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Underside Walk A Guest Quarters story By Hilary Koepenick "Aisling didn't want to go," Alvise's grandmother once said to him. "She didn't want to go, and so she didn't. She stopped at the door that would let her cross-over, she held her mask tight against her chest—she'd wear it when she got to the other side to keep the worst spirits away. She knew she wanted to come back, though. Even if only for one night, she knew she wanted to come back."
"Why would she want to?" Alvise had asked. "Why didn't she want to stay on the other side?" "Sometimes there are things worth coming back for, Alvise. Aisling greatly missed Aaron. She wanted to see him again; she didn't want to wait for him to cross over. She loved him dearly, and that made it worth risking everything—just for one day. She wanted to find him, and so she would search. It was Halloween Night when she found the door open just a crack. If no one was watching, she thought, she could cross over—" Alvise's grandmother's words rang in his mind as they did every Halloween. Bridges over the water of years, easing him into a better slumber in spite of the thought of that poor woman, Aisling. He found himself near sleeping this night, forgetting the watch that he traditionally kept. The branch scraped against the house below his open window, incited him to ask the question he'd asked almost every night for three years. "Sebastian?" Alvise asked the name to the darkness without hopes of hearing a response. He'd fallen asleep with the death's head mask grasped all too tightly in his small hand; his fingers curled in the eye holes, gripped the plaster as if it held some sort of unspoken promise. He kept his eyes shut. He wanted to feel Sebastian before he saw him. He wanted to believe that his friend was there before allowing the possibility of disappointment to enter his life. He felt the cold breeze come from his open window; he felt the chillier pressure of frozen fingertips along his cheekbone. "Sebastian," Alvise opened his eyes once the touch reassured him. "A bird this year?" His friend stood above him, a shadow cut out of the night. He was dressed in black only; jeans and a long sleeved shirt. A great bird mask covered the bulk of his features, the beak long and hooked. He nodded and it bobbed, the point aiming down at Alvise's throat with the motion. His lips curled back in a smile barely seen. Yet he said not a word; he wasn't expected to, not now. "This is—do you like what I got?" Unbridled enthusiasm as he held the mask out to Sebastian. The boy touched it, cocked his head to the side as if to show curiosity. His thumb raised in approval, another smile darkened by the shadow under the beak. Alvise blushed, he'd gained Sebastian's approval and in truth that was all that he sought on this night. He shivered with the cold, carefully setting it over his face and tying the string that held it in place. "I—I thought it was good, too. I'm really glad you like it. Do you have any plans or are we -we're okay? Good. I've been, I've been looking forward to this." Sebastian only grinned, his blue eyes shining in the moonlight behind the bird mask. He was patient with Alvise, waiting as he got out of the bed and smoothed out his white shirt, his jeans. He fumbled for the black cowl he'd be wearing over it, a finer detail that Sebastian watched with interest. Still, he said nothing. He only pointed when the moonlight caught the silver dollar Alvise was wearing around his neck. "You remember, too?" Alvise blushed as Sebastian nodded; he flipped up the hood on his cowl, "Come on, let's go." # "Do you have a silver dollar?" Sebastian had been badgering Alvise from the start on that fine summer day. "You have to have one. Everyone's got one at one point—no, it's the bigger one." Alvise had handed him a quarter, a fact that had apparently filled the boy with the deepest dismay. Sebastian sighed heavily, dug into his own jeans to pull out the requested coin. The silver dollar was shiny, infinitely old but not showing the wear; he'd washed it the day before, had shone it to perfection with the hem of his plaid shirt. "The most—the most important thing is the set up, alright?" Sebastian had raised his eyebrows, looked at Alvise with a comical seriousness. "If the set up is wrong than everything falls apart. You have to—you have to get the audience invested in it, that's why I asked you for yours. Mine'll do, it just—it just messes things up a little." "Hey, you could use the quarter—" "No, the quarter isn't big enough." Sebastian was obstinate, nearly aggressive on the matter. "It had to be big so when I hold it up, like so—you can see it. This—this is a normal silver dollar. You can touch it, you can see