by Nancy Holder
The lift jerked to a stop. As with the more horrifying trip to the mine pit, the bottom of the cab did not stop flush with the floor. She had to step down. She was almost a little dizzy; she was at the highest accessible point of the house. It seemed terribly wrong to place a nursery up here. How had Lucille phrased it? “Confined.” Like prisoners.
But there was no doubt that she had arrived at the nursery. The moldy, mottled wallpaper featured a little boy who appeared to be falling—Jack and Jill? The omnipresent moths clung to painted flowers and did not scatter when she approached.
The first room she entered was incredibly dusty and neglected. A cradle and toy chest occupied a corner near a window. A blackboard and student desk reminded her of her first days learning her letters at her mother’s knee, before she was old enough to join the other children at school. Many more moths trembled, glued to the walls and the ceiling, staining it a deep brown. They shifted and flew, swooping close to her head. Under a skylight stood an old wicker wheelchair. As she turned her head, dust motes seemed to collect in the chair, thickening into a shape; she looked back and the illusion dissipated.
She heard the whirring of a drill and followed the sound into a dark but wonderful room full of gears and clocks and mechanical wonders. Automata of all sorts greeted her eyes—clowns, a lady in a French gown playing a harpsichord. A wigged gentleman with a flute to his lips. A comical little duck.
And there he was with his back to her, Thomas, ever the industrious inventor, refining the prototype of his mining machine, since the snow had precluded any work on the full-scale model. Still hopeful, then. He had a woolen blanket around his shoulders, putting the lie to her suspicion that her thick-blooded English husband was impervious to the cold.
“Do you like it, Edith?” he asked her without looking at her.
“It’s wonderful.” She raised her brows. “But how did you know I was here?”
He turned around and smiled at her winningly. “The creak of the floorboards, a shift in the light. It’s easy to sense when you are not alone in this house.”
She was tempted once more to speak of the things he had not seen but that she had, but held her tongue. Instead she pointed to the array of incredible fabrications.
“You made all these?”
He inclined his head. “I used to carve toys for Lucille, make her trinkets to keep her happy.”
Dear Thomas. “Were you alone?” she asked him. “Here? All the time?”
“Father was always traveling. The family fortune didn’t lose itself you know, Papa really had to put his back into it.”
She allowed him his bitterness, for she shared it. The house had deteriorated so rapidly; the book she had perused back in Buffalo with the engravings of the hall had not been all that old. The upkeep of a home such as this must be constant; a few years of neglect and it would show its age; a few decades and it would be as if disease had ravaged it. Allerdale Hall was truly dying, and she wondered if even her fortune could save it.
But despite everything, this room was a happy one, and its occupant seemed truly joyful to see her taking it all in. He hovered over her as she investigated the figure of a white-faced gentleman with painted black hair, a red harlequin diamond outlining his left eye and two golden cups in his hands.
“This is the magician,” he announced. “It takes fifty-eight clockwork movements for it to do its trick. To look human. To charm its audience.”
Then he pushed a lever and the little puppet made a show of passing the cups over a tiny golden ball. Enchanted, Edith followed the passage of the ball beneath the cups until pop! it appeared in his mouth and he pretended to drop it into one of the bowls. Of course there was another inside one of the cups, but Edith laughed at the clever feat of prestidigitation. Thomas grinned back at her, and then he touched her hair. A now-familiar sadness crossed his features, followed by a masculine hunger.
“You are so different,” he murmured, still touching her. Studying her as if memorizing her.
“Different from whom?” she asked mildly.
He blinked, coming out of his reverie. “Everyone, I venture.”
And then… at last, at last, he kissed her with real passion. Skin on skin, mouth on mouth, sliding over her cheek, her forehead, her neck.
