Shurley said "Raphael," and I knew it was Dunham, the carpenter, "Joe, you ever hear anything like this? Here all over town they're saying that the Winchesters are moving away, and now Mr Samuel William Winchester sits here and speaks up and tells me they're not."

There was a little more silence. I knew Raphael was scowling. Looking at Chuck Shurley and at Castiel and at me. Thinking over what he had heard, sorting out the words and deciding what each one meant. "That sk?" He said at last.

"Listen, you two," Castiel said, but Chuck Shurley went right on, talking with his back to me, and his legs stretched put so I could not get past him and outside. "I was saying to people only this morning it's too bad when the old families go. Although you could rightly say a good number of the Wincheste are gone already," he laughed and slapped the counter with his hand. "Gone already," he said again. The spoon in his cup was still but he was talking on. "A village loses a lot of syel when the fine old people go. Anyone would think," he said slowly, "that they want wanted."

"That's right," Raphael said, and he laughed.

"The way they lived up in their fine old private estate, with their fences and their private path and their stylish way of living.
" he always went on until he was tired. When Chuck Shurley thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wing each one dry. Besides, each time he repeated himself he thought it was funnier; I knew he might go on like this until he was really sure no one was listening anymore, and I made a rule for myself: Never think anything more than once, and I put my hands quietly in my lap. I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.

"Well," Chuck Shurley said; he smelled, too. "I can always tell people I used to know the Winchesters. They never did anything to me that I can remember. Always perfectly polite to me. Not." He said, and laughed, "that I ever got invited to take my dinner with them, nothing like that."

"That's enough right there," Castiel said, his voice sharp. "You go pick on someone else, Chuck Shurley."

"Was I picking on anyone? You think I wanted to be asked to dinner? You think I'm crazy?"

"Me," Raphael said, "I can always tell people I fixed their broken step once and never got paid for it." That was true. Dean had sent me out to tell him that we wouldn't pay carpenters prices for a new board nailed crookedly across the step when what he was supposed to, was build it trim and new. When I went out and told him we wouldn't pay he grinned at me and spat, and picked up his hammer and pried the board loose and threw it on the ground. "Do it yourself," he said to me. And got into his truck and drove away. "Never did get paid for it," he said now.

"That must have been an oversight, Raphael. You just go right up to Mr Dean Winchester and he'll see you get what's coming to you. Just if you get invited to dinner Raphael, you just be sure to say thank you to Mr Winchester."

Dunham laughed, "Not me," he said. "I fixed their step for them and never did get paid for it."

"Funny," Chuck Shurley said, "them getting the house fixed up and all, and planning to move away all the same time."

"Samuel William," Castiel said, coming down the inside of the counter to where I was sitting, " you go along home. Just get up off that stool and go along home. There won't be any peace around here until you do."

"Now, that's the truth," Chuck said, Castiel looked at him and he moved his legs and let me pass. "You just say the word, Mr Samuel William, and we'll come put and help you pack. Just you say the word, Moose."

"Qnd can you tell your brother for me-" Dunham started to say, but I hurried, and by the time I got outside all I could hear was the laughter, the two of them and Castiel.

I liked my house on the moon, and I put a fireplace in it and a garden outside (what would flourish, growing on the moon? I must ask Dean) and I was going to have lunch outside in my garden on the moon. Things on the moon were very bright, and odd colours; my little house would be blue. I watched my small brown feet go in and out. And let the shopping bag sing a little by side; I had been to Castiels and now I needed only to pass the town hall. Which would be empty except for the people who made out dog licenses and the people who counted traffic fines from the drivers who followed the highway into the village and on through, and the people who sent out notices about water and sewage and garbage and forbade other people to burn leaves or to fish; these would all be buried somehwere deep inside town hall, working busily together; I had nothing to fear from them unless I fished out of season. I thought of catching scarlet fish in the rivers on the moon and saw that the Harris boys were in their front yard, clamoring and quarreling with half a dozen other boys. I had not been able to see them until I came past the corner by the town hall, and I could still have turned back and gone the other way, up the main highway to the creek, and then across the creek and home along the other half of the path to our house, but it was too late, and I had the groceries, the creek was nasty to wade in our fathers brown shoes, and I thought, I am living on the moon, and I walked quickly. They saw me at once, and I thought of them rotting away and curling in pain and crying out loud; I wanted them doubled over and crying on the ground in front of me.

"Moose," they called, "Moose, Moose," they moved all together to stand in a line by the fence.

I wondered if their parents taught them, Chuck Shurley and Raphael Dunham and the dirty Harris leading regular drills of their children, teaching them with loving care, making sure they pitched their voices right; how else could so many children learn so throughly?

Moose, said Deano, would you like a cup of tea?

Oh no, said Moose, you'll poison me.

Moose, said Deano, would you like to go to sleep?

Down in the graveyard ten feet deep!

I was pretending I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke soft, liquid tounge, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world; I was almost halfway past the fence.

"Moose, Moose!"

"Wheres old Deano? Home cooking dinner?"

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

It was strange to be inside myself, walking steadily and rapidly past the fence, putting my feet down strongly but without haste that they might have noticed, to be inside and know that they were looking at me; I was hiding very far inside but I could hear the. And see them still from one corner of my eye. I wished they were all lying there dead on the ground.

"Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!"

"Moose!"

Once when I was going past, the Harris boys mother came out onto the porch, perhaps to see what they were all yelling about. She stood there for a minute watching and listening and I stopped and looked at her, looking into her flat full eyes and knowing I must not speak and knowing I would. "Cant you make them stop?" I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over the grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love. "Can't you make them stop?"

"Kids," she said, not changing her voice or her look or her air of dull enjoyment, "dont call the boy names."

"Yes ma'" one of the boys said soberly. "Dont go near no fence. Dont call no boy names." And I walked on. While they shrieked and shouted and the woman stood on the porch and laughed.

