Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #13 (Chapter Two)

A Girl, a House, and a Secret

by Trismegistus Shandy

Fired from her teaching job after being outed as trans, Jenny Brand was offered a tutoring job for a disabled child of a wealthy family.  But why so much secrecy surrounding the job? 

 

Chapter Two

When I got home, I called my friend Kathy, who taught second grade at South Taine Elementary.

“Hey, Jenny, what’s up?”

“I got a job —”

“Wooooooooo!” she cheered.

“I can’t tell you any details because of an NDA,” I said. “The family wants their privacy. But basically I’m going to be full-time tutoring a disabled child.”

“Oh! Do they live nearby?”

“Not too terribly far — I can’t say exactly where they live.”

“I was afraid you’d have to move away to find another job. Good for you.”

We talked a few minutes longer, but I could barely tell her anything about my new job, and I didn’t have any other news to share, so it was mostly her sharing gossip about the other teachers and the PTA at South Taine Elementary. When I told her I was going to move in with the family of the child I was teaching, she offered to help me move, but I said I’d have to check with the family to see if it was okay — that would require telling her the address, and sharing the map Mr. McKay had given me.

How was I going to move, if I couldn’t tell anyone where I was going so they could help? I didn’t have that much stuff, but there was some heavy furniture I wasn’t sure Patience and I could move by ourselves. It wasn’t too late yet, so I called her.

“Hey,” I said. “Just a quick question. Is it okay if I tell a couple of friends where I’m moving to so they can help? I’ve got a few heavy pieces of furniture.”

“No,” she said after a moment of hesitation. “I’ll get Mr. McKay to hire a moving firm for you and have them sign an NDA. Sorry, I should have thought of that sooner. This will probably delay your moving in until Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“No problem, I can commute until then.”

“See you Monday morning, then.”

After that, I gave notice to my landlord that I’d be moving out before the end of the month, and told a few online friends the little I could say about my new job. Then I cooked supper and ate while watching a couple of episodes of The Lathe of Heaven. Finally, I worked up the nerve to call my parents.

It was not a fun conversation. Mom took the opportunity to snipe at me for not going into a more lucrative career, and criticized me for signing the NDA without getting another lawyer to examine it. When she handed the phone to Dad, he didn’t say anything overtly bad, but he said goodbye and hung up after two or three perfunctory questions.

After that, I had to take some deep breaths and count to ten before I called my brother Ethan. Telling him Ethan was much easier than telling Mom and Dad. He teased me about joining the NDA club. “There’s an awesome clubhouse with a hot tub and arcade machines, but nobody’s allowed to tell you where it is.” We had a fun conversation and I hung up feeling much better than I had after talking with Mom and Dad.

 

* * *

 

Saturday, I drove to the grocery store and asked if they had any empty boxes they were about to throw out. I came home with a car full of boxes and started packing. Kathy came over Sunday and by the end of the day we had all my miscellaneous small belongings packed, except for the toiletries, clothes, and dishes I’d be using between now and the move.

Monday, I drove to the Oldcroft house and taught Essie for a few hours. She was bleary and sleepy in the morning, saying she hadn’t slept well because of nightmares, so after a short review lesson on geography, I suggested she get a little nap. During lunch, Patience told me she’d gotten a call from Leon McKay; he was arranging the moving company and they would help me move on Tuesday.

After Essie’s nap, we went for a nature walk in the woods, and I taught her some basic ecology and how to identify some plants — she already knew several. We also ran across a lizard, crawling up a tree; Essie caught it and let it run up her arm before letting it go.

 

* * *

 

Tuesday, I didn’t go to the Oldcroft house in the morning, since the movers were to come at eleven. Loading up at my apartment went quickly and smoothly, but by the time we got up to the north end of the county, the weather turned bad again, though not quite as bad as it had been the day I interviewed. We had to slow down because of the heavy rain impairing visibility, and when we got the house, I got soaked coming in from my car and the movers got even more soaked going back and forth between the moving truck and the house over and over. After the stuff was all hauled into the house, Patience let them dry off and rest before they rearranged furniture to remove some pieces I didn’t want from the rooms I was taking and put my stuff in there. The previous bed from what would be my bedroom was taken apart and the pieces put into an already-crowded lumber room at the back of the first floor, along with a roll-top desk that looked beautiful but wouldn’t work as well for me as the modern ergonomic computer desk I’d brought. The storm abated about the time they finished that, and after the movers left, I shared a late lunch with Patience and Essie, and taught Essie for a short session in the afternoon.

The first night I spent in the Oldcroft house was not a restful one. It took me over two hours to get to sleep; I attributed it to sleeping in an unfamiliar space, despite being in my own bed, and to the creaking and settling of the old house, which I wasn’t used to. And when I did get to sleep, nightmares came.

