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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Teens
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Mystery
- Published: 10/19/2014
An Unexpected Villain
by
Cara M. Lyiss
In the hot and sticky suburbs of Texas’ largest city, Houston, was a house. A yellow house. The paint had faded over the years but it was easy to tell that it had once held the life of the neighborhood. In this house lived a family. Who knew that something as basic as the front of a house could show you so much about the history of a place? This was all before the youngest son of the previous generation, the richest family in all Texas, had married a little brat from up north, Illinois. That was the turning point. Nowadays, the name was still trying to regain the status from the years past.
*
Lil’ John Farcarts was sitting in his room reading when he heard the carriage pull up along the drive. He looked up from the book, and a devilish grin spread across his face. He had been waiting for this day for weeks. He jumped off the bed and rushed down the stairs to where his mother and father were waiting.
John was a typical twelve-year-old boy from Texas. However, he, unlike many others of his age, was from an incredibly well off family. His father owned the most successful car manufacturing business in the entire continental US. He was told he had inherited father’s hard feature, but his mothers flaming curls and soft mouth. And her temper. When he had been younger the slightest thing would send him into an uncontrolable rage. He was beginning to learn to control himself but it was still difficult.
His mother was not dressed in her regular attire. Her usual wild, fiery red curls were brushed back into a neat net and her face was powder free. Sophia and Louis; her family’s servants, were standing close behind her. Sophia and Louis were twins from Italy; Rome to be precise. They had an olive tone to their skin and chocolate brown eyes. His father was in his best suit, standing in the corner, his back straight and his eyes boring a hole into the front door.
Aunt Lucinda’s visits were not common so when they came along his parents made sure to dress their best.
Aunt Lucinda wasn’t really John’s aunt. She was her father’s ex-wife, and an old friend of her mother’s. There seemed to be an air about her that made you respect her immediately, even if you had only just met her. She loved to pick out the tiny winey problems people had, and she had an awful habit of drifting rudely away mid-conversation. *
As Lucinda walked up the steps to the front porch, she noticed a patch of green on the marble pillar that framed the left side of the door. ‘Tuh’, she muttered. ‘And these people are supposed to be of the highest of classes. Standards around here really are beginning to fall.' The door in front of her was then opened, pulling her out of her quiet but constant stream of complaining. Aunt Lucinda, unlike the rest of the Farcarts, was not Texas born and bred. She was from the northbound state of Illinois and half blind, I must point out. From a respectable family, she may add. She was not immediately proud of having married into a Texan family, but there was nothing she could do to change it. There was no use crying over spilt milk. (With the Texan side of the family being the spilt milk, may I quickly add) as she often said.
*
As Aunt Lucinda walked through the front door, John knew that it was going to be fun!
*
‘When on earth are you going to get that hair of yours cut, Johnathon?’ It took me a few seconds to realise that Aunt Lucinda was talking to me.
‘What?’ I said, sitting up straight. She smiled smugly at me, looking over the top of her half-moon spectacles.
‘Yes, I was talking to you, Johnathon. It is polite to listen.’
‘Sorry Aunt Lucinda. Sorry. So sorry’ I enjoyed mocking her. Unfortunately she didn’t seem to notice it, and if she did she didn’t reply in any shape or form. She had gone back to talking to my mother on the difference in politics in the rural and ‘savagely mad, drunken area’ (her word, not mine!) of Texas, compared to the perfectly respectable northbound state of Illinois. (‘The Windy City to be exact.)
Later that day, when the adults in the family were sitting in the porch drinking tea and discussing the weather, I sneaked into Lucinda’s room and was in the difficult process of opening the suitcase that sat on the bed, when I heard from behind ‘Do you really think you should be doing that, young sir?’ I swirled around quickly and there, standing in the doorway, was Louis, who must have sneaked up behind me.
*
Later that evening, the Frank and Delilah Farcarts were sitting around the fire reading the paper and knitting. They had sent John to bed a while ago and now they were relaxing. Lucinda had gone to wash. Everything was as it should be on a normal Friday evening in the heat of the Texan summer. He closed the door silently and tiptoed up the stairs to Lucinda’s room.
*
As she pulled the comb from her hair and looked at her aging face in the mirror. She sighed. There had been a time not that long ago when she would have had someone prepare her for bed. They would have taken the comb out of her hair then brush her tangled blond curls until perfectly smooth. Then they would have folded over the top of her bed while she changed out of the tight corset into a soft white linen nightgown. Then they would have taken the heating pan out of her bed and she would have laid down on the soft feather down of the king size bed she and her husband used to share. Nowadays she slept in the guest bed, at the opposite end of the corridor. And instead of the unsuited washroom she used to have she had to share the family washroom. She hadn’t got anyone to do any of this anymore. When she and her husband had got a divorce, he had won everything. The house, the better part of the joint family fortunes, and the Farcarts’ family servants; Sophia and Louis.