Moose, said Deano, would you like a cup of tea?

Oh no, said Moose, you'll poison me

Their tongues will burn, I thought, as though they had eaten fire. Their throats will burn when the words come out, and in their bellies they will feel a torment hotter then a thousand fires.

"Goodbye, Moose," they called as I went by the end of the fence, "dont hurry back."

"Goodbye, Moose, give our love to Deano!"

"Goodbye, Moose," but I was at the black rock and there was a gate to our path.

Chapter Text

I HAD TO PUT DOWN THE SHOPPING BAG TO OPEN THE LOCK on the gate; it was a simple padlock and any child could have broken it, but on the gate was a sign saying private n trespassing, and no one could go past that. Our father had put up the signs and the gates and the locks when he closed off the path; before, everyone used the path as a shortcut from the village to the highway four corners where the bus stopped; it saved them perhaps a quarter of a mile to use our path and walk past our front door. Our mother disliked the sight of anyone who wanted to walk past our front food, and when our father brought her to live in the Winchester house, one of the first things he had to do was close off the path and fence in the entire Winchester property, from the highway to the creek. There was another gate at the other end of the path, although I rarely went that way, and that gate had a padlock and a sign saying private no trespassing. “The highway’s built for common people,” our mother said, “and my front door is private.”

Anyone who came to see us, properly invited, came up the main drive which led straight from the gateposts on the highway up to our front door. When I was small I used to lie in my bedroom at the back of the house and imagine the driveway and the path as a crossroad meeting before our front door, and up and down the driveway went the good people, the clean and rich ones dressed in satin and lace, who came rightfully to visit, and back and forth along the path sneaking and weaving and sidestepping servilely, went the people from the village. They cant get in, I used to tell myself over and over, lying in my dark room with the trees patterned in shadow on the ceiling, they can't ever get in anymore; the path is closed forever. Sometimes I stood inside the fence, hidden by the bushes, and watched people walking on the highway to get from the village to the four corners. As far as I knew. No one from the village had ever tried to use the path since our father locked the gates.

When I had moved the shopping bag inside, I carefully locked the gate again and tested the padlock to make sure it held. Once the padlock was securely fastened behind me I was safe. The path was dark because once our father had given up any idea of putting his land to profitable use he had let the trees and bushes and small flowers grow as they chose and expert for the great meadow and the gardens our land was heavily wooded, and no one knew its secret ways but me. When I went along the path, going easily now because I was home, I knew each step and every turn. Dean could put names to all the growing things, but I was content to know them by their way and place of growing, and their unfailing offers to refuge. The only prints on the path were my own, going in and out to the village. Past the turn, I might find a mark of Dean's foot because he sometimes came that far to wait for me, but most of Dean's prints were in the garden and in the house. Today he had come to the end of the garden, and I saw him as soon as I came around the turn;he was standing with the house behind him, in the sunlight, and I ran to meet him.

"Sammy,” he said, smiling at me, “Look how far I came today.”

“It’s too far,” I said. “First thing I know you’ll be following me into the village.”

“I might at that,” he said.

Even though I knew he was teasing me I was chilled, but I laughed. “You wouldn’t like it much,” I told him. “Here, lazy, take some of these packages. Where's my dog?”

“He went off chasing butterflies because you were late. Did you remember eggs? I forgot to tell you.”

“Of course. Let's have lunch on the lawn.”

When I was small I thought Dean was a superhero. I used to draw him pictures, with a long red cape and eyes as green as I could make them, and a big symbol on his chest; the picture always surprised me, because he did look like that; even at the worst times he was red, white and gold, and nothing had ever seemed to dim the brightness of him. He was the most precious person in my world, always. I followed him across the soft grass, past the flowers he tended, into our house, and Bones, my dog, came out of the flowers and followed me.

Dean waited inside the tall front door while I came up the steps behind him, and then I put my packages down on the table in the hall and locked the door. We would not use it again until afternoon, because almost all of our life was lived toward the back of the house, on the lawn and the garden where no one else ever came. We left the front of the house, turned toward the highway and the village, and went our own ways behind its stern, unwelcoming face. Although we kept the house well, the rooms we used together were the back ones, the kitchen, and the back bedrooms, and the little warm room off the kitchen where Uncle Bobby lived; outside was Dean's chestnut tree and the wide, lovely reach of lawn and Deans (used to be moms) flowers and then, beyond, the vegetable garden Dean tended and, past that, the trees which shaded the creek. When we sat on the back lawn no one could see us from anywhere.

I remembered that I was to be kinder to Uncle Bobby when I saw him sitting at his great old desk in the kitchen corner playing with his papers. “Will you let Uncle Bobby have peanut brittle?” I asked Dean.

“After his lunch,” Dean said. He took the groceries carefully from the bags;food of any kind was precious to Dean, and he always touched foodstuffs with quiet respect. I was not allowed to help; I was not allowed to prepare food, nor was I allowed to gather mushrooms, although I sometimes carried the vegetables in from the gardens, or apples from the old trees. “We’ll have muffins,” Dean said, almost singing because he was sorting and putting away the food. “Uncle Bobby will have an egg, doen soft and buttery, and a muffin and a little pudding.”

“Pap,” Said Uncle Bobby.

“Sammy will have something lean and rich and healthy.”

“Bones will catch me a mouse,” I said to my dog who rested his head on my knee.

“I am always so happy when you come home from the village,” Dean said; she stopped to look and smile at me. “Partly because you bring home food, of course. But partly because I miss you.”

“I’m always happy to get home from the village,” I told him.

“Was it very bad?” he touched my cheek quickly with one finger.

“You dont want to know about it.”

“Someday I’ll go.” It was the second time he had spoken of going outside, and I was chilled.