I vaguely remember a dream of being chased, and another where I was hiding from something that was looking for me, but the dream I remember most clearly is almost a memory — distorted by the nightmare lens, even worse than it was in real life, but unfortunately all too solidly based on fact. I had just come out to my grandfather, and he was ranting and raving about things I won’t repeat, and telling me to get out of his house and never come back. And all the while the room was getting darker and darker, and a storm was raging outside the windows, and as much as I was afraid of my grandfather, I was afraid of going out in that storm more. And behind him, looking eagerly over his shoulder and occasionally egging him on with a “Yes, yes,” or “Get rid of it,” was another old man, much older if I had to guess from his wrinkles, and indefinably terrifying. At last, cowed into submission, I stumbled away from them and put my hand on the door to go out and brave the storm.

I woke to the sound of a loud creak and for a few moments, half asleep, I was afraid the other old man was walking around upstairs — or worse, coming down the stairs to my bedroom.

Then the door opened with another squeak and Essie stood there, blinking sleepily. “I couldn’t sleep. I keep having bad dreams.”

“Oh, honey,” I said, my heart going out to her. “I’m having bad dreams too. But why didn’t you go to your mother’s room?”

“I knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. She was arguing with Great-Grandpa.”

On the phone at this time of night? I’d gotten the impression he was an obnoxious burden on his descendants and this furthered that impression. I wanted to comfort Essie in her mother’s absence, but it would be wrong to let her sleep in my bed.

“Let’s go sit on the sofa and I’ll read you a story,” I said, getting out of bed. “Do you want to go up to your bedroom or the schoolroom for a book, or pick one of those?” I gestured to my bookshelf, the one with mostly children’s books on it, as I turned on the lamp with my other hand.

She went over to the shelf and pulled out one book, then another, looking at the covers and titles. Then she said, “This one,” and held up Howl’s Moving Castle.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in the living room.”

“You mean the parlor or the drawing room or —?”

I smiled. “Yes, the parlor.”

I turned on a couple of lamps and we sat down on the sofa — or davenport or love seat; I wasn’t up on all the furniture terminology I’d probably need, living in this house. I read to her until she fell asleep leaning against me. Then I carried her up to her bedroom and laid her in bed, staying with her a moment in case she woke up.

I slept better after that.

 

* * *

 

We settled into a routine. I would teach Essie for about three hours before lunch and two hours afterward, and then she’d have some time to play or read or watch TV before supper. Then, after supper most days, Patience would give Essie a private lesson about their family history. I wasn’t invited, and I used the time for my own recreational reading or for planning the next day’s lessons.

The lessons continued uneventfully for a couple of days, and both Essie and I had a restful night Wednesday. But Thursday night, I had nightmares again, though I couldn’t remember any details by morning, and when I blearily greeted Patience at breakfast, she told me that Essie had come to her in the middle of the night with night terrors and had eventually fallen asleep again in her mother’s bed. She was letting her sleep late to make up for it. I took advantage of it to get a nap myself before starting lessons with Essie later in the morning.

We were doing a history lesson — Patience had gotten Essie well ahead of her grade level on American history, but not as much on world history, especially outside of Europe. I was telling her about the history of India, and took the opportunity to tell her about the hijra, and to mention other cultures in different times and places that had a special role for people like us.

She was listening eagerly and asking intelligent questions, and suddenly she burst out, “If there are people like us everywhere, why is Great-Grandpa being so mean about it?”

“I don’t know, Essie. Only he can answer that. But even though a lot of cultures have a place for us, when the American colonies were formed the countries in western Europe that the colonists came from didn’t. We’ve been trying to carve out a place for ourselves and finally made some headway in the last twenty or thirty years, but a lot of people, especially older people like your great-grandpa, don’t like things to change and get mad about it when other people try to change things.”

“I don’t like him. I wish he’d leave us alone,” she said, tears starting into her eyes. Then she seemed to remember her mother’s injunction about not talking about family business in front of me, and rubbing her eyes, she mumbled “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know what it’s like to have your family not accept you. My parents are... sort of okay about it. Not as good as your mother, but not terrible. But my grandfather was pretty bad. I haven’t seen him since I told him I was a girl and he got mad and yelled at me a lot.”

“He just did that once?”

“Yeah, he told me never to come see him again.”

“I wish Great-Grandpa would do that.”

“Let’s hope he gets bored and finds something else to do.”

She giggled and we got back to talking about the Mughal Empire.

