The Haunting of Maddy Clare

by St. James, Simone

  It was Mr. Jarvis’ day off, but the vicar directed us to his house, just a short distance over the rise. Matthew and I set out at a walk through the cool spring sunshine.

  We didn’t speak. Matthew was troubled, far away in his own dark thoughts. I felt much the same, though I would have liked to talk to someone. There was no time to try to open Matthew up, however, as in moments we were in view of a shabby little cottage that apparently housed Mr. Jarvis.

  The man was home, though he seemed reluctant to let us in, and would gladly have left us standing there in the overgrown crabgrass and weeds. He reserved an especially hostile glare for me, and set it on me from his dark, deep-set eyes. He was dressed in shirtsleeves, like the vicar had been, over an undershirt that could be clearly seen. His trousers were held up with braces, and I was surprised to notice that, though over sixty, he possessed still-powerful shoulders and oxlike arms. Perhaps a man who dug graves for a living would be so strong, but I still found the physical verve of the man unexpected.

  He turned his glare from me to Matthew. He greeted us with, “The ghost people.”

  “Yes.” Matthew held his gaze for a long moment.

  Finally Mr. Jarvis shrugged. “All right, then. For God’s sake. But don’t be long. It’s my day off.” He turned from the door.

  We followed him into a small, dingy front room. An old floral sofa, sagging and shabby, sat against one wall, its matching chair in another corner. A radio took up much of the narrow end of the room, next to it a small table covered in dishes and empty bottles of beer. The fireplace was cold and unlit, and over it jutted a short mantel with an ornate, dusty, and intricately carved wooden clock, painted with inexpert tree branches and songbirds.

  “I won’t offer you tea,” Mr. Jarvis said roughly. “Just get on with it. Like I said, I haven’t got all afternoon.”

  I took a seat on the sofa. Matthew strolled directly to the radio and looked closely at it. “This is nice,” he said.

  Mr. Jarvis, who stood in the doorway, dropped his fists into his trouser pockets and grunted.

  “I know a bit about radios,” said Matthew. He bent, looked carefully at the radio, then straightened again.

  “My Sunday shows come on in fifteen minutes,” said Mr. Jarvis pointedly. “I never miss them.”

  “Right, right.” Matthew glanced at me, then turned his gaze back to Mr. Jarvis. “We’re here about the servant girl, Maddy Clare.”

  Mr. Jarvis shrugged, but his eyes gleamed. “You convinced Mrs. Clare you been talking to ghosts—is that it? Sounds like a bunch of bunk to me.”

  Matthew let this glide by. “Mr. Jarvis, I’ll get to the point. Is there any way that Maddy Clare is not buried in that coffin in the churchyard?”

  Mr. Jarvis went still. “Is this your story, then? That you’re getting messages from the other side? Stirring things up, are you?” He looked from Matthew to me. “There’s no ghost, and we all know it. Who’s been talking to you, then?”

  Matthew shrugged. “We’re just investigators, Mr. Jarvis.”

  “You’re shams, the lot of you.” He turned to me. “Especially you.” I reddened, remembering Mrs. Barry’s theory that I was Alistair’s specially imported “ghost expert.” Apparently the rumor had made its way all over town.

  “Are you married, Mr. Jarvis?” I asked.

  That stopped him. He looked at me long and hard. It was a cheap blow, perhaps, but it made me feel a little better.

  After a long pause, he said, “She’s long gone, missy. Took herself off in ’twelve, God knows where. I never heard from her again. Maybe she’s dead. I wouldn’t mind that.”

  My stomach turned, but I nodded. I had guessed as much. A woman had furnished this room, once—the flowered furniture, the badly painted clock—but she had not been here in a long, long time. This was now a man’s room, in which he listened to the radio and drank beer and did not clean up his dishes.

  “We’ve had a lead,” Matthew said, bringing our attention back to him. “I’m not disclosing the source. We’ve been told Maddy may not be buried where we think she is. We’re following up on it.”

  His coolness was impressive. A lead! Not half an hour ago we had listened to that eerie recording, one that simply couldn’t exist. Now he was talking to Mr. Jarvis as if he’d heard someone mention at a cocktail party that Maddy Clare was not buried in her coffin but somewhere in a shallow grave in the woods, and he simply felt idle curiosity to wonder why.

