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Chapter 4. Uploaded Saturday November 27, 10:02 PM.

Often, after her father had thoroughly beaten and whipped her, it had been Mallory Erticus who cleaned Dawn up. There had been days, back when Dawn was little, when she had lived with Alex and Dawn's mother, in that white farmhouse just outside of Feesburg, simply because she had no home. A veteran, the lone person with real balls in her entire town, homeless. This was her lot in life; to move in with her pregnant sister, her firstborn daughter, and her abusive husband.

Dawn had been beaten in the womb. Another excuse for her “self-destructive actions.”

Interestingly, though Dawn had had a real mother for much of her life, Mallory Erticus treated her more like a daughter than Alex Elphough's wife ever did. For this, Dawn loved her, and if love was an overstatement, she certainly respected her.

There was no question about it: Mallory Erticus had ten times the toughness of her brother-in-law. And for the seven years she lived in his house, almost every other night she was threatened, evicted, and put on the receiving end of beer bottle projectiles. But she was still there. Every moment she could spend protecting Dawn, the one caught in the middle of this horrendous hurricane of human emotion, was a blessing. She would treasure this even after she left, the year Dawn turned six years old and the community donated her a house along route 756.

“You doin' okay, Dawn?” Mallory asked when her niece stepped into the car, perhaps the ugliest, reddest Dodge Neon in the multiverse.

“Yep.”

“I'll guess you're bored.”

“Yep.”

“I'd be bored too, sitting around with Alex bitching at you all the time.”

He'd called her the night before, a couple hours after they'd found Dawn in the cornfield. “Dawn needs to get out,” he told her, and she agreed dispassionately over the phone. It was not the first time Dawn had come over to live with her, and surely would not be the last, seeing as the girl would do just about anything to get away from her father.

Dawn kept fidgeting in her seat, thinking of the black creature and Gasolina and the rows of corn smudging out the light of the outside world. What was once blinded by growth and puberty was now unveiled, naked and hideous, for all her mind to see.

“Something's bothering you,” Mallory said.

They were driving past row after row of grain. Seas of molten amber. “I just can't stop thinking about...”

“About what?”

“Remember when you were still living with us, and I was about six, and Gasolina died?”

Mallory thought for a second. “Gasolina died? I thought she just disappeared...”

“I found her dead.”

This invoked another pause in Mallory's speech. “Well, that's a bummer.” It was late morning, around ten-thirty or eleven, and the sun was just reaching its peak in the sky. The wind was hot and heavy and brutal, like the taste of black licorice ran through a toaster oven. Dawn rolled up her window, not liking this sensation blasted into her face.

“What happened to her?” Mallory asked, her voice caring but her notions a bit gruff. She'd never really attained balance between her negativity and her gentleness.

“Something killed her.”

“Oh...”

They drove by Phyllis' and into the collapsing air outside of Feesburg once more. Mallory was tapping her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “I saw something...” Dawn said, still looking out the window. The trees were turning brown already. “It was some sort of black monster.”

“Jesus, Dawn,” Mallory said, her eyes fixed on the gray road. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“It was big and... hunched and... black. Color black, not... person black.”

Mallory smiled. “Dawn, you were little...”

“I saw it.”

“You were scared. Sometimes we see things when we're scared.

The air was oppressive, collapsing. Of course, no one would believe her. If they didn't believe her eight years ago, surely they wouldn't believe her now. This was something she'd expected. No confidence. There were three things in the history of existence that understood her: Gasolina's corpse, her own brain, and a mysterious, freak monstrosity of unknown origin. Her palate of emotions enlarged itself to include loneliness alongside confusion and monotony.

“Alrighty, girl,” Mallory said, slowing the car down. “We're here.” They were approaching the driveway of a particularly red, Victorian house, about three stories high with black shutters and dark curtains hiding the windows. The roof was shingled in more black. Dawn, mindlessly texting with her phone in her lap, ignored the house's garish facade and merely uncrossed her legs. She'd seen it a million times before, but it never changed. The first time she saw it, she was texting, and only glanced up for a moment, thinking something dark and visceral was looming in the distance. It was only when she got out of the car that she realized it was a house, bright and glaring crimson.

“What the hell is this place?” she'd asked, only eight years old.

