Chapter Text
Claudia kind of expected it to be a bigger hullabaloo, leaving the Old House.
It wasn’t as dramatic as she thought it would be, moving out a little further. But there was no noise, really, no commotion about them leaving. For that matter, the Old House barely held onto the three of them. In fact, the poor thing must have been ready for all three to let her to rot. Their piles of books and bags went right up into the moving truck, and Claudia went into the car. Old House spat them out right quick.
She didn’t fight it. They’re going to the New Place, and that was that.
The source of the change was obvious. She heard Daddy Lou say it himself– whispering to Papa Les, when they both thought she was asleep.
“I’ve always been more than willing to support you.”
“We are not livin’ off your pension.” Through gritted teeth.
With just enough strain to sound conflicted. "If you would but give a little, mon cher...”
“Azalea fell through. Is what it is.”
And so that meant the Old House had to go. Bankruptcy, gettin’ fired, layin’ off employees, what funny words. No more music at night in the Azalea’s lobby, watching Papa Les kick out the piano player to show off his new groove. No more hot foods served to every human that came to sing and sin, to wait by the wayside in the arms of comfort and sleek jazz. And no more creaky floorboards, no velvety stairs, no big beds or bigger, dustier bookshelves. The New Place would be far away, and perfect. The money would grow on the trees. Or something.
Claudia would have to find a brand new hiding spot for her diaries.
When she bugged him enough for details, Daddy Lou vaguely referred to the New Place as ‘The Palace’ . Or, ‘The Pink Palace’. Then he’d puncture that epithet with a dreamy sort of “oh, you gon’ juuust love it.”. Papa Les was no more useful when it came to a description– “it’s surrounded by forest, ma puce, plenty of space for you to get lost.”. Right.
The car ride came and went, Claudia lost in rereading her own handwriting. From chicken scratch to loopy cursive to chicken scratch again– going on ten years of work. As she leafed through the pages, soft in her mind in the backseat, she wondered whether she should be sad. Sad was the appropriate thing to be, when someone died. It almost felt like Old House was dying. Passing away. It was passing out of their hands at least, and so was all of their town; far removed was she from the place where she was made, and the only captured traces of that origin remained in her own writing. She wasn’t missing it, though. That was the poison of it all: Claudia didn’t feel much about the move, at all. Not even the energy to wonder if such a vague, grey emptiness was normal.
As the car pulled up to the wilted, snow-covered gardens of the New Place, walled in by spiky pine trees and uneven hills, Claudia swallowed that emptiness down and with it, shut the diary. This was her third.
The movers were quick about everything. Boxes out of the truck, boxes in the house. A little eye-to-eye talking and some sotto voce persuasion and the coffins– weird little statues with each of their likenesses– were in the house, too. Thanks, Papa Les. It was off Daddy Lou’s sideways stare, the beginning of a grin pulling at his lips, that Papa Les smacked a bill and some coins into the hand of one of ‘em, and shut the door. Very nearly slammed it. He had a bad habit of doing that.
That was it. Frighteningly, maddeningly fast, from Old House to New Place.
She could unpack her room later. Claudia stuck all three diaries under the mattress, and headed for the door.
New Place was indeed named Pink Palace . Every wooden plank in the cluster of apartments and houses was filled with frigid air, that made the paint peel off the sides and the pink really look a bit more salmon. It was faded, a little battered, and she supposed that was what made Daddy Lou and Papa Les like it. Daddy Lou liked fancy things. Papa Les liked old things. Claudia half-tripped, half-skipped down the steps and went straight for those large iron gates– only stopping to grab a branch from a dying bush and scrape it of its orange leaves. It made an uneven Y, the short end scraggly from her uneven tear. She stared over it for a second. Would it still work?
This was an old tradition she could still afford herself. Thirteen was so very close to being a lady. Claudia closed her eyes, stretched her arms out in front of herself, and waited.
Sharp tug to the left, and around. She followed, hurriedly, tripping over her own feet, tearing out the gates. Papa Les was right, it was woodsy in the area, and as the makeshift dowsing rod dragged her along by its magic she took note of the roots. They were deep in the ground, every now and then billowing through the pavement or the cobblestone, pushing up bits of earth and the carved rock. The trees seemed to be mingling with the architecture.