“Dean,” Uncle Bobby said. He lifted a small scrap of paper from his desk and studied it, frowning. “I do not seem to have any information on whether your father took his cigar in the garden as usual that morning.”

“I’m sure he did,” Dean said. “That dogs been fishing in the creek,” he told me. “He came in all mud,” He folded the grocery bag and put it with the others in the drawer, and set the library books on the shelf where they were going to stay forever. Bones and I were expected to stay in our corner, out fo the way, while Dean worked in the kitchen, and it was a joy to watch him, moving perfectly in the sunlight. “Its Jody Mills day,” I said. “Are you frightened?”

He turned to smile at me. “Not a bit,” he said. “I’m getting better all the time, I think. And today I’m going to make little rum cakes.”

“And Jody Mills will scream and gobble them.”

Even now, Dean and I still saw some small society, visiting acquaintances who drove up the driveway to the call. Jody Mills took her tea with us on Fridays, and Ellen or Ash or even Rowena stopped by occasionally on a Sunday after church to tell us we would have enjoyed the sermon. They came dutifully, although we never returned their calls, and stayed a proper few minutes and sometimes brought flowers from their gardens, or books, or a song that Dean might care to try over his record player; they spoke politely and with little runs of laughter, and never failed to invite us to their houses although they knew we would never come. They were civil to Uncle Bobby, and patient with his talk, they offered to take us for drives in their cars, they referred to themselves as our friends. Dean and I always spoke well of them to each other, because they believed that their visits brought us pleasure. They never walked on the path. If Dean offered them a cutting from a rosebush, or invited them to see a happy new arrangement of colors, they went into the garden, but they never offered to step beyond their defined areas; they walked along the garden and got into their cars by the front door and and drove away down the driveway and out through the ig gates. Several times Mr Shurley had come to see how we were getting along, because Mr Shurly had been very good friends of our fathers. They never came inside or took any refreshment but he drove to the front steps and sat in his car and talked for a few minutes. “How are you getting along?” he always asked looking from dean to me and back; “how are you managing all by yourselves? Is there anything you need, anything I can do? How are you getting along?” Dean always invited him in, because we had been brought up to believe that it was discourteous to keep guests talking outside, but Chuck ever came in the house. “I wonder,” I said thinking about him, “whether the Shurlys would being me a horse if I asked them. I could ride it along the meadow.”

Dean turned and looked at me for a minutes, frowning a little. “You will not ask them,” he said at last. “We do not ask from anyone. Remember that.”

“I was teasing.” I said, and he smiled again. “I really only want a winged horse, anyway. We could fly you to the moon and back, my horse and I.”

“I remember when you used to want a griffin,” he said. “Now, Sir Idleness, run out and set the table.”

“They quarreled hatefully that last night,” Uncle Bobbysaid. “ ‘I wont have it,’ she said. ‘I won't stand for it, John Winchester,’ and ‘We have no choice,’ he said. I listened at the door, of course, but I came too late to hear what they quarreled about; I suppose it was money.”

“They didn’t often fight,” Dean said.

“They were almost invariably cicil to one another, Nephew, if that is what you mean by not fighting; a most unsatisfactory example for the rest of us. My wife and I preferred to shout.”

“It hardly seems like six years, sometimes,” Dean said. I took the yellow tablecloth and went outside to the lawn to start the table; behind me I heard him saying to Uncle Bobby, “Sometimes I feel I would give anything to have them all back again.”

When I was a child I used to believe that someday I would grow up and be tall enough to touch the top of the windows in our mothers drawing room. They were summer windows, because the house was really intended to be only a summer house and out father had only put in a heating system because there was no there house for our family to move to in the winters; by the rights we should have had the Rochester house in the village, bt that was long lost to us. The windows in the drawing room of our house reached from the floor to the ceiling, and I could never touch the top; our mother used to tell visitors that the light blue silk drapes on the windows had been made up to fourteen feet long. There were two tall windows in the drawing room and too tall windows in the dining room across the hall, and from the outside they looked narrow and thin and gave the house a gaunt high look. Inside, however, the drawing room was shone in reflections from the mirrors and sparkling glass. Dean and I only used the room when Jody Mills came for tea but we kept it perfectly. Dean stood on a stepladder to watch the tops of the windows, and we dusted the tops of the walls, starting up into the white fruit and leaves, brushing away at cupids and ribbon knots, dizzy always from looking up and walking backwards, and laughing at Dean when he caught me. We polished the floors and mended tiny tears in the rose brocade on the sofas and chairs. There was a golden calance over each high window, and golden scrollwork around the fireplace, and our mothers portrait hung in the drawing room; “I cannot bear to see my lovely room untidy,” our mother used to say and so Dean and I had never bee allowed in here, but now we kept it shining and silky.
Out mother had always served tea to her friends from a low table at one side of the fireplace, so that was where Dean always set her table. He sat on the rose sota with our mothers portrait looking down on him, and I sat in my small chair in the corner and watched. I was allowed to carry cups and pass sandwiches and cakes, but not to pour the tea. I disliked eating anything while people were looking at me, so I had my tea afterwards, in the kitchen. That ay, which was the last time Jody Mills ever came for tea, Dean had set the table as usual, with the lovely thin rose-coloured cups our mother had always used, and two silver dishes, one with small sandwiches and one with the very special rum cakes; two rum cakes were waiting for me in the kitchen, in case Jody Mills ate all of these. Dean sat quietly on the sofa; he never fidgeted. I waited by the window, watching for Jody Mills, who was always precisely on time. “Are you frightened?” I asked Dean once, and he said, “No, not at all.”

I saw the car turn into the driveway and then saw there were two people in it instead of one; “Dean,” I said, “she’s brought someone else.”

Dean was still for a minute, then he said quire firmly, “I think it will be alright.”

I turned to look at him and he was quiet. “I’ll send them away,” I said. “She knows better than this.”

