Oswin's Project Read online

  Oswin’s Project

  By

  Fiona Law

  Eternal Press

  A division of Damnation Books, LLC.

  P.O. Box 3931

  Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

  www.eternalpress.biz

  Oswin’s Project

  by Fiona Law

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-584-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-585-4

  Cover art by: Amanda Kelsey

  Edited by: Naomi Clark

  Copyright 2012 Fiona Law

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  1st North American, Australian and UK Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To Bronwen, with love

  Chapter One

  A shadow darted across the top of the old wall clock. Just a flutter of movement. Oswin looked up at once, his fine, straight hair shifting like desert sands across his scalp. He sat riveted, frozen in mid-chew, staring keenly with gray, bespectacled eyes at the clock. It was hideous—a wooden, ornate thing with a pair of cherubs carved at the top—creepy! It had originally hung in the dining room, but recently found its way into the kitchen-diner.

  Perhaps, Oswin thought, perhaps, Gemma is right about their house.

  This wasn’t his house. He was only a guest, a border. He went home for most weekends and all the holidays, only staying here with his cousins and uncle in order to attend a private school. When he first moved in at the beginning of the school year, he thought Gemma had been overreacting, but perhaps…

  “Gemma!” he called, letting his spoon fall into his bowl of cereal, and racing up the stairs two at a time. At the top of the landing he paused, ran his fingers through his hair, then marched briskly down the landing to her door.

  “Gemma!” he called again, his voice rising to a hoarse squeak. “Open up, it’s…”

  The door opened a crack and an elegant, white hand shot out, clutching Oswin firmly by the collar and pulling him in. The door shut behind him with hardly a click.

  He stood face to face with his cousin, Gemma. She still held onto his collar with one hand and in the other, she held a large, flat brush. It looked like a paddle in her delicate fist.

  “Shh!” she hissed, her dark, almond eyes wide and her cheeks flushed in her pale face. She was a pretty little thing, with that elfin look about her and movements that were quick and nervous. She had the sort of rigid posture that ballerinas get.

  Gemma waved her brush earnestly towards the door. Oswin pursed his wide lips and nodded, staring earnestly back to show he knew to be quiet, and he turned to open the door. Gemma leapt into his way, landing neatly in front of the door on stocking feet. She spread her scrawny arms and legs out across it, preventing Oswin from opening it.

  “But the rules,” he said lamely.

  “I just want to get to school today without any conversations,” whispered Gemma. “I don’t feel like all that ‘blah…blah…blah!’ today.”

  “Perhaps I should…I could speak to you later…”

  “Not you, silly! Her!” Gemma indicated to the doorway behind her with a flick of her head and a roll of her eyes. Her rosebud mouth pouted and she frowned determinedly.

  “Okay,” Oswin replied gently. He understood perfectly and sympathized with her. He stepped back, away from the door—moved over to her dressing table, leaning on its cluttered surface. One or two little bottles toppled over. He avoided looking at the unmade, rumpled bed in front of him by turning to put the bottles up right. Gemma relaxed and began to brush masses of curling, auburn hair, far too thick for her thin frame.

  “Well, what is it?” she whispered pleasantly enough, pointing her toes and kicking her ballet shoes under her bed, trying to tidy her room as she finished dressing.

  “I was just thinking,” began Oswin slowly. He adjusted his specs. Suddenly it all seemed so silly, but he struggled on. “Well, the thing is…I’ve just seen something rather…peculiar.”

  Gemma froze in mid stroke, her eyebrows arched, enquiringly.

  He continued, “I think I saw…”

  A door banged, cutting his sentence short and making them both jump.

  After a pause Gemma whispered, “That’s the bathroom door,” and resumed brushing her hair—with faster strokes, now.

  “Your Dad?” asked Oswin.

  “No. He left over half an hour ago. He popped in to make sure I was up.”

  “It must be her—Beryl—then.”

