literature

Edward - Story of Snow Pt 7

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Published: Feb 15, 2011

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Chapter Twenty Five

Everybody around here knew that the strange boy from the house on the hill had not been born but had been made. He had been created up here, by the old inventor, who had died before he got to finish the man he invented.

Edward looked exactly like the kind of charcoal sketch a disturbed child might draw, all in blacks and whites, with the sticklike figure patchily coloured in, and the face very roughly drawn and hatched across with lines. The hair was a big scribbled mess, the eyes were two big round black holes and the hands had been given great claw-like fingers, much too long for the rest of the body. No child would want to see this nightmarish doodle brought to life. And yet here he was.

Moira had always avoided thinking in much detail about how exactly Edward came to be. But it was really shocking to come face to face with this room full of twisted inventions, and with…that, that robot thing with the knives and the buckles, that looked so much like Edward. She had no idea what any of these horrible machines were. And the whole place just looked…evil.

Moira realized properly for the first time that Edward was a made thing, and that it was impossible to know whether the thoughts and instincts running through him were the same as other people's. She couldn't help but remember that very little was known about him, that he hardly ever spoke, that he'd spent all this time on his own, shut up in this house, for years and years since…since he had killed a man… And now she was spending all this time up here alone with him. And nobody knew she was here and who she was with because the man with the scissors for hands was supposed to be dead.
She felt a white-hot wave of hysteria rush over her and threaten to submerge her.

Edward, who had been watching her intently all this time from the other side of the inventing room, as if he was trying to read her thoughts, suddenly began to advance on her, with that horrible stiff-kneed lolloping shuffle, his arms outstretched like a mummy rising from the tomb, his great shining talons extending, snipping, slashing and slicing in the most horrible manner imaginable.

But, as she cringed away, petrified, Edward's birdlike attention was caught by an automated biscuit cutter, its hearts and stars arrested in mid air, and suddenly her eyes too picked out the familiar shape of mixing bowls, beaters, spoons and all the usual kitchen clutter involved with – baking cookies.
Moira felt weak-kneed with relief. Was that what all this was about? It was absolutely ludicrous. The whole sinister bulk of metal filling the breadth of the room was just the most convoluted, ridiculous, long winded farce of a kitchen gadget she had ever seen.
And suddenly she keeled over with laughter, and actually felt tears of hysterical relief coursing down her cheeks.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Moira made her way over to where Edward was standing, and smiled sheepishly at him. This made him bold enough to smile back and to carefully point at an enormous dusty old tome lying near the foot of the metal man-machine.
"Look" said Edward.
So Moira picked up the book and leafed through it.
It was very large, and seemed to have been hand bound with thick paper leaves roughly secured inside the covers. Inside there was a series of beautifully illustrated drawings. The first was of the scary machine in front of them and she could just make out the words "lettuce chopping devices" with an arrow pointing to the multitude of blades, although the spidery black calligraphy was hard to read.
"Go on reading" Edward's soft voice came from just behind her shoulder. She almost jumped; it was a lot closer than he usually stood.
She turned the page.

The picture was almost the same but now the metal creature had a more human shape. As she continued turning the pages, the figure became more and more familiar, until finally she was looking at Edward, wistful smile, big eyes and all. Except this Edward had smooth and shining hair falling level with his chin and his face was serenely free of scars. He was handsome. He always had been, but somehow, she'd not really thought about it straight out like that until now. Moira looked elsewhere, concentrating very hard on what looked like a giant pair of eggwhisks.
How on earth was it even possible that one minute the boy with the scissors for hands made her jump out of her skin, and the next minute she found she was more and more – well, nothing. Everything was fine, just the way it was.

By now Edward had by now lost interest in the inventor's set of notes and had gone to root through the interesting junk in the rest of the great disused chamber. Moira asked if she could borrow the book.
Edward smiled and nodded at her. Then, all of a sudden, his large round eyes focused on something behind her. His mouth opened wide in pleased surprise and he reached out excitedly across Moira, narrowly missing blinding her with a fistful of long, scrabbling scissor blades.
Edward suddenly realized what he had done and shot both hands behind his back, while his face filled with almost comic chagrin.
"I'm-I'm sorry".
"Don't be" said Moira and stood aside. "It's your house after all."
Edward happily stepped past her to investigate a huge industrial fan from which hung a bicycle wheel, cogs, and varying lengths of rusted chain with objects attached; a warming pan, some tin cans, garden shears, ice skates and a set of fire irons. All of these spun round together and created a horrific jangling din when set in motion by a curious metal finger.
Moira left him to it.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Back home, that night, Moira walked into a major drama the minute she got inside the door. Wendy was sitting on the flowery blue sofa with her face in her hands, while their next door neighbour, in a soap-sud covered apron and marigolds, tried to comfort her. Ted was standing awkwardly over by the sideboard, near the hall door, with a phone in his hand.
They looked round as Moira fell through the front door, almost dropping the huge book she clutched in her arms, having not realized the door was already open. Moira's mother wiped her eyes hastily, stood up, walked over to her daughter and put an arm round the young girl's shoulders.
"Moira, darling, it's your grandma. She's getting worse, they're really worried. Get a few things together, we're going up there. Lucky it's a Friday and no school tomorrow, but you'll have to miss your dancing class."
The lady from next door waved her soapy rubber gloves at them and broke in "Wendy, I already told Janet. She was a bit annoyed as they're all supposed to be doing slow dancing this week to With These Hands, and now she's got an uneven number, but it can't be helped."
Moira gave Wendy a quick hug and ran off to her room.

