Barnaby sat up at the sound of his stairs engaging. Irritable old men slept light. He regarded his two unpapered windows with a sigh. It was still dark outside. What did I do to deserve this? He wasn’t sure if he’d gone after the wallpaper with newspaper clippings or paint this time. But she must know by now it’s pointless to yell at me…
Hyacinth staggered into the attic and pitched forward against his desk. She said, “Barnaby,” and then vomited all over his carefully curated papers. He screamed.
“I don’t know what I did, but this is disproportionate, Alice! What the hell are you doing?” He grabbed her and spun her around, examining her hair and clothing. She was wearing a dishevelled version of her bright blue I-want-to-look-nice-but-not-really ensemble, with her hair smashed up on one side like she’d slept or passed out on it. David would’ve said, Too much cheap champagne, and offered more expensive champagne. Barnaby knew better. Involuntarily.
“Goddammit, I warned you about the salmon puffs! I am positive I did!”
“Is that what those were?” Hyacinth muttered. “Calliope kept calling them salmon shoes.”
“Choux au saumon! You are from the South, for gods’ sakes! You know what that means, you-you ‘petit fou’! ‘Salmon puffs’!”
“Honest to gods, I didn’t even remember you said not to eat them until just now. It must’ve been years ago. Oh, damn…” She threw up again, onto the floor, between his stocking feet.
He threw himself backwards, onto his bed, amidst the pillows. “I cannot deal with this. Dealing with this is above my pay grade. Is there any responsible human being in this house who didn’t eat the salmon puffs?”
“I didn’t want David, I just came here.”
“David is dead!” he cried. “I-I am almost entirely positive he is dead, and he is not coming back and that’s no fair talking about him like he is still a going concern, Alice!”
Hyacinth peered at him feverishly. “What year is it?”
“Gods, I hate you,” he said. He wrapped an arm around her to drag her back downstairs.
◈◈◈
A salmon apocalypse had taken place in his absence. He had to wander around piecing the story together from the available evidence and the incoherent victims. He felt like one of those poor bastards who wakes up in an empty hospital and has to figure out what kind of horror movie he’s in.
It did not help matters that someone (he guessed him) had thrown paint on most of the walls. As if he needed more random patterns and information to sort through. He despised all of these people and his past self of a few hours ago most of all.
He heard a baby crying when he got down the attic stairs, so he had to abandon Hyacinth on the bottom step and go check that out right away.
He found Milo sprawled on the floor of Room 103 beside the bassinet, with Lucy on top of him. The baby was apparently old enough to realize something was wrong, but not to do much more but complain about it and smack Milo on the head with a stuffed animal. Calliope was in the bed with a pillow over her head, a bottle of ginger ale on the nightstand, a glass pot full of vomit on the bed beside her, and a chamber pot full of unmentionable on the floor.
Barnaby deduced or perhaps saw a sick Milo being woken by a sick Calliope and staggering off on a mission in the dark, which he almost completed before either passing out or dying.
“Milo, can you get the baby?” said Calliope, sub-pillow. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just checking him, dear,” Barnaby said, with restraint. He liked Calliope, and it wasn’t her fault. He didn’t warn her about the damn salmon shoes. Also, he’d just stolen a bunch of her art supplies to fix the wallpaper, so maybe he felt guilty? Maybe? “Ah. Well, I’m pleased to say he’s breathing and I’ve just pushed him over so he won’t choke if he vomits. I don’t suppose you can take care of this baby?”
“I’m gonna puke again.”
“Right. Hang on…” He cast about for an empty object and selected a wastebasket with a paper bag in it. Less than ideal, but there was a time constraint. He touched it with a careful finger and was relieved to find he hadn’t just read something that suggested a wastebasket somewhere and gotten it confused. He put it on the bed and helped sit Calliope up so she could throw up in it.
Watching a dark-haired head vomit amidst puffy white bedclothes unsettled him.
“Not coming back,” he muttered to himself. “Not coming back. We’ve done that. It’s over. Not coming back… Calliope, please say something. Anything.”
Calliope lifted her head and regarded him blearily. “Grandpa?”