“But I wont have you frightened.”

“Sooner or later,” he said, “sooner or later we will have to see people again.”

I was chilled. “I want to send them away.”

“No,” Dean said. “Absolutely not.”
The car stopped in front of the house, and I went into the hall to open the front door, which I had unlocked earlier because it was not courteous to unlock the door in a guests face. When I came onto the porch I saw that it was not quite as bad as I had expected; it was not a stranger Jody Mills had brought with her, but Donna Hanscum, who had come once before and been more frightened than anyone else. She would not be too much for Dean, but Jody Mills ought not to have brought her without telling me.

“Good afternoon, Samuel Winchester,” Jody Mills said, coming around the car and to the steps, “isn’t this a lovely spring day? How is darling Dean? I brought Donna.” She was going to handle it brazenly, as though people brought almost-strangers every day to see Dean, and I dislike having to smile at her. “You remember Donna Hanscum?” she asked me, and poor little Donna said in a small voice that she had so wanted to come again. I held the front door open and they came into the hall. They had not worn coats because it was such a fine day, but Jody Mills had the common sense to delay a minute anyway; “Tell dean Dean we’ve come,” she said to me, and I knew she was giving me time to tell Dean who was here, so I slipped into the drawing room, where Dean sat quietly, and said, “It’s Mrs Hanscum, the frightened one.”

Dean smiled. “Kind of a weak first step,” he said. “Its going to be fine, Sammy.”
In the hall Jody Mills was showing off the staircase to Donna Hanscum, telling the familiar story about the carving and the wood brought from Italy; when I came out of the drawing room she glanced at me and then said, “This staircase is one of the wonders of the county, Samuel William. SHame to keep it hidden from the world. Donna?” They moved into the drawing room.

Dean was perfectly composed. He rose and smiled and said he was glad to see them. Because Jody Mills was ungraceful by nature, she managed to make the simple act of moving into a room and sitting down a complex ballet for three people; before Dean had quite finished speaking Jody Mills jostled Mrs Hanscum and sent Mrs Hanscu sideways like a catering croquet ball into the far corner of the room where she sat abruptly and clearly without intention upon a smal and uncomfortable chair. Jody Mills made for the soft sofa where Dean sat, nearly upsetting the tea table, and although there were enough chairs in the room and another sota, she sat finally uncomfortably close to Dean, who detested having anyone near him but me. “Now,” Jody Mills said, spreading, “its good to see you again.”
“So kind of you to have us,” Airs. Donna said, leaning forward. “Such a lovely staircase.”

“You look well, Dean. have you been working in the garden?”

“I couldn't help it, on a day like this.” Dean laughed; he was doing very well. “Its so exciting,” he said across to Mrs Handscum. “Perhaps you’re a gardener, too? These first bright days are so exciting for a gardner.”

He was talking a little too much and a little too fast, but no one noticed except me.

“I do love a garden,” Mrs Handscum said in a little burst. “I do so love a garden.”

“How's Bobby?” Jody Mills asked before Mrs Handscum had quite finished speaking. “How is old Bobby?”

“Very well, thank you. He is expecting to join us for tea this afternoon.”

“Have you met Bobby Singer?” Jody Mills asked Donna Handscum, and Mrs Handscum, shaking her head, began, “I would love to meet him, of course; I have heard so much-” and stopped.

“He’s a touch… eccentric,” Jody Mills said, smiling at Dean as though it had been a secret until now. I was thinking that if eccentric meant, as the dictionary said it did, deviating from regularity, it was Jody Mills who was far more eccentric than Uncle Bobby, with her awkward movements and her unexpected questions, and her bringing strangers here to tea; Uncle Bobby lived smoothly, in a perfectly planned pattern, rounded and sleek. She ought not to call people things they’re not, I thought, remembering that I was to be kinder to Uncle Bobby.

“Dean, you’ve always been one of my closest friends,” she was saying now, and i wondered at her; she really could not see how Dean withdrew from such words. “I’m going to give you just a word of advice, and remember, it comes from a friend.”

I must have known what she was going to say, because I was chilled; all this day had been building up to what Jody Mills was going to say right now. I sat low in my chair and looked hard at Dean, wanting him to get up and run away, wanting him not to hear what was just about to be said, but Jody Mills went on, “It’s spring, you're young, you’re handsome. You have a right to be happy. Come back into the world.”

Once, even a month ago when it was still winter, words like that would have made Dean drawback and run away; now, i saw that he was listening and smiling, although he shook his head.

“You’ve done penance long enough,” Jody Mills said.

“I would like to give a little luncheon-” Mrs Handscum began.

“You’ve forgotten the milk; I’ll get it.” I stood up and spoke directly to Deanand he looked around at me, almost surprised.

“Thank you, Sammy,” he said.

I went out of the drawing room and into the hall and started towards the kitchen; this morning the kitchen had been bright and happy and now, chilled, I saw that it was dreary. Dean had looked as though suddenly, after all this time of refusing and denying, he had come to see it might be possible, after all, to go outside. I realized now that this was the third time in one day that the subject had been touched, and three times makes it real. I could not breathe; I was tied with wire, and my head was huge and going to explode; I ran back to the back door and opened it to breathe. I wanted to run; if I could have run to the end of our land and back I would have been all right, but Dean was alone with them in the drawing room and I had to hurry back. I had to content myself with smashing the milk pitcher which waited on the table; it had been our mothers and I left the pieces on the floor so Dean would see them. I took down the second-best pitcher, which did not match the cups; I was allowed to pour milk, so I filled it and took it to the drawing room.

“-do with Samuel William?” Dean was saying, and then he turned and smiled at me in the doorway. “Thank you, Sammy,” he said, and glanced at the pitcher and at me. “Thank you,” he said again, and I put the pitcher down on the tray.