The minute Moira got in there she ducked under the canopy of her bed and shoved the big dusty notebook under her pillow – she would have to save it for later. Then she began opening drawers at random, pulling items of clothing out and stuffing them in the big red knapsack from her wardrobe. A load of boxes fell down from the top of the wardrobe, full of old clutter from when Peg had lived here and soon the room looked like a bombsite.
Moira stopped and surveyed the wreckage. It was beginning to look like Edward's attic space, where he kept his cuttings and special treasures.

Her room was increasingly full of Edward's things. Paper doll chains still festooned the room, but there were so many now she had started sticking them to the ceiling, where Wendy had been eyeing them, but, as yet, had said nothing. The mirror was now stuck all over with her own collection of cuttings, which she was saving to give to Edward, all about miracle medical procedures such as the one where little Jimmy had cut off his finger but he had kept it in a bag of frozen peas until the kind medics had managed to sew it back on for him, so that now he was the school tiddlywinks champion.
The dressing table had been cleared of lipsticks, nail polish and bangles and now boasted a chipped and dented wooden box, full of pencil stubs, a cobweb covered hacksaw, and a can of WD40 that she kept forgetting to take up to Edward – his left thumb had begun to make an irritating squeak after the day they had fixed the hole in one of the first floor bedroom ceilings.

Moira finished packing and hastily tried to shove a few things back in their places. Her eyes lit on a white paper chain featuring the same figure over and over again, a girl dancing with her arms uplifted as tiny paper snowflakes whirled about her. Moira slowed up and walked over to it. She reached out for it, hesitated, then let her arm fall back to its side. Then she got the better of herself and gently tugged the paper chain from the wall, folded it and put it in her bag to take to the sick woman up in the mountains.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was Sunday night before Moira got to open the inventor's notebook. The minute they got back to the house, Moira headed into her room. She slung the knapsack on the floor among all the rubbish and flopped down full length on the bed, lying on her front, tugging the book out from under the pillow as she did so. She needed a very good distraction right now, after... but she would think about that later.

The book fell open at the picture of the metal creature they had seen in the inventing room. Beneath it was pinned a set of spidery notes, and Moira, halting over some of the words, began to read. As she read, a picture formed in her mind.

An old man in a high collared black frock coat was smiling to himself as he walked into a bright silver room, full of spinning cogwheels and whirring machinery. He was tall, thin, and aristocratic looking, with silver hair, that was still thick, sweeping back from a high forehead over a hooked nose and salient cheekbones. His piercing blue eyes and the devilish looking silver moustache on his top lip gave his face a disturbingly Mephistophelean gleam when it was uplit by the cold greenish light filling the inventing room. As he approached the strangely shaped pile of black objects in one corner of the room however, the old man's face became gentle and full of affection.
"Ah, Edward, let us see if we can, perhaps, begin to fix those arms of yours at last."

Propped up between a shelf of books, and two disused birdcages, on top of a pile of dusty black scraps of leather, the torso of what seemed to be a shop mannequin was lying on its back. It had no arms and no legs, and its chest was just a rudimentary assortment of leather scraps with large stitches tacking it together. It looked as though all the effort had gone into the making of the head so far, as this was the only thing that looked more or less complete.
The mannequin had the head of a young man, with soft waves of shining black hair tumbling around his face. It looked like the moulding of the features had been finely finished but the skin colouring was still only foundational as yet, as the only tones were monochromatic whites and blacks. The eyes were dark and glassy, but, as the old man approached, astonishingly, the pupils moved and fixed on him.

The old inventor picked up an assortment of black scraps, that seemed to have come from the upholstery of a nearby sofa, various plastic tubes, bits of wiring, several nails and a long sharp needle and thread. With surprising haste the old man began to cobble together a shapely arm, and kept holding it up in front of the torso in order to assess the proportion. The eyes of the old man's creation watched every move avidly.

"And what shall we teach you today? Have you learnt all the alphabet yet? Let us say it together, shall we? ABCD-
"ABDC. EFA-" began the head obediently.