it, there is nothing up my sleeves." Sebastian fell into the stage banter with ease, standing there on the lawn. He was tall, young and serious, the light glinting off of the coin as he spun it between his thumb and forefinger. Alvise, he sat on the grass before him, watching Sebastian as he went about his trick. He let him touch the coin; let him handle it before it was back to the display. "The set up is the most important part," he repeated. "You need to feel that it's important, you need to notice all the small details. You need—you need to touch the thing before anything else happens. It makes you feel certain." "Certain of what?" Alvise's attention was held by that silvery shine, by the slow rotation of the coin, the way it walked over Sebastian's knuckles. "You need to be certain that you know what's going to happen. You need to be certain that you know where you are before you know anything else." # "Come on, let's go." Alvise repeated from beneath the black hood. The first step was always the most difficult, bending to get through the window and into the chill night air. Alvise breathed it in, felt Sebastian's hand at his shoulder. He warmed to the touch in spite of the cold; he looked over his shoulder to flash him a grin. This was an adventure, the rare night that they had nothing to worry about and little expectation of parental interruption. "Come on, Sebastian." Alvise repeated once more, and it was this third request that incited him to motion. They scaled the tree like animals, nary a scratch between them. They dusted themselves off once they reached the ground and sank back into the shadows where the glow of the street lamps could not reach. Alvise giggled, went silent under Sebastian's confused stare. He didn't apologize; Sebastian raised his hand for silence. There was a plan, then, some deeper purpose to the outing. "Where are we—" Alvise stopped short as Sebastian turned, the long hooked beak nearly catching him in the eye. Sebastian shook his head again, gestured with his hand to get Alvise closer. He pointed into the darkness, indicating a far different trajectory from what had been initially been planned. Alvise nodded, and it was decided; Sebastian was always the leader, was always the one who knew where to go. "I'll follow," Alvise clarified and Sebastian smiled beneath the hooked beak. The boy took off at a run and Alvise followed, breath puffing before him in small clouds of smoke. The grass was wet and he nearly fell, coming up short more often than not and feeling the way his feet would skid. The path was determined, however, and the only rule was to avoid the light, to avoid the cars; they were meant to be unseen and thus traveled invisible and silent. Their path curved away the main road, twisted serpentine down to the lake where they used to go. "Are you sure it's here?" Alvise heard his voice crack and boom, shut his eyes for a moment to avoid what he was sure would be Sebastian's laughing face. Alvise opened his eyes when he felt Sebastian's hand once more at his shoulder. The boy nodded and Alvise felt himself wince; Sebastian wasn't laughing. The boy's blue eyes shone in the moonlight through the holes of the bird mask, gaze intense and deathly serious. He turned his head, indicated the large drain pipe that they had outfitted into a fort some three years previous. If there was any doubt as to what he was indicating he quashed it when he raised his hand and pointed the way. "But we haven't been here in—" Sebastian glanced over his shoulder, cast Alvise an all too serious look. A wag of his head and he turned his book to the boy once more. He walked, path unwavering toward the entrance that Alvise had done his best to avoid for far too long a while. Biting his bottom lip, Alvise followed, only one glance back to the road to ensure that their progress was not being followed. He didn't want to go, but he followed mindless and uncertain; he had no real choice after all. # "Once you know where it is that you are," Sebastian continued, "that is when it can be subverted." "Why would you want to subvert it?" Alvise's question was met with a frown from Sebastian. "If you don't subvert it, then the audience will get bored. You need to engage them, you need to keep them on their toes and keep them guessing. What will happen next?" He looked at Alvise all too closely, walked the silver dollar around his knuckles once more. "I—I don't know?" He withered under the scrutiny. "Exactly, which is why I show you what you don't expect." Sebastian tossed the coin in the air, caught it. "The coin disappears?" A hesitant question when Sebastian remained silent; the boy shook his head. "It usually works." He tossed the coin up again and it twisted, landed with a small sound against