He sighed. It was only half-relief. He put a hand on her forehead to check. “Right-o. The high fever is a feature. I will expect it, even in the ones who can kill me with magic. …Whom I don’t think I’ve checked yet. Endless possibilities for failure. Oh, hooray.”
“Grandpa, can you watch the baby? I don’t feel good.”
“I-I-I promise I’ll store it in a box or somewhere safe, dear.”
Calliope tried to consider that. “Okay.”
“Just try to keep sitting up and I’ll be right back if I live, dear.” He stepped over Milo on his way out, with the bawling baby in tow.
When he reached the front room again, he held Lucy at eye level and addressed her, “Are you capable of articulating your needs? How old are you? What do you want?”
“Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da!” the baby shrieked.
“He has been incapacitated by food poisoning. He is of no use to you. Be reasonable.”
“Da-da-da-da…!”
“This is why no one takes your work seriously.” He tucked her under his arm and had a look around for the playpen. He was pretty sure they’d already done the murder highchair, so they must have a playpen somewhere. “Lucy, where is your Maximum Security Prison?”
“Maaaaa-ma-ma-ma-ma…!”
“Oh, honestly. She has food poisoning too. Pay attention, Lucy! Or Dave. I’m not going to check because I don’t care. We have far too many people with four-letter names in this household and it’s going to get someone killed. You should at least have the decency to go by Taffy.”
He found the playpen in the dining room and left the baby in it. “Now you wait there, Potential-Taffy, and I’ll check on you later. Unless I forget. Anyway, if a few hours of neglect were going to kill you, I would’ve seen something about it by now, whoever you are.”
He headed into Room 102, as long as he was in the neighbourhood. “Excuse me? Is anyone okay in here?”
Mordecai was sitting up in bed against the wall, clutching a whimpering Erik and staring straight ahead with a glazed expression. There were also two full chamber pots and a blanket with vomit on it.
Barnaby saw this overlaid by the image of a man wandering through the halls of an abandoned hotel with incredibly tacky decor and shitty towels, desperate to take care of someone and with no idea how to do so. Also, a blue little girl with a cough and a green boy lying in a puddle of blood… or possibly in a hotel bed and screaming. It was all a bit muddled.
The yellowish stain on the blanket was an abstract portrait of despair.
“Listen, I am ninety-seven percent sure we’ve done all that,” Barnaby said helpfully. “You’re only in hell at the moment because the damn things were ninety-seven percent cream cheese and salt. Or some percent. I sort of like ninety-seven. Reduces to sixteen, and then seven again. Lucky! Anyway, you seem to have your hands full here.” He shut the door. After a moment’s pause, he opened it a crack to add, “And you’re not going back to the hotel.”
“Hotel?” he heard a voice say, behind the door. Followed by a wounded howl and sobbing.
“Oh, for gods’ sakes, I said not. Not. Nobody ever listens to seers. Occupational hazard. That is not my fault. He has no excuse. He’s not running into the past every time he turns… around…”
Barnaby regarded the paint on the walls. Random patterns. Damn it, that was how he used to cheat on his schoolwork. Random goddamn patterns. Shadows on the wall, dust motes in the air, rain on the windowpane. If he got really desperate, he could spill some ink. Random was never really random. It all served a purpose. But he could only see pieces of it. And — it used to be, not so long ago — only when he tried.
He had to drag himself through a forest of the unknown and instantly knowable to get back upstairs. He tried not to wonder about anything. It was possible to stick to your diet in an endless, inescapable pâtisserie, really it was.
By the time he reached Alice, he had begun yelling at the walls. “No! He is not coming back so we do not require a piano! I refuse to purchase a piano! I abjectly refuse it! I am not the comic relief! I… I… Alice…”
She was curled up on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with her wet hair in her mouth.
He crouched next to her and shoved her with a hand. “Alice? Dave and Lucy and Erik and Milo and Sean and Otto didn’t get you, did they? Hyacinth, are you alive?” he managed hoarsely.
“Tue-moi,” Hyacinth muttered.