Some held that women did not feel desire, not in the way that men did. But if Thomas felt more than she felt now, she did not understand how he could have held back all this time. For she wanted him completely, utterly. She could not breathe for wanting him. It was an ache, an insatiable need, and it had been building in this space he had held between them. She saw herself bursting free of her cocoon of innocence, ready to fly into his arms and his heart and he into her flesh, to join with her and be with her. To forget death and tragedy and loss. She was his wife and it was her duty and her privilege to transform him with her devotion and her love.
He put his hands on her breasts, which were pushed up by the boning at the top of her corset, and she arched her back with a gasp.
“Edith,” he managed, “you’re still in mourning and—”
“No. It is time. It is time,” she insisted.
He shoved tools and mechanisms from off his worktable and pushed her onto it, raining kisses on her face and above the neck of her dress. She knew that he wanted her; she raised her skirt as he moved to make them one flesh and she accommodated him, oh, yes—
Then he stopped and jerked away from her. He looked almost… frightened.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up.
“I heard a noise,” he blurted, moving away from her. “I thought…”
“What?” She waited for his answer as she slipped off the table. “You thought what?”
Then Lucille swept into the room. She was carrying a tray of tea things. The cloisonné pot was quite beautiful.
“I was hoping to find you here,” Thomas’s sister said, with as much warmth as she seemed ever to be able to muster. “I made you some fresh tea.”
The English certainly loved their tea. Edith watched as Lucille put down the tray and handed her a steaming cup. There was a spoon on her saucer, though not on the others, and Edith figured it must have been intended for serving the sugar. Lucille did not comment on the mess on the floor. Too polite, Edith wondered, or disinterested?
Thomas was flustered. As he rearranged his clothes, avoiding her eyes, Edith thought he looked ashamed. Perhaps he was concerned that he had placed her in an embarrassing situation. If Lucille had come into the room any later… He was truly chivalrous.
But she wished he had taken his chances.
“You’re too kind,” Edith said to Lucille.
“Oh, don’t mention it. I heard the elevator. I needed the company.” She gestured to the bowl of sugar cubes. “One lump or two?”
* * *
Sick. So sick.
Edith awoke, her stomach roiling with nausea. She had experienced a bout of seasickness on the crossing from New York to London. This was ten times worse.
“Thomas? Thomas?” she murmured urgently.
Moonlight revealed that she was alone. Hurriedly she lit a candle in the silver candelabra, and stared in shock at a bloodstain on her pillow, next to her mouth. She touched her lips.
She heard the rustle of silk.
In the air, the scent of:
“Jasmine,” she said. Not her own fragrance. She wore essence of rose.
Her dog growled.
And suddenly she knew without an ounce of doubt that there was something in the room. Something with them.
Or someone.
But she saw nothing. Their boudoir, as she warily studied it, looked the same as always. On the rumpled bed, the indentation of her body as she had slept. And beside that, evidence that Thomas had been in the bed. Her empty teacup. Beside the fireplace, a half-full glass of deep burgundy wine. Thomas’s, she assumed. A book. She wanted to see what he’d been reading but quite suddenly, she was afraid to cross the room to look.
Sh
e felt it, sensed eyes on her, a near-caress on the nape of her neck. Nerve-deep tremors shuddered through her and knocked against her ribcage, the inside of her skull. Her cheeks and forehead prickled; her lips went numb. Was it behind her? Beside her?
Could it touch her?
She wondered if someone took a photograph right now of this room, would it reveal a stretched, blurred face staring straight at her, nose to nose? Or a crimson corpse pressed against her back, caressing her hair, showering her with ghostly rose petals, humming a lullaby? Images snapped in and out of focus like a kaleidoscope: decayed headstones neglected for centuries, the restless dead rising with the mists on the heath, and something here, right now, something that was made of hunger and longing and unrequited love. Of fury and vengeance and unsatisfied malice.
She was so sick; was she delirious?
Or was she dying, and thus able to commune with the dead of Allerdale Hall? Is that why she had been able to see her mother? A hidden sickness all her life?
Why am I bleeding? Why am I so ill?