  “Good!” Gemma deftly plaited her hair into a thick rope running down her back. A chestnut haze fuzzed above her head like a halo. She shoved her feet, twisting frantically, into her shoes without undoing the buckles. “I’ve got time for a quick breakfast now,” she announced as she fled out the room and down the stairs.

  Oswin followed her as far as her doorway and stood looking after her, running his fingers through his hair. He wondered if Gemma rushed about like that to avoid staying still in a house that gave her the creeps, or to avoid being pinned down by her elder sister, Beryl. Or was it a bit of both? He sighed, still pondering the matter, when the door opposite swung open to reveal a large girl, looking much older than her seventeen and three quarter years. She dressed in long layers and dramatic colors. Today’s eye blinder was a cyan v-necked jumper, stretched across her generous bust. An unbuttoned waist coat fell alongside a multicolored scarf to below her wide hips. Even her face and nose were long. Apart from the same hair tone and rose-bud mouth, she didn’t really resemble her younger sister. Her peepers were small and a watery hazel—nothing like Gemma’s deep and soulful eyes.

  Oswin stood, blinking stupidly up at Beryl, for a moment. Realizing that his mouth was open, he shut it quickly.

  Beryl took a step towards him, her long skirts rustling. “You weren’t in Gemma’s room, were you? You haven’t been fiddling, have you?”

  “Certainly not!” retorted Oswin indignantly. “I wanted a word with her.”

  “Well you can’t,” replied Beryl. “She’s in the bathroom and needs her privacy respected at such times.”

  Oswin narrowed his eyes and seethed quietly for a moment. Then he balked, his eyes widening. “Actually, I think you’ll find that she is not in the bathroom.”

  “Of course she is! I heard her slam the door,” insisted Beryl. She stalked across the landing to the bathroom door and flung it open. She stood in the doorway, her hand still poised on the doorknob, and looked about. Then she turned back to Oswin, “It definitely slammed. Ah, so it was you—you said you were looking for Gemma! Try to be more gentle with the furnishings of this house please, Oswin, or someone could get hurt!”

  He took a step towards her, protesting his innocence, but she cut him off by raising her hand, “No!” she said firmly, before changing her tune to sound quite coy. “I need the bathroom now. You and Gemma don’t mind waiting, do you? But don’t queue, I can’t get my make up on evenly with someone hovering outside the door. It’s the pressure, you know! I hope you don’t mind!” She grinned cheerfully at him, as she shut the door.

  Os
win shuddered. Oh, that Beryl! Her bossiness was bad enough, but the way she kept trying to sugarcoat it with supposed subservience was beyond annoying—it was disturbing. Oswin had seen at family gatherings, aunts and nan’s—and even his own mum!—tut-tutting about ‘poor Gemma’s emotional problems’. But he spent proper time here and now he knew the truth. As far as Oswin was concerned, there was nothing the matter with Gemma at all. She was as well adjusted as she could be with a family like hers. If it weren’t for Gemma, he’d tell Beryl and their father where to put their enormous ‘Edwardian Terraced’ and go to his school’s hostel. And gladly put up with the rich ogre types shoving his head down the loo and sneaking punches at him for cracking a maths test. He had fellow ‘gifted’ friends in the hostel, so he knew what weedy boffins put up with there.

  Oswin was half done packing his book bag when he remembered his unfinished cereal in the kitchen and went downstairs, just in time to see Gemma tip-toeing upstairs again.

  She mouthed, “Is she still in the bathroom?” as she passed him on the stairs.

  He nodded and continued on into the kitchen. The contents of his bowl were so soggy and dismal that he threw them away and poured himself out a new helping. To his annoyance, Beryl soon joined him, spreading two slices of toast with liberal helpings of marmalade, and pointedly reading a paper as she chewed noisily. Once or twice, she muttered things like, “Serves them right!” and “Oh, my Gawd!” as she slurped marmalade off her fingers and turned the page.