Barnaby backed off a pace, shaking his head. “No, no-no. We don’t do that anymore. That isn’t now. No more Southern accent, we’re past that. Parlez vous russe, to piss off David. You’re thinking of Seth — damn it, there’s another one! — and that’s only since the Filk Revision of 2020!” He blinked. “Wait, what?” He didn’t like that for a year. It reduced to four. Probably a lot of people died. Well, more than the usual number, he bet.
“Head hurts, go away,” Hyacinth said. “Floor is nice.”
“Hyacinth, Hyacinth…” He crouched to address her. “It’s not just that I hate this. I am trying to be totally honest with you. You do not want me to be in charge of this mess. My mentis is not compos over here. You know that! Can’t you pull yourself together?”
She stared at him for a few moments. “…No.” She shut her eyes and buried her head in her arms, hiding from the light.
“I’m probably going to get myself killed, so I hope you’re happy!” he cried. She did not respond, so he left her there.
He knocked very gently on the door to Room 202, almost petting it. “Hellooo? You didn’t eat the salmon puffs, did you? Ninety-seven percent of the intelligence in this household lives beyond this door, even if it does reduce to four and death. It… It’s just that you’re rather violent, that’s all it means. Two is a nice number, it’s prime. Are you okay in there, smart people? Can you help me?” He peeked inside.
Less than a minute later, he reemerged with the sleeve of his bathrobe and several wisps of his hair on fire, shrieking, “I am not an enemy combatant! Does this look like a uniform to you? You are in violation of the Florentine Conventions you, you, you war criminal! I did not curse you, your daughter, or your troops! Goddammit, I wish you were in any condition to understand me!” He slammed the door and slid down it, panting. He licked his fingers and extinguished his hair.
“Ferme-la,” Hyacinth groaned.
“I have shut it!” he cried. He gazed at all the closed doors and splattered paint on the walls, burdened with terrible knowledge. He said it aloud just to get it out of his head, “Everyone in this house is sick. Oh, gods. Everyone in this house is sick except me.”
The light of dawn spilled dramatically through the particoloured windows.
The broken lens of his vision cracked just a little more, fragmenting reality into new facets of panic.
◈◈◈
“Uncle, I don’t feel good. I’m thirsty,” Erik said. And Mordecai, who was not feeling so great, either, staggered into the kitchen to get him a glass of water. But that didn’t work out. He swore, then he headed into the basement to see what they had there. There were four ginger ales in the cold box, so he brought one of those back for Erik and managed to get partway undressed before collapsing into bed.
Barnaby assumed this had to be the past he was seeing, because he’d read it off the consequences he’d just encountered in the present: there was a thin film of vomit circling turgidly in the cement water bucket.
He snarled and kicked it, but it was nearly full and he couldn’t tip it over.
He did the math reflexively while searching the random information for Hyacinth’s actual, literal doctor bag. Four ginger ale minus one for Erik and one for Calliope means two ginger ale left for a whole houseful of dehydrated sick people. Somebody has to go to the store.
He did a double take, noting the light on the reflective surface of the toaster, and burst out laughing at the image of him wandering down the street in slippers and a bathrobe, chucking a convenient melon from a produce stand on the cobbles to generate a shopping list. There was also a version with him in a coat and shoes, as if Cousin Violet was willing to negotiate.
So sorry to disappoint you, my dear, but that needs a rewrite. Go back and give us yet another edit if you must, I’m certain I won’t notice, but I’m not doing it. Or the piano.
Not him. No way. No way in hell. But if he didn’t want that reality for himself, he had to find some medicine and get a sane person back on their feet. He was going to bet his money, and whatever drugs he could find, on Hyacinth.
There it was! By the box of quarantined toys under the sink! He hauled it onto the counter. Okay, so…
He looked down and he was standing over the table, reading, he guessed, the pattern of spilled salt. “Shit!”
Okay, he knew where it was and he was going to get it. Eventually. Maybe he should’ve checked if it was dark outside when he saw…
He swept the salt away. “No, no, no. Come on, damn it! This isn’t hard!”