Over stairs, around a gnarled tree that looked more like a stump and a branch, up the little incline the dowsing rod lead her. Across the brown-mossy brick wall they went (and that she took in skips), then from there onto the earthen pathway of one of the many hills. This one was uncovered by snow, but decorated by that flickering light you only see when the beautiful sun is weaving through winters quilt of grey-dark-grey clouds.
From the rocks up the hill, a stone the size of a fist clattered down. It hit the ground a few paces in front of Claudia. She stopped.
“Somebody there?”
No answer. Claudia took a small step back and thought of the mattress at home without sheets on it, without a blanket. Covered in boxes. “Papa Les, that you?”
Still no answer. The rock wasn’t heavy. She picked it up easy, and tossed it right back, watching it clatter against the bigger rocks. Barely had it settled when she heard a howl, grating and metallic like the swing of an automatic door against city cement. A dog. There was a dog up there. A slight grin crossed Claudia's her face; she’d tell her fathers about that, when she got back. Papa Les would hate the comparison.
The dog came out, then; being a slightly mangy thing, with sharp ears and patchy hair dotting its brown and black backside. It’d clearly been aggravated by the stone, but the unsteady way it padded down the hillside generated no fear within Claudia, only another small step back to avoid the splash of mud the dog made as it landed on the path. Not blocking her, behind her. It cocked its head to the side. As if to say, ‘you threw a stone at me, now what?’
“I didn’t know it was you,” Claudia said indignantly, and the dog half-opened a mouth full of rotting teeth to pant. “Oh, you don’t talk. Pity,” she frowned. “That’s boring.”
Mouth still hanging open, the dog stared up at her, with expectant orange eyes.
Interesting. Claudia bent down to its height to look at them closer, folding her long skirt around her knees. “Ain’t never seen a dog with eyes like those...” She tapped a finger to the side of her head, to her own, unnaturally pink ones. “Did y’get em custom made?”
The dog panted wider and wider until it was almost smiling, and a long flappy pink tongue rolled out of its stinky mouth. She straightened up.
“Guess so.”
Claudia corrected her dowsing rod and continued on, willfully ignoring the click of big paws against gravel behind her. The dog could be someone on the property’s business, maybe– then again, she hadn’t met anyone on the property enough to know. Further down the path the two of them went, the girl and the dog, up the hill and back down again, through rows upon rows of close-grown trees that looked like hands. The leaves were starting to blow with the wind, harsh dry things striking the muddy ground with force right before Claudia’s boots hit them. And so her dowsing rod led them both, girl and dog, through the old apple orchard, past the wheelbarrow with its broken baskets, straight to a fairy circle.
The dog, who she’d momentarily forgotten, set to a loud and baleful howl. Claudia jumped, caught her foot on a mushroom, and stumbled backwards into a tree stump. The dog’s jaw clicked shut, howl cut off, and she threw her bag to its feet, huffy. “You scared me,” she grumbled. “Were you trying to do that?”
No answer.
“You know, I really thought you could talk.” She crossed her arms over her front, dowsing rod hanging over her side. “If you could, you’d tell me where that old well is. I’ve heard my daddies talkin’ about it. Just haven’t found it yet.”
The dog paused as if to listen, and then gently stretched one paw in front of the other. Paw by paw it went, until both its head and paws were low to the ground, slowly wagging tail up in the air. And then it flopped, to a full lay, and started panting again.
“Really,” Claudia said, filling her voice with as much sarcasm as she could muster, and the dog wagged a little bit harder. Then there came the sound of a horn, behind her, and both she and the dog turned their heads just in time to see a dirt bike come careening down the path– a bike with a girl atop it squeezing the handles for dear life. “À ta gauche, à ta gauche– ” she shouted as she got closer, and then the dirt bike was catching Claudia in the chest and dragging the both of them around the stump, just to the side of the dog. For the third time that day, she found herself stumbling over her feet.
Claudia recovered herself, brushed down her front. She’d narrowly avoided falling flat on her ass– she got the strange feeling the dog was going to laugh at her, if she did, so she’d really tried not to. The dead apple orchard grew silent again, the red-head girl staring through her sweaty curls at Claudia.
She was wearing a red dress that was just barely down to her knees, but they were scuffed and skinned all the same, giving her legs a blotchy look as if she was finger painted. Her figure was a little pointy, like an arrow, in a way she hadn’t really seen before. The two of them sized each other up like that, until Claudia put a hand on her hip.
