by Nancy Holder
“Thank you for the advice,” Alan replied. “I’ll be sure to take it.”
The man cocked his head. “You’re an amenable chap. I say, won’t you join me for a proper drink in the Grand Saloon?”
The night air was bitter, and Alan felt that he had achieved a victory by easing this man’s great anxiety. Though he wasn’t certain that more brandy would serve his new companion well, Alan said, “I’d be honored, Mr. Desange.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EDITH WAITED, HEART racing, for Thomas to come to bed and then to fall asleep. Her dog was restless, and kept shifting, unknowingly waking her up a couple of times when she began to drift off. Her stomach was cramping and her headache had gotten worse. Her eyes itched and her mouth was as dry as cotton wool.
Her best guess was that he was in his attic workroom, tinkering with his mining models. It was difficult for her to judge when he might walk into the room, but what of that? She wasn’t a prisoner. She could come and go as she pleased.
So she stole out of bed, picked up the phonograph case and stepped into the hall. Rubbing her arms to ward off the chill, she looked fearfully up and down the long, elaborate hallway with its mullioned arches. Light from the moon tinted the air a dreary blue. Moths that perched on the walls turned out to be shadows in the wallpaper. She could almost see human faces, even letters forming words that she couldn’t quite make out.
Was that the elevator? She had better get to work or she would miss her chance. Gingerly, she crept to the linen closet and faced the closed door for a good minute before she gathered the courage to open it. The box of wax cylinders was still inside. She accepted now the possibility that she had experienced supernatural guidance in finding them. To what end, she was not yet clear. She had also come to believe that neither Thomas nor Lucille could see these ghosts or phantoms or whatever they were. They had no idea that they were there.
Unless Lucille is a better actress than I give her credit for. She certainly can’t hide the fact that she sees me as an interloper.
She grabbed the cylinders and tiptoed down into the kitchen. With each noise, each shift and creak of the house, her sore stomach spasmed. There could be something in the room with her. It could be standing behind her, or crouching under the table.
By the moonlight, she arranged the cylinders for playing on the phonograph, and examined her clutch of envelopes from the trunk with their faded lettering:
Pamela Upton, London, 1887. Margaret McDermott, Edinburgh, 1893. Enola Sciotti, Milan, 1896.
Her memory cast back to her father’s first fateful meeting with Thomas. Carter Cushing had stared straight at him and said, “You have already tried—and failed—to raise capital in London, Edinburgh, Milan…”
Her throat tightened and she almost faltered, but she put down the needle on the cylinder and listened:
“I cannot take it anymore.” The speaker was a woman with an Italian accent. “I’m a prisoner. If I could leave him, I would. If I could stop loving him. He’ll be the end of me. Hush, hush now…”
And then, as the scratchy recording ended, the cooing and wailing of a baby. She blinked, stunned.
I have seen no baby here. Those things in the attic… I assumed they were Thomas and Lucille’s. But did another child live here? She looked back at the date. It would be four years old now.
She thought of the red rubber ball. It could have belonged to a child, not a dog. That would make more sense, since the Sharpes had not owned a dog.
That day in the tub when she and the dog had played fetch, and the ball had rolled back on its own… and she had heard something in her bedroom… Could it have been a little child?
Perhaps there was something wrong with it. With him. Maybe the speaker was his mother, and the child was so sick or malformed that his mother had stayed by his side rather than leave him. Maybe she had died and left him on his own here, and Lucille had concealed that fact from Thomas.
Or maybe Thomas knows. What if all those automata he has made are for that child, and not Lucille when she was a little girl?
Shakily, Edith pulled the cylinder off the spindle and put on another. Then the next, and then a third. And when she was done…
No.
…everything in her heart and soul stopped working for at least a full minute. She simply could not believe what she had heard. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was that she couldn’t.
Once upon a time…
It was like a wicked fairy tale. Like Bluebeard, with his haunted castle and the one room his new wife was forbidden to enter.
