The Lorgenhaux Lady: Chapter One
By GuyLarsen
- 365 reads
I did not kill Rosie the horse.
This is probably the first time all four of us find ourselves in the same place by choice. We gather in the paddock out back of the estate grounds, overgrown with grass and weeds since Uncle Veldwick moved in three months back. His skin gets embarrassed, red and itchy to get away whenever he is near Rosie. He seems alright at the moment.
There’s an equine-shaped pit in the long grass. Nothing from it smells yet. All I can smell are the embers from last night’s fire, along with rotting seaweed, cockles and salt.
The gulls are flying backwards again in the wind.
I lean over to inspect the dead body. Even though it’s just dawn and everything is blue, I can see Rosie’s belly - punctured and sunken like an old tractor tyre. I’ve already worked out the spatial dimensions of where Rosie is:
Paddock size: 50m x 35m, rectangular.
Rosie’s location within paddock: 32m across, 15m down.
Rosie’s rotation: NNE (direction of torso).
A small, circular hole; the size of two of my fingers or one of Mother’s. A brown trickle, long dried up if not for the moisture in this sea air. It dribbles down to a flattened defilade of grass under Rosie’s hull.
She must have lay there all night for the grass to be that dry.
We’re all peering from above into the grass pit in silence: my sister, Mother, Uncle Veldwick and I. I guess nobody here really has experience of horse murder.
The only sound breaking the deafness is the sign way over on the cliff fence that stops people with no direction falling into the sea – a ‘WARNING’ sign so rusty and worn it may as well read: ‘WE HAVE A POOL’.
I can already picture how I will draw this moment in my head down on paper. I will be represented by one line. A horizontal one. I will be black and thick and five centimetres long, to show how resilient and strong I am. Mother and Uncle Veldwick will make up the left diagonal slope of a haphazard triangle in conjunction with myself. Their line will be green, thin and roughly drawn. The corner my line and theirs form will not touch. My sister, Rene, will make the right edge of the triangle, and our corner will cross over a lot. She will be red. A brown smudge in the middle for Rosie and around us a wide, brown square – the paddock. The rest will be block grey.
Rene is red because of her emotions. Her face and eyes are blotchy and swollen; like that time she fell in nettles. Straggly, mousey-brown hairs scribble across her moist cheeks. She erases them with two delicate fingers when she sees me watching, framing her face in efforts to compose herself. The lines are rubbed out but redrawn across her jaw.
Rene and I have the same jaw line – ‘asexual’. She’s my twin, Rene. But we are not identical. For one, Rene’s voice is much higher than mine.
I also hate dolls.
Things we have in common:
a. Good special awareness
b. Like to draw
c. Enjoy breaking up dirt clods
These common qualities mean we have an excellent knowledge of where everything on the estate is in relation to each other. The gravel path and horizon are framed perfectly from our circular bedroom window, like those on ships. Whenever we drew the cliffs in the past, Father would always make sure we had enough blue crayons. Those were the ones – teal and navy – that we ran out of first. He’d disappear every now and then; come back with fresh 24-packs and pace them on our bedside table. Then he would relieve his pockets of all the blues he’d picked out and stolen from other packs. He’d then make a quip about the weather: “Fog’s so thick you could hammer a nail into it! Hang your coat up!”
That was my favourite. Not that you’d ever take your coat off round here.
He’d often interrupt me at night, marching wooden soldiers up and down the cliff path in a one-eyed parade of power from behind the glass. I’d ‘herr’ on the window pane, and construct condensation nations from scratch, building upon what I could already see: trees; causeways; town squares; back streets; parades; parks; palaces and even once a small portrait gallery.
My memory is interjected by a quiet ‘bopping’ sound – like somebody pushing air through loose lips. It’s Uncle Veldwick.
His cheeks slowly inflate with air, before imitating a pin with his finger and slowly bringing it to his pursed lips, blowing out tediously.
Rene’s eyes widen but she doesn’t look up. Nobody has said a word since we found her.
“She must have been a valiant beast”, he rasps. His voice is course and damaged. He was stabbed square in the gullet in a fight a while back. He doesn’t talk about it. He’s still getting over it now.
He repeats himself: “She must have been a valiant beast. War heroes don’t get this much respect!”
The remark floats and dilutes the fog around us. The sign clangs.
One minute and twelve seconds pass. The tall, spindling frame of Veldwick splits in two, leaving my Mother out in the cold to pull her lapels tighter around her neck. He steps forward through the grass and without concern picks up Rosie’s hind left leg.
Mother and Rene both scream. I admit I would have too if I weren’t so shocked. Veldwick flinches at the noise. He angrily throws back down the leg. It lets off a visceral ‘SLAP!’ sound as Rosie’s thighs clap together. The sound cracks, then bounces off the house back at us from behind. An after-shock.
“So nobody TRIPS! Indoors! Indoors! NOW! Go, Pietre!”
He’s looking at me. I go to abide.
There is a rumble of an auto-mobile in the distance. A pale blue Volkswagen makes its way up the hill, gasping in the fog and the steepness of the approach. It’s hard to make out in the mist. The passenger window gives birth to a bald, thin head.
“Otto! Sorry we’re tardy, sir!”
Veldwick’s Telescope Society friends are here. Veldwick grins: “These fellows know how to cheer an early hour up.”
He’s already making his way over, treading high and purposefully over the grass.
“Morning!” he respectfully shouts across from us, “Just pop her over the round the…yes that’s fine, round the front! Be over! Good day for it!”
It’s foggy. As always.
The seagulls are now interested in the commotion, and the eager of the flies are taking a morning stroll.
Veldwick’s Telescope Society friends all look exactly the same as him: balding; thin; gaunt; crass. All with identically ironed and over-starched shirts that creak like Veldwick’s when he moves his arm down the teaching board. Yes, he is our in-house teacher.
Veldwick’s seven white wisps of chin hair hang down. Old drapes over a leather bow tie he’s stitched to his neck – hairs that flow gently from shoulder to shoulder as he vomits gravel.
He disappears under the wooden slats of the paddock enclosure, one thousand wet lashes on his boots. He begins helping unpack the telescope equipment from the car and setting up, joking about something I gratefully cannot hear.
I look back. Mother has cautiously started to wander over too with a forced smile. She still looks sad.
It is Rene, Rosie, and I. Rene is crying now. This makes me want to cry also.
Patters of rain start collecting on Rosie’s belly, washing away the blood. She’s just asleep now.
It begins and ends with rain. It always does.
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