“She…” I was embarrassed again. “She, ah, likes you.”
“Likes me? I thought she hated men!”
“Not you,” I said. “She finds you…beautiful.”
He stared at me in bewilderment, as did Matthew, and I realized I would not be able to explain. It was the girls who locked themselves away, who had never felt the loving touch of a man, who, when they loved, loved the fiercest. Maddy and I were different in every way, but this much I understood.
Maddy wanted Alistair, and she was determined to have him. And if I did not find the men who had attacked her, if I did not find her grave, she would take Alistair over completely, and she would never think it wrong. He would end up in a madhouse, or, yes, likely dead, perhaps by his own hand. And what would happen to Alistair after death?
I shook away these frightening thoughts and came back to the present. “We need to do something,” I said. “The constable was just downstairs. I thought perhaps he could help.”
“No, no.” Alistair flung back the blanket. He was fully dressed in the bed, and he sat up, scanning the floor for his shoes. “We can’t have the police in this. It’s too crazy. We’ll start with Mrs. Clare—interview her again. Mrs. Macready, too. There may be something they remember that we’ve missed. Then we’ll go back to the inn. Matthew—the recorder?”
“I saved it,” said Matthew. “But not the camera. I’m sorry.”
“Ah. Well, I believe I may have dropped it, right before—right before. It was broken anyway. But the recorder may have picked something up. I’d like to know.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“And then we’ll pay a visit to the sexton, Jarvis,” said Alistair. “He told us he buried Maddy himself. Either he lied, or someone has fooled him. I intend to find out which.”
Mrs. Clare was sedated, and unable to talk to anyone, and Mrs. Macready sent us away. She refused to be interviewed herself. “There’s been too much today,” she said—and, indeed, her reddened face looked tired. “I’ll not have any more. Not for myself, not for my lady. I’ll not be talking to you unless she tells me to, and that’s final.” She looked at us. “You need a rest yourself—all of you do. Maddy is gone. I can feel it, the quiet. We can all rest now.”
I thought of Alistair’s question—where was Maddy with the barn gone? But Alistair simply asked Mrs. Macready, in his sweet, charming manner, if she would relay the message to Mrs. Clare when she woke that he wished to speak with her. We left Falmouth House and walked to the inn.
In the second blow to our plan, we had not even reached the main path before Alistair’s mind began to wander again. He complained of a headache first. Then he cocked his head, as if listening. “Do you hear that? That music?” By the time we got to the inn, his eyes had started to cloud over, and he was stumbling. He had been given back to us only briefly, and now he was gone again.
I hid my dismay as we helped him to his room, as we laid him on his bed, as Matthew removed his shoes. I hid my panic as he again started to talk of the war. He had come out of his fog once; perhaps he could do it again. But what if he could not?
What would we do without Alistair?
Matthew shut the door behind us as we stepped back out into the hall, and a choked sob escaped my throat. I felt hot tears of despair flow down my cheeks.
Matthew put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. “Jesus, Sarah.” I could hardly see him through the tears in my eyes. I couldn’t seem to stop crying.
Matthew gripped me harder. “Sarah. Don’t cry. Do you hear me? Don’t cry.” There was a note of desperation in his voice, as if he was near the breaking point himself. “Just don’t, all right? Just don’t.”
I shook my head so vigorously I felt my hair fly against my cheeks, but it was foolish. I was already crying and I could not promise to stop. He let me go and somehow, in that darkened hallway, we swayed toward each other, as if unable to help it. All I knew was that I was closer to him, feeling the warmth coming off him, and it was impossible not to touch him. I slid my arms around his neck and pressed my cheek into his shirt.
He didn’t resist. He stood there, hot against me, and then his hands came up, his palms tentatively pressing my waist. He smelled like smoke and sweat. I closed my eyes. His hands traveled to the small of my back, pressing me closer to him, my belly to his, our bodies flush together. One of his hands rubbed up my back, the palm along my spine. I felt my tears drying on the rough fabric of his shirt beneath my cheek.