The room with the forbidden key. Thomas had told her never to enter the clay pit.
Enola Sciotti’s trunk was in that pit.
Once upon a time:
There lived three young women. One was named Pamela, one was Margaret, and one was Enola. They did not know each other. Each of them had fallen in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe and left everything to move to Allerdale Hall to be his wife.
Like me, Edith thought.
And each had been so happy at first, so loved. Then they had gotten sick. They had grown steadily weaker, unable to leave Allerdale Hall. They had suffered terribly. Wept. Cursed Thomas’s name. Tried to warn others with these recordings… or at least leave a mark upon the world: I was here. I was murdered.
Oh, God, Edith thought. She began shaking from head to toe. Her heart thudded thickly; her head pounded. A sensation like sharp pins moving through her veins traveled throughout her body. Icy fear and the deepest dread she had ever known clasped her in invisible arms and drew her inside that dark, evil room she was not meant to enter. This couldn’t be right. This could not possibly be the secret of Allerdale Hall those red-boned wraiths wanted her to see.
It could not be, because it was too horrible.
Not Thomas.
Quaking, she shuffled through the stacks of photos she had found in the envelopes and matched them to the voices on the cylinders. All featured Thomas and one of a trio of women, proudly smiling.
Pamela Upton, from 1887, was thin, and seated in a wheelchair with a cup of tea on the arm. Edith jerked as she studied the conveyance. Was it the one she had seen in the attic nursery?
Margaret McDermott’s photo was dated 1893. She was a little older than Pamela, and older than Thomas, who stood beside her. Margaret was already graying, but what one might call “handsome,” in a straw hat. She was holding a cup of tea.
Wait, Edith thought. She went back to the picture of Pamela Upton. She was also drinking tea. Were the cups the same?
They were.
And it was the same cup Lucille had used to make tea for her.
Her throat constricted so tightly she couldn’t swallow. She teetered on the brink of bursting into screams; through sheer force of will, she sat in the chair and saw her sister-in-law in this very kitchen putting on the kettle. Saw the tea leaves steaming in the pot. Saw the cup on a tray brought up for her.
All on that very day, that first day, when Thomas had told her about firethorn berries. And urged her to drink her tea. And had stayed away from her, claiming to respect her mourning, when in reality he had not wanted to make love to a dead woman.
No, I have to be wrong. I’m tired and scared.
“They put poison in the tea,” she whispered very distinctly, forcing herself to face it, believe it. In her tea. Her stomach clenched hard and she tasted the bitterness in the back of her mouth and the odor of it singed her nose as she absorbed the shrinking horror of it; she had been murdered. She couldn’t even count the many cups she had consumed since arriving at Allerdale Hall. She recalled with crushing clarity how, when she had made sandwiches and tea for Thomas, he had asked her which tin of leaves she had used—the blue or the red? She remembered his guarded expression, which had obviously masked real fear at the prospect of drinking only one cup. Had he ever poured her a cup himself? Had she drunk down her death deliberately prepared by him?
She forced herself to move to the next picture.
By the date she knew that this was Enola Sciotti. Also with tea… and by her side sat the cute little dog that now belonged to her, Edith.
Edith remembered what Lucille had said just after she had come in from the post office: What is that thing doing here? They had pretended not to recognize it. But they had thought it was dead. That all evidence of the Italian woman… the Italian wife… had been erased.
He had released it onto the moors, anticipating that nature would run its course. He hadn’t cared a jot that it might starve, or fall into a ravine, or drown in an icy stream. That sweet little pup had come to her emaciated and half-frozen. And Thomas had let it happen.
More frantic, she made herself look at the next picture:
Enola.
Holding a newborn baby.
It had to be the baby in her recording, the one Enola had soothed as it cried. But surely there was no four-year-old hidden away in this enormous mansion?
There are parts of the house that are unsafe. So Lucille had claimed. Unsafe for whom?