In her best French, she said, “Pourquoi tu m’as presque renversé?” Why did you almost run me over?
The girl’s eyes lit up mischievously. She laid the dirt bike against the tree-stump and sidestepped it. Muddy sneakers to go with a red dress. Again, interesting.
“Americaine?”
“Oui,” Claudia said, and pursed her lips. Yes. “Peut-être.” Maybe.
“Your French is ugly,” the girl said, like she’d been waiting her entire life just to say that to someone. Her whole face broke out into a smile, like a sliver of the moon lit up by sunshine, and it crept across her face until it devoured her features. “Very ugly.”
That didn’t bruise Claudia's ego one bit. Not at all.
“You liked it,” Claudia said, and waved one end of her dowsing rod at the girl. “Look at how big your smile is. Besides, you don’t go around stalking people. Not on bad bikes that need a tune-up.”
“You have a learner’s accent,” the girl replied shortly, “and your English is Southern. I hear more of that then the French.” Insult for insult.
“Y’almost hit me on that thing,” she retorted in no more than a mumble. “My Daddy’s Southern. New Orleans. Papa’s from France.”
The girl reached out slowly and brushed the tip of her finger over one of the dowsing rod. “And they taught you how to water witch with your stick?”
Claudia drew it back. “Taught myself. Always did it when I was real little. Our Old House was by a river.” By enough water that when she’d started drowning rats to get away from the fights, the water carried them back to shore. A flood of rat bodies for every yelling match her fathers had. She twirled the rod in her hand, out of the girl’s reach. “It’s a dowsing rod, by the way. That your dog?”
The girl’s head jerked to the dog which was now sitting behind her. Its tail started thumping the ground eagerly. “No,” the girl said, and then, “Sometimes, when he’s cold, he will come in and wag at my door until I give him my carpet to lay on. I toss him meat when I cook it. And he’ll do friendly things… like bring me dead birds and dying squirrels.”
Dead rats were dancing around Claudia’s head. “Sounds codependent.”
The girl stared at her for a moment, and then pulled off the stump. “Move from where you’re standing, ‘Water Witch’. You’ll fall into the well.”
“My name’s Claudia,” she said, more out of obligation than offense, and moved. "Last name's too long. I don't usually bother."
The girl dropped to her knees– adding dirt to the bruises, blotches, and scratches– and swept a thick pile of loam out of the middle of the fairy ring. There was a metal cover underneath. Before Claudia could offer help, she’d set two hands to the iron pull and yanked it with all her might. It came away with a creak.
“Madeleine,” the girl said. “Madeleine Éparvier. They say that this well is so deep your feet will never touch bottom. But if you did, you might see stars when you look up. The night in the middle of the day.”
“Never heard of something like that.” Claudia stooped down to look with her, at the darkly encrusted walls of the well, old and rotting and dripping with filth. Moss and lichen all over. “Madeleine.” She tasted the name on her tongue, thought about it. “Pretty name.”
“Pretty girl,” Madeleine said, and smiled again. Claudia wished she could keep that little lip-curl in a jar forever, so full of light it was. “‘Claudia’ is not a name with a nice meaning. Was that your Southern father or your French father?”
Claudia knocked a pebble into the well and watched it fall for an endless time. Her own blue skirt was getting muddy, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. That’s what the washing machine was for, right? “Neither,” she replied. “I was an adoption.” She felt eyes on her, and she avoided them. Claudia didn’t want to see pity.
When she finally willed herself to look at Madeleine again, the girl had turned away. In her open palm was a handful of more pebbles, one by one taking a flight into the depth of the well. “It’s surprising that Madame Florence let you move into the Palace,” Madeleine said. “She doesn’t take to children.”
“Doesn’t she?” Claudia said incredulously. “You’re a child.”
Madeleine shrugged. “I’m an exception and I’m not meant to talk about it. C'est amusant, that's all. You're a deviation.”
Suddenly, carrying across the hills, there was Daddy Lou’s voice. Faint, but she could hear that twang from a mile, sweet but sharp expectance all in one. “Claudia!” he called. “Come in, Claudia. It’s gettin’ late.”
“Someone is calling you,” Madeleine said. “It sounds like your Southern father.”
