The Wind in the Bamboo

Posted on Thu 24th May, 2018 @ 1:11pm by Purulence Addams

980 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: Addams House, Deck 1554

The aged woman sat in a wingback chair, her black, tatterdemalion shawl tugged close around her shoulders. "Sit, sit, mes petits chéris. The time has come to talk of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax; of cabbages and kings."

Purulence had changed out of her painting smock and black leggings into a comfortable dress that didn't have random streaks of paint on it. There was something about serving tea that called for a dress rather than leggings or jeans. The three of them now sat in the parlor, sipping blood orange tea out of china cups in the shape of skulls, and nibbling on cranberry-orange shortbread cookies -- mainly because Purulence couldn't think what else might go well with blood-orange tea.

The ancient woman looked at Purulence with her good eye as she stirred her tea. "Be at peace, child," she said. "Things are in motion, and though I can not see to the end, I do know that the breeze is pleasant."

"Um ... okay," Purulence said uncertainly. She sipped at her tea and thought of the one thing she wasn't at peace about. Her eyes widened as she recalled that some Addamses had certain abilities that people from other families didn't have, and she gave Grandmère a closer look. "Thank you for letting me know," she said. "I'll, ah, be patient, then."

"You mentioned Chlamydia almost with your first step in the door. We," Ischemia nodded to include Purulence, "have been concerned about her. At the moment, we're doing nothing, because there doesn't seem to be a clear direction in which we should go. Do you know something we should know?" As she took a sip of tea, the negotiator in her thought, Of course she does, or why else would she be here with her mystifying mutterings and her mysterious self!

The old woman chuckled and set her tea cup aside as Ischemia's male cat came and jumped in her lap. "Yes, hello," she said, stroking the cat's smooth black fur. "Aren't you the handsome fellow?" After a moment of petting, she looked up at her great-granddaughters. "A voice has come to me, down the wind. It speaks of a lost child and of broken hearts. I hear it only distantly, only intermittently."

Suddenly tense, Schemy leaned forward. "Does it whisper a name to you? Maybe a number? Does it have anything to do with Cousin Perverto?" she asked, rapid-fire.

Purulence raised an eyebrow at Ischemia, but her mind also went back to the last time she had seen their cousin, in the crystal ball on Halloween, dying. That was also, coincidentally, the time when she'd seen Chlamydia weep. Perhaps that wasn't so much of a coincidence? "And what about the eight others?" she asked quietly. If one child was named Nine, there had to be One through Eight.

The old lady seemed to be thinking of nothing but stroking the cat, but in her faint, dry voice, she said, "Experiment Number Nine Addams misses the only mother she ever knew." A moment later, she added, "Echoes; gone to echoes all."

"Experiment?" Purulence murmured. She glanced at Ischemia, feeling herself grow cold. Perverto had appeared to be in a laboratory during that glimpse she'd had of him in the crystal ball. Purulence swallowed hard. She could feel her imagination spinning out of control as she began to speculate about what sort of experimentation Perverto had been involved in--and put a clamp on it. That wasn't going to help anyone.

"What brought up all of this with Number Nine?" she asked. "We thought Chlamydia was affected by the deaths in a Besm clone group."

The old woman laughed a wheezing laugh. "A little green man -- older, perhaps, than even I -- said 'always in motion the future is.' But today's present is yesterday's future. Nothing is static. Difficult to see. A ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff."

"You know," Ischemia said, her mind racing, "If Number Nine Addams were the ninth in a series ... the Winters were ten .... What if Chlamydia made some kind of connection to them and whatever was going on ...." She sat up straight. "I know Chlamydia would never be involved in experimenting on children, but I don't put anything past Perverto. He wasn't fit to be an Addams. If he were doing something to children and Chlamy found out about it, she'd have gone directly to him and stopped him any way she could. Maybe the child was a rescue project."

She turned to whatever relation the old woman claimed to be. "Stop beating around the bush with all this mumbo-jumbo. Who is Nine and where is she? Why isn't she here with Chlamydia, if she misses her? Clearly, there's something that isn't right, because I'll tell you right now, there's a hole in Chlamy's memory, and that child is in it."

"Chlamydia misses Nine, too," Purulence said, "to the point of crying for her. But then the memory vanishes. It's hard to convince someone that they should see a Counselor for trauma or grief when they don't remember having suffered those things."

Remembering their sister the night of the Halloween party, Ischemia could only nod her agreement. "I don't know if you've experienced it, too, but most of the time when Perverto's name comes up it triggers some kind of mental wandering on her part. It's where I've picked up the little I know. So, Grandmamá, what gives?"

"What I know, I have told," the elderly woman said. She gently shooed the cat from her lap and stood, leaning heavily on her cane. "No mumbo; no jumbo. Things are sometimes complicated, and the truth which can be spoken is rarely the true truth." She sighed. "For now, I am tired. The trip was long. Someone show me to a stone shelf, and let me rest?"

 

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