Chapter Text
In 1899, Ignatius Becile had been six years old.
He had only been six years old.
Being so small- the action of it, the methodology, is work. Effort. Children that age are learning everything from simple concepts - math, shapes, size - to awful ones. What death is - what it entails.
Children that age are hungry for this world, and children that age have to piece together what reality is still.
As you age you forget that, or so Ignatius might think. That the younger someone is, the less they know about basic conceptual facts of reality.
In 1899 Ignatius was only six years old.
It had been summer. Late June or early July. His birthday had been coming up. His father had promised to get him something. His father…
His father would not be around all that much longer.
But see,
See,
In summer 1899, Ignatius Becile saw something that hadn’t made any sense.
It was in his father’s home. He must have been sitting on the floor, by the long green curtains. He had been all the way by the wall. He had been dressed up, he sort of recalls - nice clothes, Sunday clothes.
He recalls the ordeal of it. His father getting annoyed, as he squirmed in the clothing, threatening to take the belt to him if he didn't just let him dress him nicely. He remembers being confused because it wasn’t like they were attending church today, and he remembers just wanting to do anything else.
He had been six years old.
His Father had told him it was a special occasion. That he needed just to be good and listen.
Or…. Well, perhaps he had started on one of those old chairs? as he thinks about it. The details are—
Hazy.
Perhaps he had started on one of the chairs just slightly too high for him. Feet dangling on the ground. That seems more accurate, spliced together as the thoughts are. Sitting there in his Sunday vest and hat, feet swinging off the edge of the chair, that seems more correct, close to the reality of a situation that…
Shatters the more he thinks it over.
So, here is what he remembers:
So, here is what revisiting the topic yields:
Ignatius Becile had been six years old in 1899. His birthday was in several weeks. He had been sat on the floor by the curtains. Or perhaps he had started on the chair. But they've covered that, haven't they? But that's the easy part to know. To remember.
His father had…
He was only six years old. You have to understand that, you have to, he didn't know what was about to happen to him. He couldn’t understand it. An adult could hardly understand it, he tells himself, sometimes, but–
He—
You have to understand, he was only six years old.
He had been by the curtains, or on the chair. His father had gone down to the basement. He had never been allowed down, as a child. His aunt had all but stripped the house when he was younger. Nothing remains down there now but—
But his father had gone downstairs. He had not come upstairs alone. He had not left the building. He had not come upstairs alone.
Ignatius has inherited the house now. He’s gone back there - though not often, and never long) (He rents anywhere else, he can't stomach it, being there.)
He had gone back to the basement, checked the layout himself. The basement had one escape window. It still has only one escape window. The windowframe had been barred and bolted into the walling.
His father had not left the house. His father had not come up from the basement alone.
Thadeus Becile was— in the portrait Ignatius still has, in the one or two photos Ignatius still has, Thadeus Becile looks intimidating. Scowl painted across lips that mirror Ignatius’s own. His hair is cropped short, slicked back.
In his memories his father would tell him of dreams, and futures. His father would tell him how he was going to convince the world that Peter Walter was a fraud, that he just had to figure out how to do it. His father would tell him he was born for greatness.
His father in the photographs stares outward with furious eyes.
His father did not come up from the basement alone. Thadeus Becile had walked up the stairs, through into the sitting room, accompanied by,
So you have to understand, he was six,
Please.
Please, it won’t make sense, because it didn’t then, and even thinking about it makes his head spin, makes reality splinter, but he wasn’t old enough to know what he was seeing, he was only six.
He was only six and this was too much for any child to see.
His father did not come up from the basement alone. Thadeus Becile had walked up the stairs, through into the sitting room, accompanied by,
It.
It. The— woman?
The memory doesn't work right. His father's face is blanked out, in it, much of everything after so so so long since is smeared beyond recollection. But Ignatius thinks his father may have been smiling.
If memory serves, if disjointed, incorrect, from long ago, if memory serves, (and so confused), Thadeus Becile may have been smiling.
“Ignatius,” said his father, and he really must have been sitting in the chair, as they weren't by the curtains, or he thinks he wasn’t, when Thadeus spoke to him.
Ignatius remembers this bit, maybe, looking up at his father, “There is someone I'd like you to meet, Ignatius,”
And he'd gestured to
and Thadeus had gestured to
and his father had gestured to
Sorry.
He’s so sorry. It's like piecing together ashes of paper into the document they were before. Like trying to rebuild something out of photos from off angles, warped from rain and mold.
It was too tall. His father was not a particularly tall man. It towered next to him, like it had been stretched upward, warped upwards, and he doesn’t—
He doesn't know if that's true, he doesn’t, he was a small kid, or— so his aunt has said, he was small, short, maybe it was just tall, a tall— person, if it could be a person, or—
But it wasn’t only that, was it?