Moon shadows stole across her curtains; did the wine in Thomas’s goblet ripple against the rim?
Creeping, tiptoeing, gliding. Was there a furtive pressure on the hem of her nightgown? Did someone experimentally lift a tendril of her long, unbound hair?
The tension that gripped her was unbearable. It was making her stomach cramp and now a headache pressed hard on both sides of her head. If an invisible force was trying to contact her, she should make an effort, too. An image of her stuffed toy rabbit flashed into her mind. Rabbits and sick women could die from fright.
She swallowed hard and extended her hand. What had Alan called it? An offering, an invitation.
She would invite.
“If you are here, with me,” she began. She almost stopped out of sheer fear. But she could not stop. She could not hover here forever; just as when she had been compelled to identify her poor father’s ruined face, she stepped over her terror and acted.
“Give me a signal,” she said clearly. “Touch my hand.”
There was nothing, only the sound of her breathing and the soft whining of her pet. But the room still held something, and she was trapped in here with it. She swayed, even more nauseated.
And waited.
Nothing. Her shoulders drooped but she felt no relief, none at all.
Very well, then, she thought, perhaps it is only my imagina—
Then something grabbed her hand and half-threw her to the floor. Impossibly strong and violent. The impact jolted the breath out of her and yellow dots exploded in her vision. If she’d had time to resist it, her effort would have proved useless. Such was its power. The candle went out.
Trembling, she got to her feet and struggled to light it again. There is something here. Oh, my God, there is no doubt—
Screams of pain—shrill, horrible—emerged from the bathroom. Without a second’s hesitation, Edith raced to the doors and flung them open. Utter blankness, blackness, nothing at all and then:
There.
In the tub.
Nightmare.
Insanity.
Submerged, partially visible above brimming crimson water.
Decayed, barely recognizable as a human corpse—an outline, blurring, transparent and then solid, in bits, and giving off wisps of red, smoke-like trails that trickled upward as the other thing had done, the other corpse; clotted blood bubbling; dead, dead, dead; dead eyes and dead mouth rotted open; hands of taut stretched leather-skin splitting over knuckles, joints, bones. Clasping the sides of the tub as it soaked, head drooped forward, and Edith was paralyzed with horror.
The skull—its head was split with the blade of a meat cleaver, firmly and deeply embedded in the bone. She could see the red brain, the bone fragments, maggots crawling in the gore.
Edith could make no sound; she could only stare, only see. I am seeing this. I can see this.
Then the ghastly figure twitched and moved. The scarlet water spilled over the sides of the tub as the figure rose. Its—her—twisted face and sagging chest were covered in blood.
And Edith knew who she was.
“Oh, my dear God, no!” she shrieked.
She ran out of the room, down the corridor. “Thomas!” she screamed. “Thomas!”
Reverberating along the passageway, an unearthly voice hissed, “You! Leave now!”
The thing she had escaped was the thing she was now running towards at full speed. It stood at the far end of the hall: a naked red hag with a cleaver in its skull. Her eyes were wild with rage and madness. She pointed a skeletal finger straight at Edith.
“Edith! Leave now!” she rasped.
Edith backed away, wheeling around as she reached the stairs, and ran into Thomas as he was turning the corner. Her savior, protector. Safe now, safe. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing.
“Edith, Edith, what is it?” he demanded, embracing her.
She focused. Gazed around fearfully, seeing… nothing. Knowing now that it could be there, still be there, coming for them both, right this moment. Refusing to be seen. It had grabbed her.
It could kill them.
“That thing, that horrible thing!” she cried.
“Your hand’s like ice.” He touched her forehead. “Are you running a fever? Look at me.”
And when she did, his lips parted. He must have finally seen how terrified she was.
“What, in God’s name?”
