1: The House And The Household

The house on the hill was cold and dark, old and twisted.

The very structure was gaunt with towers that scratched at the sky and deep corners where hid deeper secrets. To say the very least, it was thought to be a strange house by the rest of the neighborhood. Lights often turned on in rooms where no one was. Locked doors inexplicably opened, and open doors suddenly slammed shut and locked. It was a house of bumps and creaks and unexplained sounds. Some swore that on certain days it was larger than usual with an extra spire or row of windows. The sky over the house was always two shades darker than any other part of the sky, even at night. Many said it was haunted, others said it was condemned and there were a few who just thought it needed a new coat of paint. Despite what anyone thought of it, the house was a house of tales and stories and half-known accounts. It was something interesting to wonder and speculate about, but it was not considered a very good place to call home.

Once there was a girl who lived in the house on the hill. The girl was small, with colorless skin and eyes that were always red from crying. In many ways she was a very healthy, very normal little girl of eight with perfect bow lips and hair the reddish brown color of new rust. She had a pet she took care of very well and loved completely. She had two sisters who, more often than not, got her into trouble. Her best friend was the neighbors’ boy, Pete. She enjoyed playing in the rain. She was not the smartest, or the fastest, or the most creative girl of her age in the city she lived in, nor even in her neighborhood if we're being honest, but neither was she the dumbest or the slowest or the dullest. She probably cried more than the average girl of eight, but that was mostly with good reason. For, if you looked closely, all of what was normal about this girl was so in a peculiarly particular way.

When the girl played in the rain, it was only on stormy, thunder and lightening nights. She liked the neighbors’ boy, Pete, because he could eat large quantities of mud without being sick. Her older sister liked to terrify her for fun while her younger sister was without a right hand - which in itself is not so odd, but the hand had been lost under questionable circumstances when the younger sister was three. The girl's pet was a scrawny rabbit that had been ailing since its birth. Her parents were constantly away on vacations (she could hardly remember the last time she's seem them) and her perfect bow lips were the dark hue of a dried bramble thorn. All of which she was perfectly comfortable with. What bothered her was that she could not smile.

It was not that she would not, or thought that she should not. The girl was incapable of smiling because her smile had been stolen from her when she was a baby. As a newborn she had smiled, she might even have been said to have had a cheerful disposition, but a few months later she stopped. Instead, she started to cry - all the time. So her parents, believing in the name fitting the child, called her Melancholia. Her sisters were named Destructia and Mischievia. The one missing a hand, that was Destructia.

The three girls were mostly watched over by a man named Gregman. Although Gregman was their parents’ housekeeper he was also, it should be added, the children’s caretaker. He was the one who marched down the road to the irregular school uniform liquidators store and bought new dresses and tights and shirts when Mischievia outgrew anything. Melancholia only wore Mischievia’s hand-me-downs and Destructia only wore Melancholia’s hand-me-downs. Now, if the irregular uniform liquidators store is mentioned, then it should be explained that the girls were always dressed in irregular school uniforms. The dresses were dark woollen things that had asymmetrical hemlines, or one shoulder strap that was shorter than the other. The shirts were all an over starched and itchy white with irregularly placed buttons or one sleeve that was longer than the other. As a result, the sisters looked like lopsided private school students. Except for Mischievia, there was something about how she pointed her nose about authoritatively that made her not seem so silly in the irregular clothes. Or maybe she did look just as silly, but people were afraid to say so. Plus, her tights never had holes in them as Melancholia’s sometimes did and as Destructia’s always did.

When not at school, Melancholia’s days were spent playing in the tall, drafty halls of the house on the hill, or wandering in the expansive and near lifeless garden beside it. She took care of her ailing pet, Drop, and waited for Pete to come and see her. (He was never allowed to go and see her, by the way.) In Melancholia’s eight-year-old world that was all there was. That and her sister’s stories. Her eleven-year-old sister, Mischievia, told terrible tales.

“Melancholia, you shouldn’t suck your thumb.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you do the scissor men will come and cut it off. Snip, snip. Just like that.” And Mischeivia would laugh.

Mischievia’s laugh was almost as terrible as her stories and always lasted exactly three seconds longer than it should. Although, her laugh always lasted an extra half second longer than that when she told the story about the scissor men.

Melancholia was four when her sister first showed her the picture of the men with scissors for hands. They were cutting off a boy’s thumbs in an old book of German nursery rhymes. The picture was silly and painted with bright greens and pinks and reds. It was the same day Melancholia’s younger sister (who was only two at the time) had taken apart the bathroom and eaten soap. Destructia had hoped that when she ate the soap bubbles would come out of her little, O-shaped mouth. Instead she only got watery suds on her tongue and a stomach ache. She still had both hands at the time and a tendency to try and stick both of them in her mouth at once, though usually only the right one fit.

Melancholia never said anything, but secretly, she did not believe the stories that Mischievia told her. She knew they were all from Mischievia’s horribly overactive imagination, dreadful fairy tales meant to frighten her. Melancholia was not very imaginative and seldom believed anything she had not seen. Sometimes she would suck her thumbs, or play with matches because she could not imagine anything happening. The scissor men never came, she never caught fire and burned to a crisp. None of Mischievia’s stories scared her, except for one.

Soon after Melancholia’s birth, Mischievia started telling her about the man who lived in the room under the house. One of Melancholia’s earliest memories was of her sister standing over her crib, her face half hidden in shadows, telling the story.

“I don’t suppose mother and father have told you about the man who lives in the room under the house. He goes anywhere he wants, even into bedtime stories. Sometimes you can see him peeking out from the corners of paintings. Inside the frame. They should have told you, he is the one who stole your smile after all. But be careful, he thinks it’s his now and if you ever tried to smile he would think you were trying to steal it back from him. And then . . . and then he would come and sew a zipper over your mouth and lock it.”

Mischievia always laughed a full seven seconds too long after telling that particular story.

* * *

As the sisters grew, so did the story. The man who lived in the room under the house was tall, with spidery limbs all clothed in a black and gray striped suit. He had a top hat and shoes that whispered to him. He only played on spider webs in the moonlight, lunched on midnight shadows and liked to spend his spare time sitting in his chair and watching fish drown. He was the one who had stolen Melancholia’s smile and he would never give it back.

So, Melancholia did not smile. She had tried once while looking in a mirror one night. Yet as soon as she twitched the corner of her mouth, even though it twitched down instead of up, she heard a rustling up by the back corner the ceiling. There was a light whispering and a brief scuttling, the kind of sound that feet small enough to dance on cobwebs might make.

At the sound, Melanholia scooped up Drop and fled the room. Clutching the wheezing rabbit to her, she ran straight to Destructia’s room where she dove under the covers and huddled close to her sleeping sister.

There were said to be many strange things in the house on the hill, but it was the man who lived in the room under the house that frightened Melancholia.