Then the monster on my back leaned over me, and I felt its breath on my cheek. And I closed my eyes and knew nothing more.
Chapter Twenty-two
When my eyes opened, I no longer saw the river, the trees, the mud. I was in my bed at the inn.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. So it had all been a dream, then—a horrible, terrifying dream.
“You’re awake,” said a soft voice.
I turned my head. It was Alistair, standing near the foot of my bed in the blue dark, his arms crossed over his chest. He was looking at me with perfect comprehension, a twinkle of humor in his tired eyes. I stared at him in amazement, wondering if I was still dreaming.
He took a step closer. “She left for a while,” he said, as if answering my question. “It’s me.”
The world was still falling into place, after swirling apart in my nightmare. “What are you doing here?”
“We thought someone should stay with you until you woke.”
I shook my head, confused. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I may have made some noise. I was having a dream.”
Alistair’s expression fell into seriousness. “Sarah,” he said softly.
I saw how he looked at me, with meaning and sadness, and I did not want to contemplate what he meant. “No,” I said. “It was a dream.”
“Sarah,” he said. “Look down.”
I did not want to do it. I wanted to close my eyes, disappear into nothingness again. I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked down to see I was covered in mud, down the front of my nightdress. My bare feet were crusted in it. I touched my cheek and felt the thin film of dried mud crumble away. I thought of my dream, of the thing on my back, pressing me into the mud by the river.
A sob escaped my throat. Real. It had been real. If Maddy had left Alistair for a while, she had come to me instead. She had come to my dream.
“I was in the woods,” I said to Alistair. “Something was chasing me. Something was—”
“Hush. I know.”
I looked up at him. “How?”
“Matthew told me.” He frowned as I stared at him in incomprehension. “You didn’t see him, then?”
There came a soft creak, and the door opened, letting in a thin, pale crack of light. Matthew came into my room carrying a mug of hot tea. He stopped when he saw I was awake.
The breath left me. In one terrified sweep I took him in, the mud dried on him like it was dried on me, on his knees, on his elbows and forearms—where he had pinned me to the ground.
“You,” I breathed, pulling myself upright, remembering the thing chasing me, its burning hands on me, its breath on me. “It was you.”
He didn’t move. “Are you all right?”
I stared in horror, remembering how I had fled the thing in the woods, how I had run from it with all the strength in me. Had I been running from Matthew, or from something else?
“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he said. “You must be cold.” He came forward and set the mug of tea on the bedside table. I couldn’t speak. My knees came up and I wrapped my arms around them. He moved away again, back to the foot of the bed, into the shadows.
“Sarah,” said Alistair, “you were sleepwalking. You were outside, heading for the woods, when Matthew saw you. He followed you and brought you back. How did you think you got back here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember.” Everything had gone dark when the thing—when Matthew—had grabbed me. Had he carried me all the way back to the inn? “It’s all so confusing.”
“Was it Maddy?”
“Yes,” I said softly. She had been there. I had, in the strange way of dreams, been her. “She was telling me to run.”
“From what?”
I looked up to see Alistair leaning forward, looking at me avidly. “I don’t know,” I said. “Does she—does she talk to you?”
“Yes,” he said, and for a moment the exhaustion left him and he was the old Alistair, sparked by the pursuit of his passion. “She talks to me, but I can never remember. It always leaves me. I can’t remember it. It makes no sense. It’s almost hallucinatory.” He sagged a little in frustration. “If only I could remember.”
“You must be hungry,” I told him, remembering that we had not been able to get him to eat.
Alistair frowned. “I might have a bite in a moment or two. I just need to think for a minute.”
Behind him, Matthew moved. “She’s right,” came his low voice from the shadows. “You should eat.”
But Alistair had dropped his gaze and was looking, of all places, at my feet. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”
I looked at my feet—bare, caked with mud—and back to him. “What is it?”
“Wait.” Alistair frowned again, rubbed his forehead. “Your feet. There’s something—something important….” He rubbed his forehead again as he trailed off.
Matthew came forward. “They look fine to me.”
“Yes.” Alistair closed his eyes, pressed them shut as if in frustration, took a breath. His features started to sag, though he fought it. “They’re fine. Her feet. They’re fine….”
“Alistair?” I said.
But Alistair stood quiet now, still rubbing his forehead slowly back and forth. His eyes were still closed. I felt tears lump in my throat.
Matthew came forward, put his hand gently on Alistair’s shoulder. “You should eat something,” he tried again.
Alistair shook his head. “The tack’s gone moldy,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want to eat it. It’s only a short march. I’ll go without.”
I looked at Matthew. Half-hidden in the shadows, his face looked haggard with sadness. “All right,” he said after a moment, as if his throat was choked like mine. “Just a short march, then.”
The tears came down my face then, washing away the mud, as he led Alistair from the room.
I was still sitting on the bed, hugging my knees to my chest, when Matthew returned a few moments later.
There was no chair, so he sat on a side table. “We need to talk,” he said.
I looked at my dirty toes and said nothing.
“I want to clear this up.”
“There’s nothing to clear up,” I said, though my voice sounded weak in my own throat.