  Mr. Jarvis’ deep-set gaze took in Matthew, up and down, where he stood in front of the radio. “You play rugby?” he said.

  Matthew shrugged, surprising me. “When I have time.”

  Jarvis nodded. “I can tell. I played, myself. It’s in the shoulders, rugby is. You’d be a good player.”

  “I’m not bad.” I recalled the feel of Matthew’s shoulders, the muscles that bulged from his arms and back, and felt a small piece of my curiosity fall into place. “Your show starts in five minutes, Mr. Jarvis. Are you going to answer the question?”

  Jarvis’ eyes narrowed. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Both of you. Well, fine, then, I’ll answer your bloody important question. That girl is in her grave in the churchyard, right where she belongs. I buried her myself. I vouch for it. You don’t believe me? You ask the constable, Moores. He cut her down that day, and he saw me lay her out. Or just try to get Mrs. Clare to agree to dig that coffin up, why don’t you? Fool that lady again, just like you’ve been doing. You’ll go through all of that just to find the girl’s dead body rotting in there, right where it should be. I buried Maddy Clare, Mr. Ghost Man. And now we’re done talking.”

  There was a silence after this unexpected speech. I caught Matthew’s eye and saw my own thoughts reflected there. Constable Moores had never told us about cutting Maddy down in the barn.

  “All right, then,” Matthew said as I stood. “You know where to find us.”

  “Aye, I know you’re staying at the inn. Everyone in town knows it, Mr. Ghost Man. You and your blond-haired friend and your special researcher here.” He sneered at me. “You and your source are chasing the wrong game, you know. There’s no mystery about that servant girl. She’s just another girl who killed herself. She was no better than she should be.”

  “You knew her?” I said, surprised.

  He turned to me. “I didn’t have to,” he said. “I’ve known enough girls like her, missy.” His eyes glinted. “Girls a little like you, come to think of it.”

  A chill of fear went down my spine. Suddenly Mr. Jarvis and his bulky strength no longer seemed curious, or pitiful. If a man like this wanted to hurt me, I would have no chance; he knew it, and he watched as I realized it.

  Matthew grabbed Mr. Jarvis by the shirtfront, slowly, almost gently, with one powerful hand, and flexed his arm to bring the man closer. “That’s it,” he said, his voice stony. “You’re finished now.”

  Surprise flicked across the man’s face; then he covered it with a nasty laugh. “So that’s how it is, is it? I suspected as much.”

  Matthew was silent. His fist tightened on the man’s shirt, his knuckles whitening; for one stark moment, I thought he would give in to the anger pulsing from him in waves.

  Mr. Jarvis stared from Matthew to me and back again, beadily uncertain, until Matthew let him go. I let out a breath I had not realized I had been holding.

  I followed Matthew from the house, cold sweat on my back. My heart beat in my throat. I felt Mr. Jarvis watch us go, though I knew without turning that we would not see him from any of the dark windows of his tiny house. He watched us, and he watched from the shadows.

  Matthew waited until we were out of sight of the house, and then he stopped and took my shoulders. He turned me to face him, his eyes on mine. “Are you all right?”

  I gave him a small smile as I felt the warmth of his hands. “Yes. A little shaken, perhaps. But yes.”

  His hands released some of their tension, but they did not move from my shoulders. He looked
troubled. “Alistair would have handled that better.”

  I raised one of my hands and put it over his. “You did just fine, and I thank you.”

  My hand touched the scarring on the back of his wrist, and he pulled away. His gaze traveled over my shoulder, fixed on something there. “We should go.”

  I turned and looked. Two large black crows sat in a nearby tree, perched on its lower branches, their beady eyes on us. As we watched, a third arrived and perched with them.

  I suppressed a shudder and followed Matthew back into town.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  By the time dark fell, I was sick and exhausted. It wasn’t a sickness of the body that afflicted me, though I was more tired than if I had been awake a week. It was a depression of the mind, a feeling of hopelessness, that dogged me to my bed that night.

