by Emma Beaven
Behind the terrifying figure, the door opened wider, and Rose saw another figure look stealthily about the hallway. Rose knew she should yell, scream, anything, but she couldn’t bear it. There was no safe place.
The figure increased its pace, and that time Rose ran. She shot toward the figure, leaping as she got close before she rounded the corner and tumbled down the long stairwell. Her head smashed into the banister, but somehow she still kept moving. She banged into the great oak door and fumbled with the bolt before racing out into the night. Faintly she thought she heard a voice behind her, begging, pleading, but she continued running through the yard into the road.
She had the feeling she wasn’t running quite fast enough.
Twenty-One
The light was bright, unbearably so, and Rose stretched her stiff muscles, her eyes squeezed tightly against the glare. The dream clung to her like a shroud, tatters of which danced before her eyes and tickled her skin. Lazily, she pulled the blanket up and turned over, finally peeling her eyes open.
Mariotta stood before her, shock and concern painted on her normally austere features. Rose blinked, wondering what her stepmother could possibly be doing there. Something loomed behind Mariotta, something hulking, pressed against the wall.
“What are you doing in here?” Mariotta asked. Rose blinked again, confused. Mariotta took a step closer, seeming uncertain as to what she should do.
“What are you talking about?” Rose asked, annoyance rising to cover the remnants of her nightmare.
“What are you doing in here?” Mariotta repeated, and that time there was a bizarre urgency in her voice.
Rose opened her eyes wider as she considered getting up to confront Mariotta. She pushed back the covers and realized that the bright light from the front window that usually fell near her side of the bed in the morning wasn’t there. In fact, she wasn’t on the correct side of the bed at all. She lay next to a window shielded by trees that were blocking the light. The door was far from her reach, sitting open at the front of the room to the right.
She wasn’t in her room at all. She lay in the back bedroom, the room her father had been using a year ago, the one to which the wardrobe had been moved.
The wardrobe lay against the wall behind Mariotta. The door wasn’t just cracked; it was flung wide, exposing a gaping shadow.
Rose jumped up, shock settling over her as she reached out for her stepmother. Mariotta moved back, her eyes wide. She reached a tentative hand for her stepdaughter before reconsidering. “Why are you here?” she whispered. She reached again, this time touching the side of Rose’s head.
Rose was twitching, panic infusing her. She looked from Mariotta to the wardrobe, her mouth dry. The floor suddenly felt too cold, the way it had in her nightmare. “I don’t know! I don’t know.” Rose clutched Mariotta. “Get me out of here, please, for God’s sake!”
“Did you see her?” Mariotta whispered, pressing her dry lips close to Rose’s ear.
Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes as she tried to pull herself toward the door. Mariotta clutched her hair tightly, piercing her with her gaze. “She brought you here.”
Rose shrieked, grabbing Mariotta’s hand and violently wrenching it free from her hair, losing a handful of strands in the process. “Stay away from me!” Rose raced out of the room, terrified and disoriented. The stairwell lay immediately to her left, and she plunged down just like in her dream. Her feet slipped halfway down, and she slid roughly on her backside the rest of the way.
Falling on her knees and crying out, she crawled to the door, desperately reaching for the handle. A hand fell on her shoulder, and Rose swung around, her fingers wrenched into claws, striking out blindly at whatever was behind her. She heard a screech and redoubled her efforts before hands grabbed her from behind and shoved her to the floor. Rose screamed and kicked, her mind spinning as images of what touched her pierced her brain until her consciousness dissolved into floating gray ribbons fading into black.
Twenty-Two
Her bed felt uncomfortable. It was the first thought that entered Rose’s brain, memories of the morning having fled to be replaced by desires for food and entertainment. She pulled her arms out of a blanket wrapped tightly around her and stretched. Her flesh met with the hard fabric of an armrest, its embroidery rubbing roughly against her fingers.