 

* * *

 

For reasons that seemed obvious at the time, I dreamed about my grandfather again that night. He and the other old man I’d seen in my previous dream were sitting around a fire, talking in low voices, frequently glancing at me where I was tied up and struggling to get loose. I was terrified of what they were going to do to me, but I woke up before they did anything more than look threatening.

I woke up about four in the morning and didn’t feel like trying to sleep again right away, in case I had more nightmares. I’d had more nightmares in my first few days in that house than I’d had in my previous apartment in over a year; I tried to chalk it up to sleeping in the unfamiliar, creaky old house, but I was already beginning to suspect there was more to it. I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself some hot chocolate, then headed back to my room to sit and read for an hour or two and clear my head before trying to sleep again. As I passed the staircase, I heard a faint voice coming from upstairs; it sounded like Patience, though I couldn’t distinguish the words. She must have both been talking pretty loud if I could hear her from downstairs, and I hoped she wouldn’t disturb Essie.

I had barely picked up my book and started reading when I heard the creaking of the stairs, and then a knock at my door.

“Can you read me a story?” Essie asked when I opened it. “I had another bad dream.”

“So did I,” I said. “And your mom’s on the phone with your great-grandpa again, huh? What a coincidence.”

“It’s because —” she began, and then caught herself. “I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

“Okay, sit down and I’ll read you some more.” I picked up Howl’s Moving Castle and asked her how far I’d read last time before she fell asleep, and started from that point. But I could see she was distracted and having a hard time following the plot.

“Still thinking about your dream?” I asked. “Maybe it will help to talk about it?”

“Only if you tell me yours too,” she said.

“All right. It was kind of scary, but not one of the scariest dreams ever. I was tied to a chair in a dark room, with the only light coming from a fireplace. My grandfather was sitting close to the fire with another old man, and they were talking about me, but I couldn’t hear everything they were saying. Only I knew they were talking about me because they kept glancing my way, and sometimes I would hear them talk about what they wanted to do to me. I woke up before they did anything, though.”

Essie nodded solemnly. “My great-grandpa was chasing me to make me turn back into a boy. But I could squeeze into places he couldn’t get, so I hid behind a cabinet while he passed by. But when I thought he was gone, and I came out, he caught me, and then I woke up.”

I should have started to realize what was going on at that point, but at the time it seemed logical for us both to dream about our transphobic ancestors when we’d been talking about them a few hours before bed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’ve got a supportive mother and she’s not going to let your great-grandpa do anything to you in real life. And my grandfather can’t do anything except make a fuss at Thanksgiving.”

“She can’t stop the dreams, though.”

Something occurred to me then. “No, but maybe you can? There’s something I’ve read about, but haven’t tried very hard yet. But now that I’m having nightmares more often, it’s probably worth trying again. Maybe we could do it together?” I told her what I’d read about lucid dreaming, and how I’d had some sporadic success with it back in college. “So maybe we could try doing those techniques and see if it gets us more control over our dreams. If it works, we could turn the bad dreams into good ones.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Let’s do it!”

So I set aside Howl’s Moving Castle and got out my tablet, and looked up lucid dreaming. We read about several techniques for lucid dreaming, and practiced them together; then Essie went back to bed, looking happier and more confident.

 

* * *

 

At breakfast, I told Patience what had happened during the night, and how Essie and I had started learning lucid dreaming.

“I hope that works,” she said. “Essie has had a lot of bad dreams lately. I’ve done what I could, but it’s not much.”

I wanted to ask her what was up with her grandfather phoning in the middle of the night. Why couldn’t she just turn off her phone if he kept bothering her like that? But I’d definitely gotten the impression she didn’t want to talk about it.

It being Saturday, I hadn’t planned to do any formal lessons, but Essie was eager to work on the lucid dreaming exercises after breakfast, so we did that. Patience joined in. Then we all went for another walk in the woods before it got hot.

Later, while I was in my study working on lesson plans and Patience was fixing lunch, I heard raised voices from the kitchen. From the bits I could make out, Patience was arguing with her grandfather again.

“— leave her alone —”

“— just a child, you can’t —”

“— no, I won’t —”

She was standing up for Essie, it sounded like. I nodded approvingly and got back to work on my lesson plans for the following week.

 

* * *

 

My sleep, and apparently Essie’s, was restful for a few nights after that. Things went pretty smoothly overall, except that when we were about to go for another nature walk on Wednesday morning, there was another surprise storm that kept us in. I punted to my next lesson and we adapted, but I wondered what there was about this place that it kept getting so many more storms than the forecast called for.

