The Winter Garden

by Kara Jorgensen

“Finished? Finished with what?”

  Silence and the tattoo of her heart in her ears met her answer.

  “Who are you? Why have you taken me?”

  Opening her mouth to scream again, she stopped when she heard footfalls retreating away from the tube. The faint clap of a door that rocked the plaster of her apartment confirmed he was gone. Emmeline moved the chair under the bathroom window, but neither feet nor steamer wheels blocked the sliver of sun in her dank alley view. The girl slowly slumped down in defeat, feeling particularly small and oddly helpless. She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes but refused to cry and let her face grow red and inflamed. Much like her screaming, it would do nothing to help her escape.

  Her eyes trailed up to her reflection in the mirror. During the night, her hair had tumbled down with pins sticking out at all angles, but apart from being a little wrinkled from sleep, her green gown remained without anymore missing sequins or tears. She turned to leave the powder room when she glimpsed her twisted and crunched wings. In a panic, Emmeline tried to set them back in place, but they drooped as the gears of the mechanism ground together, reminding her of a swatted insect. With a sigh, she slipped them off and let them drop beside the soiled shoe on the bathroom floor.

  Stepping back into the hall, she carried her tray back to the bedroom. She sniffed at the plate, checking if it was poisoned but realized she didn’t know what poison smelled like. The dish smelled like cheap meat, so she daintily nibbled at her meager dinner. The sinewy meat refused to cut, and the waterlogged carrots oozed moisture with each fall of the knife. What disgusted her even more than putting her foot in the toilet was the cold, dishwater tea. She left the pot on the dresser and dug into the only passable morsel of food, the box of Huntley and Palmer biscuits, hoping to drown out the awful taste. If they were going to hold her captive, they could at least give her real food, she thought as she lay back on the bed and stared at the cracked plaster ceiling.

  Why would anyone take her only to ask if she was feeling well? Her mother was wealthy, so maybe they were holding her for ransom. Yes, that must be it, she told herself. As long as her mama paid them, she would be fine. As she ran her fingers through her hair and the remaining pins tinkled to the ground, a grin crossed her features. Maybe Lord Rose had stolen her to elope when her mother refused his proposal. How romantic. Just like Hades and Persephone. If that was true, she would only remain there a few hours more until the vicar could be called. She would have preferred a white dress but at least her Samhain costume was fine. Emmeline turned the tiny piece of metal over in her hand before scratching 1 November 1891 into the wall to mark the day of her engagement.

  She gathered the blanket around her arms as she checked the bedside table and discovered a hairbrush and toothbrush that looked newer than anything else in the room. In the drawer below were several candles and a box of matches. She quickly shut them and unlatched the wardrobe. A few dated, doleful dresses that smelled of mothballs hung on the bar but sitting on the shelves were a few extra pairs of stockings and another dusty blanket. Stooping down, Emmeline pulled open the drawers at the bottom. They were littered with stationary and half-empty bottles of ink that had been scattered and upturned by some invisible wind. As she scooped them up to tidy the pile, brightly colored books printed with painted damsels and highwaymen on their tattered covers appeared below. Emmeline abandoned the pile of papers in favor of the penny dreadfuls. Thumbing through the tales of robbers, rapscallions, and regal ladies, she headed back to her bed. For hours, she lay quietly on the mattress, transported from the empty space to castles on the misty moors. The tales of adventure and passion held her until the light from the electric bulb in the hall grew too weak to read anymore, and when it did, she lit a candle and contently continued. Until her mother or Lord Rose came to rescue her, there was nothing to do except read.

  ***

  The charcoal steamer stopped before the unkempt brick house as it did every day for the past month and a half. Though the neighbors heard strange noises every time he was there, they never dared to ask questions. He owned their houses and could turn them out at any moment if they tried to make trouble. Marching past the cloaked furniture and shutting the kitchen door behind him to block out the last rays of day, he descended the steps. He slipped past the locked door where the girl slept and continued until he reached the rough-hewn portal hidden within the cupboard under the stairs.