  The doctor had just been and gone again. Alistair had not improved. Indeed, far from improving, he had grown worse, unable to recognize the doctor, hardly able to respond. He had not eaten any of the food we’d had brought to him, nor taken any water. “That man,” the doctor declared, “needs to go home.”

  Matthew had said little to this. But after the doctor left, Matthew slumped in his chair, his head in his hands, the sight of him confirming my own hopeless thoughts.

  “He can’t go home, can he?” I said softly.

  “No.” Matthew rubbed his forehead and did not look up. “He has no one there—no one but a skeleton staff of servants.”

  And he will only get worse. The words hung there, unspoken, between us. There was no way to fool ourselves that Alistair would simply recover on his own. This was no ordinary illness, after all.

  Alistair was already unable to care for himself; a few maids and a butler would be of no help. When the doctor found out that Alistair had no family—and he would, sooner or later—the only option would be commitment to a hospital.

  I made a small sound as I followed this thought to its logical conclusion. “He’ll be locked away,” I said. “He’ll be—”

  “Don’t say it,” said Matthew. “We had enough of hospitals in the war. I won’t see him go back to one, and a madhouse as well.”

  “Perhaps we can delay things a little,” I said. “Doesn’t one need family authorization to be committed? He may have distant relatives we need to track down. Perhaps we could consult a lawyer. We could say we have to wait for—”

  “Sarah, if he keeps refusing to eat, we won’t have any time. He either goes into a hospital or he dies of starvation.”

  “We could hire him a private nurse,” I said.

  “With what money?”

  “Alistair has plenty of money.”

  “If Alistair is mad, who will let us spend it? There’s no one, Sarah.”

  I looked down at my hands. “I won’t let him go without a fight, any more than you will.”

  “There is only one way out of this. Maddy has to let him go. And she has to do it soon, before he starts to starve to death.”

  Maddy has to let him go. I felt the frustration come over me as I climbed the steps to my room, the hopelessness of it. Someone in this town knew something—Mr. Jarvis, or Mrs. Barry, or Constable Moores, or the man who had trashed my room. Or the man I had seen watching us. Was it the same man each time, or a different one? Was Mr. Jarvis the one who had searched my things? Did Mrs. Clare or Mrs. Macready know something they were not telling?

  The answer was so close—I could feel it, sense it just from the corner of my eye, flickering into my consciousness and out again. Something small was missing. Something that would fall into place if only I could see it…or if only someone would tell the truth.

  I changed into my voluminous white nightdress and sat on the edge of my bed. The maid had been through, and the bed’s white sheets were clean and starched, stretched and folded with military precision over the corners of the mattress. Though clean, the bed was cold, and I ran my hand over the knit wool comforter for warmth. A draft played its way along the floor and chilled my feet. I’d had no idea the nights were so cold this time of year, but I supposed a late-season frost was possible.

  I rubbed the sole of one foot over the top of the other for warmth. Alistair had been unresponsive when we’d checked on him. He’d only stared at the wall, oblivious to everything we said. I hated to leave him, but I could hardly move. I felt as if a cold, heavy blanket had come down on me. Pulling the comforter over me, I swung my feet up from the floor and lay on the bed.

  There was most definitely a draft. The end of my nose was cold. I snuggled all my extremities under the comforter and stared up at the gloom of the ceiling. As my drowsy gaze focused and unfocused, I imagined I saw movement in the shadows of the beams, like tendrils of smoke.

  Outside in the hall, a door slammed.

  That roused me for a moment. Matthew’s door was to the right of mine in the hallway, Alistair’s to the left. The sound had come from the left. Who could be slamming a door? Not Alistair, certainly, and we were the inn’s only guests. A maid, perhaps? I had not seen one when I came upstairs, nor had I heard one, but perhaps one had come up a servants’ stair since I entered my room.

  Yes, it must certainly be so, for now I could hear a low shuffling in the hall. A soft sound, padded, though not furtive; she was, perhaps, taking care to be quiet. A muddied thump against a hallway wall. Perhaps she carried linens, and they had made the sound when she stumbled.

