The demolition of the house on Cobb Street commenced without incident; in fact, it was so routine that bystanders quickly lost interest and dispersed.
The heart of the house is lost. The heart of the house is beating. The heart of the house is bleeding. The heart of the house is breaking. The heart of the house is longing, mourning, searching, willing itself back into being, circles within circles, time turned inside out. The heart of the house, like all of us, is mad and lonely and betrayed.
No unusual activity has been detected along Cobb Street since the house was razed and the dental offices built. The dentists at the site report a thriving practice. Today, fewer and fewer locals appear willing or able to talk about the incident in the house on Cobb Street.
The symbol of snakes twining round a rod known as the caduceus is sometimes used on medical signs although in fact this represents a confusion with the single-serpented Rod of Asclepius, and thus this author feels it would be irresponsible to speculate about or attach any significance to the inclusion of the similar (if symbolically quite different) Ouroborous on the modest sign on the front lawn of the brick building. It ought, however, to be noted that on the day this author visited, several little girls were engaged in making similar chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of the offices. On attempting to question them, this author was informed that they were not allowed to speak with strangers.
This author’s sensitivity to the unsettling effects of their shrill voices and the flash of their fingers gripping the chalk and the sound of the chalk scratching at the sidewalk are all most likely attributable to the severe fever this author subsequently suffered through in his hotel room later that night.
For now, we can only say that the house on Cobb Street has gone, and has taken its mysteries with it.
THE SOUL IN THE BELL JAR
K. J. Kabza
Ten lonely miles from the shores of the Gneiss Sea, where the low town of Hume rots beneath the mist, runs a half-wild road without a name. Flanked by brambles and the black, it turns through wolf-thick hollows, watched by yellow eyes that glitter with hunger and the moon. The wolves, of course, are nothing, and no cutthroat highwayman ever waited beneath the shadows of those oaks. There are far worse things that shamble in the dark. This is the road that skirts Long Hill.
So the coachman declared, and so Lindsome Glass already knew. She also knew whose fault the shambling things were, and where their nursery lay: in the great, moaning house at Long Hill’s apex.
She knew anxiety and sorrow, for having to approach it.
“Can’t imagine what business a nice young miss like you has with the Stitchman,” said the coachman.
Lindsome knew he was fishing for gossip. She did not reply.
“A pretty young miss like you?” pressed the coachman. Their vehicle was a simple horse trap, and there was nowhere to sit that was away from his dirty trousers and wine-stained smile. “You can’t be, what, more than eleven? Twelve? Only them scienticians go up there. Unless you’s a new Help, is that it? The ol’ Stitchman could use a new pair of hands, says me. That big ol’ house, rottin’ up in the weeds with hardly nobody to tend to it none.” He laughed. “Course, it’s no wonder. You couldn’t get Help up there for all the gold in Yorken.” He eyed her sideways. “So what’s he have on you?”
The road wound upward, the branches overhead thinned, and the stones beneath the wheels took on the dreary glow of an overcast sky. November in Tattenlane meant sunshine, but Lindsome was not in Tat-tenlane anymore.
“Eh?” the coachman pressed.
Lindsome turned her pale face away. She fought against the quiver in her jaw. “Mama and Papa have gone on a trip around the world. They didn’t say for how long, but I’m to stay here until they return. The Stitchman is my great-uncle.”
Startled into silence, the coachman looked away.
The nameless road flattened, and the mad, untamed lawn of Apsis House sprawled into view. It clawed to the horizons, large as night, lonely as the world.
When Lindsome alighted with her single hat box and carpetbag, there was only one sour-mouthed, middle-aged man to meet her. He was tall and stooped, with shoulders too square and a neck too short, giving him an altogether looming air of menace. “Took your time, didn’t you?”
Behind Lindsome, the coachman was already retreating down Long Hill. “I–I’m sorry. The roads were—”
“Where are your manners?” the sour-mouthed man demanded. “Introduce yourself.”
Lindsome bit her lip. The quiver in her jaw threatened to return. I must not cry, she told herself. I am a young lady. Lindsome gripped the hem of her white dress and dropped into a graceful curtsey. “I … beg your pardon, sir. My name is Lindsome Glass. How do you do? Our meeting is well.”
“S’well,” the man replied shortly. “That’s better. Now take your things and come inside. Ghost knows where that lack-about Thomlin is. Doctor Dandridge is on the cusp of a singular work, one of the greatest in his career, and he and I have far more valuable things to do with our time than coddle you in welcome.”
Lindsome nearly had to run to keep up with the man’s long, loping strides. “The house has three main floors, one attic, and two basements,” he said, leading her past a half-collapsed carriage house. “Attic is dangerous and off-limits. Third floor is Help’s quarters and off-limits. Basements are the laboratories, so they are definitely off limits, especially to careless little children.”
The man pushed through a back door that cried on rust-thick hinges. Lindsome followed. The interior had a damp, close smell of things forgotten in the rain, and the air was clammy and chill. A small, useless fire guttered in a distant grate. Pots and pans, dingy with age and wear, hung from beams like gutted animals. Lindsome set down her hatbox and touched a bunch of drying sage. It crumbled like a desiccated spiderweb.
The man grabbed her wrist. “And don’t. Touch. Anything.”
Lindsome fearfully withdrew her hand. “Yes, sir.”
A middle-aged woman, generous in girth but mousy in the face, hobbled out from a pantry, wiping her hands on her flour-smeared apron. “Good afternoon, Mister Chaswick, sir.” She turned to Lindsome. Her smile was kind. “Is this the young miss? Oh, so pale, with such lovely dark hair. You’ll be a heartbreaker someday, won’t you? What’s your name?”
“This is Lindsome Glass,” said Chaswick. “Mind you watch her.”
“Yes, Mister Chaswick.”
“Don’t trouble to see her up. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you, Mister Chaswick.”
“Don’t thank me. With your knees it takes you a century to get up the bloody staircase.”
Chaswick led Lindsome deeper into the house, under moldering lintels, through crooked doorways, past water-damaged wainscoting and rooms hung with peeling wallpaper. The carcasses of upturned insects lay in corners, legs folded neatly in rictus. Paintings lined the soot-blackened walls, and Lindsome thought that perhaps they had portrayed beautiful scenes, once, but now most were so caked with filth that it was hard to divine their subjects. Here, a lake? There, a table of hunting bounty? Many were portraits with tarnished nameplates. Any names still legible meant nothing. Who was Marilda Dandridge, anyway?