“This is where I live now,” Mallory answered, collected as always, staring with her sunglasses still on at the pinnacle of Victorian architecture standing before her. Honestly, it was a beautiful sight. A classic. Every brick was the color of spawning salmon, and a skinny porch stood out in front of its bottom floor. It was surrounded by little bushes, each one green and verdant even in the summer. Each window was ancient and rectangular, except for the ones on the second floor, which were vaulted and cracked from years of hail and rainstorms. A bit of vibrant trim separated the roof from the second floor, from which a pointed tower room protruded. And, at the very top, there were two brown chimneys, separated by about six feet and choked with deadly creosote.

Six years later, it was still the same, except the windows were a somewhat fixed (mostly with duct tape), the chimneys had caught on fire at least once, and the red was a bit faded. But it was still tremendously red, and still tremendously old, and it still had the same Victorian charm it started out with. The locals called it “the Blood house,” or “the House of Blood,” or, most of the time, “Sickle Cell Place,” sheerly out of boredom and the desire to make something simple cryptic.

Dawn, however, did not care about in the slightest how cryptic it might be, and saw it simply as her aunt's garishly-painted, somewhat attractive house. It was one of those strange instances in which she didn't judge something by its external appearance. She stepped out of the Neon and flipped open her cell phone again, her mouth chewing gum deliberately as she sent a ho-hum “Lol” in reply.

“You got everything?” Mallory asked, characteristically late.

Dawn shook her purse noncommittally.

The house's interior had the Prince Prospero-esque color arrangement of something deeply calculative, patterned, and symbolic. Every room was painted a certain color, with every object in the room compulsively the same color as the walls. Therefore, when one entered a room, save for the occasional television or stereo system that couldn't be painted, he or she felt as if they were under a harsh, tinted light, glaring down all around them and splashing onto every neutral object. If one was to run through every room at high speeds while electronic music played and under the influence of crack cocaine, it would feel like a particularly chromatic rave.

The first room, the living room, which included the front door, the stairwell, and the foyer, was a boldly-painted olive green, the color of vile pea soup or hideous diaper refuse. Despite the unpalatable connotations it created, it was actually very pleasant. The curtains, however, being thick and green and dark, were not.

Adjacent to the living room was the dining room, which opened directly into the former and acted somewhat like a bright, yet far away sign of light in the dark of the pea soup room. The dining room was the color of vivid, pinkish-brick coral, with flowery puce drapes and a dark cherry wood table, covered by a cloth the color of blood and roses. And, of course, there was a chandelier, but it was neither pink nor red.

Also adjacent to the living room was the spare bedroom, blue in color. The walls were a powerful and rich Navy blue, creating a very dark, midnight color when the sun went down. This was usually where Dawn slept when she came over, and it showed hints of her general lack of organization. Nonetheless, everything was blue, and the sense of color Zen was complete.

Dawn went inside and headed straight for the kitchen, which was a mind-numbing yellow. Bright light was flowing through the curtains, which were white and printed with sunflowers.

“You like the new paint?” Mallory asked from the foyer.

“It's... bright...” Dawn replied, not quite sure what to think. The effect was, in all honesty, overwhelming. She set her purse down on the kitchen table, right next to a pack of playing cards and a set of ballpoint pens, and went back through the living room and upstairs.

The landing was papered in ghastly, flowery celadon, the very same wallpaper put on the walls when the house was first built. The carpet was also a light green, and the first word that came to Dawn's mind when she saw it was “celery.” The first room on the right, she now saw, was painted completely brown and stacked with boxes; one of Mallory's storage rooms, she supposed. And then, further down the hall, there was the master bedroom (completely purple), a bathroom (horrifically pink) and another guest bedroom (shockingly, yet wonderfully, orange).

Creaking upstairs once again, she stepped into the musty attic and looked around. The place always held new mysteries for her. Even as a little girl, before she cared to understand history or her aunt's past as she did now, it still thrilled her to look around in the miscellanea Mallory scattered throughout the attic. There were old dusty mirrors, grainy monochromatic photographs, tiny porcelain figurines, embroidered lampshades, wooden, postbellum-era writing desks, and little, whittled statues of Indian chiefs and racehorses. Yet every time she went there seemed to be less and less; Mallory was probably selling everything off to chintzy antique stores. Dawn wasn't really sure how she made her money anyway.

Her foot got caught on one of the numerous sheets covering the room's numerous boxes, and she nearly tripped, but grabbed onto the top of a nearby chest-of-drawers. Swearing at her inherent clumsiness, she regained her composure and accidentally swept one of the little mirrors situated everywhere onto the ground. She cussed again and jumped back, avoiding the scattered shards.

