Mister Bramble and Mister Thornapple Redecorate

House hunting might be enjoyable if you have unlimited funds and your only problem is deciding between a chateau in the Loire Valley and a Fifth Avenue penthouse. House hunting is a grim business, however, when all you have is the eight hundred dollars that you were saving for an emergency, plus the seventy-five thousand that was all your homeowner's insurance would pay for the loss of your previous house, which got swallowed up by a giant sinkhole, along with all your worldly possessions.

That's what happened to Donna Brown. She left for work one morning only to return that evening to find that her house was gone. She hadn't been all that fond of the house. "Fixer-upper" was the polite term that the real estate ads used to describe it when she'd bought it three years previously. That was a thinly veiled way of saying it was a complete and utter dump, but still, it was home. She'd been planning on using her income tax refund to replace the water heater and maybe do something about the electrical wiring, which was in such bad shape that she couldn't use the toaster and the blender at the same time without blowing a fuse, but now that wouldn't be necessary because her house had ceased to exist.

Donna stood on the sidewalk amid a gaggle of curious onlookers, staring numbly at the place where her house used to be but was now a ragged hole in the ground cordoned off by wooden barricades strung with yellow police tape. All my stuff was in there, she thought dazedly.

Not quite all, as it turned out. Donna's cat, an irascible black and white Maine Coon named Evil George, was at the vet's.

He'd swallowed a thimble (Evil George had a penchant for swallowing unlikely objects) and he'd had to be operated on to have it removed. The surgery left an impressive scar on his shaved, pink belly and put him in an even more foul humor than usual. Donna had to pay the vet seven hundred and fifty dollars and Evil George thanked her for saving his life by biting her savagely on the arm as soon as the vet tech handed him over to her.

"You're a horrible cat," Donna scolded him, as he glared at her with mad, Rasputin eyes. The vet tech offered no contradiction. "He certainly is feisty," she said, smiling nervously and standing well clear, in case Evil George managed to squirm free of Donna's grasp and take his wrath out on her.

Having nowhere to live, Donna needed to find someplace fast. Her friend Alice let her stay with her, but she made it clear that it was only temporary. Alice's boyfriend, with whom she'd had a long-distance relationship, was about to be transferred from Houston and would be moving in with her, and then there was Evil George. No offense, but he wasn't very nice. Alice's elderly dachshund was terrified of him to the point that he'd taken to hiding behind the dresser in Alice's bedroom and refusing to come out.

Donna said she understood. She often wondered why she put up with Evil George. It was probably because no one else wanted him.

She looked at twelve houses, all of them unsuitable, before finding the cottage on a cul-de-sac at the end of Greenwood Lane. One, a tidy Cape Cod on a corner lot next to a Methodist church, had what appeared to be bullet holes in one of the living room walls. On the bare floorboards underneath was an ominous stain the color of prune juice in the shape of a sprawled-out human body. "It's what's called a stigmatized property. The previous owner ran into some trouble. That's why the asking price is so low," the realtor confided as Donna gaped at the stain in disbelief. "There are professional cleaning services that can take care of that," the realtor went on, pointing her chin at the terrible stain, but even if the stain was removed and the wall repaired, there was no way Donna would ever consider living there.

She was beginning to despair of ever finding a place to live until she saw house number thirteen. It was a four-room cottage with cedar shake shingles that the passage of time had turned a silvery grey. It had once been occupied by the head gardener on a private estate belonging to a man named Amos Gildersleeve who derived his fortune from the manufacture of buttons and zippers. That had been many years ago. The main house was torn down after being badly damaged in the hurricane of 1938. The land passed through various hands but no one ever rebuilt the main house or did anything to preserve the outbuildings. By the time Donna looked at the cottage, it was the only structure left standing on what had once been a meticulously tended, sixty-five-acre estate but was now a hilly, barren field backed by dense woods.

"Two acres of land comes with it. That includes part of that wooded area over there," said the realtor, pointing to where the field gave way to trees. The realtor was a stylish lady who wore her hair in a French twist and had a Bluetooth headset affixed to one ear. It looked like the real estate business had been good to her, as she drove a brand-new Mercedes SUV that smelled strongly of whatever combination of volatile organic compounds make new cars smell the way they do. If she was tired of showing Donna houses, she gave no indication. "There's a house that's right for you out there somewhere and we're going to find it," she told her determinedly the first time they met.