“He’ll eat you if he hears I’ve given him that as a nickname,” Claudia responded, if only to see the way Madeleine’s freckles wrinkled up with her confusion. “That’s Daddy Lou. Short for Louis.”
Madeleine looked at her expectantly.
"French one I call Papa Les," she explained.
"Ah!" Madeleine said. "That's good, I don't know him."
And before she had time to question that, there was her name called again, same light accent, more urgently. “Claudia!”
Madeleine stood. The dog, who Claudia had all but forgotten until then, stood too, to curl around Madeleine’s legs. “Monsieur Louis. Okay, I will tell him when I see him that I met his adoptive daughter at an old, smelly well.”
“You do that,” Claudia said, also standing, “if I don’t get back to him first.”
“I have the bike,” Madeleine said matter-of-factly, and righted the rickety thing to prove her point. Claudia took note of the ornaments on it; faded paper, a large tooth, a misshapen stone, a cracked shell, all threaded through and tied to the handlebars. Madeleine followed her stare and grinned. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Water Witch Claudia.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” Claudia replied, and meant it.
“Oh, and, put something on your hands,” Madeleine said, right before her foot hit the pedals.
“For?”
“Your ‘dowsing’ stick is poison oak.” And then she was off, careening down the hill at a speed that should’ve been terrifying.
Claudia watched her go, and then turned to the dog, who had been there all the while. He (if it was a he, she was taking Madeleine’s word for it) was back on his belly, laying flat with his nose to the mud. He looked up, rolled his orange pupils to the side, and buried his face in the ground with a huff. It almost looked like he was shaking his head at her.
“Claudia!” Louis called again, and he nearly sounded a little frantic. “It’s gonna rain, come inside.”
She dropped the dowsing stick on top of the well, right in the middle of the fairy ring. Claudia brushed her hand off on her blouse and began the walk down the hill. The long walk to her new home.
⚉ ⚉ ⚉ ⚉ ⚉ ⚉
The New Place had lots and lots of windows. Claudia was currently staring out of one, neatly arranging the packets of seeds against the sill. They’d been the last things packed and the first things unpacked: little packets are easily shoved into pockets and carried around in raincoats. It was a wonder they hadn’t lost any of them.
“Nearly fell down a well, yesterday,” Claudia said. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder or she’d see the same sight she’d been seeing for the past three hours. Papa Les, waist-deep in the most boring paperwork one could imagine, writing signatures and summaries over and over. The scratch of his pen was annoying enough. She could even tell when he was scrawling out the loopy L’s of his first and last name. How awful was that?
“Hm?” His voice drifted over to her, warm and bassy and removed. “So many close calls, Claudia, one would think you are vying for trouble.” He was speaking the way he did when distracted, all of his words rushing into one another like a waterfall.
Pumpkin seeds went next to tomato went next to small packet of fertilizer. “Could’ve died,” Claudia added, as casually as possible. Jalapeño went next to cucumber and now the sill was full. She stepped back. “Stood right on top of it, too.”
“How nice,” Lestat said vaguely. Skrr-ka-rrrrtch. Another L. L for Lestat de Lioncourt. When he was in a good mood and without a tired wrist, it was Lestat du Lac de Lioncourt. Three L’s.
“I want to go out,” Claudia said, because the best way to entreat Papa Les was with a direct demand. “It’s raining, Papa Les. Perfect weather for gardening, don’t you think?”
“Perfect if you’re a frog with pollen glands attached,” Lestat sighed, self-satisfaction running all throughout his voice like honey. Another stack of signed deeds joined a growing pile to his left elbow. “Four more. Claudia,” this time his voice and eyes were directed at her, “my busy bee without a bonnet. Rain makes mud, and mud makes a mess, and these mildewy kitchen floors are already a chore of mine without boot prints.” He tilted his pen at her. “Wash your dress.”
Claudia stepped away from the sink, hands bunching at her skirt. “I’m tryin’ to make this house look like something too! Look, what if someone new comes by? They’ll see a big, beautiful garden, ‘stead of a sad house. Ain’t that why we bought the seeds? Ain’t that why we moved?”
Lestat was purposefully dodging her gaze, although the ink on his L ’s had gotten a little heavier. “We moved to reaccommodate, my dear.”
“No.” Her hands met her hips. “We moved for a clean slate. And it ain’t gonna look clean if you leave the house lookin’ ugly!”