“Not too much at first,” Jody Mills said. “That would look odd, I grant you. But a call or two on old friends. Perhaps a day in the city shopping- no one would recognize you in the city, you know.”

“A little luncheon?” Mrs Handscum said hopefully.

“I'll have to think." Dean made a little, laughing, bewildered gesture, and Jody Mills nodded.

"You'll need some clothes," she said.

I came from my place in the corner to take a cup of tea from . Dean and carry it over to Mrs Handscum, whose hand trembled when she took it. "Thank you, my dear," she said. I could see the tea trembling in the cup; it was only her second visit here, after all.

"Sugar?" I asked her; I couldn't help it, and besides, it was polite.

"Oh, no," she said. "No, thank you. No sugar."

I thought, looking at her, that she had dressed to come here today; Dean and I never wore black but Mrs Handscum had perhaps thought it was appropriate, and today she wore a plain black dress with a necklace of pearls. She had worn black the other time, too, I recalled; always in good taste, I thought, except in our mother's drawing room. I went back to Dean and took up the plate of rum cakes and brought them to Mrs Handscum; that was not kind either, and she should have had the sandwiches first, but I wanted her to be unhappy, dressed in black in our mother's drawing room. "My brother made these this morning," I said.

"Thank you," she said. Her hand hesitated over the plate and then she took a rum cake and set it carefully on the edge of her saucer. I thought that Mrs Handscum was being almost hysterically polite, and I said, "Do take two. Everything my sister cooks is delicious."

"No," she said. "Oh, no. Thank you."

Jody Mills was eating sandwiches, reaching down past Dean to take one after another. She wouldn't behave like this anywhere else, I thought, only here. She never cares what Dean thinks or I think of her manners; she only supposes we are so very glad to see her. Go away, I told her in my mind. Go away, go away. I wondered if Jody Mills saved particular costumes for her visits to our house. "This," I could imagine her saying, turning out her closet, "no sense in throwing this away, I can keep it for visiting dear, Dean." I began dressing Jody Mills in my mind, putting her in a bathing suit on a snowbank, setting her high in the hard branches of a tree in a dress of flimsy pink ruffles that caught and pulled and tore; she was tangled in the tree and screaming and I almost laughed.

"Why not ask some people here?" Jody Mills was saying to Dean. "A few old friends -there are many people who have wanted to keep in touch with you, Dean dear- a few old friends some evening. For dinner? No," she said, "perhaps not for dinner. Perhaps not, not at first."

"I myself --" Mrs Handscum began again; she had set her cup of tea and the little rum cake carefully on the table next to her.

"Although why not for dinner?" Jody Mills said. "After all, you have to take the plunge sometime."

I was going to have to say something. Dean was not looking at me, but only at Jody Mills. "Why not invite some good people from the village?" I asked loudly.

"Good heavens, Samuel William," Jody Mills said. "You really startled me." She laughed. "I don't recall that the Blackwoods ever mingled socially with the villagers," she said.
"They hate us," I said.

"I don't listen to their gossip, and I hope you don't. And, Samuel William, you know as well as I do that nine tenths of that feeling is nothing but your imagination, and if you'd go halfway to be friendly there'd never be a word said against you. Good heavens. I grant you there might have been a little feeling once, but on your side it's just been exaggerated out of all proportion."

"People will gossip," Mrs Handscum said reassuringly. "I've been saying right along that I was a close friend of the Blackwoods and not the least bit ashamed of it, either. You want to come to people of your own kind, Dean. They don't talk about us."

I wished they would be more amusing; I thought that now Dean was looking a little tired. If they would leave soon I would brush Dean's hair until she fell asleep.

"Uncle Bobby is coming," I said to Dean. I could hear the soft sound of the wheelchair in the hall and I got up to open the door.

Jody Mills said, "Do you suppose that people would really be afraid to visit here?" and Uncle Bobby stopped in the doorway. He had put on his dandyish tie for company at tea, and washed his face until it was pink. "Afraid?" he said. "To visit here?" He bowed to Mrs Handscum from his chair and then to Jody Mills. "Madam," he said, and "Madam." I knew that he could not remember either of their names, or whether he had ever seen them before.

"You look well, Julian," Jody Mills said.

"Afraid to visit here? I apologize for repeating your words, madam, but I am astonished. My niece, after all, was acquitted of murder. There could be no possible danger in visiting here now."

Mrs Handscum made a little convulsive gesture toward her cup of tea and then set her hands firmly in her lap.

"It could be said that there is danger everywhere," Uncle Bobby said. "Danger of poison, certainly. My nephew can tell you of the most unlikely perils -garden plants more deadly than snakes and simple herbs that slash like knives through the lining of your belly, madam. My nephew-"

"Such a lovely garden," Mrs Handscum said earnestly to Dean. "I'm sure I don't know how you do it."

Jody Mills said firmly, "Now, that's all been forgotten long ago, Julian. No one ever thinks about it any more."

"Regrettable," Uncle Bobby said. "A most fascinating case, one of the few genuine mysteries of our time. Of my time, particularly. My life work," he told Mrs Handscum.

"Robert," Jody Mills said quickly; Mrs Handscum seemed mesmerized. "There is such a thing as good taste, Robert."

"Taste, madam? Have you ever tasted arsenic? I assure you that there is one moment of utter incredulity before the mind can accept-"

A moment ago poor little Mrs Handscum would probably have bitten her tongue out before she mentioned the subject, but now she said, hardly breathing, "You mean you remember?"

"Remember." Uncle Bobby sighed, shaking his head happily. "Perhaps," he said with eagerness, "perhaps you are not familiar with the story? Perhaps I might --"

"Robert," Jody Mills said, "Donna does not want to hear it. You should be ashamed to ask her."