The old cottage, despite its flaws, turned out to be the house that was right for Donna. It had sagging wooden floorboards and a kitchen and bathroom that had last been updated in the 1950s, by the look of the scarred knotty pine kitchen cabinets and the cracked pink and black tiles in the bath. It might be cozy and charming if it were renovated, but as it was, it was just run-down. Still, the roof was in good condition and the price was right. Donna figured she could just barely afford the monthly payments if she stopped going out to eat and kept her old car instead of trading it in, as she'd planned to do before the sinkhole ate her house.

"Who owns the rest of this land?" she asked the realtor. "Are they going to build more houses here?" She didn't like the idea of being surrounded by McMansions inhabited by what would probably be awful, snobbish people. She was pleasantly surprised when the realtor said the land had been deeded over to the state as public open space and would never be developed.

"Hikers come out here sometimes, and bird watchers, but it's usually just the way you see it," the realtor said. They were the only people out there. The wind blew gently through the trees. In the distance, a dog barked. Donna liked the fact that it was peaceful. She pictured herself waking up every morning to the sound of birds chirping. I can have a garden, she thought, feeling a twinge of excitement as she envisioned the lumpy ground behind the house where crabgrass grew in sparse tufts and dandelions flourished transformed into a picturesque vegetable garden. I'll grow tomatoes and corn and string beans. Maybe I'll learn how to can. She bought the house and moved in with just a futon, a card table and two chairs that she found at a garage sale, and of course, Evil George.

On the evening of May 1, as Donna was bringing bags of groceries in from her car, Evil George escaped. She was holding the back door open with her hip and fumbling for the kitchen light switch when he darted past her and made for the woods at a determined trot.

Donna shouted, "George! Come back here!"

In response, he glanced over his shoulder at her and quickened his pace. At the edge of the woods, his bushy, black tail disappeared beneath a tangle of forsythia bushes. "Oh, great! Now I have to go get you," Donna muttered. Evil George was an indoor cat. The outdoors bewildered him, not that it stopped him from escaping every chance he got. He had no sense of direction. When he'd gotten out before, from Donna's old house, she would usually find him sitting on the welcome mat of the house next door, mewing piteously to be let in, oblivious of the fact that he didn't live there. Donna would walk up to him and he'd look up at her in surprise, momentarily grateful at being rescued. Having found his way into the woods, he might never find his way out again.

Donna got a bag of cat treats out of the cupboard and George's cat carrier. She went into the woods, shaking the bag so that the treats rattled temptingly. "Yummy treats! Come on, George! Get the yummy treats," she called.

To her surprise, from quite close by, she heard a man's voice. It said, "Oh, look, Mister Thornapple! A kitty!"

"Don't frighten it, Mister Bramble," a second voice cautioned. "Approach it gently. Come here, dear little puss. Don't be frightened. We mean you no harm, we only want to... ahhh!" The voice broke off in a shrill scream.

Evil George, it seemed, had struck again. Donna stepped around a large oak tree to see George clawing furiously at the legs of a man who was backing up, making ineffectual shooing gestures at the enraged feline. Donna wasn't at all surprised to find Evil George attacking someone. It was what he did, after all. What surprised her was the man's appearance. He wore tight-fitting, lime-green satin knee breeches and a short, emerald green velvet jacket trimmed with lace. His white silk hose were torn and his powdered wig was askew as the result of being set upon by Evil George. His face, contorted in panic, was powdered and rouged and he had a diamond-shaped beauty patch stuck to one cheek. "Do something, Mister Bramble!" he implored his companion, who was similarly powdered and bewigged, and wore garnet-colored knee-breeches and a lavender jacket.

"I would rather not. I fear it would spoil my hose," the other replied apologetically.

Donna seized George and clapped him into his carrier. He glared out at her through the metal grillwork in front and hissed menacingly. "I'm sorry," she told the men.

The one called Bramble airily waved a lace handkerchief. "La! No need to apologize," he said.

"Speak for yourself," grumbled the one called Thornapple. "Look what it did to my hose."

"Don't you carry a spare pair? I always do," said Bramble.

"Then let me have it," commanded Thornapple. "It's your fault that we came this way."

Bramble fished in his lace-trimmed pocket and came up with a neatly folded pair of white hose and a little silver bottle, which he passed to Thornapple. "Here," he said. "Try this scent. It's lavender and bergamot. Very refreshing. I picked it up in Venice."