  Emmeline’s head was pressed against the pages of one of Jack Harkaway’s many adventures when the bolt on the cellar door slid open and the man inside whimpered at the sight of his captor. An agonizing scream from the depths of hell sent Emmeline from her paper pillow with a start. In a daze, she patted her mouth and realized she wasn’t the one screaming. His bestial cries were like nothing she had ever heard before. She had screamed and heard her mother and maid do the same at the sight of a mouse, but she had never heard a man scream. The voice was tinged with the unmistakable tremble of fear and the abandon of horrific pain. The hairs on her arms and neck stood on end. A sharp thwack resonated from the boards below followed by another. She listened to the cries pierce the still air over and over until she thought her heart would pound out of her chest and into her throat. But it was not only fear that made her listen. Something in his wails thrilled her like a Gothic tale. Maybe she was dreaming. Could her imagination simply be running wild after reading too many of the penny dreadfuls her mother had forbade her to read?

  After what felt like an eternity of sitting on her mattress waiting for the cries of pain and bangs from below her feet to cease, the purgatorial room fell silent. Emmeline froze anew, feeling her own pulse race against the flesh of her neck as she anticipated the cry that never came. She jolted as the door in the cellar slammed shut and the sound of boots headed for the other end of the hallway. Her eyes widened in panic as she darted from the cot and into the wardrobe, shielding her face with the row of old dresses. The man’s heavy steps echoed past her chambers and continued upstairs where they disappeared out the front door. A chunk of plaster in the corner crashed to the floor as it slammed.

  All fell silent. Pushing open the wardrobe door, she stepped back into the room on trembling legs. Her breath and pulse refused to slow. This was not some romantic elopement or ransom. She was trapped. Her apartments were no longer a great tower or cell in the Bastille but a tomb she may never leave, and there was another who was brought by her captors to share her fate. Even if she never laid eyes on him, there had to be a common bond for them to be brought together. Would they do to her what they did to him if she didn’t do what they wanted? Getting down on her hands and knees, she pressed her cheek against the cool boards to be as close as possible to her fellow hostage. At first, the young woman couldn’t hear anything, but then a muffled moan followed by a sob echoed from the abyss. The man was weeping.

  ***

  The dumbwaiter rattled down the chute until it came to rest in the hallway. Emmeline carefully removed the new tray and replaced it with the dirty dishes from the night before with shaking hands. She was about to dart back to her room to escape him when the abrasive voice echoed down the pipe.

  “How do you feel?”

  Questions hung on her lips but fear hushed them as the screams echoed through her mind again. Maybe if she played their game, she would survive. “Fine.”

  Chapter Five:

  The Catacomb

  The dates tipped down and across the wall, haphazardly scratched daily into the plaster with the end of a hairpin. Emmeline was beginning to lose track of day and night as the days grew shorter and the weather darkened the sky with snow and torrential downpours, but the routine of the two men continued like clockwork. The man with the heavy tread came every morning before the sun disappeared above the adjacent building at noon to brutalize her unseen neighbor. Hours later when it was necessary to light her lamp to even see in her bedroom, the man with the clarion voice asked only one question, How are you feeling?

  Every time they arrived, she
imagined what lay beyond the confines of her plaster and wood cell. From what she remembered of her own home, she assumed the dumbwaiter in the hall led to the pantry above and would open up to a dining room or parlor, and from the creaks on the other side of her bedroom wall, she knew the stairs and door to her fellow captive lay nearby. What stood past the threshold of the front door or up the stairs to the upper floors she did not know. The men never seemed to go beyond the ground floor and no one had ever tried to enter her apartments.