Slowly, memories of the morning floated back to her. Her eyes opened wide, and for just a moment, the wild panic from when she’d awoken in the bed in the back room descended upon her. Her body tensed, and she nearly sprang up from the couch and out the door before she heard the low voices emanating from the adjoining sitting room. Rose twisted her head toward the glass doors, taking in the scene as her panic and fear coalesced into confusion.
The voices were low, but one kept rising, high and angry. Her sister was gesturing wildly at her father, her fingers almost touching his face as she ranted. Rose crawled off the couch, ignoring the heavy throb in her head as she drew closer to the door.
“So you’re just going to ignore it again, then! What do you think will happen next, huh? She almost killed me!”
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Father responded, catching Maggie’s hand and squeezing it tightly before shoving her back.
“Ha, right, just like you said last time!” Maggie laughed loudly, each whoop more exaggerated than the next. “You think this’ll all be fine, do you? She’ll marry the neighbor and be out of your house, and you’ll never have to think of her again.” She put both hands on the side of Father’s face. “Something is wrong with her!”
He turned around, pushing Maggie away again. “Go to your room.”
“What about Rose? Are you going to take care of her?” Maggie was still animated, her face red and inflamed. She had dressed quickly and failed to grab a shawl or pull her hair up. Her pale dress looked crooked and slightly dirty, as if she’d pulled it from the laundry pile.
Rose saw her father turn toward the parlor, but it was far too late to hide. He met her eyes, his mouth held firm in a straight line. Rose pulled herself up and walked toward the dividing doors. She had no other choice.
The handle was loose when she pushed it, and as she walked in, both Maggie and Father froze, fixated. Rose self-consciously pulled at her dark, tangled hair. She suddenly realized she was still in her shift, her hair an untidy mass bunched at the back of her head. She looked pleadingly at her father as Maggie stepped toward her.
“Oh, Rose, you shouldn’t have gotten up.” Maggie began fretting with her hair as Rose tried to inch closer to her father.
“I need to get dressed.”
“Come on, come on.” Maggie pulled her close. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I’m so sorry. I should never have left you, never. I’m so sorry. I was so selfish.”
Rose shrugged her off. “There’s nothing wrong with me. Besides, you came back.”
“No I didn’t.”
The clock chimed the hour, the mechanical moon turning its face away from Rose, who stood still, shock turning her features to stone. It had been a part of the dream, then. Of course. In the dream, Maggie had been in bed.
“I never woke up,” Rose whispered.
Maggie’s whipped her head back around quickly. “What do you mean?”
The echo of the chimes bounced in Rose’s head, making the pounding worse. She rubbed her head hard, her eyes turned away. Eventually she edged toward her father. “There’s nothing wrong. I need to go dress. I have things to do.” Rose looked directly into her father’s eyes before repeating, “There’s nothing wrong.”
Maggie opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but Father cut her off. “She’s fine. You heard her.” He turned, fumbling with the buttons on his dark blue jacket before quickly exiting the room, Rose right behind him.
Maggie sighed and shook her head slightly before slipping quietly out of the room. Her father had vanished into the dark recesses of the house, but her sister had not. Rose stood at the foot of the stairs, staring oddly at th
e second-floor landing. Maggie watched as Rose tentatively placed a hand upon the banister before jerking it back as if she’d been stung. She turned, noticing Maggie watching, and fled up the stairs.
What does she see? Maggie thought. It was true that she herself had encountered those odd moments where the air seemed heavier than usual, but Rose seemed to be suffering from something much worse. Ever since she’d come home, she’d been frightened, easily startled. It was as if the doctors hadn’t helped her at all.
Maggie ran a hand through her ragged hair before flying through the hallway to her father’s sitting room. Without knocking, she flung the heavy oak door wide only to find the study empty. Two glasses with the remnants of some dark liquor sat on the side table, and the faint scent of smoke drifted in the hazy air. Maggie picked her way to the glasses and fingered the carefully cut tumblers. Someone had been drinking with her father. But it couldn’t have been Rose. She had her fit, passed out, and just now had flown off in a temper. Had someone else been in the house? She’d never seen Mariotta drink anything but wine at the table. These days, Mariotta hardly even spoke to her husband, yet it was certainly possible she’d been here.