“Claudia.” And there went the pen, hitting the table right over the next pile of Important Things to Sign, making the wine glass on it rattle. When Papa Les spoke again, his voice came out stilted, followed by a pause at every word. “I do not have time to playfight with you. You have clothes to fold, boxes to unpack– so very many boxes.”
“Great,” Claudia said, arms crossed now and not giving an inch. “That sounds so, so excitin’, Papa Les.”
Lestat fixed her with a very blank gaze, for just a moment. And then it softened. “Here,” he said, reaching underneath his chair. “Another girl from the complex left this on our porch today. If you unpack, your friend will no longer have to send you… secret messages.” And Claudia reached out, tentatively but curiously, for a small, cold bundle wrapped in wet newspaper.
The first thing in it was a note, well preserved for the bleed of water through all the layers of paper.
Claudia,
Voici ce que j’ai retrouvée dans une de les salles de Mme. Florence!
Chouette, non? I think it looks familiar…
Madeleine E.
The doll was smiling back up at her with sewn on lips, dark pink against her warm brown skin. She had little ringlets just to her shoulders of black yarn, curled and pulled into little puffs, and a red bow just above her left ear. Her button-eyes were a deep pink. And she was wearing Claudia’s blue blouse and dress, with the dark red jacket.
“Your new friend,” Papa Les said. “Who is she?”
“A girl named Madeleine.” Claudia wrapped the doll back up, thought better of it, and added the wet newspapers to one of Lestat’s pile. “She’s French. Younger’n me, too.” As she stepped around his chair, she added. “I’m too old for dolls, don’t you think?”
Daddy Lou was next on the list, as the only other somewhat-living thing in the house. The door to his room was kept ajar by the wedge of one red book that she recognized immediately as Interview with the Vampire, with it’s brainmatter-esque cover and four white stripes. Her father told her early on it was far too gory for her to read.
She later learned the real reason: it was gory, but he’d named her after one of the characters in it. Interview Claudia, that poor girl, died at the end of the story. Her and her daddy (a man named Lucas Bloom) parted from each others lives perpetually angry at each other, one in life and the other in death.
Claudia toed open the door, dragging little Claudia behind her. The doll’s booted feet barely touched the floor.
“Hi, Daddy Lou,” she said.
So this would be the dark room. It was a mess of boxes, currently, and it had three problematic windows crowding the small space with light. Some of the light was omitted by the mountains of boxes Louis had yet to unpack– Claudia made a mental note to tell Papa Les he was being hypocritical– but the rest of the light was being tamped down by Daddy Lou himself.
She’d seen his dark room at the Old House multiple times, even got a talking-to for leaving the door open too wide, once. This one was still in the set-up process, so she could push the door wide without consequence. It swung closed behind her and bounced off Interview, creaking all the way.
Louis was hanging up blackout curtains and ignoring Claudia in the process. Nothing but the rhythmic tac-tac-tac of his hammer and the eventual clack! of a new slat. First the wooden planks, then the heavy, dark drapes.
Little Claudia went in between her crossed arms, doll head bumping against Claudia’s shoulders. “Daddy Lou.”
As if waking up from a dream, Daddy Lou went, “Hmm?”
“I said ‘hi’.”
“Hey, pumpkin,” Louis said, a smile coloring his voice, without really looking at her. Clack! went the darkened wooden slat against the big light of the window. He had fast hands. The room was getting darker and darker by the second. Louis half-turned to pick up another slat, and paused. “And… mini-pumpkin. Pumpkin sprout.”
Claudia lifted Little Claudia’s felt paw of a hand and waved it at him. “Does Papa Les know you’re destroying the house?”
“Thought you were too old for those,” her dad replied, waved back to the doll, and then turned to hammer another nail in.
“You’ve got Interview stuck in the door.”
“Well, I finished re-reading it! For about the… sixth time.” Louis’ voice was always warm when he was happy. Sort of like Papa Les, except his voice was just that deep and rich– when Daddy Lou was happy, he was practically purring. And nothing made him more happy than his photographs.
Claudia kicked a box aside. Little Claudia swung to the left with the lift of her foot. “Would Mr. Molloy like that? Being stuck in a ratty old door?”
Louis sighed. “He’d be happy to know Interview is swapped out with Hate and Ashbury, for once. Took me a while to get the taste of his biographicals.” He turned and came down the ladder, for proper this time, and leaned back against it. “So hello again, Claudia and Little Claudia. I doubt you’re here on account of my readin’.” One of his eyebrows quirked up gently. “So it’s dinner time?”
