Wednesday P.O.V
Noah A. Edgar is a walking paradox. A cursed genius whose mind operates on frequencies that defy the standard manual of sanity. An enigma so dense and intricate that, no matter how much I dissect him with my best analytical tools—the gaze, the bait, the threat—I cannot decipher him.
His arrival was like introducing a virus into a perfectly stable and decadent ecosystem. And, to my silent frustration, he became familiar with everything we did with an ease bordering on the obscene. His routine in our house normalized quickly on the very first day.
The decorative guillotines that descend upon waking, designed to cut the morning breath and any sense of complacency, did not frighten him. They merely provoked a slight raising of an eyebrow, as if assessing the mechanism's quality.
The sadistic trees in the garden, using their twisted branches like living tentacles to grab his feet and lift him into the air, didn't even make him blink. He would hang suspended, motionless, observing the world upside down with a predator's patience, until the tree, bored, released him.
It was the most insultingly rapid adaptation I have ever witnessed. In such a short time, he grew accustomed to something that the poor, unfortunate Joel took an entire month of frights, screams, and renewed phobias before finally giving up and fleeing forever.
Intrigued and, I admit, deeply irritated, I took the liberty of observing and studying him daily. Hidden in the shadows, from the top of the staircases, behind secret doors. I searched for cracks, for breaches in his facade of impenetrable tranquility.
I noted peculiarities. His morning reading wasn't from grimoires or treatises on poisons, but from a book on human and social psychology. Initially, I scorned it. Was he interested in frivolous things? In that soft, inexact science that tries to categorize human irrationality? No. A deeper analysis showed me I knew it wasn't that.
And, based on his behavior with Pugsley, a simpler figure to decipher, he revealed himself as someone calm and quite observant. He listened to my brother's enthusiastic explanations about homemade explosives with genuine attention, asking pointed questions that showed a frightening understanding of the chemical principles involved.
All these pieces led me to a conclusion. A wrong conclusion.
I was deceived.
The definitive proof of his social engineering came not in a grand event, but whispered in the dusty corners of Pugsley's laboratory. I heard them. The conversation seemed innocent, a supposed "scientific interest" from Noah in my brother's experiments. But his advice was poisoned barbs, carefully disguised as encouragement.
"Pugsley," he would say, his voice a thread of reasonable silk.
"Your formula is interesting, but the reaction is too... contained. What would happen if you introduced a higher voltage electrical source? Or perhaps an alpha radiation particle to destabilize the compounds? The gunpowder you use is too pure, almost predictable. Have you considered mixing it with other chemical elements to create a more... chaotic instability?"
He didn't command. He suggested. He planted the seed of unbridled ambition in my brother's fertile and impressionable mind. And Pugsley, the fragile creature he was, didn't even suspect. His eyes shone with the prospect of a new level of destruction.
He didn't see, as I did, the smile that stretched across Noah's lips. A smile that revealed his white teeth, not of joy, but of predatory anticipation. It was the smile of a scientist about to see his most perverse hypothesis proven.
Noah A. Edgar manipulated my brother to go further. And the result was as glorious as it was predictable.
KABOOM!
The explosion wasn't just a sound; it was a seismic event that made the mansion's structure groan. And when the smoke cleared, there was Pugsley, his face completely smeared with soot, his eyes wide with surprise and a hint of admiration for the power he himself, involuntarily, had unleashed.
And then came the sound. The sound that chilled my blood not by its volume, but by its nature.
"Hahahaha!"
It was Noah. He laughed out loud. It wasn't a restrained or polite laugh. It was a shrill, raw, and genuine laugh that welled up from his core upon seeing the result of his social experiment.
A laugh that echoed through our house, profaning the usual solemnity with its chaotic glee. Pugsley's room was reduced to smoldering rubble, and that destruction was his trophy.
However, his plan for psychological domination wasn't over. In the following days, I became a silent spectator of his methodical infiltration campaign. I watched Noah play pranks on everyone, with a surgical precision that demonstrated his deep understanding of our individual weaknesses.
For my mother, it was a subtle comment about a rare black orchid that made her doubt her own cultivation methods for an entire week.
For my father, an "innocent" prank with his company papers that led him on a bureaucratic treasure hunt which he, paradoxically, loved.
Lurch was convinced his own reflection was an enemy to be pursued.
Thing repeatedly found himself trapped in spring-loaded traps made of paper clips.
And with me... with me, they were small adjustments, almost imperceptible. My tarantula syrup slightly less acidic.
My father referred to him as the Little Devil, with an amused smile. And that's when true perplexity set in. What I didn't understand.
How? How could someone who wasn't an Addams by blood, who wasn't raised in darkness from the cradle, not only comprehend but play with the gears of our family on such a fundamental level?
Had he arrived in such a short time and was already securing a place?
The question hammered in my mind, an echo of my own failure. How can someone adapt so easily? How can someone, in a matter of days, not only withstand our darkness but use it as a tool, becoming not a guest but an architect of chaos within our own domain?