I thought that Mrs Handscum very much did want to hear it, and I looked at Dean just as he glanced at me; we were both very sober, to suit the subject, but I knew he was as full of merriment as I; it was good to hear Uncle Bobby, who was so lonely most of the time.

And poor, poor Mrs Handscum, tempted at last beyond endurance, was not able to hold it back any longer. She blushed deeply, and faltered, but Uncle Bobby was a tempter and Mrs Handscum's human discipline could not resist forever. "It happened right in this house," she said like a prayer.

We were all silent, regarding her courteously, and she whispered, "I do beg your pardon."

"Naturally, in this house," Dean said. "In the dining room. We were having dinner."

"A family gathering for the evening meal," Uncle Bobby said, caressing his words. "Never supposing it was to be our last."

"Arsenic in the sugar," Mrs Handscum said, carried away, hopelessly lost to all decorum.

"I used that sugar." Uncle Bobby shook his finger at her. "I used that sugar myself, on my blackberries. Luckily," and he smiled blandly, "fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar."

"I never touch berries," Dean said; he looked directly at Mrs Handscum and said soberly, "I rarely take sugar on anything. Even now."

"It counted strongly against his at the trial," Uncle Bobby said. "That he used no sugar, I mean. But my nephew has never cared for berries. Even as a child it was his custom to refuse berries."

"Please," Jody Mills said loudly, "it's outrageous, it really is; I can't bear to hear it talked about. Dean -Robert- what will Donna think of you?"

"No, really," Mrs Handscum said, lifting her hands.

"I won't sit here and listen to another word," Jody Mills said. "Dean must start thinking about the future; this dwelling on the past is not wholesome; the poor darling has suffered enough."

"Well, I miss them all, of course," Dean said. "Things have been much different with all of them gone, but I'm sure I don't think of myself as suffering."

"In some ways," Uncle Bobby sailed on, "a piece of extraordinarily good fortune for me. I am a survivor of the most sensational poisoning case of the century. I have all the newspaper clippings. I knew the victims, the accused, intimately, as only a relative living in the very house could know them. I have exhaustive notes on all that happened. I have never been well since."

"I said I didn't want to talk about it," Jody Mills said.

Uncle Bobby stopped. He looked at Jody Mills, and then at Dean. "Didn't it really happen?" he asked after a minute, fingers at his mouth.

"Of course it really happened." Dean smiled at him.

"I have the newspaper clippings," Uncle Bobby said uncertainty. "I have my notes," he told Jody Mills, "I have written down everything."

"It was a terrible thing." Mrs Handscum was leaning forward earnestly and Uncle Bobby turned to her.

"Dreadful," he agreed. "Frightful, madam." He maneuvered his wheel chair so his back was to Jody Mills. "Would you like to view the dining room?" he asked. "The fatal board? I did not give evidence at the trial, you understand; my health was not equal, then or now, to the rude questions of strangers." He gave a little flick of his head in Jody Mills's direction. "I wanted badly to take the witness stand. I flatter myself that I would not have appeared to disadvantage. But of course he was acquitted after all."

"Certainly he was acquitted," Jody Mills said vehemently. She reached for her huge pocketbook and took it up onto her lap and felt in it for her gloves. "No one ever thinks about it any more." She caught Mrs Handscum's eye and prepared to rise.

"The dining room . . . ?" Mrs Handscum said timidly. "Just a glance?"

"Madam." Uncle Bobby contrived a bow from his wheelchair, and Mrs Handscum hurried to reach the door and open it for him. "Directly across the hall," Uncle Bobby said, and she followed. "I admire a decently curious woman, madam; I could see at once that you were devoured with a passion to view the scene of the tragedy; it happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night."

We could hear him clearly; he was apparently moving around our dining-room table while Mrs Handscum watched him from the doorway. "You will perceive that our table is round. It is overlarge now for the pitiful remnant of our family, but we have been reluctant to disturb what is, after all, a monument of sorts; at one time, a picture of this room would have commanded a large price from any of the newspapers. We were a large family once, you recall, a large and happy family. We had small disagreements, of course, we were not all of us overblessed with patience; I might almost say that there were quarrels. Nothing serious; husband and wife, brother and sister, did not always see eye to eye."

"Then why did he -- "

"Yes," Uncle Bobby said, "that is perplexing, is it not? My brother, as head of the family, sat naturally at the head of the table, there, with the windows at his back and the decanter before him. John Winchester took pride in his table, his family, his position in the world."

"He never even met him," Jody Mills said. She looked angrily at Dean. "I remember your father well."

Faces fade away out of memory, I thought. I wondered if I would recognize Mrs Handscum if I saw her in the village. I wondered if Mrs Handscum in the village would walk past me, not seeing; perhaps Mrs Handscum was so timid that she never looked up at faces at all. Her cup of tea and her little rum cake still sat on the table, untouched.

"And I was a good friend of your mother's, Dean. That's why I feel able to speak to you openly, for your own good. Your mother would have wanted-"

"-my sister-in-law, who was, madam, a delicate woman. You will have noticed her portrait in the drawing room, and the exquisite line of the jawbone under the skin. A woman born for tragedy, perhaps, although inclined to be a little silly. On her right at this table, myself, younger then, and not an invalid; I have only been helpless since that night. Across from me, the boy Adam -- did you know I once had three nephews, that my brother had three sons? Certainly, you would have read about him. He was ten years old and possessed many of his father's more forceful traits of character."

"He used the most sugar," Mrs Handscum said.

"Alas," Uncle Bobby said. "Then, on either side of my brother, his son Dean and my wife Karen, who had done me the honor of casting in her lot with mine, although I do not think that she anticipated anything so severe as arsenic on her blackberries. Another child, my nephew Samuel William, was not at the table."

"He was in his room," Mrs Handscum said.

"A great child of twelve, sent to bed without his supper. But he need not concern us."