The ginger ale was behind a bunch of carrots secured with a green rubber band, so all he had to do was…
Wait, what happened to the…
He sat up and banged his head on the kitchen table. “Wh… Who the hell crumpled up this paper towel and just left it?” He held the object and its random pattern of creases aloft. “That is blatant sabotage! If you people aren’t getting the help you need out of me it is all your own faults!” He tossed the offending towel away.
Hyacinth crumpled up the paper towel and lobbed it towards the trash can, then Milo’s foot kicked it under the table while he was groping around uncaffeinated in the small hours a week ago.
He shut his eyes and screamed, “I don’t want answers! I don’t need answers! I need the damn doctor bag!” He groped for it with his eyes closed, muttering, “No mind, no mind, no mind, no mind…”
That brought up Mu, the restaurant, and he had to watch a stupid hamburger lunch play out. Then John Green-Tara collected the waiter and had a whirlwind romance that he strangled through a combination of fear and neglect.
Idiot. Anyone could’ve seen…
This time, he banged his head on the underside of the sink. He made two more abortive grabs for the doctor bag before he finally seemed to have it for real. He gratefully curled around it on the floor, not quite sobbing, but breathing very hard with his eyes closed. “Please, let it be now. Please let it be now. Please let it just be now.”
This time, when he opened his eyes, the bag was still there.
“Stay in the moment, Mr. Graham,” he told himself, aloud. “One step at a time. I know I’m eventually going to get to the basement because, no…” He snapped his eyes shut. “No, no, no. I am just going to do this one thing right now.”
He began taking bottles out of the bag, by feel. He tried to read the labels and couldn’t. He had to stare at the arrangement of pills inside and look for some indication of how someone had used them. In this way, he found something Hyacinth had recently given Mordecai for a fever, and two things she’d given to Seth in the basement. That was enough.
He crept through the dining room with his eyes closed and one hand extended, the other in the pocket of his robe counting the bottles of pills like a fistful of prayer beads. Three was a good number. There was a conspicuous lack of crying and he did not run into the playpen, but he preferred not to chase that rabbit. Maybe he hadn’t put the baby away yet. Maybe Milo wasn’t unconscious yet! That was all the thought he allowed himself as he fulfilled the Prophecy of Moving a Bunch of Carrots to One Side and claimed a cold ginger ale. That fit nicely in his other bathrobe pocket.
Okay. He had that thing and he had the other things, now where the hell was Hyacinth?
At a garden party, about to dip a frosted tea biscuit in her cup and get shot in the head.
“DUCK, ALICE!” he shrieked, and came crashing to his knees on the cracked tile of the foyer floor. He leaned over and examined it closely. Upstairs. He left her upstairs. Upstairs.
He crawled up the stairs.
No Alice.
“What?” He felt around on the floor, as if she might have become very small. “Am I up the right stairs? Where the hell did I put her? No!”
He clapped both hands over his eyes. He might’ve put her several different places in the last hour alone. He might’ve stuffed her into the washtub so she wouldn’t get shot and then pulled her out again.
“I am going to ask the right questions and get the right answers, if I have to have any answers at all.” He blew out a breath and tried desperately to focus. “Starting right now, where will I encounter Hyacinth as soon as I possibly can?” He uncovered his eyes.
“WHAT DID I PUT HER IN THERE FOR?” he demanded of the pattern of light through the bottle-glass windows, and he almost grabbed the ginger ale out of his pocket and threw it.
Or he did throw it.
Or he broke the window with the end table.
Or a bottle of gasoline.
He stood amid what might or might not have been broken glass at this moment in time and pressed both hands over his face, over a scream. “I need help, I need help, I need help…”
He staggered to the nearest inhabited household, which he had threatened to burn down only last night, incoherent and trying to express what the problem was at a very loud volume. They threw things at him and threatened to call the police.
Yes! The police! Maybe the police would help him!
David threw back his head laughing and called him an intolerable idealist.
The police hauled him off in handcuffs to an enforced mental health intervention without even once trying to understand that he’d left a houseful of people who were going to shit themselves to death in his absence.
Oh, gods, he didn’t walk down that trail of causality for real, did he? It seemed too fast.