The answer was simple and terrifying:
Noah wasn't adapting to us. He was, by nature, one of us.
Time, in the Addams mansion, had always been a relative concept, measured more by the gradual decay of flowers and the accumulation of spiderwebs than by the ticking of a clock. But suddenly, I looked back and before I even noticed, months had passed...
...Months.
And in that hazy interval, the infiltration was complete. Noah approached each one of us with the patience of a virus. He didn't invade; he infiltrated our lives, studying our habits, our idiosyncrasies, our affectionate blind spots. And then, with a sinister skill, he created what would be called a bond.
They weren't genuine bonds, of course. They were strategic ties. With Pugsley, it was the complicity of shared chaos. With my parents, a perverse intellectual admiration for his sharp mind. Even Uncle Fester seemed to share explosive secrets with him that I didn't even know existed.
He wasn't of the same blood, but he seemed to be a part of this family. The realization was a bitter taste in my mouth. He was like a parasite lodging itself in a host, not to kill, but to become an inseparable part of the organism, making its removal impossible without catastrophic damage.
I found him in the library, one of his declared territories. He was seated, immersed in an ancient volume, but his attention wasn't entirely on the book. I felt the weight of his gaze on me before I even turned around.
"Your opinion of me is quite in character, you know," the parasite spoke with a smile, closing the book in his hand with a soft click. His voice was a thread of challenge, tinged with amusement.
Paralyzed for an instant, I turned to face him.
"How do you know my opinion of you?" I asked, staring directly into his eyes, pouring all my suspicion and distrust into a single gaze that would freeze the veins of any sane person.
He laughed. It wasn't a loud laugh like the one he let out with Pugsley, but something more intimate and, therefore, more disturbing. And then, his gray eyes carried a glow, which until then, was unknown to me. It was a strange light, dazzling and impenetrable. I don't know if it was pride, malice, or if it was just the candlelight reflecting in his dead-toned eyes. The ambiguity was deliberate. It was his weapon.
"The eyes are the windows to the soul," he replied, his voice smooth as coffin silk. He lifted the book he was reading, examining it for a second as if it contained all the secrets of the universe. Then, with a careless movement, tossed it onto the shelf with ease. The book slid through the air and slotted perfectly into the space between two other books, without a sound, an act of almost supernatural precision that demonstrated his absolute mastery over the environment.
He turned his gaze back to me, and the glow in his eyes seemed to intensify, piercing my defenses.
"You may control your emotions so they don't appear as expressions or gestures," he continued, each word an ice needle, "but your eyes convey those repressed emotions."
He paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. And then, he delivered the final blow, with a calm that was an insult.
"I know well what you think of me, and what you think about your family."
I was paralyzed.
His question wasn't a blow; it was a surgical suture applied directly to the most fragile joint of my armor. "Tell me, are you afraid of being in Morticia's shadow?" Noah asked with a smile. The smile wasn't one of mockery, but of pure clinical analysis, like an entomologist poking a rare insect to see its reaction.
He continued, his voice a scalpel dissecting my soul before my own eyes. "You truly are arrogant, obsessive, and overly stubborn." Each word was a precise label, sticking to me like an epitaph engraved on a tombstone. "In the future, you will be the source of many headaches."
The precision was insulting.
"Great." The word left my mouth before I could filter it, an automatic defense. I maintained my composure, though my insides were still reverberating from the initial shock. It was a perverse compliment, and I accepted it as such.
Noah stared at me with a questioning look. He didn't accept my answer. He dug deeper, seeking the vein.
"Are you what? An idiot?" The word was a slap, but its delivery was flat, factual. "That arrogance is your weakness, your authoritarian arrogance will make you clash with other people very easily, including even your own family." Noah spoke, his smile fading as he looked at me.
The amusement had vanished, replaced by a strange seriousness. And then, he dropped the bomb, the question designed to cause maximum collateral damage: "I wonder, how many of the Addams died before you became an adult."
That was enough.
The mention of death in the family, not as a celebration, but as an accusation, as a consequence of me, snapped the last thread of my rationality. The movement was pure instinct. My hand vanished into the folds of my dress and reappeared gripping a hidden blade. The cold steel was a relief against my sweaty palm. My arm rose, the downward strike—
And stopped.
Because something had grabbed my wrist.
It wasn't a physical hand. It was a cold, implacable pressure, as if the very air around me had solidified into invisible shackles. My blade hovered inches from his face, trembling with the force I couldn't apply.
Noah's expression didn't change. His eyes, those bright gray pools, still stared at me.
"Can't accept the truth?" He asked, his voice a poisonous whisper. "Or do you already know I'm right and are angry about it?"
And then, Noah smiled. And as he smiled, behind him appeared his own shadow. It wasn't a common shadow, cast by light. It was a solid and distinct entity, detaching from the wall like a nightmare specter. And the shadow... the shadow had the same smile.