It had long hair. Matted hair. Manged hair. It’s hair was brown, long, it hung nearly to it’s waist — falling out in clumps, in spots. It was like the stray dog his father wouldn't let him feed. That bit he thinks he knows, maybe- plausibly? It's hard, it's so hard to line up what happened, but he remembers it’s hair, he remembers not knowing, not knowing why, looking up, thinking, ‘Why is your hair like that?’
And it’s hands, her? Her hands? They were— wrong. The fingertips swollen. Green— maybe, gangrenous or decayed? Retrospect is difficult, knowing if what he saw was a child's mindless panic or reality is impossible, but it’s hands were too long, and one of them was in his father’s own hand.
His father had said something, after there is someone I’d like you to meet, but the words have washed out, washed away, out of his mind, because its—
It’s face.
It’s face. The teeth, then, the fact they…
He hadn’t understood how it worked. Physically. How they stayed in it’s mouth. Because it’s mouth was open slightly, and it’s teeth were as long as his fingers, and pointed. Like the stray dogs. But more. And worse.
And there was green… green everywhere on it’s face. It’s eyes wept green. It’s mouth dripped green. It’s nose bled green. It’s face was surrounded by it. Covered in it. And it—
He doesn't know.
He doesn't remember.
It was in a red dress, he thinks. She was in a red dress.
And then his father said his last words, though he didn’t know it yet, neither of them knew it yet,
“Ignatius, boy,” He remembers jolting at the tone, at how angry he’d sounded, “Stop staring, you're being rude. Come over here and meet my wife.”
And then it—
It
It
It…
(He thinks, in retrospect, it may have been the word wife.)
He was still staring at it, her? the woman’s face, and—
It’s like drawing rocks through a sieve.
Sometimes.
All of this.
Remembering this.
He was only six years old.
Her face— cracked, open, and he had been right, that the teeth shouldn't have been able to fit how they did, because as soon as it’s mouth was open they didn't, they couldn't, it’s jaw—
twisted? changed? And it was all green, inside, just green, bright light, and,
and none of it makes sense.
Because that is impossible.
None of that is possible.
Because she was glowing green.
And he remembers the rest in…
And he remembers the rest in…
His father had cast a shadow against the wall, stark against the brightness.
The sound of ribs breaking, crunching, popping, a hand shaped like knives plunging into his father’s chest. Breaking him open.
There was warm liquid on Ignatius’s face. Warm liquid on Ignatius’s neck. Blood?
There was a pulsing, something, in her hand, in her hand? In her hand, bringing it to it’s teeth, eating it?
Eating it.
She was eating him. His father.
And it doesn't make sense, and that doesn’t happen, that's not possible.
Because even if his father had been keeping some poor woman in the basement, she— She couldn't have ripped open his chest like the coroner's report said. The bite marks against his flesh as she turned back for a second bite were not written down as human, instead as unknown animal.
And none of it makes sense.
And he remembers being by the curtains then. Then. And seeing red all over himself. All over his hands. His vest. His white shirt. He remembers falling. Falling back, hitting his head on the wall, finally sobbing, then, as he finally uncovered his mouth, and then it—
looked at him?
It’s eyes, her eyes, were green, only green, and she, it, she stared.
His father’s body had hit the floor, unmoving, as it stared, as she reached towards him with bloody arms, and he—
He thought it was going to—
None of it makes sense.
None of this could have happened.
A woman with matted brown hair, so thin as she was, could not have ripped the heart from his father’s ribs with her hands alone. And no person could rend open a man’s chest with teeth like that, strip more meat from it, not as how the body was found.
None of it could have happened like that.
None of it could have happened like that.
The police paperwork says unknown animal.
But Ignatius Becile thought it would eat him too.
Maybe it grabbed him.
He doesn’t know.
He had bloody handprints all over him when he stumbled into the neighbors yard. That's what the paperwork says, of the police investigation.
He was a child found with blood all over him, bloody handprints all over him.
You have to understand, please, that he was six years old, and watched, or thought he watched, a woman kill and eat his father.
You have to understand he probably watched a woman his father kidnapped kill the man who tortured her.
You have to understand there is no reasonable explanation for all the green light, for the eating.
He was only six years old.
He ran, he thinks, or— he might have ran, he remembers the door handle, it had already been bloody, as he turned it. He hadn’t been able to grip it. Turn it well.
He had been so small.
He remembers walking down the path, he remembers sobbing, tripping, at one point. He remembers his hands were bleeding into the blood already all over them when he stood back up.
He remembers the neighbor's gardener seeing him.
He doesn’t remember much else after that for a long time.
He had only been six years old.
He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know what happened.
He just knows he saw a monster.
He wishes he knew more. What actually happened. What that was.
But he can’t.
And he had only been 6 years old.