“Time is an illusion, time is a delusion, where am I?” He put out a hand and tried to feel, eyes closed against the unwanted responsiveness of the splattered paint, or the asylum brickwork, or…
It was something soft and threadbare. Padded walls? He felt a ragged seam, and a curved surface. The winged back of one of the upholstered chairs in the front room.
He did not open his eyes to make sure. He tried to slow his breathing. “I am going to find Hyacinth and fix her and she will help me. I am not asking, I am not going to check to see if I manage it, I’m taking it on simple faith. Blind faith.”
He wanted to know where the door was, he wanted to know that very badly, but he clamped down on that want and didn’t move until he could let it go. He crawled, and even so he fell several times, until luck or fate bumped his searching hand into a doorknob. He turned it. “Alice, are you in there?”
“I don’t have your breakfast, go away,” she groaned.
“I have medicine. Is there any way you can meet me halfway?”
He heard a thud, and another groan. Okay, he’d have to take that as a no.
He had to look. He was just going to look and make sure everything was okay.
Erik stood in front of the machine, the incomprehensibly vast machine, staring into a blinding white light. He screamed a demand for accountability into a face he could not see, or even comprehend, but one which he would’ve spat in. “Why did you build the world broken? Why did you build the world broken so I have to fix it? Why do I have to fix it? Why did you have to build anything at all?”
“Oopsie-daisy!” Erik scooped up a diapered bottom and put the crying child against his shoulder. “That’s okay. I know what’ll fix it! Wanna go get some cake? Yeah? Okay, let’s go get some cake.” He cupped a hand to his mouth…
I hate this world so much, Erik thought.
“…Hey Maggie, is there any cake left?”
“What the hell are you doing?” cried Barnaby. “I like contrast, but that’s too much even for me! It is literally cake or death with you? Pick a freaking path, you mentalist!” He shrieked and clapped both hands over his face. “I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care….”
He was lying. It seemed really important and he couldn’t help wondering if Erik was going to grow up and murder the world — he was in favour of that at the moment — but he had to stop. He had to stop wondering and focus. He had to stop freaking out over how impossible this was and just let it happen. He had to help Hyacinth so she could help…
No, no consequences.
He had to…
First things first, he had to open his eyes and accept whatever there was.
Hyacinth was lying on a rug on a floor near a bed. He looked down at the floor and crawled forward, one motion at a time. When he was in reach, he put his hand on her hand, then her shoulder, then he helped her sit up. Then he went after the pill bottles in his pocket. One, two, three. He took off the tops: one, two, three.
“I-I don’t want to…” He shut his eyes and shook his head. That was more looking ahead. It didn’t matter what he wanted. There was only what was. “I can’t read how many of these you’re supposed to have. I’m sorry, Hyacinth.” He counted out three each, for reasons he tried not to consider. Reasons to do with things past. No looking back. Three was a good number, that was all. He got the ginger ale out, and he got the top off that.
He wasn’t sure how to get her to take them.
There was no way to stop looking ahead. There was no way to stop looking back. He didn’t know any other way to be.
He had to look both ways to find it: “Here, Alice. I have some chocolates for you.” She ate pills out of his hand and he gave her the soda to wash them down.
She stared at him. “They’re terrible.”
He giggled. It was insane, inappropriate and involuntary. “They’re domestic. Be a very good girl and feel better and I’ll get you some of the imported kind.”
She grumbled and curled up on the floor.
Why in the hell did I put her in Room 102? he thought.
There’s a bed. Erik’s sleeping with Mordecai.
Yes. I suppose that’s convenient… What did I do with the baby?
I don’t care.
Ah, yes. Right.
Hyacinth groaned, pushed her head up and puked on the bed. The colour of the vomit was yellow, a hellishly familiar shade of yellow.
“What,” Barnaby said. He asked, and he got an answer.
Mordecai swept a handful of pills off the counter and into his hand, because Erik wasn’t feeling well. Then he headed to the basement for the ginger ale.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” the old man howled at the fabric of the universe. “Why didn’t any goddamn random configuration of useless objects TELL me that was the exact same thing Erik threw up? HOW COULD I POSSIBLY HAVE MISSED IT?”