"Moira? Moira, are you in there?" Moira woke out of her reverie with a start as she heard her mother calling her name. "It's ok, Katie, I know she's in there, just go on in, she won't mind."
There came a knock at the door.
It's always the same, thought Moira, quickly shoving the book under her pillow again and glancing despairingly round what had once been quite a presentable room. You only ever get visitors when you and your belongings make a pigsty look like a step up in the world.
"Come in" she called out weakly.
Katie stepped in – and around the wash of litter that had swept up like a tideline near the door.
"I was just – uh – sorting my room out, you know, you have to make things worse before they get better…" she trailed off. Katie politely avoided the issue.
"I just came to see how you were. You missed dance class and I know you never would normally. Are you alright?"
Define 'alright' thought Moira. And before she could stop it, she was thinking about yesterday, up at the hospital, again.

They had gone straight in to see Kim when they got up to the hospital in the mountains yesterday. She was lying in a great hospital bed, connected to various machines and heart monitors and was so covered in wires, tiny plastic tubes and discreet little patches hiding drips inserted into her skin, that Moira hardly recognized her any more.
Ted and Wendy made small talk, and put the roses they had brought in a fresh glass of water. Moira said nothing.
"You should try to speak to her, Moira." said her dad "She can still hear you. If you want, we'll just go down to the ward and get a coffee, leave you with her". So they left.
Moira slowly opened her bag, anything to avoid looking at the prone figure in the bed. Her fingers closed on the small bit of folded white paper. She drew it out, and sat there for a long moment, debating.
"Listen, I've got something to tell you." She sat beside the bed, right in front of the blank, staring eyes. "I went up there, I found him". She unfolded the string of dancing girls, slowly, deliberately, in front of Kim's dull eyes. "I've seen Edward."
Did she see the faintest of movements on the heart monitor, a break in the regular red pattern of the heartbeat? She wasn't sure. But she went on, and told Kim everything.
Except how it all made her feel.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Katie left not long after, she'd only come round to see how Moira was, but left an invitation to come over next weekend, and watch some films at her house, if Moira could put up with Katie's brother making inane comments throughout.
"She seems very nice." said Moira's mother when Katie had gone "You should invite her round here for a change. It's really rude to practically live round hers half the week without ever having her back here. I don't know what her folks must think of us."
Wendy sighed and ran a duster along the cabinet where the family photos were standing.

Moira couldn't explain that she didn't actually impinge on Katie's folks very often. She just felt incredibly relieved the alibi for all the time she spent at the old mansion was still holding up so well, but was constantly terrified that somebody would figure out that she only actually turned up at Katie's every couple of weeks. And she couldn't explain that most of the food she took wasn't for Katie's benefit either, but for the entertainment of Edward and herself.
There were few things more fascinating than watching Edward attempt to eat food with those huge long scissors of his. He always insisted on trying everything she had brought with her, and was so incredibly pleased when he managed to get even a tiny mouthful. He was on very safe ground with anything like spring rolls that he could spike easily, and had developed such a knack for paring, coring and slicing fruit in a few strokes of steel sleight of hand, that Moira felt it would offend him if she didn't ritually hand over her apple to him every visit.

Moira handed Edward a Conference pear on Tuesday, as they sat quietly, like living gargoyles, on either side of the front steps. He sliced it and gave it back to her, and while she ate it, returned to his perch on the other balustrade. It was such a gorgeous April evening, full of dying golden light that stained the tree trunks yellow and softened the edges of the giant spidery green hand rising up from the round flowerbed before them.
They both sat there in silence, letting the mellow light wash over them and warm their skin. The lichen on the steps had rubbed off on Moira's slim jean-clad legs, and she could see a greenish tinge on her smooth skin where her jeans had torn at the knee.
Edward's sharp eyes had also spotted it, and he grinned one of his rare smiles at her, his eyes slightly closed against the strong evening light.
Once again, Moira was struck with just how beautifully ordinary he looked at times like this.
As the light faded and the garden softly filled with melancholy brown shadows, they stood up with one accord and went inside, Edward pushing the massive wooden door with its huge iron handle just enough ajar for them to slip in, and away down to the inventing room.

And, down here among the machines, and also perhaps because of the unnatural light indoors, Edward returned to looking like a member of the undead once more.
It was all so incredibly confusing, thought Moira. Half the time the boy with the scissors for hands frightened her to death – he looked so sinister, so scarred, so black and white, so clearly inhuman. And yet, the other half of the time, he absolutely fascinated her – probably for the very same reasons.
He was nothing like the other boys round here, he was unpredictable, dangerous (technically), exciting, artistic, tragic, attractive –
Moira caught herself abruptly on the edge of that last thought and looked over at Edward.
Right at that moment Edward was luckily completely oblivious to the way in which the prettiest girl in town was looking at him. He was busy meddling with the great cookie baking monstrosity.

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Part 2
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Part 5
Part 6