*
As Louis entered the bedroom, he had to make sure he didn’t trip over any of the many suitcases and trunks that were scattered across the floor. As he reached the bed, he saw Lucinda’s wild blond curls spread artfully across the bed. In the way that the moonlight shone in through the gap in the shutters, she looked beautiful. But he knew exactly who she was. For years, she had treated him like nothing more than dirt, which she could push around and treat horribly. His master, Frank Farcarts, had never raised a finger to stop her. He was too much in love with her. But not now. She wouldn’t be missed. Nobody liked her. Frank wouldn’t miss her. Neither would John or Delilah. She had no close family left.
Louis looked at her again. With utter hatred. He reached behind his back...
*
The next morning at breakfast, John and Delilah were sitting around the dinning room table. It was odd for either Frank or Lucinda to be late down for any meal. And where was Louis? When Delilah had asked Sophia she had said that she hadn’t seen him since yesterday evening. He hadn’t helped to prepare the meal or anything. When Sophia cleared the fruit away, Delilah finally lost her calm. ‘John. Please can you go and fetch your father. He should be here.’ I went to get up and was at the door when my mother added ‘Oh. And John.’
‘Ma’am.’ I said, giving a mocking salute. She smiled.
‘Check Luci is still alive on your way.’
‘Certainly mother. Right away.’
As I made my way upstairs, I heard my mother say to Sophia, ‘you should properly go and find your twins.’
My father’s room was one of the easiest rooms to navigate around. You went up the winding staircase from the entrance hall and looked straight ahead to the old mahogany door. It was always left slightly ajar so that if I needed something in the night I could find my way using the moonlight that came from the room.
‘Father.’ I paused. No answer. ‘Father.’ I said again, softly as I knocked on the door. I peered round the edge. Everything was perfectly ordered, as usual. My father was lying on the bed, turned to the far wall away from me. I started walking over towards him, when I heard a shrill cry from the washroom. I ran out into the hall in time to see my Aunt Lucinda looking into the washroom, her hand turning white against the door handle.
*
There had been thunder the previous night. And screaming I had thought. When I had woken up the candle was burnt low and the fire had long since burned down. As I looked around for a sign of what had woken me, I heard footsteps on the landing. ‘That’s strange’ I thought to myself when I heard a bang from behind me. I spun round quickly, my nightdress twirling like a ball gown. Only the window. I suddenly felt exhausted. I stumbled over to bed and my eyes were shut before I hit the sheets.
The next morning I woke late and decided to take a late mornig shower. As I left the room I saw that Franks bedroom door was open. I wasn’t really looking at where I was going and so when I finally looked round, seeing the washroom covered in blood was an enourmous shock.
*
When I rushed over to Aunt Lucinda, I realised what she was screaming at. There were handprints along the wall, up the bathtub, on the mirror. They were all blood. The bathroom was covered in blood. As I took in what was in front of me, my mind drifted back to my father in his bed, lying so still he could have been dead.
Two hours later, I was sitting in the living room downstairs. When I had realised what had happened I had screamed to my mother, who had come running up the stairs. Lucinda had looked at me strangely until I had managed to stutter out what little I knew. Mother had given Lucinda a look and then walked calmly over to her room. I was gently taken by the arm downstairs to the living room. As I passed my parents’ room I heard a gasp and then sobs of tears. So I had been right. Ten minutes later, the police and postmortem examiners arrived. They had said that father had died of blood loss. ‘He was murdered’ the chief inspector said, after he had examined the “crime scene” as they referred to it. ‘And by the looks of things it wasn’t an inside job. Broken windows and a door. Quite a few signs of a forced entry.’
‘How?’ I had to know. ‘How?’ i said again. The sargent looked at my mother for assurance. She nodded. The sargent took in a deep breath. ‘His throat was slit’ he said.‘
*
From the door I could only hear snippets of the converasation, but from what I could tell they didn’t suspect me at all. For years he had stood by while his wife, Lucinda, had pushed me around. I had been his faithful servant for years, but last night things had changed. I had changed. For the first time ever, I had occureed to me that Luncinda wasn’t the only one who was to blame. So was he. He had let her. He had deserved to die.
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