The start of a good day

As a child, the scratching frightened Maxwell terribly. Steady desperate clawing at the windows, the floorboards, and once or twice he was sure the blankets that he had drawn up over his head as he tried to hide from the onslaught had been tugged at in such a way that made it alarmingly clear that whatever it was had gotten so much closer than he ever would have been comfortable with. Keeping him from falling into the much-desired embrace of slumber, instead spending long hours of the night jumping at shadows and any noise at all that he happened to hear. 

As an adult, however, Maxwell was used to it. Used to the way the shadows stretched too long, reaching for him as he drew near independent of any light source in the area. Used to the way the candles would flicker and dance about in the absence of a breeze whenever he occupied a room for too long. Used to odd whispers in his ear when he was quite alone, speaking in languages both familiar to him and entirely unfamiliar. Used to strange things shimmering in mirrors, windows, and even particularly reflective pools of water when he drew near. 

To be quite frank, he was rather sick of needing to be used to things like that, and more so, he was sick of having to pretend like there was nothing that was happening that he needed to be used to in the first place. He had asked, when he was younger and things were still strange and unfamiliar to him, if anyone else was experiencing what he did, but all he got in return was laughter and the occasional accusations of madness. Precisely one person took him seriously, a little old lady who had been deemed hopelessly mad by the larger population of the town, who claimed to be a spirit worker of sorts. She told him that something dark, something unholy, something not entirely of their world had latched onto him, claiming him as its own while drawing others of its unnatural ilk to him like a moth to a flame. 

So that was it. He had some unearthly entity that had chosen to cling to him. He would have liked to have asked why it was him of all people that it chose to cling to, and he had actually asked this aloud in the hope of receiving something of an answer, but the trouble with dark, unholy and unearthly things was that they rarely made for good conversationalists. He assumed, then, that the thing was either just very bored and he had happened to pass by at the right – or wrong, depending on how he was feeling at any given moment – time, or it was very lonely and had picked up on the fact that he was also very lonely. 

It used to frighten him, truly, but it had become so commonplace that he had accepted it as part of his life. It had, after all, been with him longer than he had been without it and so he was not entirely sure if he knew how to simply be without it there. Even still, it would be wrong to claim that he was particularly pleased with its being there, but he had accepted that it was, in a way, a part of him and so there was no real point in making a fuss about it when there wasn’t anything he could actually do about it. 

The day itself had, remarkably, started out relatively decently. This should not have been too much of a surprise, he had been having a series of relatively decent days but rather than being able to rejoin in this, he just found it a little suspicious. Too many good days felt like it was just setting up for the inevitable disappointment of a crash. There always was a crash, eventually, after things seemed normal for long enough to forget that being haunted really was not a very good thing to deal with at all. 

But that morning, the sun streamed in through the little cracks in the curtain, trailing patterns across the heavy rug that was fighting the autumn chill that would have otherwise made the room unpleasant. So, feeling cautiously optimistic, he drew his velvety black dressing gown tight around him as he set about making himself his cup of morning tea. 

Sure, the shadows lurking beneath the kitchen table reached out for his ankle with long talons as he passed by, but they always did that. They had managed, on the very rare occasion, to catch him and rather ruined the rest of the day but this was not one of them. No, he had gotten rather good at just simply hoping up and over them as they lashed out at him. It had well and truly gotten to the point where he could consider it a habit, though he had not yet attempted the maneuver while actually carrying his tea. The idea of spilling the beverage and needing to risk coming face to face with the shadowy thing that lurked there in the earlier hours of the morning – okay, both parts of that seemed a little too charitable to be sincere, it was a lot closer to the hours of the afternoon than it was anywhere near morning – sounded far worse than needing to reach a little excessively to set the drink down before claiming his chair by the window. 

His legs were, understandably, tucked neatly beneath him.

Whatever it might be that was lurking there was always gone by the time he rose again, so it was more a waiting game than anything. 