Little Claudia waved again, all too happy, and Claudia shoved the doll in the pocket of her skirt. “Where’s the gardening tools?”
Louis’ other eyebrow went up, just as slowly. Oh she hated when he did that. He jerked a thumb towards the boarded up window behind him. “You hear that rain out there, lil’ lady.”
She raised her eyebrows too, but trying to keep them in her hairline the way Louis did took too much energy. “It’s only rain, Daddy Lou. I’m not the wicked Witch of the… West, I won’t melt.”
“Compelling,” Louis chirped as he turned back around, picking up another two boards. “What’d your papa say, hon?”
Little Claudia, released from Claudia’s pocket, is then taken by her littler shoulders and given a good, strong shake. “Don’t you daaaare playfight with me, Claudia du Lac!” Claudia growled at her doll self in her best French accent. “You go unpack youuuur boxes, Claudia de Lioncourt!”
“Hm,” Louis said, and picked up his hammer. “Sounds like you don’t need them garden tools after all.”
“But I’m bored.”
“I know.” Tac-tac-tac. “But you do need to get your part of the house set up. Which includes all those boxes you got,” around came the hammer, waving in a languid circle, “up in that room of yours.”
Claudia considered sticking out her tongue at Daddy Lou’s back for a second and then decided against it. Instead she sat, propping her boots up on one of the boxes, and Little Claudia between her knees. “Why did we come here, anyway?”
“Our landlady is a one Mrs. Florence,” Louis said, somewhat robotically. “That’s my mama. We haven’t seen each other in a while, but when she heard I was sellin’ the Azalea, she offered me the place. Hoped it’d be a chance for me to get my act straight.”
“Grandmama,” Claudia said.
Her dad chuckled. “The one ‘n only.”
Silence fell for a little while, only interrupted by Louis’ steady hammer, the slats clacking, and Lestat humming to himself from the kitchen. Claudia sat with Little Claudia in her lap, the two of them whispering and wondering to each other, about the garden they’d plant, about her pretty pink eyes, that weird dog, about Madeleine. Her palm itched from the poison oak, but not so much. Madeleine warned her just in time, and besides, Little Claudia’s tiny feltpaws made it feel that much better.
“Com’ere,” Louis said, eventually, just as Claudia was about to start yawning on the uncomfortable cushion of the boxes and nodding off. When she rose, he handed her a small notepad, complete with a little yellow pencil, the kind that the movers were using to check items off their list.
“A notepad,” Claudia said, because she was still on the verge of sleep.
“Should the princess of the Lac-Court household find she is still bored,” Louis clasped his hands together, grinning, “I thought maybe she could go take inventory for me. This house is ‘bout a hundred-fifty years old. Four times my age.”
Claudia put her hands on her hips, again. Little Claudia’s head got in the way, smushed against her side. “So?”
“So? Windows, doors, nooks ‘n crannies, all that… take a look.” Louis waved the notepad out of her reach and then lowered it back to her hand. Claudia closed her hand around the notebook and his grin inched a little wider. “Shut the darkroom door on your way out, pumpkin. Don’t hit Mr. Molloy too hard.”
Inventory. Okay, she could do that.
Little Claudia came along with. The darkroom-to-be hallway connected to the kitchen, but ended in an odd little closet, one that opened with yet another rickety door to the largest foyer she’d ever seen, complete with sketchy staircase. A matted, thin rug lead the way through the foyer to the next set of spidery, maze-like hallways. It had an annoying lump in it– one equally long and thin air-bubble. The unfortunate result of the rug being too long for its stretch across the first floor foyer.
Claudia, naturally, stomped on it.
It didn’t go away. In fact, it seemed to dance out from underneath her feet and gleefully split into twos. Two bubbles. She stomped on those too, with enough vigor to make the floor of the house shake. The bubble reverted one cheeky lump, settled right between her boots. Even Little Claudia’s permanently perfect face looked annoyed.
She studied the windows, doing inventory like Daddy Lou asked. Nothing was particularly interesting except the structure of them, an intertwined lace of metalwork like the lines on a palm. With a few wipes she cleared a space for her eyes and for Little Claudia’s eyes, and they both stayed there staring out of the window until a large, dusty droplet landed smack in the middle of her notepad.
