The town was overshadowed by the gargantuan shell of a ruined castle on one side, and the empty refinery on the other. Lichen and small ferns had begun to settle into the cracks in the castle’s stone walls. Gaping holes in the masonry carried through the sounds of children playing during the day; by night all that could be heard was the wind whistling softly through these chinks. The refinery also housed it’s own fair share of nascent greenery, though having been much more recently abandoned the state of the flora in this hollowed body had yet to establish as prevalent a presence of plants.
These were the only two of the old buildings that were left unused. The castle because of the stories which surrounded it, and due to the wide availability of other buildings. The refinery because such a large amount of metal around was deemed to be dangerous. There were also rumoured to be infestations of ants and rats which vied for dominance within. A contest which no human wanted to pick a side in.
The other buildings, while incapable of being fully used, were all put to some purpose or other. The old four and five storey buildings with their carved gargoyles leering down on the cobblestone streets, through which saplings were now beginning to rupture, were occupied by a family or two each.
Trapped between the refinery’s rust and the castle’s stone, the townsfolk seemed to have adopted the shades of their surroundings into themselves. Grey and brown clothing were what was worn, only the occasional piece of mottled green to give even a semblance of liveliness to the sartorial semblance of the town. Some people looked up as they walked to meet the gaze of the watchful gargoyles. Most looked towards the cobblestones at their feet.
It was cold this far north. Forests sat steady, solidly, upon the mountains, and between the rivers which trickled there. Wind whipped along and fine rain often fell, which didn’t feel much to walk through but could soak a pedestrian to the skin if they spent too long out in it.
It was a rainy windy day, which hardly failed to distinguish itself from any of the others to either temporal flank of it, when the headmistress Lerino of the local humanitarian school discovered that one of her students, Sarmin, had been caught trying to break into the single still-used classroom the night before.
The janitor, Patrice, told her. “I caught him as I was leaving the school later’n usual ma’am, having spent longer than I usually would’ve, seeing as the desk needed repairs see? One of those worm eaten wooden legs had finally given way as I’d been trying to replace a lightbulb overhead. These damn ancandescent bulbs sure do go quick, but they’re all’s left us now. I thought of replacing the desk itself of course, but we’re so short staffed as things are, nobody’s the time to make a new one, and it was such a fine desk. So I cut a length of timber from t’repository and replaced the leg as went. It weren’t easy seeing as how finely carved the old thing was, and I were loathe to cut it at all. It was partway through my’s trying to figure out what cuts needed making when I heard him trying to scrabble in through the window ma’am. See fer yerself, the latch’s been bust.”
So it had. So finely bust that had Patrice not seen the boy pushing into the school the evening before, Lerino doubted whether she would have ever noticed the damage. As it was, the bust was an odd one. It was a clean bust she thought, surprisingly so were it to have been bust from the outside the evening before.
“Does the bust look odd at all to you Patrice?” She queried of the janitor.
“It does indeed ma’am,” he replied. “Intentional, and, if I’m not mistaken, from the inside I’d say. There certainly weren’t any snapping noise as I heard. First thing I knew his head was poking through that window. He seemed surprised as all hell t’see me there I can say.”
“It sounds like he was planning it then, if what you’ve said is true. You’re sure this was Sarmin?” She looked at him to see if there was any flicker of dishonesty in his eyes. Many people disliked Sarmin Waterfell. Many more disliked the Waterfell family. Lerino trusted Patrice, but it wasn’t unthinkable that he’d see a young male form and immediately blame the habitual troublemaker.
There was no such flicker in Patrice’s eyes when he said; “no doubt ma’am, Sarmin it was, quite surely. He were carrying a backpack too. I tried to run after him, but by the time I was outside he’d made off already”
Lerino had expected as much, but it still disappointed her to hear that the one child she’d been working at for so long continued to be the one child who continued to cause all the problems. Certainly, classroom hijinks were committed by almosts all of her students. Sarmin however, was the only who caused trouble.
Lerino thanked Patrice for letting her know. Chiron the policemaster would likely have to be informed of Sarmin’s attempted entry of the school, but she wanted to talk to Sarmin first. Perhaps he’d be more forthcoming with someone he knew. It being the weekend, there was to be no school today. She felt it necessary to pay a visit to the Waterfell household so as to talk to Sarmin, and ideally his family as well, so as to establish what he’d been doing the evening before.
She wondered what he could have possibly been up to. Sullen silence was Sarmin’s style, but he was also known to occasionally break into sadistic psychological space. It was impossible to predict when such episodes might occur. Typically Lerino only found out by the sound of a sudden scream from the back of the class. Sarmin would pinch hard enough to leave bruises on these occasions, or try to set someone’s hair alight using matches.
Theft or sabotage were primary amongst her suspected motives. It was well known that the Waterfells were poor, and she wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Sarmin had been acting under the guidance of his family members, who might well have encouraged him towards such a criminal act.
Lerino walked along the cobblestone streets, wrapped tightly in an oiled coat which kept the worst of the rain from penetrating through to her worn woolen sweater and linen trousers. She’d never been to the building where the Waterfells lived before, but knew how to find it. The Waterfell’s name was derived from the building where they stayed, which once had had a butcher’s shop at the base of it. The Waterfell sign at the base of the building was still vaguely visible, carved into the concrete there between a similarly carved symbol of a t-bone steak and a chicken drumstick.
She knocked at the patchwork wooden door, sections of which had been replaced once rotten enough to see through with newer pieces of scrap wood.