Barnaby, I am so incredibly sorry. That’s all we have and I really hoped she’d keep it down.
“WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?”
He got an answer.
So soon? he thought sadly.
Not yet, he thought, equally sadly. I’m not done yet.
He regarded Hyacinth. He wasn’t even sure if she’d thrown up yet, but it didn’t matter. If she hadn’t, she would. He propped her on her side. He knew how to do that. He and David made a habit of drinking until one or the other of them passed out.
“Okay,” he said. “I have to go shopping. Melon on cobbles, here I come.”
Mordecai sat up with a moan, already shaking his head. “What are you talking about? Shopping? You’ll never make it, and we are in no condition to rescue you. If you have to do something, make us a soup. There’s soup in the pantry, make soup.”
Barnaby rattled his head and stared. It was as if the body at the wake had just lurched back to life. “Good, uh… Good… I have no idea what time it is. ‘Salutations’ will do. Is this actually happening at the moment or have I skipped forward again? It’s always a bit hard to tell if I have agency. Ever.”
“I’m having a moment of lucidity, but don’t expect me to keep it up. Or recall it. Do not go shopping. Step away from the abyss.”
Barnaby sat forward with a scowl. “Well, I’m thrilled you’re so concerned about me, but I’m not going to have an argument with a delirious man who is in desperate need of medication and fluids.
“As long as you’re not going to remember this, thank you so much for vomiting in the water bucket, you enormous festering asshole. That complicated matters nicely. I couldn’t make you a soup if I wanted, it’s all condensed. I suppose I’ll dial Xinese delivery from the drugstore phone. It’s pointless for me to write down your order, but I imagine, in my inevitable panic, I’ll be able to read it off the graffiti on the phone booth or the tangles of the cord.
“I would offer you a ginger ale, but you’ll probably just spew it out again anyway. Good day, sir.”
Mordecai scrambled out of bed and grabbed his arm. “Barnaby… please…” He dropped his head. “I can’t do it this way, he’s going to pass…” The red man slumped all the way forward, and his forehead hit the Farsian rug.
Barnaby collected himself with great dignity and shook Mordecai’s hand loose from his arm. “Then that’s settled. I am not putting you back in the bed, so don’t…”
“Tell her to make her own damn sandwiches,” Mordecai muttered against the floor.
“Indeed.” He shut his eyes for a moment. If he could only remain this irritated and detached, he might just make it. It was a shame Mordecai couldn’t come with him.
(Barnaby, please don’t go shopping.)
He leapt to his feet. “Who said that?” He examined the wallpaper, the arrangement of clothes in the closet and hamper, and the recipes he’d glued up during his previous attempt to purge the wallpaper. He noted a few more details of his pending demise and Erik’s future, but nothing that said he shouldn’t go shopping. And so clearly.
(Barnaby, don’t. Please. I know it’s your nature, but don’t make me hurt you any more than I’m going to already. I don’t really know if I’m hurting you, but this can’t be good for you. I’ll introduce myself and answer your questions as best I can, but please don’t pry. It’s not safe for you or anyone else here.)
He saw a bunch of anonymous partygoers playing that game where you have a bunch of marbles in a tube, resting atop a nest of sticks. They all took turns removing the sticks until one unlucky bastard sent all the marbles tumbling down. This time, the poor jackass was a blue woman in a glittering gold ball gown. She held the fatal stick with a pained and sheepish expression.
He recognized her.
Then he couldn’t remember. It had just been some anonymous woman holding a stick.
(I’m sorry, Barnaby. I’ll help you, but I can’t let you know who I am. It’s not safe.)
He put a contemplative hand to his chin. “Well, this is a new and interesting brand of crazy. I don’t know how I got it into my head that I was just going to drop dead of a heart attack like an ordinary human being. Being driven mad by an eldritch abomination is much more my style. I think it is safe to say I am not the only responsible… creature in this house who didn’t eat the salmon puffs, is that correct?”
(Yes. I didn’t want to upset you, but I couldn’t just leave the baby crying and Hyacinth on the floor.)
He nodded. “Mm-hm. And what else do you feel it’s safe to tell me about yourself, Miss 101?”