Five creaky doors so far. Twelve leaky windows.
Next came a series of bathrooms that took Claudia forever to find. Maybe Daddy Lou just wanted her off his back, sure, but this was an expedition worth taking: dirty water full of silverfish. Gross, but enchanting. Claudia flipped up two pages and smashed them with the back of the notepad, before skipping out of the slowly filling tub one shoe at a time.
Downstairs were more commonplace oddities: a rusty water heater that glowed back at her when she turned the lights off, a cobwebby lightswitch that shot half the power– she only noticed the “DO NOT TOUCH!” label after Papa Les yelped at the lightbulb popping– and an old room with a box of old photos. Daddy Lou’s, from before she was born. There was Papa Les in a few of them, in gardens and on walkways, always solo and smiling. If Claudia sifted far enough to the bottom, she would see the Man.
The Man was a photo that Daddy Lou couldn’t let go of, even if it made Papa Les scoff ‘oh, please.’ every time he saw it. It was old, WAY older than she was, perhaps one of the first photos recovered from that long-ago housefire, when Papa Les and Daddy Lou lived out in Paris for a little bit. The Man was a grayscale photo– yes, that old– a young man with a sharp, smooth face and curly hair that kissed at his neck. He had a lithe body squared out by a fancy suit, exactly the kind Daddy Lou liked, and he was blurry. As if Louis had snapped his picture in a hurry, and still decided to print it out. He fixed the camera with a wide-eyed stare, with no more than a shoulder in frame.
He was an ex of Daddy Lou’s, she’d figured out. Papa Les must be jealous. It was interesting that Louis had not one picture of Molloy in the thousands of scenery, couples, Lestat– but the Man was there, and his eyes followed Claudia around the frame when she uncovered him. Like she thought, he was at the bottom of the box.
Claudia closed the box up and sat Little Claudia beside it, watching the doll flop around and smile in her hands. With that she went back to her notepad and eyed the last thing she’d yet to inventory: an incredibly mundane painting of a sad man. Short, tightly curled hair just like Daddy Lou, sitting on the edge of a cliff with a deep frown on his face, and a little blue bird on his shoulder.
One sad boy with blue bird, Claudia wrote down on her notepad.
That was it. Fifty windows, fourty-three doors, one creaky boiler, twelve dead silverfish, and one sad painting right above the photo of the Man.
Claudia turned back to the box and found Little Claudia was nowhere to be seen.
“Papa Les?” she called softly, automatically, because she was near the kitchen again and she’d been expecting the doll to disappear anyway, snatched up by one of her dads for inspection. But there was no answer, no hum, not even the scratch of a pen. The New Place was being oddly silent.
Claudia stooped to her knees and checked under the table, over the table, and then under one more time, just in case. It didn’t provide answers; Little Claudia had all but disappeared– at least until Claudia turned around.
There the doll was. At the intersection of wall and one annoyingly large moving box, she was laid sweetly against the floor, one hand over her chest and the other splayed out behind her little soft head. As if resting. Or dead. Claudia tilted her head to better see the angle and walked over. A quick shove and the box– probably another one of Papa Les’ folded up music stands– fell to the side. Behind it was a door, covered by the same ugly paisley wallpaper that coated the entire room.
“Papa?” Claudia called, lifting her voice above the pitter-patter of the rain. “You got any idea where this door goes?”
And here came the same strained, deep voice, over a rustle of paper, pulling out the accent on every vowel– “Papa is still working, my little naturalist.”
“It’s locked.”
Lestat refocused away from the whiny tone she pitched to at the very last second, contemplated throwing this last Azalea deed into the trash can, and decided against it last minute. Claudia’s little fist hit the wall. Two solid taps.
“Pleeease?”
A four-minute-shuffle through every single house key later and Lestat fished out a key that looked sufficiently gothic. He presented it to Claudia, one hand on his hip, and watched as she turned from him to the wallpaper with a forlorn look.
“Ma puce,” Papa Les said, with just a hint of warning, “I really have to finish these papers, alright?”
“Wallpapers first and then I won’t ask again.” The entreatment came along with Little Claudia’s paws pressed together by Claudia’s thumbs, a sad little plea that made her permanent smile a little sad. Claudia said, as woefully as possible, “Pretty, pretty please, Papa Les?”
