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 Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:30 pm
one. page index
two. dean intro
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:33 pm
Dean Godfrey wiggled her toes as the waves washed over her feet.
She had always felt a particular love for the ocean. Once, the blue-green waters had been the only connection between her and her father; the elder Dean Godfrey, when he was alive, always told her that if she ever needed help, the ocean was the place to turn. It held all the good memories of time spent with her father, building sand castles and windsurfing, sailing sometimes and fishing while they were at it. When they fished, they would roast the catch over a fire pit dug in the sand and eat it off the bones. Wind-surfing and sandcastles meant an evening sitting on a bench outside the dunes, eating Subway often as not - him with an Italian sub, her with a turkey, tomato and mustard sub on Italian bread. They would share a Coke and talk about what they would do the next day at the beach.
Far off, over the ocean, a storm fired one warning shot of lightning; she tilted her chin up to watch it strike the iron rod on the roof of the house. Dean wasn’t so close she could see through the windows, but a shrill cry of shock from inside was clearly audible over the crash of the waves. She lived with Anna Fay, who was something between best friend and lover, on a godforsaken spit of land that had belonged to the Godfrey family for generations. It wasn’t a big house, no, nor particularly well cared for, but it had a sort of charm. Two stories, an attic, one bedroom (the second was used as a quasi-library and guest room, since neither Anna nor Dean particularly liked to sleep alone), two bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen - it was actually very small, nicely compact.
Her father had died when she was sixteen, the result of a silent myocardial infarction brought on by the stress of his command in the Navy. Not long after her mother had followed, leaving Dean the sole heir of the Godfrey fortune, which had not always been the ‘Godfrey’ fortune. In fact, for the longest time, the Godfreys had been a military family, well-off but never quite rich. It had only been when her father had married her mother that they had actually acquired “fortune”. Her mother’s family had risen to prominence in the Victorian era with the advent of the railroad, and their company remained under familial control. Though it was now run by a familial proxy, a young woman named Aurelius Venport, the bulk of the profit still went into family coffers.
Dean did not mind letting someone else run the company. It let her do her work and keep her house. Dean adored Godfrey House, though the weather sucked almost year-round, and the insurance was not exactly a pittance. She relished the wildness of ‘Godfrey House’ - the chill of the Atlantic, the terror bordering on ecstasy during a real storm, the bite in the air and the nearly constant breeze. Her childhood had been spent in the house, with the creaky floors, the iron spiral staircase inside, the widow’s walk, hidden passages and keeping-places. Good weather was for vacation; getting soaked by freezing rain in the summer was for home. Thunder rolled through the sky, precluding branches of lightning that reminded her of a spreading ash tree.
She swiveled her upper body towards the house, kept her feet planted where they were ankles-deep in the surf. Her chestnut curls fell into her eyes; she pulled them back just in time for the first barrage of rain to smack into her like a brick wall. The cold momentarily froze her lungs, left her unable to catch her breath for a moment, and then she freed her feet from the sand and started to walk back. A tall figure waited in the open doorway, under the porch’s shingled roof. Dean grinned at Anna, at the stern, disapproving look.
“Oi,” said Dean brightly. “How’s the book coming?”
“Get inside,” said Anna. “You’re soaked.”
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Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 4:58 pm
Anna Fay was born in Germany, in Weimar, in 1921. The daughter of a baker and a seamstress, her family wasn’t wealthy (of course, no one was) but what it lacked in money it made up for in Morals and Values. When her brothers went off to fight in World War Two, Anna was eighteen. Neither brother came home. Despite her parents’ warnings, perhaps feeling sympathy for the people contained within, Anna wandered too close to the nearby concentration camp and was killed.
This only mildly inconvenienced her, or so it seemed, because she woke up several months later in a hospital on Gambino Island. She lasted exactly four months in Gaia before fighting to return home. Unfortunately, she came back to a time about a century after hers, and not anywhere near Weimar - actually, she ended up on a rocky peninsula in Maine, in the middle of a storm. Waiting it out yielded not only a job with the family who lived in the great old Victorian house, but also a friendship with the patriarch’s only daughter, a ten-year-old girl named Diana who called herself Dean.
Anna observed the two until she quit her job, and was struck by how well this family seemed to echo hers. The only difference between familial roles seemed to be that Dean did not listen at all to her authoritarian father, and she was allowed to get away with this as long as she seemed... happy. Anna worked for the Godfrey family for two years and then left, using her wages to pay her way through a college in her homeland of Germany.
While she was away, studying medieval literature, she realized something odd. Since waking up in that strange Gaia place, she had not aged at all. She obtained her diploma, and then she returned to the Godfrey house. Not only was her job still waiting, she distinctly remembered seeing a book on their shelves that might be of use to her. She returned to find seventeen-year-old Dean Godfrey alone in the house, working more often than not. While she approved of the changed work ethic, she did not approve of the reasoning, and so Anna borrowed the book and left to wander the world.