  Oswin made no response. He stared into his cereal, out of the window, at the clock—anything rather than converse with Beryl. And then there it was again. A shadow—a movement—just out of focus, above the clock. But when he looked—nothing. Just a tingle of gooseflesh. He frowned. Nope. Surely he imagined it and he imagined it because he expected—wanted—to see it again. But he could feel eyes boring down on him. He could just feel he was being watched.

  It was Beryl. She stared at Oswin from across the table, then, throwing her paper aside, she thumped her fist down. Her toast bounced on the plate.

  “You are not helping!” she boomed.

  The flowers in the vase quivered. Oswin, although not yet thirteen, was made of stronger stuff. He looked at her inquiringly.

  “You are not supposed to go ‘Ga-Ga’ on us,” Beryl continued. “You were invited to board with us in order not only to assist your parents’ financial burden of rearing a gifted child—as you know the cost of public schooling—but also to help our family situation. That is, to promote stability by helping us draw Gemma out of herself. Your mother is always going on about your common sense and genius,” she embellished bitterly, “but you’re making things worse!”

  Beryl enjoyed spouting off long monologues. It made her feel sophisticated.

  “What? I looked at the clock. What is wrong with looking at a clock?”

  “It’s the way you did it!” Beryl accused loudly. She seldom spoke quietly.

  “Ah.” Oswin folded his skinny arms and lent back in his chair and asked with mocking eloquence, “Would you be kind enough, my dear cousin, to demonstrate to me, preferably in slow motion, how you would like me to look up at the clock?”

  The hue of her ruddy face deepened further. “You’re supposed to look at it to see the time! You thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye!” She punctuated her accusation with an aggressive stare. Her eyes seemed more watery than ever.

  Oswin wondered how they never melted away altogether. He blinked at her innocently.

  “Do you know what I am thinking now?” he asked levelly—sweetly. “Perhaps you could tell me what I am planning to do for my next science project? Because for the love of Mike, I can’t come up with any good ideas! None that I’m aware of,” he finished irritably.

  In the dining room, further along the hall, the framed Van Gough print crashed to the floor. They both ignored it. Beryl had put it up there to replace the old clock and loved referring to it as ‘The Van Gough.’

  Gazing down her ample cleavage at some crumbs that had become wedged there and begun to tickle, Beryl picked them out with her broad, manicured fingers, flicking them onto her plate with studied elegance.

  Then she continued, “Do you know how long it’s taken me to get Gemma back to some semblance of normality, after we lost Mother? And I use the term ‘normality’ broadly. As you know, she is under observation by the child welfare authorities. That is to say, Gemma is under constant threat of being committed to a child psychiatric unit at the nearest large hospital.” Here she paused to place a hand on her bosom as a shudder rippled through her.

  “And a fine job you’ve done too,” remarked Oswin. “She’s a perfectly normal twelve year old.”

  Beryl continued loftily, “The death of Mother has had an enormous effect on her sense of reality. Her foundation was ripped from beneath her. She was grasping at anything to fill the gap of not having a mother figure, despite everything that Father and I did for her in trying to replace what she’d lost. I don’t think she’ll ever be totally right, but she has calmed down a bit with regards to her strange beliefs.” Beryl paused to dab her eyes with a handy tissue. She always carried things like handy tissues and combs.

  Oswin rolled his eyes wearily and slurped his sweet, corn flake milk. It was best just to sit it out. There was no stopping Beryl once she got going, and it looked like this morning’s spiel was going to be a long one. Beryl didn’t know she was alive unless she was sloshing around in her Bog of Melodrama.

  “We have already moved from our original family abode of happiness,” sniffed Beryl, “in order to escape the ghostly memories of my mother. I simply had no choice but to insist we move out of that house. Mother’s spirit was lingering so strongly—God-rest-her-soul—that I couldn’t escape it and get on with the task of rearing Gemma, whilst keeping up with my studies. It was the most difficult decision I have had to make. And I’ve had to make many since being forced to step into Mother’s shoes.” Beryl stuffed the last of her toast into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Her watery eyes fixed in a morose upward stare.