For a moment she froze, hoping Mallory hadn't heard anything, and when she was sure there was no sound from below, she bent over to clean it up. Sweeping the pieces into the corner of a sheet, she suddenly saw a pale face staring back at her. It was not hers. Acting instinctively, without caring to recognize who the face actually belonged to, she grabbed the shard and swung it around, screeching at the top of her lungs. She grabbed a wooden statue from another nearby desk.

“Dawn!”

She swung the piece again, grunting and shrieking like a tennis player.

“Dawn! Relax! Stop!”

Gasping for air, the blind terror-rage left Dawn, and she blinked her eyes several times. Standing in front of her was a girl, about fifteen-or-so years old, with dark brown, feathered hair and eyes the color of freshly-clipped grass trimmings. She wore glasses and tight jeans without shoes, her toenails painted in a checkerboard pattern. At last, her cutesy, freckled face was twisted into an expression of shock, her grass trimming eyes staring at the fragment of glass in Dawn's hand.

“Holy crap, Dawn.”

“Don't sneak up on me like that, Cleopatra.”

Cleopatra Aggripina Orange was Dawn's “step-cousin” of sorts, the daughter of Mallory's step-brother Colton. Back when Mallory was only six, her mother had left her original husband, a man she'd never completely understood, and shacked up with Milhous Orange, a man whom Mallory thoroughly disliked. However, he did have a son named Colton, who she became close friends with, despite his pompous and annoying attitude. He would go on to become a history scholar while Mallory would join the U.S. Marines, though their friendship was never interrupted. Eventually, Colton Orange got the strange idea to send his daughter Cleopatra to live with Mallory for several months, simply to “experience the rich culture of Southern Ohio.”

Therefore, it made perfect sense that Cleo Orange should be in her step-aunt's attic, but nonetheless, Dawn had to ask, “What're you doing here?”

She giggled, in a light and airy way that was sincerely disgusting, and replied, “Dad sent me. Says I need to experience the rich culture of Southern Ohio.”

“Booze and marijuana?”

“I guess.”

Dawn raised her eyebrows a bit, then started picking up the pieces of the mirror again. “Then... why are you sneaking around in the attic?” God, that mirror was a fine piece of art. Smelled nice and musty. Ornate carvings around the edges. The usual.

“Experiencing the rich culture of Southern Ohio, I guess.” She giggled.

Dawn sneezed.

“Bless you,” Cleo said, twirling a tarnished candlestick between her fingers. “Hey, how are you and Keith doing?”

“Keith?” Wiping her nose, she said, “Broke up with that dickhead.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, he was writing on the bathroom stalls about me.”

Cleo nodded, slowly, looking around the attic for something interesting to investigate. To call her nosy would be incorrect " she was more like a cat: sneaky and deathly curious. “Is that a gramophone over there?”

“A what?”

“A gramophone.”

“What's that?”

“One of those old record players...” And this, interestingly, was how they passed the long summer days; looking through the attic, finding stranger and older objects everyday. Eventually, they'd find some sort of ancient book (something the more literature-inclined Cleo would be interested in) and bring it down to Cleo's room, sitting around and looking at it.

“Why do we do this, Cleo?” Dawn asked, laying on Cleo's bed and tossing one of the tiny glass globes they'd found in the attic up and down.

“I dunno...” she answered, her eyes glued to a first-edition copy of The Awakening. “Because it's fun?”

“This is fun?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Dawn kept tossing the globe. “Cleo, I'm tired of this. All I do is sit around and let my life go in circles. I'm having a crisis of identity.”

“Who taught you that term?”

“Probably you.”

“Hm...” Cleo responded, flipping the page.

“I mean,” Dawn continued, sitting up, “look at me. I'm wasting away. I'm either texting some a*****e or tanning nude or trying to... connect with my past, I guess... in the attic. I'm not thinking about my future at all.”

“Is that a teensy bit of sense I hear?”

Maybe not, though. I think I'll try and seduce Marc.”

Cleo shut her book and sighed. “Dawn, you kill me. You really do.” Shutting her book, she stood up and walked out of the room, Dawn staring at her with her bottom lip pouched outward. As they headed back into the attic, Dawn caught up to her.

“Cleo, what if I told you I met an evil black creature in my dad's cornfield when I was five years old, and it planted something in the dirt that made the corn grow really big?”

And Cleo just looked at her.