Then on Thursday, we were doing another history lesson, this time about the East India Company and the British Raj. I had slept well, or thought I had, but somehow I seemed to doze off while telling Essie about how the company had gradually taken over more and more of India. I dreamed that Essie and I were walking down a street in Calcutta in the early nineteenth century, weaving in and out of the heavy pedestrian and wheeled traffic. In retrospect, it felt like a dream — the way I unquestioningly accepted this time travel and didn’t think it was weird, for instance, and the way it didn’t occur to me to wonder how we’d gotten there. But I couldn’t remember any other dream that had such distinct smells — the smell of food cooking, of course, but mostly unwashed people and shit. There was a lot of shit, mostly from livestock but plenty from humans. Essie was better at avoiding it than I was. In the dream I was still telling Essie about the history of British colonization in India, and pointing out examples of what I was talking about as we went. Suddenly I gave a start and sat up straighter in my chair, seeing Essie leaning on her elbows on the low table, looking... guilty? I was the one who should be feeling guilty, dozing off at work.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I must have dozed off. What was the last thing I said?”

“You were talking about the sneaky ways the British stole all the little kingdoms from the rajahs.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, after a few decades of that they were in charge of the whole subcontinent...”

 

* * *

 

We had continued doing our lucid dreaming exercises every morning after breakfast and every evening after supper. And though they hadn’t paid off during that dream I’d had when I dozed off during the history lesson, they did work that night, when I dreamed about my grandfather again.

It started as a modified version of a happier memory; I was a little kid, and my grandfather was pushing me on the swing in his backyard. My brother was waiting his turn on the swing, and my grandmother and parents were sitting on the back porch, but so was the creepy old man who’d been with my grandfather in the earlier dreams. When I saw him, I realized I was dreaming. My grandfather seemed to see when I realized that, and he pushed me way too hard, so I fell out of the swing. Suddenly I was an adult woman, but he was suddenly much taller, as tall as he’d seemed when I was a child, kicking me and yelling slurs.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m in control of this dream now,” and I tried to change the scene. The first place that occurred to me was nineteenth-century Calcutta, and I was there a moment later. My grandparents and parents and brother were gone, but the creepy old man was right across the street from me, grinning evilly.

“Go away,” I said, and turned and started walking. I bought some naan from a street vendor — I don’t know if it was a historically accurate naan recipe — and kept walking, but I kept seeing the creepy old man everywhere I went.

Then I saw Essie, standing on a street corner and looking frightened. I headed toward her; she saw me coming and ran to meet me. “Ms. Brand! Can you help me? I tried to get away but he keeps following me!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re dreaming. Let’s change the scene, okay? Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere Great-Grandpa isn’t,” she said tearfully.

“How about Howl’s castle?”

She smiled. “Yeah!”

Calcutta vanished from around us and we were on a grassy hill, the lumbering castle that Howl and Sophie lived in approaching us in the distance. The creepy old man was nowhere in sight — we could see for miles in every direction and there was no sign of human habitation except the castle. Essie clapped her hands and we started walking toward the castle.

Somehow, although I knew I was dreaming and that the people in the first scene weren’t my real family, and the creepy old man was a figment of my nightmares, I didn’t question Essie’s reality. It seemed natural to treat her as her real self, and it wasn’t until I woke up that it seemed odd. We had tea with Howl and Sophie, and they showed us around the castle for a few minutes before I woke up. Mission accomplished, at least on my end; I hoped Essie would have as much success with lucid dreaming as I had.

I was awake a little earlier than I would normally get up, but not by much, so I got up and started a pot of coffee, then fixed some scrambled eggs and toast. Essie came downstairs a few minutes later and sleepily poured herself a bowl of cereal.

“Good morning,” I said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah,” she said, brightening. “I was having a nightmare, but then you were in my dream, and you told me I was dreaming, and we made it a good dream.”

I startled and dropped a forkful of egg. It was just a natural coincidence, I told myself. I was her teacher, specifically her teacher of lucid dreaming; it was natural that her subconscious mind would make “figuring out you’re dreaming” into “a mentor figure tells you you’re dreaming.”

I decided not to ask for more details of her dreams, or volunteer much about mine, lest I be confronted with too much of a coincidence for my mind to grasp. “That’s wonderful,” I said. “We should probably keep doing the lucid dreaming exercises for a while longer to make sure they sink in deep, but it looks like they’re already working. I had a good dream that started turning into a nightmare, but I realized I was dreaming and stopped it.”

She nodded. “Thank you so much!”

 

I came up with the idea for this story in March 2022, wrote the first draft from July 22 to September 22 of that year, and revised a few days later. The title and parts of the basic concept come from Jo Walton's essay "A girl and a house: the gothic novel".

Thanks to Chiri, Gwen, rooibos chai, Sarah and Sonia for feedback on the first draft.

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Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology / #13

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