Chapter Text
Billy can tell no one lives in the cottage based on the amount of rust and debris that’s visible under the soft blanket of snow that covers the tin roof. Or, he would, if the world wasn’t going fuzzy at the edges.
Shit. His dad got him good, this time.
The door is closed, but not locked, which means animals haven’t gotten in (probably) but Billy can, which he does, shuddering at the change from cold wind to just cold. It’s dark as shit, and Billy’s hands are clumsy when they fumble for his lighter.
The place is deserted, and has been for a long time, if the cobwebs are anything to go by. What furniture’s left is covered with plane white sheets, like maybe the owner had been planning on coming back one day, covering what looks like a table and chairs in one corner and a bed in the other. A handful of candles soft with dust are piled neatly on what might be a sheet-covered stove, along with an equally unused candelabra.
Hands shaking with cold, Billy picks up the candles and fills the candelabra, hissing as the flame of his lighter licks against his nail when he leans in to light the wicks.
Suddenly, there’s light, enough of it that Billy can put away the lighter and have a proper look around.
… When he was told they were moving to Indiana, this was more what he was thinking, rather than the cookie-cutter suburban homes he ended up getting. The entire cottage is one room, with what looks like might be a door into a root cellar near the far wall, a small dresser and a pile of bone-dry and probably-a-little-bit-rotten wood in the space between the kitchen table and the stove.
But, like he said, there’s a bed, which right now is all he needs. Well, that and warmth. But he’ll bet anything that the stove behind him is wood-burning, because of course it is.
Setting the candelabra aside on the table, he pulls away the sheet and bingo. Wood-burning.
Billy knows how to set a fire. He learned when he was a kid, before his mom died and his dad soured and everything fell to shit. He’s got a handful of crumpled napkins in his jacket pocket from lunch, a lighter, and a pile of wood. He’s good, he can do this.
Twenty minutes later, there’s a fire just starting to warm the metal of the stove, and provided that the windows aren’t totally fucked, the entire cottage should follow suit, too.
Nodding sharply to himself, Billy straightens and turns to the bed, tugging off the sheet and tossing it to the floor to join its brother from the stove. There’s a mattress, which is cool, and the metal frame— while creaky as hell— holds his weight when he carefully sits down on the edge.
There have got to be sheets or something somewhere in this little cottage, right?
There are, along with a handful of ancient-looking quilts that’ll serve just fine. He checks under the bed for any critters— of which there are none, thank God— before setting to work on the bed, setting one folded quilt at the head of the bed to serve as a pillow and tossing the other over the rest. This is good. Way better than freezing to death in the snow.
Billy’s proud of himself when he settles himself into the mattress of that old bed. Really fucking proud. Of course, that might be the cold and blood loss talking.
Well, whatever. He’s asleep in a moment, either way.
*.*
Billy wakes up with a face full of sunshine and no recollection of where the fuck he is. The gray wood of the walls, the unfamiliar furniture in the unfamiliar room— it has him suddenly remembering an old movie about rapey hillbillies, and the jolt of adrenaline he gets at the thought is enough to wake him all the way.
Then, he remembers. Right, fighting with dad, stumbling into the woods because he was an idiot who forgot he had a car, finding a weird little house in the woods that nobody seemed to be using, deciding it was a good idea to sleep in it. He remembers now.
Pushing himself up with a groan, he looks around properly, noting that it isn’t quite so warm as it ought to be before rolling out of the little bed to put more wood in the stove, reaching for a poker he hadn’t seen the night before and giving the embers an encouraging nod before closing the grate and straightening.
He’s lucky it’s Saturday. He’s lucky it’s normal for him to be gone on the weekends, that he isn’t expected to be home for anything until Sunday night. He’s lucky that he still has his car keys in his pocket and a wad of cash stuffed in his crotch. He should be fine for the weekend, once he gets his car.
Well, in order to do that, he’ll have to wait until his dad leave the house for bowling night with his coworkers, which isn’t until five. So, Billy supposes he has some time to kill. Maybe he can have a look around, maybe figure out if he can even get back to the main road.
Picking up his coat from the floor beside the bed— he must have woken up and pulled it off sometime in the night— he shrugs it on and opens the door, stepping out onto the little porch to look out onto the stretch of field and forest in front of him. It’s weirdly peaceful, how silent the world is, all covered in clean white snow that shines under the weak sun.
The cottage is more of a shack, Billy realizes when he finally gets a good look at the building he’d spent the night in. Kinda cute, in the way that old, squat little houses are, and in pretty good shape, considering the age it shows in its chipped white paint and its rusty roof.