  Emmeline sank her ears deeper into the folds of the pillow to drown out the groans and pleadings from below the floorboards. When she asked for more books and candles, they sent her an oil lamp and a stack of penny dreadfuls along with a few novels. Now, the Count of Monte Cristo served as her guide to escape. She read aloud to drown out the pitiable cries. If she didn’t, she would tremble at the sound of his wails and imagine every blow dealt to him. She flinched as something sharply hit flesh, but she clasped the pillow to her head before she could hear the resulting lamentation. Why do they treat me so well? she wondered as she let the book drop and held the pillow to her ears to block the attacker’s muffled jeers and half-heard insults. They treated him so differently. Her captors seemed to provide her with whatever she needed. She had asked politely for more to read and a sewing kit with which she could hem the sad dresses in the wardrobe, and she received them the next day without a word. For now, they were treating her like a princess held captive by a rival kingdom, but why weren’t they beating her as they did to him? More importantly, why hadn’t her mother come to rescue her? Maybe she was happy to be rid of her. Swallowing hard, she choked down her tears to keep the man below from hearing her.

  What would she even do if they came into her cell? She was cornered down there with no place to hide. At any moment they could come in and murder her or commit the crimes of Jack the Ripper that her mother refused to explain past their heinous nature. All she had to fend them off with was a dull, bent butter knife from her dinner and a piece of molding with nails jutting from its surface that she had torn from the edge of the door in a failed attempt to break free. Taking a deep breath, she fixed her eyes on Dumas’ words. She had to know how Edmond Dantés escaped. If she finished, maybe he would help her find a way out.

  The house fell silent again after the heavy-footed man creaked up the steps to the main floor beyond her chambers. With a sigh and a sniff, she walked over to the wardrobe to get the other blanket from the bottom drawer, but as she crossed the room, something scraped against the sole of her foot and tore through her stockings. Emmeline felt the holler rise up her throat but squashed it in a harrumph of frustration and a stamp of her foot. That nail had caught all three pairs of stockings she had. She tried to pry it up with her fingers, but it was too small to grasp. Grabbing the knife from her previous day’s dinner, she slipped it under the head of the nail and wiggled it until finally it popped out. A satisfied smile played on her lips as she grasped the new weapon to add to her pitiful arsenal and ran her foot over the now smooth board. On the second swipe, the wood shifted beneath her foot. She pushed on it again with her toes and watched as the edge collided with its neighbor and lifted. The girl had only placed the knife beneath it when the hurried footsteps of the other man crossed the floor above. Fearing he would hear her through the tube, she let it drop.

  ***

  It had been hours since the two men had been in the house, and light no longer filtered through the window in the bathroom. Emmeline scuffed her foot along the boards until she heard the familiar clack as they slid into one another. She turned up the lamp and easily removed the loosened board. The gap between the planks was wide enough to stick her head through, but as she stared into the darkness, the sour yet metallic odor of rot wafted into her room and made her eyes tear. Her mouth watered as the bile rose in her throat, but she choked it down. No heroine she ever read about vomited in the face of danger. Wind whistled below, ruffling the edge of her black frock and blowing against her fingers as they clung to the edge of the boards. Skirting around the opening, she grasped the next plank and pulled with all her might until the nails groaned and popped. When the board toppled out of her hands with a clatter, she froze, but no boot treads rushed to stop her. She retrieved a candle from the nightstand and lit it from the oil lamp. Swinging her feet over the edge of the sulfurous abyss, she lowered the candle until a simple wooden shelf appeared a few feet below.

  Placing the candle on the top shelf out of her foot’s reach, she slid down into the cavern unencumbered by the maid’s malleable dress. Emmeline slowly scaled the rough-hewn shelves until her toes touched the dirt of the floor. The candle’s wispy flame danced as a breeze zipped past her, escaping up into the chamber above. She took a step further into the catacomb, but the golden glow from her taper only illuminated the brick wall at her side and the wool at her breast. The young woman peered into the darkness, grasping to discern the shapes ahead. Her pulse quickened as the shadows danced and seethed, splitting off into terrific beings before shrinking back to nothing more than a brick at the other end of the tunnel. The tip of her stockinged foot brushed against something hard, but when she brought the light closer, she could make out the remnants of a shattered chair, a brother to the one in her bedroom.