Thornapple dabbed some on his wrists. "La! Divine!" he exclaimed.

Donna studied them in confusion. They were dressed like eighteenth-century fops. What was a pair of fops doing in her woods? She asked, "What are you doing out here?"

"We're hunters," said Thornapple at the same time Bramble said, "We're hiking."

Neither one seemed likely. They weren't carrying guns and they were clearly not dressed for the woods. "Why are you dressed that way?" Donna asked.

"What way?" asked Bramble. "Give me back my scent bottle," he demanded crossly of Thornapple.

"Like fops," Donna said.

"Oh, I like that," said Thornapple indignantly, his hands on his hips. "Fops, is it? Macaronis? Popinjays? Those are nice words, madam." He curled his rouged lip and gave Donna a surly look. "For your information, we dress this way because we are men of fashion. Are we not, Mister Bramble?"

"No," said Bramble. "We're dressed this way because we're going to a costume party."

"Of course," said Thornapple, shooting him a look of gratitude. "That's it; we're going to a costume party." He seated himself on a rock and began taking off his ruined hose. His legs, Donna saw, were spindly and pale and there were red scratches on his ankles where Evil George had clawed him. Bramble, who was studying her through a pearl-handled lorgnette, was built along sturdier lines.

"What are you doing here?" Thornapple asked her, busily adjusting his hose. "I suppose you work for Gildersleeve. Where is he, by the way?"

"He's dead," Donna said.

Thornapple looked up at her keenly. "Dead, you say? Really? Was he murdered?"

"Did you murder him?" Bramble asked with interest, peering at her through his lorgnette.

"Of course not," Donna replied indignantly. "I just live here. I bought the cottage where the gardener used to live."

Thornapple nodded thoughtfully. "I see. So who owns these woods?"

Donna said she did, at which point Thornapple and Bramble exchanged a look in which some unspoken understanding seemed to pass between them.

Thornapple finished putting on his hose. He slipped on his highly polished dancing pumps, stood up, and straightened his wig. "All right, then," he said briskly. "As owner of these woods, you are entitled to ask something of us in exchange for our passing through your property on our way to the party."

"Lady Belinda's party," Bramble cut in, as if that should mean something to Donna, which it didn't. She was beginning to think the two of them were insane. "Lady Belinda," Bramble continued, seeing Donna's puzzled expression, "is a superb hostess. Her parties are legendary. The music, the flower arrangements, the distinguished company, the food and wine are all perfection." He kissed his bunched fingertips to demonstrate the perfection of Lady Belinda's parties.

"There are mock sea-battles on the ornamental lake and the most stupendous fireworks you could possibly imagine," Thornapple enthused. "To see the beautiful and elegant Lady Belinda presiding graciously over the festivities one would never suspect that she comes from exceedingly humble beginnings." He leaned closer to Donna and confided, "Her father was a rat-catcher, you know, and her mother took in sailors' laundry."

"That's not true," Bramble snapped. "I have it on good authority that her father was a poacher and her mother was a wicked murderess who was hanged for poisoning eight people, including the Bishop of Uttoxeter."

"Whatever the case, the party is about to begin and we would like to be there before the dancing starts and the ladies' dance cards are filled," said Thornapple impatiently.

"And while there is still a good selection of canapés, especially the little yellow ones with candied violets on top," added Bramble. "So what will it be? Do you want us to give you a glorious singing voice or naturally curly hair or what? Just name it and it's yours."

Donna thought, These guys are completely nuts. Aloud, she said, "I really don't want anything." It was beginning to get dark and her arm was starting to ache from holding George in his cat carrier. Like most Maine Coons, George was heavy.

"Nonsense," said Thornapple. "It's part of the deal. Didn't Gildersleeve explain it to you?"

Donna shook her head. It was no use pointing out that Amos Gildersleeve had been dead since long before she was born. She set down the cat carrier and folded her arms. "Explain what?" she asked.

Their explanation was perfectly absurd. It seemed Thornapple and Bramble came from another dimension ("one much nicer than this.") They had passed through a portal into the woods behind Donna's cottage while taking a shortcut to the party. Another portal ("over there, behind those rhododendrons") led to the home of Lady Belinda. Donna saw no sign of any portals (not that she knew what one looked like) but she decided to play along. Thornapple and Bramble seemed harmless enough. They'd grow bored with their game of imaginary portals and parties and go back to wherever they came from and let her get on with putting away the groceries.