his waiting palm. A curse and Sebastian tossed it up one last time. The coin flew in an arc, fell heavy back into his hand. Alvise watched as Sebastian clutched it all the tighter, blew on his hand and whispered a few quiet words. He opened his hand, fingers uncurling slowly to show...positively nothing. The coin was gone as certainly as Alvise had hoped it would be. Sebastian smirked as he looked over the hand he'd left extended. "As soon as you're certain you know what comes next, that's when you need to deliver something different." "That's great!" Alvise started to get to his feet, only to be stopped by Sebastian's hand on his shoulder. "No—not yet. The hardest part isn't making it disappear—the hardest part is making it come back. If it doesn't come back, the trick isn't any good. Not at all." # The entrance to the drain pipe was damp, condensation forming where the ice had just started to thaw. Sebastian moved with confidence, his feline like fluidity a sharp contrast to the hesitance with which Alvise proceeded. The double footfalls echoed through the concrete, and Alvise once more hesitated, hung back where he should have proceeded. Sebastian looked over his shoulder, gestured for him to keep going; Alvise shook his head. "I can't—just not, not yet." He glanced over his shoulder to see if they were being watched once more. Sebastian's shoulders slumped, his head bowing as he pursed his lips. No words left him, but the disappointment he was feeling was more than evident in his posture, the look in his shaded eyes when he looked up once more. Alvise shook his head, took a step back on the slick ice once more. "I'm—I'm sorry, I'm just not ready. It—maybe next year? I just..." Sebastian shook his head, waved his hand with a dismissive gesture that was somehow worse than his enduring silence. Alvise winced and bowed his head, he looked at the silver dollar against his chest once more, trying to remember what it was that was said before. He tried to remember the words that could somehow make this dismissal alright. "B-Bastian," he stammered. "If it doesn't—if it doesn't come back it isn't a very good trick at all, is it?" He looked up, hopeful. Sebastian looked back at him, silent and posed in a heady disappointment. Alvise reached back, carefully sliding the coin along the chain; he held it in his hand. He fumbled, he cursed, shaky hands numb and uncertain wreaking havoc with what should have been an easy trick. He walked to the coin across his knuckles, speaking quietly. "It—it should be easy, it is easy, making something disappear. Where—where difficulty comes is in trying to bring it back. What kind of a trick is it if it isn't brought back? It isn't—it can't be a trick at all. It just would disappoint the audience. They see it go but—but it doesn't come full circle. It doesn't—it doesn't satisfy that want." He flipped the coin, he caught it. He grasped it tight enough that he could hold it in his palm to give the illusion of absence. Sebastian watched, his posture slowly relaxing, his blue eyes doleful in the scant moonlight that shone in the tunnel. Alvise pulled the French Drop, he held his hand out for examination, confident that the coin would be impossible to find. As was expected, it was Sebastian who stepped closer, cold fingers tracing the lines of his palm as if reading them. "It needs to—sometimes thing need to come back. If we want to be satisfied. If we—if we want to feel sure." Alvise paused, looked up at the feathers that hung off the mask. He reached up, gently touched them. "I can't go yet, Sebastian. I can't—I can't follow yet. Next year, maybe, but now -" Sebastian nodded, the tip of his beak hitting Alvise's shoulder gently. A squeeze to his hand and he was turning, disappearing back down that long tunnel and into the waiting dark. Alvise watched, his hand going to his pocket to draw the coin back out. He strung it in silence, listening as the footsteps faded, finally stopped their echoes. Sebastian was gone, another year passed. He'd be back again next year, and the year after that. Alvise felt the cold silver against his chest, even through his shirt. It had been getting too hard to say no with each asking. Hilary Koepenick most recently resided in Montana where she became an adamant supporter of the efforts to save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. When she is not attempting to write or regretting submitting stories under her given name, she's out hunting for Sasquatch and pretending she's a secret agent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is her first published story.
Story by Hilary Koepenick, Copyright 2011 Image by Amber Clark, Stopped Motion Photography, Copyright 2011
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