“Yes, there is,” he insisted, his voice familiar and yet unfamiliar. I tried not to shudder. “Because we still have to work together, and now you’re afraid of me.”
I didn’t deny it. Just his presence in the room made me remember the dream, the spurt of fear that made me run. “I can’t help it. The dream was so real.”
“Some of it was real,” he said. “Not all of it.”
I looked up at him. He was in shadow again. Part of me knew he was staying far from the bed in deference to my fear, but part of me thought perhaps he preferred not to be seen. What did I know of Matthew, after all? “How did you find me?” I asked. “Why weren’t you asleep in your room?”
“I told you. I don’t sleep.” Even in the shadows, I felt his gaze move away. “I doze, for short times, until I wake up again. I do it all night. When I sleep, I go back, so I don’t sleep. Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how.”
I ignored the pang of sympathy in my stomach. He had chased me through the woods, after all. “Your room faces the back of the building. You wouldn’t have seen the woods from your window.”
“I was wandering.” I felt that dark gaze move to me again. “I heard noises. Didn’t you?”
I thought of the door slamming I had heard right before I dropped to sleep, the shuffling in the hall. “I heard a maid.”
Matthew shook his head. “There was no maid.”
“How do you know? She had linens, I thought. I wanted to ask her for a blanket.”
“Because it was cold.”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “In my room, too. Cold, like a sudden draft had blown in. A door slammed, and I thought it was you. I thought—” He broke off, his voice bitter. �
�No matter. Like an idiot, I went to my door and opened it.”
I raised my head and stared at him. For the first time, the tatters of the nightmare began to fall away. He’d thought it was me, coming to his room. I wished for more light in my room, so I could see him. My mind began to spin. “Maddy,” I said.
Matthew said nothing.
It came together now. “You saw her,” I said. “She was in the hall.” I swallowed my fear, thinking of the sounds I had heard, the soft shuffles and thumps, of how I had thought it was a maid. “You opened your door and saw her there.”
Still, he said nothing.
“Why you?” I asked. “Why only you?”
He grunted. “I don’t know.” The bitterness was stronger now, tempered with anger. “I don’t bloody know. It isn’t something I want, believe me.”
My heart tripped in my chest. “What—what was she doing?”
“What does it matter?”
I frowned. “Matthew—tell me.”
He had stiffened, and even from where I sat, I could hear the reluctance in his voice. “She was standing in the hall.”
“Yes.” He didn’t want to tell me, and I could guess why. But I would have it out of him. “Go on.”
Matthew sighed. “She was—outside your door. At your door. God, she’s so—strange-looking. I can’t describe it. I could hardly see her in the shadows. But she reached out both her hands—I saw that, clearly. Those long hands of hers. She reached them both out and put them to your door, like she was feeling the door with her palms. I didn’t think. I just reacted.”
Pieces of the dream fell away again, and I remembered how quickly I had fallen asleep. I must have gone under just about then. “What did you do?”
“I stepped out of my room. Into the hall. And just like that, she was gone.”
“Did you see—where she—” I could hardly say it. Had she disappeared? Or had she gone through the door, into my room?
“I didn’t see,” he said. “I walked down the hall, up and down. The cold was still there, in places, but I didn’t see her. I went downstairs and looked. The cold wasn’t as bad there, and I didn’t see anything, so I came back upstairs. I thought then she must have gone to your room, so I went to your door and opened it.” He shook his head. “You were gone. You must have been fast, and quiet; I wasn’t downstairs long, and I was listening all the time. I went back out to the hallway and I noticed something out the window, the one at the top of the stairs. It was you, in your white nightdress, heading for the trees.”
“And so you followed me,” I whispered.
“You were damned fast,” he said. “Once you got into the woods, you were harder to keep up with. I kept calling your name. If it weren’t for the white nightdress, I’d likely have lost you.”
“I was so afraid,” I said. “I thought—Maddy thought—you were going to kill me. She told me to run. I can’t tell you how terrified I was.” I shook my head. “I didn’t hear you calling me. I swear it.”
“I know,” he said.
I thought of what had happened when I crossed the path. “It felt as if there was something else—another presence there. Did you feel that, too?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t feel anything except certainty that you didn’t know what you were doing. I didn’t notice anything until I found you by the riverbank. Then I saw there was someone in the trees.”
My gaze flew up to him. “What?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sure it was there. It was clear, just for a second. Watching us on the riverbank. Then it disappeared.” He looked at my shocked face. “A person, I’d swear it. A man, unless I miss my guess.”
My mind raced. So there had been something—someone—on the path. There had been someone else in the woods, someone besides Matthew, watching me. Waiting. For what?
I held back a shiver. I had the sudden idea that I had come very, very close to something much more dangerous than Matthew. Someone had been warned off only by his presence. If I had been alone…
“What was in the river?” Matthew asked me.
“Didn’t you see it?” I rasped, thinking of that pale arm floating in the water.
“No. There was nothing, Sarah. It was just a muddy bank. Nothing in the reeds. I checked. But you were screaming. You nearly kicked me to death. You saw something in your dream. What the hell was it?”