"What I'd really like is to have my house fixed up," she told them. It was the truth. She felt depressed every time she looked at the cracked plaster on the walls and the rust spots that were eaten into the dingy white enamel of the claw-footed bathtub.

"Is that all? That will be a piece of cake," said Bramble. He and Thornapple turned and looked in the direction of the cottage, which was just visible through the trees in the gathering dusk. They made a series of passes with their hands, spoke what sounded like a string of nonsense syllables, then turned back to Donna with broad smiles.

"Done!" said Thornapple triumphantly.

"Let's go and look at it! I want to see the expression on her face when she sees what we did," said Bramble, rubbing his hands together excitedly.

"Oh, yes! The reveal is the best part!" agreed Thornapple.

They set off for the cottage, with Donna following them lugging Evil George in his carrier. Up close, the cottage looked the same as it always did. Donna hadn't expected anything different, but she thought she'd appease her strange visitors by pretending to be amazed by its dazzling transformation. She opened the back door and said heartily, "Wow! It's great! Thanks, you guys!"

Then she took a good look inside and her mouth fell open in shock. For the first time in her life, Donna was rendered completely speechless. She looked away, blinked, and looked back again, not believing her eyes. Instead of the worn, green and white checkerboard linoleum floor of her homely little kitchen, there was now what appeared to be acres of gleaming parquet. Glittering crystal chandeliers hung from a vaulted ceiling high overhead. The walls, with what looked like dozens of enormous mirrors in gold frames, stretched on and on into the distance.

As if from far away, she heard Bramble saying to Thornapple, "Look how surprised she is! It turned out quite well, don't you think?"

"Indeed," replied Thornapple cheerfully. "I always liked Versailles."

Donna stepped backwards onto the splintered boards of the porch, her knees shaking. The exterior of the cottage was unchanged. Just to make sure, she walked completely around the outside. It looked the same as always: just a humble, one-story building not much bigger than the average two-car garage. There was no way that palatial room could be inside it. She stepped back onto the porch and into what used to be her kitchen. She recognized it now. It was the Hall of Mirrors from Versailles.

"What did you do?" she asked, her voice coming out as a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. "What did you do?" she asked, louder this time.

"We fixed up your house, as you requested. You're welcome, by the way," said Thornapple.

Her head spinning, Donna said, "You put Versailles inside my house? How could you do that?" Donna's house was less than eight hundred square feet. It was impossible that Versailles could be in there.

"Relax," said Bramble cheerfully. "It's not the real Versailles. Heavens, no! That would be unfair to the people of France. It's an exact copy. It's quite good, wouldn't you agree? Just wait until you see the ballroom and the Queen's bedchamber! You've got more than seven hundred rooms in there; plenty of space to spread out. You're going to love it!"

Donna stepped back onto the porch. Standing on that gleaming parquet floor, a floor that couldn't possibly be there and yet somehow was, had made her extremely uneasy. It had to be some kind of trick, possibly an optical illusion or maybe Thornapple and Bramble had somehow hypnotized her into imagining her kitchen had been turned into the Hall of Mirrors.

"How did you do that?" she asked.

"A simple manipulation of matter, using a technique that you really wouldn't understand," said Bramble. "And now we must be off. Enjoy your home!"

"Wait!" Donna said. "Put it back the way it was."

Bramble and Thornapple stared at her in consternation. Thornapple asked, "Why? Don't you like it?"

"It's too big. I can't live in there all by myself and I can't possibly clean all those rooms," Donna said, feeling desperate.

"Well, invite people to come and live with you and get some servants to clean everything. My goodness, you're not very good at problem-solving, are you? Most people would jump at the chance to live in a house like this, and now we really must go," said Thornapple, removing a gold, half-hunter pocket watch from his vest pocket and squinting at it. Donna saw that the watch had at least a dozen hands, some moving backwards and some spinning around rapidly clockwise. She sank down on the porch steps and put her head in her hands, feeling like she was about to cry.

"Hold on," said Bramble. "We can't leave until she is satisfied with the alterations. It's in the contract." He withdrew a vellum scroll from an inside pocket of his jacket. Unrolling it, he scanned it rapidly, then stabbed at it with a manicured forefinger. "Here, see! Paragraph twenty-eight, section 9a: 'In the event that the party of the second part is displeased with the results, he or she is entitled to demand of the party of the first part an alteration or exchange.' That means if she doesn't like it, we have to fix it."