  A spark lit up in Oswin’s busy head.

  “Did Gemma ‘see’ things there? Like you did?” he asked.

  “No. It wasn’t like Mother was haunting it,” replied Beryl caustically, reaching for another slice of toast. “That wasn’t the sort of thing she would do! She would never want to cause us any pain! It was the memories. Her presence was still there. I don’t think I can explain it to you properly. You are, after all, only a pre-pubescent,”

  Oswin opened his mouth but had no time to retort as Beryl continued, “And what I’m talking about involves emotional maturity, not mere intellect, which—gifted or not—you, as a pre-pubescent boy, have not yet obtained,” she finished. And smiled. That was another apparently unintentional insult.

  “So, although Gemma felt your mother’s presence in the old house,” he confirmed, “she’s only been ‘seeing things’ here—in this house?”

  “We all most certainly did—in reality—feel the presence of Mother, God-Rest-Her-Soul, in that house. And since we moved here, I don’t think Gemma has got worse,” Beryl said, bristling. “And I am keeping an eye on her, and following her progress, as it were. I think moving here has helped to bring some closure to our bereavement, you know.” She smacked her lips and gave her cousin a purposeful stare.

  “Yes, but seeing things has only been here?” Oswin tried again.

  “And after reading the report of the assessment on Gemma’s mental health, by the Department of Child Psychology, I am positive that I made the right decision to move us to this house. The report said, after all, ‘Gemma’s behavior remains within the realms of normality,’ ” Beryl quoted.

  “I know, I agree with you but….”

  “She was bound to have a settling-in period. Besides, they assured me that it’s just a bit of a
n overactive imagination, that’s all,” Beryl declared sternly. “And if we don’t feed it, Gemma will be perfectly well adjusted and happy.”

  Oswin threw his hands up and sighed. “Yes, yes I see! Beryl, you are perfectly right.”

  She nodded triumphantly. Ran her tongue across her teeth, and said, “And that is why I say: Don’t look at the clock like that!”

  He nodded.

  “Because there’s nothing there.”

  He nodded again.

  “And she doesn’t need to see people thinking they’ve seen things too.” Beryl took another enormous bite of her toast and chewed slowly. With deliberation. Staring hard at Oswin.

  He longed to point out while her mouth was full that Gemma hadn’t seen him see the shadow on the stupid old clock. But he nodded instead. Politely.

  Once Beryl swallowed, she laughed. Brushed imaginary crumbs off the table and said, “Sorry, Oswin! I just had to get that straight with you. We want you two to be friends, but don’t encourage her in any airy-fairy stuff, please! Just snakes and ladders and other innocent games will do. It’s very important that Gemma is not led astray. Ghosts and that sort of thing do not exist. It’s a proven fact.” She smiled again.

  Oswin bit his tongue so hard he could have sliced it off. He put a great deal of energy into scraping his empty bowl.

  “Snakes and ladders!” he mouthed with a sneer. Then once more, he froze. As he slowly looked up at Beryl, a smile spread over his face.

  “You’re not angry with me, are you?” Beryl asked. She cocked her head to one side. “I know you are a highly intelligent boy, and mature for your age, but I am five and a quarter years your senior, and thus more experienced in life than you. And I do hold the adult position of lady of the house.”

  Oswin shook his head vaguely.

  “I mean,” continued Beryl, getting knotted up, “if I seem older than my years, it’s because I am. I had to grow up suddenly to become mother to my sister, who was only six at the time. And for a girl of almost twelve years—as I was then, which you can work out with your excellent mathematics skills—taking up the position of lady of the house is an enormous task. Luckily, I was already mature beyond my yea…” Beryl broke off, aware at last that Oswin was not listening. “What is it? I’m very intuitive, you know, and I sense something’s wrong.” She leaned forward and put one hand gently onto her chest.