Several years later, nearly a decade to be exact, she bumped into Dean as the young woman was performing - apparently, she had decided to become some kind of rock star. Anna, down-to-earth, organized Anna, had never dreamed of such a glamourous life, and to see the girl she had once watched grow up live it --
Well, one thing led to another, and shortly enough Anna had returned to Godfrey House.
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Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:07 pm
The day Anabelle came to join the family at Godfrey House, Dean was building a sandcastle. And damn, was it an amazing sandcastle, featuring corbel roofs and caryatid pillars with a wide open plaza in the middle. Dodging high tide while adding newer, higher towers was difficult, but exhilarating. Dodging high tide while a small child in a basket crushed the north tower was not exhilarating. “Hey!” Dean reared up out of a tide pool, a bucket hanging from her hands; “I am calling shenanigans!” The basket was silent. She peered angrily over the side, brows stooping together to stare at the child inside.
It was a little girl, no older than four or five, her silver hair in pigtails and large gray-green eyes half-lidded. She was a tired little baby, and she yawned as she lay in the blankets. Sea-spray had wet the outside of the cloth, but the child herself was dry; there were bells tied into her hair. They jingled as the child snuggled deeper into her vessel.
Dean pursed her lips.
She thought about it for a minute. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to take care of kids, because she did. Wasn’t that she didn’t like kids, she liked them fine. It was just, what did you do with a kid who washed up on your sandcastle and then went to bed? More thought, and the answer became obvious.
Carefully, she tucked the blankets closer around the little girl and then picked up the basket, and then carried the basket inside.
“It’s wet,” said Dean, setting the basket on the kitchen table with a loud kerthump. “And cold.”
After a moment, Anna looked up from her pot of chocolate. “I’m making cocoa,” she said.
Dean nodded self-importantly. “Two mugs, if you please, my good woman.”
“Two,” asked Anna as she pulled out three coffee cups. “Two? I am capable of refilling a mug.”
“But making the guest share a mug is rude,” objected Dean. She reached into the basket and picked up the little silver-haired girl from inside it. “I think we should call her Anabelle.”
For a moment, Anna stared. And stared. And filled the mugs. And stared. “Woher erhielten Sie das?”
“Euhhh...” Dean shifted from foot to foot, holding the baby closer and more properly. “Der Strand?”
“Your accent is terrible,” said Anna, wrinkling her nose.
“Tha~nks,” said Dean.
After a moment, the German woman put whipped cream on the cocoa and set it down on the table. Dean sat the sleeping child in a chair. The little girl woke up and promptly tried to climb on the table. Absently, Anna tapped her on the head as she passed. “Don’t hit the baby,” protested Dean.
“He who spareth the rod, spoileth the child,” quoted Anna.
“Spoileth,” said Anabelle. She was sitting on the table, fully awake, up to her palms in whipped cream and hot chocolate. “Child.” The little girl smiled angelically.
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Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:35 pm
It becomes apparent that Anabelle is not really human.
Anna is the first to note it. The way the little silver-haired child can sit, for hours upon hours, staring out a window with blank gray-green eyes - how her moods are mercurial and seem to puzzle even herself - once, how she stands and stares at a mouse as she crushes it, slowly, under one foot. Anna watches it happen; bile claws at her throat as she sees the red blood spread from beneath the little girl’s foot. A mouse, no longer a living mammal, but a berry squashed into the carpet.
In horror, she slaps Anabelle. For a moment, those creepy eyes stare back at her, blank and utterly inhuman.
“Why do you hit me,” she inquires in a piping, innocent tone. “I do nothing wrong, Manna. I do nothing wrong, why do you hit me?”
Anna doesn’t know how to answer. How do you explain to a little girl that she just murdered an animal? That that’s bad? As a child, Anna had been squeamish. She doesn’t even have her father’s rants to model her own after. “You don’t,” says Anna. “You don’t stand on things.”
So for weeks, the little girl refuses to stand still. She sits, feet pulled off the ground. Anna is convinced she can see blood beneath the child’s toenails. But that’s ridiculous, it’s been weeks.
Of course not.
Dean notices it - never directly. She never stops long enough to think Hm, this is odd, normal children don’t do this. The two, mother and daughter, dig holes in the sand. Anabelle’s fill like tidal pools. Dean’s wash away, eroding under sand and sun, but Anabelle and her potholes in the beach stay.
She goes out at low tide, Anabelle, her pigtails bobbing as she kicks her flipflops into the sea. That’s the fourth pair this week, Dean sighs. The little girl looks over her shoulder, all innocence. “They weren’t right, Mama,” she says, and she plunges into the water to pull out one white and blue sandal. This she drops on the beach at Dean’s feet. “Mama,” she asks, “Where my other sandal? The black one with stars.”
Dean goes inside and brings out the other sandal. The little girl is holding a sea-star out of the water, high over her own head. It drips salt water into her eyes, and Anabelle doesn’t blink until she notices her Mama watching her. “T’anks, Mama,” says Anabelle, and she slips on her mismatched sandals. This doesn’t seem to phase the little girl as she runs back into the water, wet to her knees from the surf, sea-star still clutched in one tiny hand.
“You’re welcome,” says Dean. “I guess.”
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