I laughed, and Dean said to Jody Mills, "Sammy was always in disgrace. I used to go up the back stairs with a tray of dinner for him after my father had left the dining room. He was a wicked, disobedient child," and he smiled at me.

"An unhealthy environment," Jody Mills said. "A child should be punished for wrongdoing, but he should be made to feel that he is still loved. I would never have tolerated the child's wildness. And now we really must…" She began to put on her gloves again.

"-spring lamb roasted, with a mint jelly made from Dean's garden mint. Spring potatoes, new peas, a salad, again from Dean's garden. I remember it perfectly, madam. It is still one of my favorite meals. I have also, of course, made very thorough notes of everything about that meal and, in fact, that entire day. You will see at once how the dinner revolves around my nephew. It was early summer, his garden was doing well -- the weather was lovely that year, I recall; we have not seen such another summer since, or perhaps I am only getting older. We relied upon Dean for various small delicacies which only he could provide; I am of course not referring to arsenic."

"Well, the blackberries were the important part." Mrs Handscum sounded a little hoarse.

"What a mind you have, madam! So precise, so unerring. I can see that you are going to ask me why he should conceivably have used arsenic. My nephew is not capable of such subtlety, and his lawyer luckily said so at the trial. Dean can put his hand upon a bewildering array of deadly substances without ever leaving home; he could feed you a sauce of poison hemlock, a member of the parsley family which produces immediate paralysis and death when eaten. He might have made a marmalade of the lovely thornapple or the baneberry, he might have tossed the salad with Holcus lanatus, called velvet grass, and rich in hydrocyanic acid. I have notes on all these, madam. Deadly nightshade is a relative of the tomato; would we, any of us, have had the prescience to decline if Dean served it to us, spiced and made into pickle? Or consider just the mushroom family, rich as that is in tradition and deception. We were all fond of mushrooms -my nephew makes a mushroom omelet you must taste to believe, madam -and the common death cup-"

"He should not have been cooking," said Mrs Handscum strongly. "Well, of course, there is the root of our trouble. Certainly he should not have been doing the cooking if his intention was to destroy all of us with poison; we would have been blindly unselfish to encourage him to cook under such circumstances. But he was acquitted. Not only of the deed, but of the intention."

"What was wrong with Mrs. Winchester doing her own cooking?"

"Please." Uncle Bobby's voice had a little shudder in it, and I knew the gesture he was using with it even though he was out of my sight. He would have raised one hand, fingers spread, and he would be smiling at her over his ringers; it was a gallant, Uncle Bobby, gesture; I had seen him use it with Dean. "I personally preferred to chance the arsenic," Uncle Bobby said.

"We must go home," Jody Mills said. "I don't know what's come over Donna. I told her before we came not to mention this subject."

"I am going to put up wild strawberries this year," Dean said to me. "I noticed a considerable patch of them near the end of the garden."

"It's terribly tactless of her, and she's keeping me waiting."

"-the sugar bowl on the sideboard, the heavy silver sugar bowl. It is a family heirloom; my brother prized it highly. You will be wondering about that sugar bowl, I imagine. Is it still in use? you are wondering; has it been cleaned? you may very well ask; was it thoroughly washed? I can reassure you at once. My nephew Dean washed it before the doctor or the police had come, and you will allow that it was not a felicitous moment to wash a sugar bowl. The other dishes used at dinner were still on the table, but my nephew took the sugar bowl to the kitchen, emptied it, and scrubbed it thoroughly with boiling water. It was a curious act."

"There was a spider in it," Dean said to the teapot. We used a little rose-covered sugar bowl for the lump sugar for tea.

"-there was a spider in it, he said. That was what he told the police. That was why he washed it."

"Well," Mrs Handscum said, "it does seem as though he might have thought of a better reason. Even if it was a real spider -I mean, you don't wash -I mean, you just take the spider out."

"What reason would you have given, madam?"

"Well, I've never killed anybody, so I don't know -I mean, I don't know what I'd say. The first thing that came into my head, I suppose. I mean, he must have been upset."

"I assure you the pangs were fearful; you say you have never tasted arsenic? It is not agreeable. I am extremely sorry for all of them. I myself lingered on in great pain for several days; Dean would, I am sure, have demonstrated only the deepest sympathy for me, but by then, of course, he was largely unavailable. They arrested him at once."

Mrs Handscum sounded more forceful, almost unwillingly eager. "I've always thought, ever since we moved up here, that it would be a wonderful chance to meet you people and really find out what happened, because of course there's always that one question, the one nobody has ever been able to answer; of course I hardly expected to talk to you about it, but look." There was the sound of a dining-room chair being moved; Mrs Handscum had clearly decided to settle down. "First," she said, "she bought the arsenic."

"To kill rats," Dean said to the teapot, and then turned and smiled at me.

"To kill rats," Uncle Bobby said. "The only other popular use for arsenic is in taxidermy, and my nephew could hardly pretend a working knowledge of that subject."

"He cooked the dinner, he set the table."

"I confess I am surprised at that woman," Jody Mills said. "She seems such a quiet little body."

"It was Dean who saw them dying around him like flies -I do beg your pardon -and never called a doctor until it was too late. He washed the sugar bowl."

"There was a spider in it," Dean said.

"He told the police those people deserved to die."

"He was excited, madam. Perhaps the remark was misconstrued. My nephew is not hardhearted; besides, he thought at the time that I was among them and although I deserve to die -we all do, do we not?- I hardly think that my nephew is the one to point it out."

"He told the police that it was all his fault."

"Now there," Uncle Bobby said, "I think he made a mistake. It was certainly true that he thought at first that his cooking had caused all this, but in taking full blame I think that he was over-eager. I would have advised him against any such attitude had I been consulted; it smacks of self-pity."

"But the great, the unanswered question, is why? Why did he do it? I mean, unless we agree that Dean was a homicidal maniac-"

"You have met him, madam."