No, dear God, Edith thought, as the room began to spin. All evidence erased… they would not do such a thing.
But they would.
And they had.
They had.
The very last picture was of the baby, alone.
And clearly dead.
Its little eyes closed, mouth slack, cheeks pale.
Edith choked, coughed. A drop of blood escaped her lips and a stain bloomed on the image of the baby. For a moment her terror was too great to do anything. She couldn’t think, move. Her mind simply refused to put together what her soul knew. What they had done…
She tried to feel some hope; reminded herself they had failed to kill a little dog, but—
These were, in their way, spirit recordings, spirit pictures. Images from beyond the grave telling her their stories.
Warning her to beware of Crimson Peak.
“I cannot stay here any longer,” she said aloud, to force herself back into the world of thoughts. “I can’t.”
Galvanized, she stashed the envelopes in the phonograph case and hid everything in a cupboard. Then she grabbed her coat from the rack and threw it over her nightgown. Sobbing back hysteria, fighting through an overwhelming panic, she lurched for the front door and threw it open.
Snowdrifts were piled up high in front of the door, two feet tall at least. She staggered outside, choking back fear, so numb she did not feel the cold. But as she ventured out, the moonlight shone on the snow and she stumbled in shock.
The snow was bright red, extending out to the gate; the madhouse was surrounded by a scarlet ring like a moat of fresh blood.
There was too much of it, and she was too sick—too poisoned—to venture out into it. She was trapped. It was as Lucille had said: She had nowhere else to go. Nowhere, and they were going to kill her just like the others.
Thomas, she thought, help me. Her field of vision filled with his deep blue eyes, so often sad, haunted. Had he never loved her?
I don’t believe that. I don’t, she thought. That night at the depot, when they had talked of a new life…
When we made love. It was love. It was. It was. He loved me. He still loves me.
But what did it matter? He was a killer. And he was going to kill her.
She remembered the night they had danced. He had come to America for Eunice, not her. Why had he changed his mind?
Alan, she thought. Alan, help me. He had told her to proceed with caution. He would have had stronger words for a sister, and the possibility of his interference had no doubt spared Eunice from this hellish fate.
Beware of Crimson Peak. Her mother had come back from the grave to warn her. She knew it now. And she had not listened.
Because she had not known.
Edith backed away from the doorway, doubling over in a fit of coughing. Blood gushed from her mouth, as red as the snow. As if Allerdale Hall itself had been poisoned and was hemorrhaging its lifeblood beneath a cold, uncaring moon.
“Oh, no, no…” she begged. She had to get out. She had to escape. She had to leave.
But instead, she fainted dead away.
“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”
— EDGAR ALLAN POE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
YELLOW LIGHT SPILLED across her face, and Edith opened her eyes to defeat. She was back in the bedroom she shared with Thomas, tucked in beneath blankets that were wrapped tight around her legs. Lucille was there, waiting, holding a breakfast tray. When she saw that Edith was awake, she smiled, all sweet concern.
“Edith?” she said cheerily. “Edith? Darling! We found you next to the door. Do you feel better?”
Sick, so much sicker. And in mortal danger. Edith tried to get up. The room tilted crazily. Even in her semi-delirium, she knew she must reveal nothing. Her life depended on their ignorance. She had not signed away her fortune yet, and she must make them believe that she fully intended to. They would need to keep her well enough to hold a pen and scrawl her signature. To write Ferguson and tell him to give Thomas every penny she had to her name.
And then they would kill her.
Still, the extreme nausea and cramping were beyond her capacity to endure in silence.
“I need to go to town… see a doctor,” she slurred.
“Of course, of course,” Lucille soothed. “But I’m afraid we’re snowed in. Perhaps in a day or two.”
Lucille sat down and held up a spoonful of porridge, tempting Edith in the way one would an infant.
That baby, that poor baby, Edith thought, and gave her head a shake. There had been pictures of a baby last night, yes? She was muzzy-headed. Confused. So exhausted. She had to get out of here.