With the pressure of his hands, he backed me up. I felt the wall of the dim hallway at my back. He pushed me against it, slow and sure, pressing his body into mine. I raised my head from his shoulder. He tilted my chin and kissed me.
He was insistent, though not rough. He ran his thumb along my jaw and opened my mouth, taking no argument, sliding his tongue into me. I was like hot wax, burning from the ache deep in my belly, my body molding effortlessly to his. I opened my mouth when he bade me, and kissed him back. He was strong beneath my hands, the muscles bunching and flexing along his arms and his back, and I felt him again and again, unable to get enough. One of his hands dropped to my hip and he pressed against me, the two of us fitting together perfectly, and he kissed me harder. My body remembered his, remembered the feel of him inside me. I wanted him again.
He broke the kiss but did not let me go. I felt his warm breath on my lips. In a daze I felt his hand slide up my body, my waist, my rib cage, a touch that felt possessive. He had me pinned to the wall. He looked into my eyes, his own dark with lust and with his uncanny intelligence.
At first I didn’t understand his words, so lost was I in the sound of his voice. But when I put the words together, he surprised me.
“It occurs to me,” he growled, “that I have told you my little tragedy. But you have not told me yours.”
“I don’t have one,” I said helplessly.
He shook his head, just the barest motion. “Yes, you do. I can see it in you. I saw it on your face at the churchyard. I can practically taste it on you, Sarah.”
I had never spoken of it to anyone, and I could not form the words. “No,” I said.
He brushed his lips against mine, just the purest heat against my skin. “I think I will have it out of you.”
He was torturing me, and suddenly I was bold. “I will tell you,” I breathed, “if you come to me tonight.”
He pulled back a little, though he still did not let me go. “No.”
“Then you won’t hear it,” I said. I wouldn’t give up a piece of myself if he was not willing to do the same.
He pushed his body away from mine, though he braced his arms against the wall, one hand pressing above each of my shoulders. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
He looked steadily at me, his dark eyes piercing into mine. “I told you. I won’t come back.”
I thought I detected the faintest waver in his voice. “Then why are you kissing me?”
He looked away, but not before I saw a spasm of self-loathing cross his features. “Because I can’t seem to help it.”
I felt his words like a blow to my stomach. That was what I was to him, then—a willing girl, available. Easy to throw away. The kind of girl who makes a man disgusted with himself. I could have cried, and I could have slapped him. I did neither.
He pushed away from the wall and stood straight again, his face blank. “I’m going to wash up. Meet me in the private room in an hour. I’d like to check the recorder. Alistair is sick; there’s nothing we can do about that. We have to carry on with the plan.”
I turned my gaze away. I kept my voice level. “All right.”
He turned and left without a word. I heard his steps retreating down the hallway, the door to his room open and close. I let out a breath and went to my own room, my face still hot, my eyes still stinging from the tears I’d shed for Alistair.
Well, then. So much for the bold, sophisticated Sarah Piper. I had offered him carte blanc
he and he had not been interested. Of course. Why would he be interested? A kiss, perhaps; a quick nighttime visit on a whim. But to repeat the experience, or to have more—no, he was not interested.
I splashed cool water on my embarrassed face and changed out of my smoky clothes. After I stepped out of my blouse and skirt, I brushed them carefully and dabbed at the dirt smudges with a wet handkerchief—they were the new clothes Alistair had just bought me, after all, and I did not want them damaged. I stood in front of the mirror in my slip—also new—and regarded myself. I was thin, flushed, my dark bob stark against my pale and splotched cheeks and forehead. My hair was tousled, the short, straight locks twisted one over another. No one would ever call me beautiful. I got out the pretty silver-backed brush that had survived the attack on my things and slowly brushed my hair straight again.
As I watched myself in the mirror, my gaze fell to the white bandages on my arms. The places Maddy had grabbed me still ached, but I had not checked the wounds as I had promised Matthew I would. Frankly, I was too frightened. The sight of those chalk white marks on my own body had unnerved me.