Maggie sat down in the armchair closest to the table, trying to imagine Mariotta perched on one of the high-backed chairs, staring with that cold, piercing gaze. She had barely spoken a word since her daughter died, but she constantly stared, her eyes like spikes. It reminded Maggie of the way a cat would sit for hours, patiently staring at its prey, waiting for an opportune moment.
Maggie turned to leave, thoughts of Mariotta making her shudder there in the darkness, when her foot crunched against a crumpled piece of paper pushed beneath the table. She bent down, reaching in the dust before her fingers settled on it. It smelled of alcohol and tobacco and had a burn mark near the edge of the paper. Maggie turned her nose away as she straightened it out. The ink was faded and runny, but she was pretty sure she could read the words scrawled across the center, small intertwined circles framing it.
Maggie stood stunned as she reread the short message: I am going to Hell.
Twenty-Three
Rose wanted the rain to come again. She wanted to sit out in the rain forever, lying among the wet flowers, drinking in their scents as she passed out of existence. There was only so much more she could take. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t fair. The nightmares were like they were in the beginning. When she couldn’t handle it because sometimes she didn’t think she was asleep. In fact, she was sure of it. The dreams were getting vivid again. She could feel the cold of the floor, the fleeting coziness of her blankets as she was drawn into the hallway. Just like before.
It had happened a long time ago. And it wasn’t her fault. Maggie should have been with her, but she slept so goddamned heavily. Rose hadn’t been able to resist. The sound, the agony of it. It drifted at the edge of her hearing, drawing her out of sleep into clear, stark consciousness. Rose wished she’d never gone into the hallway. If she’d never gone, it wouldn’t have happened. And now, she had to face it.
She was being haunted.
By Sarah.
And it wasn’t fair because before they came, she had always been her father’s favorite. Rose could still remember her mother before she’d passed away with the son she’d been trying to birth. She could remember her mother’s screams that night. She’d been a little girl then, and Maggie was too young to remember or react, but Rose had flown to her mother. Or tried to.
Violet, young then too, had run after her from her bed that used to be pressed against the wall inside their room so she could tend to them in the night. Rose had tried so hard, but she was too small and Violet too strong. And then her mother had died along with the baby. Rose had seen them carrying out the blood-soaked rags.
They’d buried her mother and the baby in the same grave. Rose hadn’t been at the funeral, but she’d visited the grave when she was older.
After that, Rose and Maggie had been the only things her father had, and he’d showered them with affection, bringing them expensive gifts from the city and reading them stories from the books in his library. But Rose had noticed her gifts were always a little bit better than Maggie’s, her father a little more attentive to her.
It was natural, after all, as she had his dark hair and foggy eyes, and she was far more serious than her sister. And Maggie didn’t care, just as she never cared as long as people were nice to her.
But Rose cared. She cared a lot. Sometimes she and her father even talked politics at the table like two grown men, and despite that it might have been slightly odd, it made Rose happy.
It all changed the day Mariotta and her daughter came. Rose could understand that her father’s attentions couldn’t be completely devoted to his daughters, and that was fine, but soon enough, he stopped paying attention to her at all. And it made Rose angry.
She had tried to discuss it with Maggie, but her sister just laughed at her, at that time too busy with a serious suitor. And that made Rose jealous too. For some reason, Rose had always had trouble attracting suitors. She knew it couldn’t be due to her looks, as she was sure she was better-looking than Maggie, but in a less conventional way. And conventional was boring. But it was difficult to understand. And what was even more difficult to understand was the attention their father paid to Mariotta’s daughter, Sarah.