There’s an outhouse on one side of the shack, and a on the other there’s a water pump, something that might be a shed, and what Billy thinks might be a smokehouse. So the place has what can be considered a working bathroom and water.
That’s enough for Billy.
The outhouse doesn’t smell nearly as bad as he expected it to— it mostly smells of dirt and cold when he makes use of it. This place has been out of commission for a damn long time, it seems.
By the time he wanders back into the shack, the stove has done its job and it’s warm again, warm enough that Billy can peel his jacket off and throw it over a newly uncovered kitchen chair.
Since he’s here, he may as well check out the root cellar, right? After all, he has time to kill.
*.*
The root cellar, as it turns out, is far bigger than the actual building it belongs to, stretching another thirty feet back before slanting upwards towards another small cellar door, one that opens up into the woods. Or, Billy thinks it does. He isn’t sure, exactly, because when he tries to push open the door all he finds is heavy snow and probably fifty years of dead leaves and sticks pushing back against him.
Okay, whatever. It’s not that big a deal— there’s a bunch of shelves lining the walls, Billy can have a look at that.
There are a lot of jars, mostly of stuff that is definitely long expired. Pickles, peppers, and eggs float sluggishly in foggy water, black and molded and decidedly disgusting-looking. The jams and preserves— of which there are many— look equally expired, but they’re all labeled with things that sound delicious, like strawberry and peach and blueberry. Cautiously, Billy picks up one of the jars, rubbing his thumb over the faded sticker so he can get a better look at the sharp, slanted cursive.
Cinnamon Apple, 1946.
Yeah. This house hasn’t been used in a very long time.
There’s other stuff too, of course. There’s a box of loose tea leaves on one shelf, a tin of sugar on another, a shelf stuffed full of what look like journals above a shelf of proper books, a whole box of candles and even a handful of oil lamps— no oil, but hey, the lamps are something.
There’s a handful of boxes piled against the stairs leading up into the cottage full of clothes, kitchenware, and a small photo album. He inspects each pot, pan, skillet, and tin mug for rust and damage (not much, which is kind of interesting) before setting them aside, opening and then closing a box of beautiful silver cutlery before picking up the photo album.
The photos are from the war— well, World War II. A man— the focus of most of the photos— stands tall and proud, smiling at the camera with a cigar between his teeth. He’s wearing a bomber jacket, a real bomber jacket, monogrammed with the name Bill across the left breast. He seems like he’s a handsome, charismatic guy, because there isn’t one photo that doesn’t seem like he hasn’t just heard a good joke.
Billy sets the album aside and starts to dig into the clothes. He guesses he knows who lived in this little shack last, now.
White shirts and dress pants stained with hard work and dirt is mostly what he finds, crumbling and moth-eaten at the edges and basically unwearable. Billy tosses them to the side. Not worth much more than rags, at this point.
Then— then he finds the jacket. The leather bomber jacket from the photos.
The leather held up pretty well, considering. It smells a little musty when Billy holds it up to the candlelight, a color faded in some places and stitched in other, but it looks alright, all in all. Especially the back.
Why is the back important? Well, see, when Billy flips it over, he doesn’t find the plain dark brown he’d been expecting, but rather a faded image painted onto the back.
Sweet Dreams, Boys! A red-haired woman in a bomber jacket and not much else proclaims from her seat on a bomb, red-heeled feet kicked up in the air. She’s surrounded by plain white bombs that might have been stamped on— thirty-six of them.
A kill count, Billy realizes after a moment. Cool.
Straightening, he shrugs the jacket onto his shoulders. It’s a little loose in the shoulders, but otherwise it seems to fit him fine, and even better, it’s warm. Warmer than the jacket he has now, at least.
He keeps digging, and finds more uniforms, or parts of them, anyway, stiff with old starch and age. There are some really interesting things tucked down here, he realizes after a moment. Stuff that could be worth a lot of money, if he found the right person. That’s something to keep in mind.
Pushing himself back to his feet, he dusts off his knees and tosses the clothes back into the crates. He should probably start heading back soon. Lord only knows how long it’ll take for him to pick his way through the woods and find the road.
Billy pauses, eyes finding the teabox and the little tin of sugar.
… Tea doesn’t go bad, does it? He thinks he might need something in his stomach, just until he gets his car and buy a real breakfast.
He sighs and grabs the sugar, the tea, the kettle, and one of those little tin mugs. There’s enough snow on the ground that he can boil some water and clean everything out, right? It’s not like he’s short of possible dish rags.
Yeah. He’ll clean the kettle and the mug, he’ll make himself some tea, and then he’ll head back. That’ll work just fine.