But right now I needed to prove something to myself: that I was brave, perhaps, or that I did not need Matthew’s help. I put down the brush, and using my right hand, I unwound the bandage from my left arm.
The wound was still there, but the shape of it had changed. It was a long, gray band around my arm as before, but it had narrowed. I took in the shape of it with detached horror, as if I were looking at someone else’s body through a window. I lifted my left hand and unwound the bandage from my right arm. It was the same. The shape of both was opposite, but the same.
Handprints.
They were too narrow to be fully human, the palms and the fingers far too long. But with the bruising and blotchiness disappeared, I could clearly see the oval shapes of the palms, the tapering fingers, the deeper gray where the tips of the fingers had dug into my skin. I could see, flexed away from the palm in an elegant V shape, the dull shadow of a preternaturally long thumb. The skin in the center of the palms was the same chalky white as before.
My breath came short as I looked. I felt my blood pound in my ears. Maddy’s handprints were on my body, the imprint of her dead flesh on mine. Perhaps forever. I will kiss your children….
I stood there looking for a long time. Then I took a deep breath, crossed my arms, and gripped the bruises with my own hands.
Instantly, the room disappeared. I was looking at familiar treetops and a redbrick chimney. A familiar feeling of near panic came over me, and I wanted to drop my arms, but I forced myself to stay still. This was important. I showed it to you, Maddy had said. She had shown me this vision for a reason. I needed to stay calm, to look carefully.
It was the angle that struck me this time. I was looking at treetops, but not at their level; I was seeing them from a vantage on the ground. I was looking, I estimated, at the edge of a stand of trees some hundred feet away, able to see the tops and the chimney visible behind them. But I was on the ground. Low on the ground.
Too low. I was not standing. I was lying down.
And something was very wrong. I struggled to breathe. I was suffocated, pressed down. I shouldn’t be lying here. The panic rose in my breast. If only I could raise my head and see—
A knock on the door sliced through the vision; I jumped, let out a gasp. My hands dropped their grip. A voice came through the thick wood, muffled. Matthew’s.
“Sarah, are you all right?”
I glanced at the clock on the mantel, and a sick feeling came over me. I had passed nearly thirty minutes standing there, my hands on my upper arms, lost in Maddy’s vision. It had felt like seconds.
“Sarah?”
I looked down at myself. I was still wearing my slip. How could time simply disappear like that? “Yes,” I said shakily, so that Matthew wouldn’t open the door. He had no desire to see me in my slip, anyway. “I’m just dressing. I’ll be down in a moment.”
“Good,” came Matthew’s rough growl. “There’s something I want you to hear.”
Chapter Twenty
He had the wire recorder set up in the private room, the headphones attached as before. There was a plate of food on the table, a thick stew, bread, cheese, some warm sandwiches. An empty plate indicated Matthew had already eaten his share while he waited for me.
He stood by the sideboard, pouring a glass of water from a pitcher. He had changed his clothes, was now wearing a fresh shirt under a worn jacket that had once been forest green. It had faded, over apparent years of wear, to a soft, deep green that contrasted with his dark hair and dark eyes. “You should eat something,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyway.”
I sat down before the plate of food. It seemed we were going to pretend the little scene in the upstairs hallway had never happened. I was angry and hurt, but Matthew was right. It was only past noon, though this day seemed as long as a year, and we had work to do this afternoon. We could not rest. Maddy would not.
I ate some of the soup and started on a sandwich. “Did you listen to the recorder?” I asked.
“Yes.” Matthew sipped his water, his gaze on me. I could not read his expression.
“What is on it?”
“Finish eating. It can wait.”
I put down my sandwich, alarmed. “What is it?”
He sighed. “You never do anything you’re told, do you?”
“I work for Alistair, not you.”
“I just thought you need a little food in you, that’s all.”
“I’ve eaten,” I said. “Play it for me.”
