Part 8

The next hours went by quickly. Trapped in the house with the Grieves women and his mother, David had expected, at best, an afternoon of monstrous boredom broken by occasional terror. Instead, he found himself growing more and more interested as the hours wore on. True to their word, Theema and Gayle set about preparing the house for... something that neither of them wanted to explain. They called it a party, but among themselves, when they thought David was out of earshot, they used other words. Observance. Tradition. Ceremony. And, of course "The Watch". They spoke these words as they cleaned what could be cleaned, and removed altogether what could not. The floor was swept, and then swept again. A clean sheet was tossed over the old dining table... and then both sheet and table were thrown out. By that time, a few more women had arrived, only to find themselves pressed into service by the skeletal elder Grieves. They set about scrubbing the walls until David was quite sure they would scrub their way clean through to the outside. He very much wanted to see that, but he was even more interested in why the women were there at all.

And why they all wanted to see HIM.

Mandris Cole, the blacksmith's wife, practically squealed with delight when she saw him. Others, like Deloris Grimes, simply stared appraisingly at him for a while before going to whisper among the gathering crowd. Most reactions were somewhere in between, but not a single woman entered without casting her eyes around for David. They all touched him, too. David grew tired of women rubbing his cheeks or running their fingers through his hair... but they all did it. Some did so several times.

Once the house was suitably clean... a judgement which was reserved for Gayle Grieves... the decorations began. Carpet and wall-hangings appeared seemingly from nowhere; all of them bearing gold symbols on a dark red background. Candles began to populate the corners of the house like flickering mushrooms. Then came strange smells... first from the candles, then from tiny braziers that the women positioned fastidiously throughout the house. The combination of scents was oddly pleasant, but the strangeness of it all made David uneasy.

Stranger still was the way the women kept watching him. David was never without several sets of eyes on him, and some women seemed to be devoted to the single task of watching him at all times.

His mother was never one of those women. In fact, the more women packed into the small house, the less David saw of his mother. A few times he spotted her stepping into the bedroom or out the front door in the company of one or more women. She seemed to be under almost as much scrutiny as he was. Almost.

After the women transformed the dwelling into something utterly UNLIKE his house... something almost eerie, but with nicer smells... the strangeness began in earnest.