Sarah wasn’t pretty. In fact, Rose, and even Maggie too, felt she didn’t take the care in dressing and styling that they themselves had perfected long ago. They were careful to match their skin tone and their hair color to the hues of their dresses with perfectly matching ribbons and bonnets, hair curled and pinned before they ever left their room.
Sarah’s hair was bright red and ragged, with unkempt strands falling out of her rough buns. She used to wear horrible orange ribbons that clashed horrendously with her hair color. Rose could never understand it. For the brief period she’d known her, Sarah liked to wear pale yellow muslins and those dreadful ribbons in her hair or bonnet. She had very pale, freckled skin and cloudy, muddy-looking eyes the color of a polluted pond.
Rose and Maggie thought it was funny at first, the way Sarah had looked. They’d stand close and deliberately whisper and giggle in her presence to make her uncomfortable. But Maggie’s nature was gentle, and soon she talked and laughed with Sarah. Rose would often scowl at them from the other side of the room, anger and frustration burning inside her. But her sister’s betrayal wasn’t the worst.
Their father began buying Sarah little gifts. Oh, he still bought his own daughters tiny baubles and pretty items, but what he gave Sarah was even better. Rose had watched silently as her father would usher Sarah into his own sitting room when Mariotta wasn’t about and Rose’s own presence was unknown. Jealousy infected her, growing worse and worse until she was consumed by it, unable to think of anything else. And so she began to tease Sarah. Mercilessly. And when they were alone, she’d let her rage fly. In nails and fists and hair pulling and threats. Rose felt a little guilty about it because Sarah never seemed to fight back, and once she’d caught tears in the girl’s eyes. That had made Rose pause. But it didn’t last long. The jealousy couldn’t be cured while Sarah was there. It receded but soon regrouped and exploded upon her worse than ever before.
And then the bad night came. Rose knew she’d been wrong, but at that point, what could she do? Nothing. Nothing at all. And perhaps the worst part of all about the bad night was that Sarah had seen her, had locked eyes with her. Rose had felt her stomach atrophy. She wanted to scream, but instead, she’d been perfectly still. And somehow her legs had worked, and she’d slipped back into the room on feet as silent as a stalking wolf. She’d pulled herself back into the comforting warmth of the bed, snuggled up close to Maggie, and tried to wipe it from her eyes, from her brain. But it wouldn’t go.
A month later, when Maggie took a real trip to visit their cousins, she’d wanted to go too, knew she should, but some part of her wouldn’t let her. That guilty, blackened portion of her brain to
ld her if she had any conscience at all, she would stay. That now was the time to do something, anything.
Maggie had left, her smile filled with genuine mirth as she waved to her stiff-lipped sister. Rose had forced her rigid face back down and turned to the house, ready to fight. She had meant to do it that night, but she felt weak without Maggie. Her mouth opened several times only for it to snap shut loudly, briefly drawing the attention of the rest of the silent creatures who sat with her at dinner.
Her bed was no comfort, and there was no one to talk to, to spill her soul in front of, and so she had forced a smile again, just as she’d forced her muscles to flex and bend and move. Her head hurt that night, badly, and Rose justified that as her excuse not to talk.
Still, despite the wicked pounding, she’d hovered about the doorway, clutching her heavy shawl around her as if it alone was preserving her.
When Sarah had emerged, Rose reached a crooked finger out and snagged her.
Sarah had screamed and tried to hit Rose, while Rose shook her violently, trying to whisper to her, trying to talk to her.
But it was no use. Sarah struggled out of her grasp and raced off, leaving Rose standing in the dark, trembling, her stomach hurting deep inside.
She knew she should go to bed. She had started to move her feet, listening to the boards squealing under her heel, when her father stepped out of his study. Rose slid out in front of him, more by accident than anything else.
“Why are you standing in the dark?”
Rose trembled, her eyes locked on his, his with a slight twitch as he gazed at her, perplexed.
Rose did not know what got into her next. She stepped closer, her breath loud in her ears, and whispered, “I saw.”