Maxwell held his teacup, a dainty little thing patterned with stylized bees going about their business – beesness, according to the woman who sold it to him – focusing more on the scents of ginger and peppermint that came from his tea than the insistent tapping from the ceiling above him. It was an odd combination, the ginger and peppermint not the tea and random tapping, but he had read somewhere that the combination was good for headaches and so he made a habit of at least trying to make the morning a little more bearable. 

Mornings were already woefully unbearable when one was not being bothered constantly by otherworldly forces, so he really was not winning in either regard. By this point in his life, however, he had, in his opinion at least, gotten rather good at taking whatever little wins he could find in order to make the less enjoyable things a little more tolerable. Was it necessarily the best way to get by? Probably not, but it did work and if sipping tea in sunny spots in the kitchen made the wild wailing the silence of the night a little less of a bother, then so be it. 

He glanced up and over the rim of his cup, his gaze wandering to the clock hanging on the far wall. Its face had been cracked, and he could not quite recall if it was his doing, tossing the ticking device to the ground in a fit of anger, or the result of something else interfering with his life, but either way it still worked well enough. A little too well, in fact, as it meant there was no plausible deniability about the time, and so he was forced to come to terms with the fact he was getting very close to being late. 

He had made the conscious decision to have a good day, and running late to appointments certainly did not make for good days.

With a groan of a little bit more annoyance than he usually allowed for himself, he drained the remainder of his cup in a single begrudging gulp. Assuming enough time had passed that he did not need to worry about the previous pitfalls, he dragged himself up to go and get ready. Up the stairs, skipping the third and seventh on autopilot – he would have enough time to not be late if he hurried, and hurrying meant he did not have the time to deal with his foot becoming temporarily bound to a step – as he went to dress. 

It had been said the man dressed as if in an eternal state of mourning. Which, okay, perhaps seemed a little more accurate than it could have been, as it was very rare for even a scrap of colour to show itself in his attire, but he would not have considered it mourning. No, it just felt a little more appropriate to be dressed somberly when his very existence was morbid. 

But even still, he was supposed to be having a good day and so a rich purple tie pin claimed its place. It was, perhaps, a little excessive but he did not think to remove it. If he was going to have a good day, the least he could do was try and dress the part. 

He paused only once on his way out of the house, and this was to glance into the mirror by the door. First, he picked up the heavy cloth that was usually hung to cover the mirror’s surface that, instead, found itself pooling uselessly beneath it. Not uncommon of an occurrence, but certainly an annoying one. Secondly, he turned his attention towards his own face, tapping at his cheek to fake a smile that he hoped seemed pleasant enough to hide the fact it did not quite reach his eyes. Before the spectral hands trailing his throat in his reflection had the chance to clasp at him, he tossed the cloth back over to obscure the sight. He knew that by the time he returned, the cloth would have been tossed aside once more, but it worked for the time being. 

Trying to pretend that the most concerning thing that was tugging at his mind was the lingering sense of sleep, having had to rush out before he had the chance to wake properly, Maxwell flung himself out the door and set about his day.

The annoying thing about being haunted, he knew and understood, neither of which meant he was necessarily happy about it, was that it was very much a private matter. A personal matter that he had to deal with himself. Personal matters were all well and good, but he still had all the other ones that he still had to deal with. All those things that he needed to show his face for, to be seen doing when he would have much preferred to wallow in his own private pity. But things did not work like that, even if it might be nice if they did, and so he pretended things were perfectly ordinary. That nothing was awry and that he certainly heard every single thing being said to him because there was nothing whispering to him. That he had jumped only because he passed through a spiderweb, and not because he thought for a moment something with the intention of tearing him apart had brushed against him as it tried to capture him.

But it was going to be a good day and he was not going to think about it. He was going to make his appointment and then get a coffee at one of the little cafes that dotted the streets, possibly peruse a cozy little bookshop somewhere. He was going to enjoy the day and, more importantly, be seen enjoying the day and he was going to spend it in a perfectly normal way. Just like everyone else who did not carry the burden of being haunted would.