I pressed my hands to my face. “I’m too tired,” I said. “I don’t want to think of it now. I can’t. I’ll tell you in the morning.”
I heard him move, felt his presence come closer to the bed. He took my hands from my eyes and I looked up as he leaned over me. For the first time that night I saw him clearly, the exhausted lines around his eyes, their dark pain and uncertainty. He looked ragged and run-down, his skin leached of color. I pictured him striding the halls, looking fearlessly for Maddy, and I wanted to put my hands on his face and feel the rough stubble of his skin.
“You need to say it,” he said, his gaze never leaving mine. “It’s tearing you apart.”
I swallowed. Something was coming loose in me; perhaps it was exhaustion, or the aftereffects of the nightmare terror. “It wasn’t real, what I saw,” I told him haltingly. “But it felt real.”
He said nothing and waited.
I could not fight anymore, and I realized I did not want to. Tears began to course down my face before I even began. “I lived with my parents. The three of us,” I said.
Matthew waited.
“My parents—I suppose they got along all right. We all got along all right. What child notices how her parents get along?” My throat was rasping and dry, but I kept speaking. “My father got the influenza in ’nineteen. It was sudden. We took him to the countryside, to a house that belonged to a friend of my mother’s. She’d gone to America on a trip. We thought it might make my father get better. Mother and I nursed him. Neither of us slept. We were exhausted.”
“Yes,” said Matthew softly.
The words were coming out of me now of their own accord, as if I could not have stopped them. “On the fourth morning, I went to the market. It was June, and the strawberries were just coming into season. Mother and I had worked so hard. I thought to buy us some strawberries and cream, the first of the year, as a treat.” I thought of that morning—the bright golden sunlight, the crisp air that was not yet warm yet promised to be—and something stabbed me on the inside, hard. I felt my features crumple as new, hot tears came down my face. “I thought we could cheer ourselves up—oh, God.”
I looked down, but Matthew put his fingers gently under my chin. “What happened?” he asked.
I took a breath. “When I got home, the house was quiet. I didn’t want to call out, in case Father was sleeping. I went upstairs and I didn’t see anyone. I got to Father’s room and—” I bit my lip. “He was in bed, and he had—passed away. He was lying quietly, as if he’d just gone to sleep. I couldn’t find Mother anywhere.”
His hand still on my chin, Matthew waited.
“I looked all over the house—the cellar, the attic. Mother was gone. I called for the doctor to come for Father. I didn’t—I didn’t think to call for the police. I was so distraught. Finally it occurred to me to ask the neighbors. The woman next door said she had seen Mother behind the house, walking toward the ravine.”
Matthew’s dark eyes blinked in understanding. “Ah,” he said. “Sarah.”
A sob heaved from my chest. I bit down on it, but still it came. “They found her two days later,” I said. “In the river. She had been dead all that time; they could tell. Father had died and she had simply stood up and walked into the river. Just like that.” Another sob came, but I choked it back. “I was—I was gone less than an hour. I still can’t stand to think of it. She could have waited fifteen minutes for me, Matthew.” I looked into his eyes. “Fifteen minutes. I would have been home. I could have comforted her. We could have comforted each other, stood it together. But she just left.” I blinked as tears washed down my face
. “I think that’s the worst thing about it. It tears me apart, and at the same time it makes me so horribly angry. How can I be angry at my mother?”
Matthew lowered his hand. It had been only the slightest touch, but I missed it. “Sarah,” he said again, on a sigh of such sorrow that I knew he, of all people, somehow understood in a way I could not fathom. The bed creaked as he sat beside me. He rifled in a pocket. “Do you know, I think I will never cease being ashamed of my first thoughts of you?”
I dashed tears from my face. “What do you mean?”
He produced a handkerchief—white and spotless, vintage Matthew—and handed it to me. “I thought you timid and soft. I thought you wouldn’t be able to stand hardship.”
I thought of the life I had been living in London, the life that was not really a life. “Yes,” I said softly. “I thought so, too.” I took his handkerchief, and I dried my tears.
Chapter Twenty-three
Evangeline Barry was unmistakable, even in the foggy mist of early morning. I watched her tall figure emerge, lithe and careless, from the gloom. Her fashionable hat was pulled low over her forehead in a stylish rakishness, and her little dog’s leash was looped over one slim, cashmere-covered arm.
She approached me where I stood waiting for her in front of the inn and stopped. As before, I found I could not read her features. Was it concern I saw there? If so, was it for someone else, or only for herself?
“I’ve come every morning,” she said after a moment, when I did not speak. “I’m glad to see you here.”
I said nothing. I could not make myself look away from her: the way a dark lock of marcelled hair wisped under the corner of her jaw like a line drawn in ink, the flawless tone of her skin that I could not detect as powder. It was rude, but I couldn’t help it. I shrugged deeper into my nondescript wool sweater against the early-morning chill and looked at her.
She looked away with a sigh, as if it were a normal thing for people to stare at her without speaking. Her profile was perfect in the gray light. “How is he?” she said.
The Haunting of Maddy Clare Page 18
