Chapter Five

Todd and Fiona Matheisson lived in a gated community named Egret Landing. It was one of those planned communities in the middle of what had once been farm land, and before that the primordial swamp of the Everglades, that grew up inorganically from the countryside. A circular formation of large white houses, all with the same basic architecture - large drive-way in front, no porch, pool. The residents hardly knew each other. It was pointless to. Everyone worked in the city, a thirty minute drive away, and half of the residents would leave in the next year, to be replaced with new ones. This was Florida, the Transient State.

 

Their house was in the inner rim, where the houses were slightly smaller, and slightly cheaper. It was located, as all of the houses were, in its own cul-de-sac, hidden down twisting, dead-end roads in the labyrinthine community.

 

Craig felt uncomfortable as the taxi driver pressed on and on and on, inexorably towards the center of the maze. There, danger lurked, and darkness. Here there be monsters. He wanted to shout to the man to tell him to turn around, just turn around, and take him back home, to the safety of monsters of his own creation. He couldn’t. The terror froze him and he stared at the cloned houses that were drawing him in and blocking his escape. He’d never free himself. He’d never leave.

 

The taxi finally stopped in front of the house. It was a large white house with a large garage gaping at the front lawn. The actual entryway was hidden. Only a path, well lit with tasteful lawn lights which donned the disembodied heads of reindeer glowing red for Christmas, marked where the unwary traveler should search.

 

Craig was immobile. The decorations would have been considered tasteful and, even, muted to most people. Yet, Craig’s eyes darted manically to the wreath on the streetlamp, the white reindeer grazing, the icicle lights dripping from the storm drains. He was searching for something that would send him away, some sign. Some omen.

 

“Sir, is this the place?” the cabbie asked. The tone in his voice, still polite, but strained, showed that he was a newly immigrated man, probably illegally, but was being pushed to his limits of patience. Craig jumped.

 

“Oh, yes, yes. Sorry. They all look the same,” he said.

 

The cabbie snorted a laugh.

 

“Yeah,” he said. The rattled something off in his native language that was obviously meant as derisive. “That’ll be fifteen sixty.”

 

Craig fumbled with his wallet and paid the man, then tipped him too much because he didn’t know how much to tip him, and got out of the car. The cabbie waved at him as he left and wished him a happy holiday but Craig didn’t hear. He was standing on the sidewalk trying to will himself to walk up to the house.

 

He looked up. The moon was still there, shining white in the nearly black sky, but Craig knew what was in store for it tonight. He knew but he didn’t tell the moon. It was better this way, he felt. He walked up to the path and to the door and knocked.

 

The party was already going on inside. Most of the people had driven themselves and the street was lined with the sporty SUVs of corporate businessmen who didn’t want to be seen as corporate businessmen but as Bill, the man that likes to fish. He knew it was pointless, but he counted the cars, six. Two people per car, plus himself, plus Todd and Fiona, fifteen. He relaxed slightly.

 

The door flew open and Fiona stood there smiling into the night. She was just as beautiful as she’d always been. She was short and plump and pale in the way that Irish women are pale without being sickly. Her chestnut brown hair spilled over her shoulders in soft shining curls, framing her pale face. Her green sweater brought out the flecks of green in her hazel eyes, brought out the red in her lips. She was tastefully dressed, green on top, cream on bottom, a subtle Christmas themed hairclip in her hair.

 

She took his breath away and made him turn from her. The old hurt returning but not as sharp as before. He was able to breath, smile, return.

 

“Craig!” she said. “We thought - we’re so happy you’re here. Come in,” she said. She took a step into the foyer, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor, then sinking into the inch thick white carpeting. He hesitated, then entered. He handed her the bottle of wine he’d brought.

 

“I’m sorry if it’s no good,” he said. “The man said it was festive.”

 

She looked at the bottle of Chocovino and took it.

 

“It should be fine,” she said. “Come in. Everyone’s in the den.”

 

The house was tastefully and blandly decorated, like the outside of the house, like the rest of the neighborhood. They had enough money to make it look exactly like the magazines and so they did. The living room was done in shades of beige and cream, a white sofa, a brown coffee table. The only interesting thing being the grandfather clock that, now, chimed eleven. The kitchen and dining room were, too, the magazine perfect images of domesticity. The only sign that there was life in the kitchen was the cooking smells emanating from the oven. Something with herbs was cooking.

 

“What’s for dinner?” he asked.

 

He didn’t realize that she’d been talking the entire time until his question, out of place with what she’d been saying, interrupted her. She glanced at him, startled, then stammered out her response.

 

“Oh, um, Todd’s making it. Chicken with a blood orange salad. I think there’s mousse for dessert,” she said.

 

She paused in the kitchen for a second. Beyond was the den where the sounds of people talking could be heard, punctuated by laughter.

 

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

 

Craig nodded.

 

“Sure.”

 

She poured him a glass, nervously pushing her hair behind her ear. Obviously there was something she wanted to say but she wasn’t certain how to say it. She poured him a glass of blood red wine and handed it to him. He took it and sipped. It was real wine, full-bodied and as vital as blood, and he savored it. It had been so long since he’d had real wine.

 

“You still drink red, then?” she asked, belatedly, obviously.

 

“Yes.”

 

Red wine. She’d poured without thinking, without asking. Red, the color of life and death, the pair of opposites that denoted luck but didn’t specify good or bad. Red was ambiguous. Unlike white, the flavor of purity, of chasteness, of Apollonian, rather than Dionysian, tastes. You knew where you stood with white.

 

“Craig, we’re so glad you came,” she said. “Todd and I’ve been concerned about you.”

 

He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to get into it. He forced himself to smile.

 

“I’m here, though,” he said.