He put down his water glass and handed me the headphones. Moving to the recorder and turning the dials, he said, “I recorded while we were in the barn, but all I could hear was—”
“Feedback,” I said, remembering him throwing down the headphones, pressing his hands to his ears. It had all been so jumbled, the entire scene like an illogical dream. “You heard feedback, and Alistair heard music.”
“And you heard Maddy.” He wound the reels. “I thought all I’d hear would be feedback, but our recorder got its own little performance.”
At first I heard nothing; it seemed the recorder had picked up only a hiss of silence. Then the hiss changed its tone, and I realized I was hearing something after all. It was the sound wind makes in the trees.
I closed my eyes and listened, concentrating. The breeze rose and fell. A bird sang somewhere in the distance. I pictured the scene I’d just seen upstairs in my room, the waving trees and the sky. Maddy was returning to the scene yet again, this time in sound. There was no way to know that, of course. And yet, I knew.
A harsh rasp broke the peace, and I jumped in my chair. It was breath, taken painfully, through a ruined throat. Another followed, and another. The last was exhaled on half a sob, a hitch of panicked despair.
Where am I? came Maddy’s voice.
It was she, and yet it sounded different; on the recorder, she sounded less inside my skull, more like a living girl. The mocking tone, the furious teasing, the petulance, had gone from her voice. She sounded alone, and not a little afraid.
Where am I? she said again.
The rasp again, then the voice: No. No. No… There was such despair in it I put my hand to my forehead, forcing myself to listen. No, no…What has happened to me?
I shook my head. What was this? Did Maddy not know she was dead? Did she somehow forget she had hanged herself? What did it mean?
The rasp came again. Run, Maddy said. Run.
And with a sharp sound, the recording stopped.
I put down the headphones and sat for a long moment. Matthew was standing by the window, looking out. We were silent for a while.
“It makes no sense,” Matthew said finally. “I turned the recorder on, then off again, then on again. It turned itself off at some point—I don’t remember when. And then it turned itself on again.”
“Yes.” I remembered seeing th
e recorder coming to life, right before Mrs. Clare had smashed her lamp in the barn. “And yet it’s one unbroken recording.”
Matthew shrugged, still looking out the window. “I’ve given up trying to explain it. I’ve given up trying to explain anything.”
“It was her burial place,” I said. “The place by the trees, by the redbrick chimney. She’s telling us that she doesn’t know where it is. And she seems…confused, as if she doesn’t know she’s dead.”
Matthew turned from the window at last and looked at me. “Poor little dead girl. Isn’t that what she said to you?”
“Yes.”
“And what does run mean?”
I felt a spurt of fear in my chest. “I don’t know.” I looked at his haunted expression and asked something I had wanted to ask since we’d come out of the barn. “You saw her, didn’t you?”
His gaze turned inward, as if he were seeing it again. “Yes.”
“What did she look like?”
His brows drew together as he remembered. “All I saw was a figure. White. Long black hair down its back. Big, dark eyes in the face. It moved so fast.” He paused, went on. “She was wearing a dress perhaps, or a nightgown—something long. She was indistinct, but there was something off about her—the proportions….”
“Yes.” I thought of the impossibly shaped hand marks on my arms.
He looked at me in surprise, and I explained. He shook his head. “Those marks worry me.”
But I changed the subject. “You looked up at one point. I heard a creaking. Was she—was she—”
“Hanging.” Matthew’s expression shuttered. “She showed herself to me, hanging from the rafters. She must know she’s dead, Sarah.”
And why only Matthew? Why had Alistair and I not seen her? Matthew was right—we could drive ourselves mad with wonder. And in the meantime Alistair sat in his room, sent back to a war he was starting to lose.
Mr. Jarvis, the sexton, was not in the churchyard at Waringstoke when we returned to find him. He was not in the church either, but the vicar himself was there, dressed in shirtsleeves and tan trousers, quietly tidying the place after service. I realized with a start that it was Sunday.
The Haunting of Maddy Clare Page 16
