The Butler

 

This went on for two or three more days.  I think.  The thing is, when you’re essentially a prisoner in your own windowless bedroom—in your own bed!—you begin to lose track of time.  And your sanity.  I already mentioned the bed coverlet.  Having virtually nothing to do except partake in the randomness of the visits from Reverend Al and Ms. Spigot—silently praying with the former; trying to make sense of made-up card games with the latter—I did a lot of sleeping, and, without fail, every time I woke up, I found that the bed coverlet had been made up over and around my body while I’d been asleep.  Yes, this was weird, but it became easier to ignore once I’d at least gotten my phone back.  I’d been texting Kelley, and she assured me that, no matter the crampedness of my living quarters, the strangeness of my caretakers, I did, in fact, need rest in order to recover from bashing my cranium against the dash of the stolen ambulance.  So, talking to Kelley definitely helped, but my departure date was still unknown, and more oddities popped up every single day.

For starters, the rectory room in which I was recuperating—a room which Ms. Spigot reverently referred to as the “Vermilion Room,” which even I, a rube in all things artistic, knew exhibited no trace or shade of vermilion—well, it could only be locked from the outside.  At first, I thought this was a possible design flaw, but then I began to wonder whether it was a calculated measure to incarcerate maniacs, or to silence religious dissidents.  Whatever the reason, Rev. Al and Ms. Spigot never forgot to lock the door.  Yes, I checked.  Then, one afternoon, in a fit of suspicion, I went into the bathroom, which was really just a closet with a small toilet and a janitor’s sink.  I looked up at the curtain drawn across the tiny window above the toilet, watched the dust motes dance in the slanting of the afternoon sunlight.  I hoisted myself on top of the tank and drew back the curtain.  Outside, spikes had been installed on the window ledge, and splayed across them was a dead pigeon, like a crucified and avian Jesus.  Beyond the spikes, for an added measure of security, was a wrought iron cage, which was a little overkill if you asked me, and I told Ms. Spigot as much when she came in that evening to bring me my dinner. 

As she was bending over, the plate fell from her hand and clattered onto the bedside table.  She turned to me with startling speed and hissed, “You were trying to escape?”

I jumped back.  No, no, I said.  Curiosity got the best of me, that’s all, but can you blame me?  I haven’t been outdoors in days, and the only glimpse of the outside world is within that closet you call the loo.  Ms. Spigot stared at me for a few seconds and giggled, my lightheartedness and placatory tone seeming to have assuaged her.  She picked up the fork that had fallen to the floor, and then a chill ran down my spine as she informed me that the spikes and iron cage weren’t to keep me from going out, but rather to keep it from coming in.  Again, she stared at me for a few more seconds before she erupted into a fit of giggles.  She tsk-tsked and poked the fork at me in a playful manner.  “Mr. Worm is scared of the Butler, ha ha!”  Then, still laughing, she exited the room with the fork still in her hand.  She closed the door behind her and locked it.

I was left to ponder what Ms. Spigot had meant, left to wonder who this “Butler” was.  I was also left to eat my dinner with my hands, which proved somewhat difficult considering it consisted of a slippery slab of meatloaf and a huge dollop of mushy peas (again).  I didn’t have much of an appetite, though, and my pondering and wondering were short-lived, as I soon heard footsteps approaching from beyond the door, and then whoever—or whatever—was on the other side of the threshold began to violently jiggle the doorknob, and for the briefest moment I worried that the Butler was trying to break in, that he had abandoned his previous attempts to enter through the upstairs bathroom window and instead had slipped in through the front door, past Rev. Al and Ms. Spigot, the two oafs, and had slinked his way up the stairs to the Vermilion Room, where he was fixing to burst in through the door and commit the brutal and barbaric acts of which he was capable.  But the jiggling suddenly stopped, and then I heard the faint flick of the locking mechanism.  The door opened, and in strode not some nebulous and murderous butler, but Rev. Al, his briefcase strapped across his shoulder.  “Wrong key,” he explained.

During my recuperation, whenever he’d come up to the room, Al had been making it a point to sit on the end of the bed with me, at my feet, and he continued the trend.  It was a bit awkward, considering there was a perfectly comfy—and empty—armchair for him to the side of the bed, and, not to mention, every time he adjusted himself, he’d accidentally brush his elbows against the lumps of my feet.  And look, I’ve known Rev. Al a long time, and, despite his idiosyncrasies, I do consider him a friend first and a spiritual mentor second, but a man needs his space, especially when he’s under the covers in his own bed.  Though, technically, the bed, along with everything else in the Vermilion Room, was the property of the diocese; I was simply a lay person renting out the space, which, funny enough, was the purpose of Al’s pop-in. 

He removed a manila folder from the briefcase and took out a sheet of paper.  “To make it easy, I took the liberty of itemizing the cost of your stay, from the per-night fee down to the charge for Ms. Spigot’s cooking.”  He handed the sheet to me.  “Now, Archbishop Mologna would have my head if knew this, but, as you can see, I’ve given you the family and friends discount.” 

I stared at the itemization.  A baffling $82 for Food & Bev.?  An additional $30 for a TDZ Surcharge?  And, at the bottom: a nightly $20 fee for Security.  Security?  I thought about the Butler, about Ms. Spigot’s unsettling giggles, and, because trying to understand the raving fantasies of a demented and decrepit choir director was surely more important than figuring out how I was going to pay the $200-plus staring me in the face, I asked Al about it, about the Butler.  Rev. Al raised his eyebrows, surprised. 

“There’s evil in this world, Sterling,” he said.  “True evil.  And it can take many shapes, can come to us in many forms.  Poverty, war, addiction, abuse.  It just so happens that for Agnes it comes as the Butler.”  He went on to explain that, based on what he’d gathered from Ms. Spigot—or Agnes, who was clearly destined to be a church choir director—over the years, the Butler was a shapeshifting and fairy-like trickster whose most common form was that of an antiquated majordomo.  Clad in a black suit and tie, he was tall and lanky, a lot like Lurch from The Addams Family, except that while Lurch was a gentle giant who was bumblingly loyal to the occupants of the Addams family mansion, the Butler was a conniving thief who was hellbent on destroying the lives of those residing in the rectory.  Like a raccoon, the Butler had a penchant for shiny objects, so it was not unusual to wake up to find a particular piece of silver missing from the kitchen.  More frustrating, though, he had an unquenchable thirst for wine, and it was all too common for Ms. Spigot to find the cellar emptied of the bottles she’d purchased at the store earlier in the day, or the countertops stained with the purple rings of ghostly and vanished wine glasses, or the flagstones of the courtyard littered with corks. 

I laughed and looked up to find Al staring at me, and I could tell he was daring me to say what I was thinking, which was that he, Al, was the Butler—obviously—but I didn’t, and I instead offered him my assumption that, because he’d presented me with the bill, my stay in the Vermillion Room was over, that this was my eviction notice?  This Al confirmed.

“But don’t worry,” he said.  “I spoke with Desdemona.  She’s on her way to pick you up, to take you home, and she should be here any minute.”