 

“Yes. And we’re happy. Are you happy, Craig?”

 

She was looking at him in that way that he loathed. She was a sweet woman, too maternal perhaps, the inability to have children making her baby the world, but she, like so many women, was a fixer, someone who could not bear to see others live the way they wanted to. It was in these moments that he couldn’t understand the drive to marry, to even allow such a woman into his life, to baby him and nag him into changing.

 

“You don’t have to worry about me, Fiona. I’m as fine as I can be.”

 

She looked unconvinced, maybe a little hurt that he wouldn’t open up to her, but she dropped it. She checked the chicken, making sure that it was still cooking properly, and led him into the den.

 

The sudden noise after the relative quiet of the rest of the house was shattering. The den was a darkly decorated room filled with large, spacious furniture, all in dark blue, facing a fireplace and a big screen TV. The TV was on but to what channel Craig didn’t know, or care to know, just that it was loud and no one was paying attention to it and everyone was shouting over it.

 

“Todd, honey,” Fiona shouted. “Craig came!”

 

Todd looked over with an expression of incredulity at first which was quickly and expertly replaced with an expression of over-enthusiasm. He stood and walked over to Craig, pumping his arm.

 

“Craig! Oh my God, it’s wonderful to see you. How have you been?”

 

Craig could barely hear over the TV, over the conversations which hadn’t stopped, over the press of people, all somewhat tipsy. He was uncomfortable. Fiona and Todd thought he was unsocial, he had always been someone on the edge of the world, but he couldn’t understand how people liked this sort of thing. Were they that afraid of silence?

 

“I’m fine,” he said.

 

“Let me introduce you to everyone,” Todd said.

 

People looked up at the sounds of their names being said and waved or smiled at Craig in various ways. Their names, if he heard them at all, slipped from his mind as soon as they were said. There were a number of businessmen, colleagues of Todd’s from different companies, men and women who were very carefully dressed so that they looked casual. One woman wore studded jeans and a top with some sort of feminine graphitti on it and tipsy heels, something a teenager would wear, though she was in her thirties. A man stood with a beer in his hand and grabbed his hand in that overly aggressive, tight handshake that American men seem to think is a sign of character and introduced himself as “Nick, call me Nick.”

 

There were a few of Fiona’s friends there as well. The common theme among them being the aloof nature of the martyr. Women dressed nicely, but drably, men in polo shirts, all of whom spoke softly but with hidden meanings.

 

Eleven people, twelve including Craig.

 

“So, that’s everyone, come sit down,” Todd said.

 

Craig sat on the sofa where there was a small space near the armrest available. Todd sat on the chair near him, feeling that he needed to be there for his friend, as he had in college.

 

“So, anyway, Todd, when is that lovely chicken going to be ready? It smells wonderful!” asked the woman next to Craig. She was the one in the studded jeans.

 

“In a few more minutes, but dinner isn’t until midnight,” he said.

 

“Oh, isn’t that exciting. The witching hour,” she said.

 

Craig flinched. The woman’s voice was annoying, the overly-happy voice of cheerleaders past their prime, and she was leaning too close to him. That, and she was wrong. It was a stupid thing but it annoyed him.

 

“It’s not,” he said.

 

“Not what?” the woman asked.

 

Over Craig’s head Todd and Fiona exchanged a glance but Fiona shook her head slightly, some sign. She tensed.

 

“Midnight is not the witching hour,” Craig said. Now it was too late.

 

“Oh?”

 

The woman beside him stiffened. She was a highly successful, highly educated, woman, nearer to her forties now that he looked at her more closely, who had sacrificed the traditional route for the success that was supposed to make her happy. Her intelligence, she fancied, was the reason that men found her intimidating and she was proud of that, though it wasn’t true.

 

“Chris’s mother was an anthropologist, Maggie,” Todd said.

 

Maggie nodded and sipped her wine.

 

“Oh? Well, that’s interesting,” she said.

 

Craig nodded, though he was upset that Todd would think that he knew this only through his mother. She had been an anthropologist, yes, but her specialty had been physical anthropology, the remains of dead cultures, not religious studies. He thought about mentioning this and hesitated. Did it matter?

 

“So, when is the witching hour?” Maggie asked, as if now it didn’t matter.

 

“Three in the morning,” Craig said.

 

A different woman sucked in her breath at this. She was one of Fiona’s friends from work, dressed primly in jeans and a turtleneck, her blonde hair tied into a ponytail.

 

“Oh! That’s when we’re all supposed to look at the eclipse,” she said.

 

Craig nodded. Was it possible that this entire room, maybe this entire country, had no idea the meaning of this night? Looking around at all of their faces, now turned towards him, it was clear that they had no idea. The omens that had been long remembered by men throughout the ages hadn’t been worthy enough for the fifteen second news blurb.

 

“Right,” Craig said. “Tonight is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. In ancient times, people threw a festival at this point to entice the sun back, or in three days from now, to celebrate the returning of the sun.”

 

“That’s Christmas,” said the other woman.

 

“And the holy day of a thousand deities, yes. The days are visibly longer on December 25^th making it a very holy day for a lot of people,” Craig said.

 

The woman looked as if she were about to say something but didn’t. Instead she turned from Craig and pretended not to be listening.

 

“The eclipse itself signifies much the same thing. The moon will be swallowed, made dark, and perhaps never return. In the unholy dark, anything can happen. And that it happens at three in the morning here, the witching hour, means that the dangers are heightened,” he said.

 

A man laughed. Nick, call me Nick.

 

“Well, that’s dramatic,” he said.

 

The spell was broken, then, and everyone laughed, either derisively or nervously. Craig closed his mouth and sipped his wine.

Reviews

[the crying cup]

Great chapter :3 exciting and well-written!