  I should ask her for another blanket, for I was still cold. But I must have been more tired even than I had thought, for my body was in a heavy languor, and I was unable to move. Threads of alarm wound their way through my weary thoughts, and I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Certainly, I would never sleep. It was my last thought as I closed my eyes.

  And then I dreamed.

  How to describe the dream I had? Even now, when I think of it, I am filled with unnameable horror, a fear that seems primal, dredged from the depths of my brain like a long-dead body from a deep lake. It was cold, very cold. I was outside, still in my nightdress, my feet soaked in the dewy grass. I was crossing the short clearing to the edge of the woods, heading for the place where I had seen the man watching. The place I had dreamed of before, when I had dreamed of Mrs. Barry. I was drawn to that place, but all the same I did not want to go.

  My feet kept moving. They were losing sensation in the chill, a sharp sting along the soles at first and then an icy numbness. I felt the soil sticking to them as the grass gave way to the dark, foggy woods.

  I did not want to cross into the woods. I knew I didn’t want to go in there, in the darkness. But I had to move because suddenly the pins of awareness between my shoulder blades told me someone was behind me.

  Run, Maddy said. Run.

  I ran. The ground here was uneven and harder to travel, and I had to dig my toes into the ground to keep balance. My breath was ragged. Branches came from nowhere and stung me, on my cheeks, my neck, my arms. Behind me, something breathed. I ran faster.

  I didn’t know where I was going, or even what direction I had taken now; there was no path. I pushed myself, my knees pumping, to the gaps in the trees as I saw them, trying to avoid the obstacles that rose in the darkness. A fallen log, a malevolent spray of undergrowth. Overhead, night birds scrabbled in the trees.

  There was the sound of water, a stream somewhere, and I abruptly changed course to avoid it; I wanted nothing to do with the stream, and what might be hidden there. I tracked the sound to my left and continued to run, taking care not to cross the water. The woods seemed endless. My throat burned. My follower dropped back for only the shortest moment, then found me again. Its footsteps were steady, unrelenting. I tried not to sob in panic. Quiet, I must be quiet, to get away.

  My feet hit clearer ground, and I found myself on a path of sorts, a rough-worn valley through the trees. I stepped onto it and nearly stopped, keeled over in fear. There was something on the path—something entirely different from the attacker behind me. A pure malevolence that beck
oned me. Take the path. Take the path. I put my hands on my knees and gasped, bent over, trying not to retch. Something waited on the path, and if I turned and ran toward it now, it would grab me, and my God, it would—

  The underbrush shook behind me, spurring me into motion again. I sprinted across the path—I hardly even wanted to touch it with my feet, and indeed, as I left it, I imagined icy fingers tracing my ankles—and raced on. The attacker behind me had gained precious time; I could hear it closer now, and gaining. A sob broke in my chest. Hopeless, it was hopeless. I was lost in the woods like a hunted rabbit and I would never go home again, never be safe again. I would run until it killed me and no one would ever know—

  I broke through a thick stand of prickly brush and stopped. In my terror I had lost track of the water, and here it was, the short slope to the muddy bank of a river, cold and swift, before me. I was hemmed in by a high stand of rock on my left and more prickly bushes on my right; I could not go back into the arms of whatever chased me. I stood frozen for a moment, unable to bear to go forward, because the river—there was something in the river.

  And in that second I knew what it was, and that nothing could be worse.

  I fell to my knees. So I would die, then; I no longer cared. I could see a white shape on the riverbank, tangled in the weeds. An arm, a bloated hand, with a woman’s wedding ring. The old nightmare, coming into this one. I would never escape it. The sight pulled a sound out of me, a screaming moan, a sound of pure grief.

  The thing came through the bushes behind me, and grabbed me.

  I kicked; I thrashed; nothing worked. It gripped me with hot, strong hands that burned my skin like fire, pinning my arms. It threw me to the ground, wrestled its way onto my back as I lay there, talking to me in a voice that sliced terror through my body like knives. I sobbed into the mud.

  The thing on my back stilled, as if something had caught its attention. I raised my head and saw, farther down the bank, a shadow retreat into the trees. So we weren’t alone, then. The thing from the path had come as well.