“I saw a woman,” she told him, and rushed on before he could contradict her. “Not a shadow, not a trick of the light. Scarlet, and full of rage. Her head was open—a horrible, gaping wound.” Edith’s skin was buzzing with electricity as if it were trying to crawl off her body. Her knees were rubbery and she would have fallen if he had not held her. She had to get him out of there, away.
He was stunned, but she went on.
“Her face was distorted, twisted, but I recognized her.” She gazed hard at her husband, willing him to really listen to her. To see in her words what she had seen with her own two eyes. “She was the woman in the portrait. She was your mother.”
He allowed her to drag him from the hall, down to the sofa before the great fireplace, where shadows could not lurk. Lucille appeared with tea; Edith was shuddering, nearly losing herself again, but needing desperately to get it all out. They could only see that she was sick and incoherent. Nothing she described made any impression on them.
“There was such hatred in her eyes. And intelligence. She knew who I was. And she wants me to leave.” She ground out the words in sheer misery, in shock, desperate for their help. The cadaverous whispers still knocked against her eardrums, like a seashell whispering of doomed voyages and drowned sailors. Of horrors yet to come.
“Nonsense, my dear,” Lucille soothed. “You are not going anywhere. You had a bad dream. You were sleepwalking.” She poured a cup of hot amber liquid.
“But I am afraid I shall go mad if I stay.” Flanked by her only two relations in all the world, Edith felt herself begin to descend into hysteria once more.
“You are imagining things,” Thomas insisted. “Tomorrow we’ll go out.” He spoke to her as if she were a child. “To the post office. The fresh air will do you good.”
To the post office? She could scarcely believe what he was saying. She had crossed an ocean to be here with him.
“No, I want to go,” she demanded. And then, in case he misunderstood, she added, pleaded, “Away from here.”
Her hands were shaking. Lucille helped her steady them so that she could drink her tea, forcing her to hold onto the cup. Giving her an anchor point so that she would not shatter.
“Edith, there is nowhere else to go,” she said kindly, as one might speak to a lunatic. “This is your home now. You have nowhere else to go.”
* * *
It watched the sister eye the brother. She was frightened. He was too.
What mischief is this? her gaze demanded.
What mischief indeed?
Of course there was something in the tea to make the bride sleep. After she passed out, the two conferred in the hallway, dark clothes shifting in the blue night gloom like two black moths.
“What is she doing?” the sister whispered fiercely. “How could she possibly know?”
“I didn’t tell her a thing,” the brother vowed.
That scared the sister even more. “What is she trying to do, Thomas?” As if asking the question repeatedly would yield a different answer.
“I don’t know,” the brother said. “She is in quite a state. Tomorrow I’ll go to the depot, pick up the machine parts. I’ll take her with me. Let her get some fresh air.”
“Yes,” the sister agreed. “Get her out of here.” She glared at him. “And soon as we get the final papers signed, I want this over with.”
Things moved around them, through them, but they did not see them. But as the bride had observed, just because they couldn’t see them, didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
Through a glass, darkly; once upon a time…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MORNING IN CUMBERLAND was so different from Buffalo. The snowy mud was rutted from wagon wheels and the residences were nothing more than hovels. Thatched roofs were not uncommon, and the air between the snowflakes was a murky brown and gray. A few brick buildings stood staunchly upright but their walls were dotted with moss and smeared with smoke. There was a pub called the Red Hand; the windows were steamed up and as their wagon bumped past the door, Edith inhaled the greasy odor of boiled meat and cabbage.
“It’s much more pleasant in the spring,” Thomas said; then his brow furrowed and he returned his attention to some schematic drawings in a notebook across his lap. He hadn’t spoken much on the trip, and she had been unable to engage him in a serious discussion of the horror of his mother’s butchered corpse ordering her to leave Allerdale Hall. Like Lucille, he had patronizingly suggested that it was nothing more than a bad dream. Then he told her some ridiculous theory held by some that spoiled rye bread could bring on hallucinations. They had been eating rye bread of late, had they not? She had used some to make his sandwiches.
