Chapter Five: Ofelia
When they finally got back to the house, Grizzelda was waiting for them--arms crossed, toe tapping--in front of the big front door with the snake knocker. On her dress, stars buzzed about angrily forming sharp geometric patterns. Grizzelda looked like a bird of prey, her chin and nose tilted haughtily, her eyes glaring keenly.
“Where have you been? Didn’t I leave specific instructions that you were not to leave the house?” she demanded in a clipped, severe manner. She knew exactly where they had gone because her own guardian spirit, a black squirrel, had followed them, watched and reported back.
Colin cleared his throat. He was prepared to take the brunt of his aunt’s fury, but he hesitated too long, and Grizzelda’s observations ran ahead of him.
“Melissa, do you want to go to school?” asked Grizzelda. When Melissa nodded, much of Grizzelda’s anger dissipated. She had expected Colin or Spike to be the ones defying her authority, not Melissa, not mousy little Melissa. In Melissa she was reminded of herself at that age.
“Yes, well,” she said tightly. She had never had to punish Melissa before. “Get inside. I want a full account of how things went, now!”
Once inside Colin and Spike took over, telling the tale, leaving out Sergeant Peary, the parakeets and the fire in the principal’s office. They stuck to the fact that they couldn’t go to school because they weren’t registered.
They sat on a big couch in the parlor. The piano had been moved into the library. Everything, strangely enough, looked amazingly clean. The dust and cobwebs along with the white linen furniture covers had been cleaned away revealing a dark, rich, wood-paneled room; they wondered how the transformation had been done so quickly. In fact they were wondering so much that their aunt’s scolding had become muted in an irritating muffled sound from which they only caught the key words – school – dead – and – never. Obviously they weren’t going to get the opportunity to go to school any time soon.
From somewhere in the house issued a delicious aroma that made their stomachs rumble with hunger. And, bizarre as it might seem, they could hear someone singing.
The beautiful melodic tune was coming from the kitchen, muting Grizzelda’s rant even further, diminishing it to insignificance. Carrying a silver tray, piled high with slices of sweet, spice loaf, a woman glided into the room. Her skin, the color of warm sandy earth, glimmered, setting off the dazzling white smile that spread across her face.
“Hello, hello, I’ve heard so much about you,” she exclaimed blithely, as though Grizzelda had been singing their praises, instead of ranting her complaints. “Here you are, a little snack for you,” she said, setting the silver tray down on the coffee table in front of them with a flourish. “My, my,” one of her brown hands dove gracefully towards Spike’s hair, tentatively touching a few strands as if they were spun gold. “What beautiful hair. All of your children have beautiful hair!”
“They are not my children,” said Grizzelda vehemently, “but I am their guardian, and therefore, bound to take care of them. This is Colin, Spike and Melissa. Children, this is our new housekeeper.”
Even though he bridled at being called a child, Colin stared at the woman in amazement.
“New housekeeper?” asked Spike. “Where did our old one go?”
Grizzelda flashed Spike a withering glare.
It began to dawn on Spike, as he bit into a piece of spice loaf, the many benefits of having a housekeeper, especially one that liked his long hair. He grinned contentedly.
“Yes, my name is Ofelia,” said the woman cheerily, leaning over to shake their hands vigorously, “so pleased to meet you!”
Colin and Melissa couldn’t help but smile; it was as though the woman didn’t have a negative or ill feeling in her entire body. She was the exact opposite of their ever-negative aunt. They wondered how such an event--the two women being in the same room--had come to pass.
Grizzelda cleared her throat, and in her most condescending voice, said, “Isn’t there something else you need to do?”
“Oh, yes, so much to do!” Ofelia said in delightful anticipation. “I hope you enjoy your snack. It’s a little recipe I picked up while visiting a place – very far away. The spice flavor,” she said, winking at Spike, “is cardamom. Well, I must get back to work.” She gazed intensely at each of them, enveloping them in the deep, brown warmth of her eyes before slipping back into the kitchen.
Grizzelda rolled her eyes plaintively. “If there had been anybody else, I would’ve hired them,” she said in a tired, exasperated tone. “Everywhere I go, people seem to turn white and start to shake when they hear ‘Horwood House’ uttered. Puh-lease!”
She stretched her long arms and took in the room with a self-satisfied air of accomplishment. Her gaze caressed a large portrait on the wall. It was the picture of a young man dressed in black armor with a red sash cutting across his torso on the diagonal. The man’s sallow face stared out emptily from the dark, as haunting and expectant as the moon hanging in the background of the painting. The face was devoid of any emotion that might link the man in the portrait to humanity. His eyes were flat and blank, without a shred of humanity, just an immense darkness. “This place is absolutely wonderful. I don’t see why everyone is so fearful.”
“Right,” mumbled Spike in-between mouthfuls.
“I have a question,” posed Colin tentatively.
“Yes?”
“How could you afford this place? It must’ve cost a lot. I mean, I had to scrape through enough ditches just to get enough cans and bottles to buy my comics.”
A delightful memory touched Grizzelda’s lips moving them to smile. “Comics, oh, yes, I burned them, didn’t I? I never asked you, but why did you waste so much effort on such trash? I mean, what an unbelievable character, this Sergeant Peary, total fiction!” Quickly she stood up, went to a bookshelf, pulled out a book and tossed it to him. “Here, read something good instead of that trash!”
Colin caught the book adeptly and turned it over to read the cover, “Myths and Legends of the Carpathian Mountains?”
“Yes, I’m sure you’ll find it rather enlightening. As far as where I got the money, well, that is none of your business. By the way,” she said, “all three of you are grounded to your rooms for the rest of the day.” With this she swirled out of the room leaving them with the feeling that their aunt was on the edge of something, and just about ready to fall off. What that something was, they just weren’t exactly sure.
“What was that all about?” asked Spike, through a mouthful of spice loaf.
“I don’t know, but something has changed, don’t you think?”
“I try to think as little as possible,” answered Spike, who picked up another piece of bread and thrust it at his sister, who was rigid with fear. “Don’t worry about Aunt G,” he said confidently, “we can handle her, can’t we?”
Colin nodded, but inside he wasn’t sure. “There’s something about her that’s different,” he said, thinking out loud. “I don’t know what it is, but something is different.”
“Can’t be! She’s the same bright, cheery person we’ve always known,” responded Spike.
Colin tried to smile at this but was unable to do so. There was something in the air, a dark vapor of foreboding. It was tangible, almost as though he could reach out a touch it. It felt like a Shadow Nix, but much, much worse. He looked at Melissa who was nibbling on her bread, eyes still wide and dilated. “You feel it too, don’t you?”
Melissa nodded.