  A few yards beyond, something shifted, dragging across the dank dirt floor. Emmeline raised the candle in front of her and stepped closer until something white appeared to be sitting on the floor. He was filthy and thin, but in the isolated rays of light, she noted his bare feet caked in muck and his curled hair which peeked around a tight band of fabric. The creature had his mottled, waxen arms wrapped around his legs as he rocked forward and teetered back. She tiptoed closer, but the moment her foot crunched the earth, his misshapen head whipped toward her. Clotted in his hair and down the side of his face was dark, congealed blood. As her eyes followed the trail down from the blindfold, Emmeline was horrified to find his jaw askew and gaping. He drew in a long, rattling breath as he groped for purchase on the floor and wall, revealing the deep purple and green bruises on his arms.

  “Hewo,” he murmured. His voice was breathy, barely audible, and resonated like an un-fingered flute. “Whoosh der?”

  The man’s head swept back and forth but stopped in her direction as she tried to suppress the shudder that threatened to escape her lips. His fingers sunk into the mortar as he teetered before hoisting himself to his feet. He blindly staggered forward, reaching with one hand while the other held tight to the wall. Emmeline’s body locked in fear. The thing was coming straight toward her, but she couldn’t move or do anything except draw in a ragged breath. As his hand swept through the air only inches from her, so close she could feel the dank breeze against her cheek, her body lurched back into action and she let out a scream loud and long enough to stun him before flying back to the shelf.

  In her haste, the candle blew out, but the light streamed down from the two open boards in her room and onto the shelves. The creature was still calling out for her, but she heedlessly scrambled up the shelves and into the safety of her chambers. Rough, shallow breaths rocked her body and hands as she threw the planks back into their original positions, sealing her off from the horrors of the catacomb below. The thin, hollow voice lapsed back into tears as she dragged the nightstand over the opening. Emmeline backed up until she hit the wall of numbers by her bed. Her throat and mouth were dry, but as she stared down at the hem of her dress and her stocking feet, the bile climbed from the pit of her stomach. Her toes were covered in the same offal that coated his body. Her eyes locked on the nightstand waiting to see it thump or attempt to be moved from below by the creature as he struggled to reach her, but he never tried.

  ***

  It had been three days since she ventured down to the cellar, and as she stood at the dumbwaiter receiving her meal, she dreaded the question she knew he would ask. How much longer would it be before they grew tired of her answer? How many days would she be fine before they decided to change tha
t? Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his battered and deformed body, and she could not help but wonder if he counted the days by his beatings too.

  “How do you feel?” demanded the clinical voice at the other end of the tube.

  She paused with the new dinner tray in hand. Should she tell him how she wretched when she heard the man below being pummeled again? “Miserable.”

  His tone sharpened with curiosity. “Miserable how?”

  “Miserable because I want to go home!”

  The dumbwaiter rose and carried the plates away.

  Her eyes locked onto the bedside table that still stood over the loosened boards. She hadn’t been able to get his twisted features out of her mind since she saw him. He was what she could become if they decided she was no longer worth caring for, and she had to go back. She had to speak to him and find out how he got there. With trembling hands, she carried the thick stew back to her room unable to keep it from sloshing onto the floor. In the silence, she listened for the rattle of the front door. When it slammed somewhere in the distant rooms, she pushed the miniature chest of drawers out of the way and dislodged the planks. Emmeline removed her socks and rolled up her skirt before carefully lowering herself into the tomb.

  The stench of death was as strong as ever, yet it didn’t bother her as much this time. Her pulse quickened at the sound of his ragged, hiccupped breaths as he consoled himself by rocking with his unblemished cheek on his knees somewhere beyond the glow of her lamp. For a few minutes, the young woman stood watching him. She had found him so frightful during her first journey, but now, he was just a woeful creature. He was not the romanticized man in the iron mask or the Byronic robber clad in velvet and leather waiting in the Tower of London for an execution he would escape. He was a human, broken and forever altered at the hand of another, and for him, there would be no escape. New bruises peeked out from under his tattered shirt and across his neck. They had no qualms about hurting him, but what stayed their hand against her? Was it simply because she was female?