Chapter Seven

SEVEN

There are rules to these things. Everything is survivable.

After Hal and I learned that Father Cyrus’ blessing was going to get us only so far, we needed to figure out our own solutions. Rather, I needed to figure out solutions; Hal was never particularly solution focused. I, however, was a bit of a pro.

The thing is, every situation, no matter how unusual, has rules. They might be strange rules, and they might be difficult to figure out, but once they are learned, they can be followed. And everything works out.

Charred remains of a woman crawling out of the fireplace with claws for hands—screaming and getting ashy footprints on the walls whenever a fire is lit? Stop lighting fires. Easy. Fires are lovely in the winter, but they aren’t essential. You can do without.

Birds snapping their necks against the nice clean windows at all hours of the day and night? Get rid of the bird feeders. Fewer birds coming by to eat mean fewer birds sailing into loud and violent suicide missions that scare the bejesus out of everyone on otherwise quiet afternoons. Sure, you might have always dreamed of a lush backyard full of fat, chirping birds, but you also dreamed of a backyard free of mangled, ant-infested bird corpses. Compromises must be made. There are rules.

Milky-eyed boy hovering in Hal’s office, biting anyone who gets too close? You might assume that rule to be simple—don’t get within biting range. Hal, however, wanted a more lasting solution. That would be a bit trickier, especially since the boy doesn’t talk. Some investigation will be required, a trip or two to the local library to browse through old newspaper clippings. It isn’t ideal and it certainly seems like the behavior of someone who’s more than a little off-balance, but the clippings reveal information about the boy’s mother, so it’s well worth the sideways glances. Sure, digging her up will never be the ideal way to spend an afternoon and her bones don’t keep him away forever, but a temporary fix is still a fix. It’s nice to feel a sort of control over these types of things. Control is important.

Some problems seem like problems, but they aren’t actually problems. The children who arrive in September, Angelica and her friends, they aren’t really problems. They appear one by one and point down into the basement. Some of them are very wounded, upsetting to look at, but just because something is upsetting doesn’t mean it’s harmful. You would be surprised just how many upsetting things aren’t harmful in the end, if you consider the definition of “harm” in the strictest sense. The rule is to ignore the children and walk around them when they appear, not walk through them—that would be rude, and it tends to evoke a fairly strong vomiting reaction.

Jasper, the crumpled man in the upstairs closet, isn’t really a problem either. He’s hard to look at, sure, but he never leaves the closet and the matchstick that he keeps in those splintered fingers never catches flame, no matter how much he flicks it. It’s terrible what he did to Fredricka and Blythe all those years ago, but you can live with something without approving of it—those are two different things. You can live with many, many things you find deplorable. Especially when there are rules.

Still, some problems don’t have solutions, and the rule is just to cope. Take, for instance, the blood dripping down the walls every September. Logic would dictate that the rule should be to clean it up, but that course of action is never particularly effective. So it seems that the rule is simply to do nothing. Sure, you can investigate how far the blood makes it down the stairs as the days progress if you are feeling a spark of scientific curiosity, but in the long run, what good does that do? Knowing how much blood is on the stairs doesn’t change how much blood is on the stairs. The best course of action is to simply try to walk around the blood and keep the bloody footprints to a minimum. You don’t want to make the situation worse, after all.

September doesn’t have a solution either, thanks to Master Vale down in the basement. Sure, Father Cyrus’ blessing makes it better, an aspirin to quell a migraine, but the storm of September makes landfall every year like clockwork. These things are cyclical. It starts with the blood and the moaning, which turns into clotty red waterfalls and screaming. Angelica arrives, followed by more and more of her little friends—broken, devastated bodies of children darting around the house, pointing. Fredricka is a mess; Blythe is testy; things get out of place. The house becomes a conductor for chaos. Pranks turn vicious. There’s only so much you can do during times like these. Best to keep your head on a swivel. Brace for impact.

That said, it isn’t all difficult. There are nice times, times when everyone is calm and September is months away. There are times when Elias is easy to dodge and the birds give it a bit of a rest and Fredricka makes dinner and permits assistance with the potatoes. Those times are almost enough to make you think you’ve done it, finally made the house a half-decent place to live, with no screaming or bleeding walls or massacred children. Of course, nothing lasts forever—September is always right around the corner, exactly as planned. Still, if the rules are followed, the nice times can be even nicer.

But then there’s the basement. There is really just one rule for the basement—don’t go down there. Make sure the Bible pages stay taped to the back of the door, no gaps visible. Keep the door closed and boarded up at all times. Don’t open the door, not even a crack. And definitely not in September.

These rules, they keep things in order. They make life bearable. You will find that everything, even the apparently unbearable things, can be bearable to some degree. It is all in how you handle them. The perspective you take. How quickly you can learn what to do and what not to do and act accordingly.

There are rules to these things. Everything is survivable, even this.