Thornapple frowned. "Very well, although I can't for the life of me understand why she's not ecstatic with what we've done. Ah, well! De gustibus non est disputandum." He turned to Donna and told her to explain exactly what she wanted done to the house. She said she wanted it put back the way it was, but with a few minor changes.

"A new kitchen floor made of Mexican tile, a dishwasher and marble countertops and some solid oak cabinets, the kind with glass fronts, and off-white subway tile in the bathroom, and a pedestal sink..." The list went on and on. More closet space! Make the bedroom closet cedar-lined! Vinyl replacement windows, with a window seat in the living room! Make it a bow window, while they were at it! Refinish the floors, fix the cracks in the walls... it took Donna ten minutes to explain everything she wanted done, at which point Thornapple and Bramble were sighing and tapping their feet impatiently.

"Is that all? Are you sure you don't want solid gold doorknobs?" Bramble asked sarcastically. No, Donna replied. Just the things she specified. Thornapple and Bramble again made the mysterious passes with their hands and repeated a string of words that began with what sounded like, "erum irum orum norum."

"It's very nice. Thank you," Donna said, surveying the results. The cottage's interior now looked almost exactly the way she'd always envisioned it if she'd had the money to fix it up. She resisted the impulse to ask that the glass in the kitchen cabinet doors be beveled instead of plain. She didn't want to seem ungrateful.

"You certainly are hard to please," observed Bramble. "Not like old Gildersleeve. All he wanted was for us to give him a superior zipper design that would make him rich. Well, good-bye. It was nice meeting you. I don't suppose we'll meet again. We don't come out this way very often." He and Thornapple turned to go.

"Wait!" said Donna. "You could have made me rich?"

"Yes, but you didn't ask for that. Adieu!" said Bramble,waving his lace handkerchief.

He and Thornapple set off briskly for the woods as Donna stood there, stunned. She could have been rich! Why hadn't she asked for wealth instead of home improvements? Now that she thought of it, why hadn't she asked to be a movie star, or a world-famous athlete of some kind? Now that Thornapple and Bramble were gone, she could think of many things she should have asked for. Fame! Fortune! Beauty! Genius! Damn! Why hadn't she chosen more wisely?

"Because you didn't think they were for real," said her friend Alice, when Donna invited her to come and see her new and improved home. Alice had been there the week before. She knew there was no way the transformation could have been accomplished in a week, even if her friend had enough money to pay a crew of carpenters, plasterers, plumbers and tilers to work around the clock, which she didn't. They sat at the table in Donna's kitchen, drinking coffee and admiring the marble countertops, the shiny new appliances, and the Mexican tile floor. Evil George was curled up on the window seat in the living room, watching a squirrel that was perched in a tree outside.

"So, you believe me that two guys from another dimension came through a portal in the woods and did all this?" Donna asked Alice.

"Sure. Why not? There are probably lots of other dimensions out there. Maybe the portal was some kind of wormhole or something. The main thing is they fixed your house the way you wanted. That's awesome," Alice said.

Donna agreed that it was but still, she wished she'd asked for something better.

"Like what? Whatever you asked for, it wouldn't have been enough. You'd be satisfied for a while but then you'd think of something you wanted more. Just be grateful you got all this," said the practical Alice.

"I guess so," Donna sighed. "More coffee?"

"Okay," said Alice. "So, they really put Versailles in here? I wish I could have seen it. It must have been like the T.A.R.D.I.S.: you know, bigger on the inside. That's too cool for school."

"I guess so," said Donna uncomfortably. Unlike her friend, Donna wasn't a fan of Doctor Who. Science fiction seemed kind of silly to her, all those tentacled aliens who somehow spoke perfect English, and yet she'd been visited by two extraordinary gentlemen who could casually manipulate matter. She shivered, remembering how uneasy it had made her feel to see the Hall of Mirrors inserted into her little house. "I guess so," she repeated.

THE END

Bio: Ms. Hand is a former newspaper reporter and editor from New Jersey. Her work has appeared in Aphelion, Bewildering Stories and Weird N.J.  She has a short story in the Spring 2015 issue of The Oddville Press and recently became an associate editor at Bewildering Stories.  Her last Aphelion appearance was Two Strokes of a Pen in our March, 2015 issue.

E-mail: Jill Hand

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