"I have what? Oh, my goodness yes. I completely forgot. I cannot seem to remember that that handsome young man is actually- well. Your mass murderer must have reason, Mr. Singer, even if it is only some perverted, twisted -- oh, dear. He is such a charming boy, your nephew; I cannot remember when I have taken to anyone as I have to him. But if he is a homicidal maniac-"

"I'm leaving." Jody Mills stood up and slammed her pocketbook emphatically under her arm. "Donna," she said, "I am leaving. We have overstayed all limits of decency; it's after five o'clock."

Mrs Handscum scurried out of the dining room, distraught. "I'm so sorry," she said. "We were chatting and I lost track of time. Oh, dear." She ran to her chair to gather up her pocketbook.

"You haven't even touched your tea," I said, wanting to see her blush.

"Thank you," she said; she looked down at her teacup and blushed. "It was delicious."

Uncle Bobby stopped his wheel chair in the center of the room and folded his hands happily before him. He looked at Dean and then raised his eyes to gaze on a corner of the ceiling, sober and demure.

"Robert, goodbye," Jody Mills said shortly. "Dean, I'm sorry we stayed so long; it was inexcusable. Donna?"

Mrs Handscum looked like a child who knows it is going to be punished, but she had not forgotten her manners. "Thank you," she said to Dean, putting her hand out and then taking it back again quickly. "I had a very nice time. Goodbye," she said to Uncle Bobby. They went into the hall and I followed, to lock the door after they had gone. Jody Mills started the car before poor Mrs Handscum had quite finished getting herself inside, and the last I heard of Mrs Handscum was a little shriek as the car started down the driveway. I was laughing when I came back into the drawing room, and I went over and hugged Dean. "A very nice tea party," I said.

"That impossible woman." Dean put his head back against the couch and laughed. "I’ll bred, pretentious, stupid. Why she keeps coming I'll never know,"

"She wants to reform you." I took up Mrs Handscum's teacup and her rum cake and brought them over to the tea tray. "Poor little Mrs Handscum," I said.

"You were teasing her, Sammy."

"A little bit, maybe. I can't help it when people are frightened; I always want to frighten them more."

"Dean?" Uncle Bobby turned his wheel chair to face him. "How was I?"

"Superb, Uncle Bobby." Dean stood up and went over to him and touched his old head lightly. "You didn't need your notes at all."

"It really happened?" he asked him.

"It certainly did. I'll take you into your room and you can look at your newspaper clippings."

"I think not right now. It has been a superlative afternoon, but I think I am a little tired. I will rest till dinner."

Dean pushed the wheel chair down the hall and I followed with the tea tray. I was allowed to carry dirty dishes but not to wash them, so I set the tray on the kitchen table and watched while Dean stacked the dishes by the sink to wash later, swept up the broken milk pitcher on the floor, and took out the potatoes to start for dinner. Finally I had to ask him; the thought had been chilling me all afternoon. "Are you going to do what she said?" I asked him.

"What Jody Mills said?" He did not pretend not to understand. He stood there looking down at his hands working, and smiled a little. "I don't know," he said.

Chapter Text

A change was coming, and nobody knew it but me. Dean suspected, perhaps; I noticed that he stood occasionally in his garden and looked not down at the plants he was tending, and not back at our house, but outward, toward the trees which hid the fence, and sometimes he looked long and curiously down the length of the driveway, as though wondering how it would feel to walk a long it to the gates. I watched him. On Saturday morning, after Jody Mills had come to tea, Dean looked at the driveway three times. Uncle Bobby was not well on Saturday morning, after tiring himself at tea, and stayed in his bed in his warm room next to the kitchen, looking out of the window beside his pillow, calling now qnd then to make Dean notice him. Even Bones was fretful- he was running up a storm, our mother used to say- and could not sleep quietly; all during those days when the change was coming Bones stayed restless. From deep sleep he would start suddenly, lifting his head as though listening, and then, on his feet and moving in one quick ripple, he ran up the stairs and across the beds and around through the doors and around the table and through the kitchen and out into the kitchen and out into the garden where he would slow, sauntering, and then pause to lick a paw or flick an ear and take a look at the day. At night we could hear him running, feel him cross our feet as we lay in bed, running up a storm. 

All the omens spoke of change. I woke up on Saturday morning and thought I heard them calling me; they want me to get up, I thought before I came fully awake and remember that they were dead; Dean never never called me to wake me up. When I dressed and came downstairs that morning he was waiting to make my breakfast, and I told him, "I thought I heard them calling me this morning." 

"Hurry with your breakfast," he said. "Its another lovely day." 

Later breakfast on the good mornings when j did not have to go into the village I had my work to do. Always on Wednesdays mornings I went around the fence. It was necessary for me to check constantly to be sure that the wires were not broken and the gates were securely locked. I could make the repairs myself, winding the wire back together where it had torn, tightening loose strands, and it was a pleasure to know, every Wednesday morning, that we were safe for another week. 

On Sunday mornings I examined my safeguards, the box of silver dollars I had buried by the creek, and the doll buried in the long field, and the book nailed to the tree in the pine woods; so long as they were where I had put them nothing could get in to harm us. I had always buried things, even when I was small; I remeber that once I quartered the long field and buried something in each quarter to make the grass grow higher as I grew taller, so I would always be able to hide there. I once buried six blue marbles in the creek bed to make the river beyond run dry. "Here us treasure for you to bury," Dean used to say to me when I was small, giving me a penny, or a bright ribbon; I had buried all my baby teeth as they came put one by one and perhaps someday they would grow as dragons. All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us. 

On Tuesdays and Fridays I went into the village, and on Thursdays, which was my most powerful day, I went into the big attic and dressed in their clothes. 

(This chapter is not done it is just really long and I have no time to get it all done)