When, after a momentary pause the door was flung open and she was greeted by a bleary eyed man, whose face hadn’t seen a razor since he’d first needed one, she saw that the nails points had been hammered into the wood on the other side so that they didn’t pose so much of a risk. How homely, she thought. There were still bits of something organic seeming in the short wiry man’s beard. Dribbles down his well worn shirt. Between the dirt the drips and the holes, she doubted she could find a square centimeter of his clothing which was still pristine and presentable.
“Mr. Waterfell?” She inquired, as his red eyes struggled in their sockets to focus on her. Clearly she’d caught him on a good day.
“Yers,” the patriarch of the Waterfell family slurred through yellow-brown teeth and gaps showing only raw gums. The word was accompanied by an odour of carrion so objectionable that Lerino felt her eyes water. He swayed slightly as he pondered something momentarily, before realizing what it was that had been confusing him. “Who’re you?” He posited, squinting slightly, whether in an attempt to jog his memory or merely to bring her face into proper focus, she couldn’t tell.
“I’m Ms. Lerino, Sarmin’s teacher. Is he home?” She looked past his shoulder into the dingy space beyond. A chair was set up by the groundfloor window, where she assumed he’d been sitting. A mattress with a scrunched up towel on it beside the chair. There were old tin cans in the corners of the room, and torn scraps of newspaper. Beyond, the staircase could be seen. It was missing steps.
“Dunno.” Mr Waterfell replied simply, then turned and called out “Sarmin”, but the name was misspoken so egregiously, with the pitch starting strong then dropping off rapidly, that Lerino wondered whether the boy would be able to distinguish at all that it was his name that’d been called.
Mr Waterfell waited a long moment, swaying slightly and continuing to squint suspiciously at the staircase, as if he thought the boy might be hiding in one of the gaps beneath the stairs. A rat scuttled across the floor in pursuit of a fleeing cockroach.
He turned back to Lerino “not here” he said gruffly before turning back to his chair, seemingly fatigued from the effort of standing so long, and thinking so hard. He collapsed into it with a short exhalation of breath, his eyes closed by the time his unthinkable behind made contact with the half-decomposed cushion beneath him. Lerino watched, wondering whether he’d passed out. As she was just working up the courage to disturb him he cracked open an eye and asked “Whatchu want’im fer anyway?”
“Mr Waterfell, do you have any idea what Sarmin was up to last night?” She asked, pointedly.
“‘Ow sh’I know?” He replied, clearly considering the response quite a witty one by the raising of his eyebrows and the small smile which played for a second by the corners of his lips. Then his single open eye ceased it’s world-weary struggle and shut firmly once again.
There came the sound of soft scuttling from the other room once more, as the rat ran back the way it came, pursued by a small group of aggressively intent cockroaches.
“Mr Waterfell,” Lerino projected her voice in the same commanding manner she did when the class was beginning to descend into uproar, hoping her firm tone would rouse him from his slumber. She saw a flutter of one eyelid as it was raised slightly then hastily descended. Lerino walked closer to where he was, then in the same tone continued “Sarmin broke into the school last night, and seemed to have premeditated the break in.”
Mr Waterfell’s eyes opened once more this time, intrigued. “Anything left worth something there?” He asked.
“Sarmin isn’t interested in books, pencils, or paper at the best of times.” Ms Lerino retorted, “I don’t think he was looking to steal.” She hesitated, then going on, “but I can’t be sure. Mr Waterfell we’ll need to talk to Chiron about this, but I wanted a chance to talk to Sarmin first and see what it was he was he wanted from there. You’re sure you knew nothing about this?”
“Lerk, I haven’t talked to the boy in days”, Mr Waterfell seemed to mean this as a reassuring comment. “Hardly seen ‘im as I can remember.” He was looking firmly at an object somewhere on his hazy mental horizon, attempting to discern when the last firm time he had seen the boy was. Surely within the last week, but who could know for sure? “Yer welcome to check’s room ‘n see if he’s there.” Mr Waterfell offered, making it clear by the widely swung gesture of his arm that if she wanted to do so then up the stairs, booby-trapped by neglect, she’d have to go; and she’d be going alone. She looked at the rotten steps, wondering whether they’d support her weight. Even the banister seemed about to break. “First door on’t left once you’re up,” Mr Waterfell helpfully clarified, before making it clear that their discussion was done, by beginning to snore sonorously.
Lerino made her way across the floorboards, doing her best to avoid the rat shit at first, then abandoning her tiptoeing and simply striding through the soft pungent pebbles. When she made it to the staircase, she placed her hand on the wobbly banister and attempted to distribute her weight as evenly as possible, trying out each step by leaning on it with her toe before she committed to it.
The door to Sarmin’s room was off the hinges, and seemed to have come from an entirely different doorway originally, judging by the way it didn’t fit the proportions where it leaned. She knocked on it, then waited. Hearing no response, she knocked again, before picking up the door, which was heavier than it looked, and stepping into the dark space.
The window was grimy around the edges; a filthy rag lay on the windowsill which had been used to clean away the worst of the offending muck from the glass. A mattress, similar to the one downstairs lay in one corner of the diminutive room. There wasn’t even a towel on it. Next to the doorway was a brown canvas backpack, but Sarmin was nowhere to be seen. Odd that he should’ve brought a backpack to break into the school, when he never bothered bringing one to class, thought Lerino.
She kneeled to untie the straps and pull wide the mouth of the bag. The only items within it were a pillow and sheet.
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