And so Lestat knelt down, took the key, and destroyed the wallpaper of the New Place in three rips. It fell away gently from the secret door, like a dying leaf would, and without another glance to the Claudias he sprang upon it, and unlocked it.
Beyond the secret door was nothing but a wall of bricks, cemented firmly together.
“Bricks,” Claudia said, hugging Little Claudia to her close. “There’s nothin’ beyond them.”
“A servant door, passageway for trays, something or the other.” Papa Les seemed a little more at peace now that he was away from all the deeds, although Claudia noticed he kept his back firmly to the photo box. “The architects that came through took care to close it when the house was divided. At least,” and he spared a glance at the cement grit underneath his nails, “that’s what I’ll assume.”
“But that’s–”
“Claudia,” Papa Les said, with every single syllable carefully placed. “I have to go back to the deeds. If your daddy won’t help me, then I have to get them done.” And in her silence, he leaned down and gave her a light kiss on the forehead. “Be good. Don’t tear the bricks up.”
The mood was a little heavy at dinner, but if anyone noticed, no one said it. Louis took the chair right next to Little Claudia, kept his face a peaceful smile, and let Lestat dance all around him, his daughter, and the doll. Papa Les was ladling out his latest creation, which was a pack of sausage he’d bought mixed with whatever vegetables they’d snatched from the Old House’s garden. Daddy Lou, in a pinch (and at Papa Les’ request), had added in some improvised spice, and then thrown a wink to Claudia, as if to say ‘got your back’. The problem being, Claudia didn’t have an appetite. Whatsoever.
Papa Les’ ladle dipped into the fry skillet and dipped out, hovering right over Claudia’s plate. As he spooned up just a little extra for Little Claudia, he sang,
Oh, ma petite pauvrette
Qui es tellement belle
Je te sert des andouillettes
Et de glace à la… cannelle
“I’m not very hungry, Daddy Lou,” Claudia said as lightly as she possibly could, and watched Louis’ posture stiffen just a little bit.
“Not much I can do, lil’ lady,” Louis said, cupping his chin. Lestat came by with a ladle for him, still lost in his own song, and the two met each other for a quick kiss. “Your Papa and I have been swappin’ Andouille sausage recipes since we met. Can’t deny him an experiment with the new kitchen.”
Claudia pursed her lips a little at that. Another inside joke she wouldn’t understand. “Daddy L–”
“I’ll go buy food once we’re all settled in,” he cut in, eyes following Lestat to his end of the table. “You still have unpacking to do, and so do I.” Louis budged her plate to her with every word, nearer and nearer by the second. “Try the peppers. You’ll like it.”
“I don’t have any culinary energy left in me for tonight,” Lestat interjected, around a mouthful of the vegetable-sausage mixture. “Sausage or bed, chou.”
Claudia took Little Claudia’s felt paw in hers and gave it the tiniest of squeezes, just above the rim of the table. They’re trying to poison me.
She did go up to bed after all, her plate stocked away in the barely running refrigerator. Because she hadn’t unpacked her sheets, the mattress was cold, and bare, with nothing but a sleeping back to make up for it. Surreptitiously she checked the pillow for bugs, the mattress for bugs, and then fished between mattress and bedframe for her diaries.
Still there. Untouched.
As Little Claudia lay against her chest, smiling into Claudia’s collarbone, Claudia wrote.
Dear Diary,
I’ve been tryin’ to talk to you about the move, because I think I’m s’pposed to feel some grand feeling about it all, and I really don’t. It’s interesting, at least. We brought all this memorabilia, but I thought we was gettin’ away from it all! So why is it all drug in boxes with us?
This house is just as creaky as the Old House, diary, full of bugs and spiders too. The only problem is that the New Place has so much empty space. There is everywhere and nowhere to hide.
Papa is stressed. Daddy is pretendin’ not to be. And me? I’m a little bored, diary. A lottle bored, to be honest. Was hopin’ to see Madeleine today and ask her about Little Claudia, but I could barely get outside without one of my daddies blowin’ a gasket about the mud or the light or whatnot. They’re all stressed about sellin’ the Azalea off. Oh well. Stuff I’m ‘too little to understand’.
I don’t feel the energy to write too much, but I s’ppose I’ll be back tomorrow.
Sleep tight, Diary. Love you.
<3 Claudia