Away from Crimson Peak.
I have to pull myself together. I need to think clearly. Her heart stuttered, skipping beats, and she feared she would have a heart attack.
“Now you must eat, my dear. You must get stronger.” Lucille tried again to feed Edith some porridge. “I tended Mother in this bed. I can care for you too, my pet.”
Edith listened but made no move to eat. Undeterred, Lucille set down the bowl and poured Edith a cup of tea. “You see? Father hated Mother. He was a brute. Broke her leg. Snapped it in two under the heel of his boot.”
Edith’s lips parted in shock. She had never heard anything about this. Was Lucille making it up? To what end?
“She never quite healed. She was bedridden for a long time. I cared for her. Fed her. Bathed her. Combed her hair. I made her better. I’ll do the same with you. I’ll make you better.”
Remain calm, Edith reminded herself. But she was even more afraid. The Sharpe legacy contained depths of violence and madness she had not dreamed of. If what Lucille had just told her was true, it was no wonder that the dead prowled the halls and the ground bled.
Lucille was about to say something more when Thomas entered the room pushing a wicker wheelchair. Edith’s hair stood on end. That was the wheelchair Pamela Upton had sat upon in her picture. With Thomas. Holding the very teacup that Lucille had used to make her numerous cups of firethorn tea. Too numerous to count. Burning away her insides, torturing her, killing her.
“What is that?” Edith asked, her voice shrill.
“Just to help you get around,” he replied, falsely cheerful. But he couldn’t pull it off. His smile didn’t reach his eyes, and he faltered. He turned to his sister. “I’ll take care of Edith,” he said. “Leave it.”
Lucille threw him a defiant look, but he held his ground. Lucille backed down, rising and planting a loving kiss on Edith’s forehead as she placed the deadly teacup between Edith’s hands.
“You’ll be out of this bed soon,” Lucille cooed. “I promise.”
She swept out of the room. As Thomas sat down, he took the tea away from Edith.
“Do not drink that,” he said.
Hope billowed through her like the frosted winds that pushed air through the chimneys and gave breath to Allerdale Hall. He d
idn’t want to harm her. So he would spare her. He would. But she was so sick…
And perhaps that was why he took the tea away from her. Not because he had had second thoughts, but to keep her from dying until she gave him her money.
Nevertheless, he fed her the porridge very gently. Kindly. The way a loving husband would minister to his sick young wife. It was very sweet, laced with honey and butter.
“Just eat,” he urged. “You need to get stronger.”
“I need to see a doctor,” she pleaded.
A shadow crossed his face, and then light came into his eyes. He seemed… transformed. As if a terrible weight had just lifted from his shoulders. Everything in her waited. Everything prayed, even her fingernails and eyelashes.
“Finlay is gone for the winter but I’ll clear a path to the main road. Take you to town.”
Oh, thank God, thank you, God, she thought in a rush. Thomas, love me still. Keep loving me. Save me.
“Yes, yes,” she said eagerly, almost crazily in her desperation. “I would very much like to go. Just us. Alone.”
He gave her another spoonful of porridge. And then his face altered again, and she was terribly afraid that she had misunderstood him… or that he had changed his mind.
“Thomas?” She fought to keep the terror out of her voice. “What is it?”
“Those apparitions you spoke of,” he began. He paused. “I have felt their presence for some time.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “You have?”
He inclined his head. “Out of the corner of my eye at first. Furtive, almost timid. Then I felt them. Figures, standing still in a dark corner. And now I can sense them, moving and creeping about, watching me. Ready to show themselves.”
“It’s time. They want you to see them,” she declared. “But why? Who are they, Thomas?”
He seemed to look somewhere that she could not. Was he reviewing his life with each of the women he had failed to save? Whom he had murdered? Were those the apparitions? But what of the ghost of his mother? So evil, raging at Edith to leave?
