The Haunting of Maddy Clare

by St. James, Simone

  The gun prodded me again, and under this hopelessness I felt a bone-deep chill. It was not fear exactly, but a terror slow and deep, pushing its way out from an icy well inside me, freezing my limbs. I looked at my hands and saw I was shaking. I whistled a breath into my lungs and realized I had felt this fear once before.

  “It was you,” I managed through numb lips. “In the woods that night. It was you on the path.”

  I remembered the rush of fear I’d had that night—There’s something on the path. Something that waited and watched. I had felt it then, this deep unreasoning fear. Because Tom Barry had really been there, in the woods that night.

  His hand clamped to the base of my neck, where it met my shoulder, and I felt him move close behind me, his breath in my ear. “Ah, well,” he sighed. “I was so close then, wasn’t I? You knew it. I was so very close. I haven’t done it again, you know, since her. It was a lark. We’d had too much to drink and we wanted a bit of fun. But you…I was in the woods, watching the inn, and then there you were. Running like a hare, just like she did. That white nightgown. I hadn’t thought of it, but that night—my girl, if only you’d been alone, what fun we could have had. What wonderful fun.” His chuckle was hot on my skin. “Maybe we still can.”

  “You can’t do this!” I cried. The hopelessness was gone with his words, and panic started in my veins. “Everyone will know!”

  He sighed. “Last time was such a perfect opportunity, really—it couldn’t have been better if we’d planned it. Such things don’t come often in life. Even my wife was out of town, visiting her mother, or she would have seen something. The circumstances aren’t so favorable this time. Still, we make do with what we have, don’t we? Your friend here was an intruder—he attacked me. That much is simple. As for you…” He tightened his grip on my neck, sending shoots of pain up into my skull. “I’ve never seen you, and I don’t know what happened to you. Perhaps your friend lost his temper. Perhaps the madman did you in. The woods are dense out there. So many people have been lost in those trees. How many people are going to go searching for you, a stranger? And for how long?”

  He was so close to me now, leaning in to sneer. I could smell tobacco and sweat. I realized that in his position he had lowered the gun; though his hand was still clamped on my neck, his guard was down for a brief moment. If I could think clearly, if I could control my shaking body, I could take advantage.

  I took a breath and drove an elbow backward, into his sternum. He was surprisingly hard—he had almost no fat on him—and I felt the impact up my arm and to my shoulder. At the same time I twisted away from him. He teetered for a split moment, off-balance. I had never hit anyone in my life, and I had no idea how to do it. I could think of nothing better to do than to hit, as hard as I could, the hand that held the rifle and hope he dropped the gun.

  He fell backward, but even as he fell, the look of surprise on his face slipped away, and as the gun fell with him, he was reaching for it again. He landed on his back with a heavy thud. I stepped backward to turn to run, but he already had the rifle in his hand again, and he pointed it at me from his position on the floor.

  Our eyes locked. We froze a long moment like that, each one of us taking the measure of the other. A sick humor came into his eyes, and he chuckled darkly. He pointed a loaded, cocked gun at me, and I knew he would use it. I would not run.

  “Not bad, darling,” he said. “Not bad.”

  He pulled himself to his feet, slowly, the rifle never wavering. Now I saw something different in his face—interest, and even pleasure. I realized I had triggered something in him, the same instinct that had made him enjoy chasing Maddy. The instinct that had made him enjoy what he did to her. I was no longer a nuisance to him. I was prey.

  He came toward me, smiling.

  “Don’t do this,” I said softly.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but what he planned to say—whatever it was—I never heard. We were interrupted by a commotion at the window across the room.

  It was the low, whirring sound of wings flapping. A crow—a large, dark, long-beaked creature—was alighting on the sill outside the window. As we watched, it gained its balance, scrabbling its feet and flapping its inky wings in a dark tattoo against the glass. Another alighted next to it, the soft thud of its wings hitting the window adding to the noise of the first. The second bird opened its beak and cawed deep and throaty, even as a third bird appeared behind the first two.

  The same thing was happening at the other window, near the fireplace; and I could hear the same beat of wings from the other windows in the house. Something large and bony flapped against the front door, over and over, and I felt a new kind of fear come over me.

  I looked at Tom Barry. He was gazing around, bemused, but the aim of the rifle never wavered. He turned back to me and his eyes narrowed. The bruises on his face were starting to darken.

  “Please,” I said to him as I noticed a familiar metallic smell. “You need to get out of here.”

  Surprise transformed his face, his eyebrows shooting upward; then he laughed. “Get out of here? What do you take me for, darling? It’s just a few birds.”

  “It isn’t. Don’t you hear them?”

  “I hear birds,” he said, but the first spark of uneasiness crossed his expression. The birds were loud now, and unmistakable; they were obviously at every window of the house, and we could hear them calling to one another in their awful voices. I was reminded of the day we had seen them on the barn, covering it like a shiny black shell.

  His face hardened, as he obviously pushed the uneasiness away. “Enough about a few birds. I want—”

  Again something thumped against the front door, something large and heavy. We both jumped. The sound came again.

  “You don’t understand,” I said, the words bursting out of me. “You’re in danger. It’s Maddy. It’s her ghost. She’s still here, and she talked to me, just as you suspected. It was you watching me from the woods, wasn’t it? It was you who ransacked my room.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You don’t want to admit it, but you were worried that the rumors were real. That she was truly haunting the barn. Roderick saw her that day, and told you, and you knew she was still alive, that she hadn’t died when you buried her. And then you heard she killed herself, and you thought it was over. But there were rumors that her ghost haunted the barn, and then Mrs. Clare brought us in, and even though you didn’t quite believe it, you still worried. What if the ghost was real? What if it said something to one of us? What if your perfect crime was undone at the very end? Well, you were right to worry. You were right.”

  “Shut up!” He jabbed the gun at me in anger, and it hit me hard in the soft part of my stomach. I gasped in pain, but the sound was lost under the overwhelming whirring of the birds on the house. “I’ll take care of this,” he said. “Walk. Toward the stairs.”

  I obeyed, but the words wouldn’t stop coming. It didn’t matter how wild I sounded; now was no time to worry about sounding like a madwoman. “She didn’t remember,” I told him. “For years, she didn’t remember what had happened. And then, again, after she died, I don’t think she remembered—I think she’s been living in a shadow world of some kind, unable to leave. But she remembers now. It wasn’t Bill Jarvis or Roderick Nesbit who told me what happened—Roderick confessed, but I already knew. It was Maddy, do you understand? It was Maddy who told me, because she remembers what happened now. I didn’t want to come to the house, because she follows me. She’d find you. And now she knows who you are. You have to get out of here. It’s your only chance. You have to run.”

  He had prodded me down a set of stairs, into a dark cellar. The sound of the birds was fainter here. I smelled damp, and coal, and the earthy scent of potatoes. The ground was cool through the soles of my shoes.

  He glared at me in the gloom. “I’ve had enough of listening to you. You’re completely mad. Just stay still and shut up. I’m going upstairs to deal with those birds, and then I�
��ll be back.”

  “You can’t!” I cried. “You can’t! She’s come here!” I grabbed his sleeve. “You have to run!”

  “Enough!” His face contorted. He jerked his arm away, and brought up the butt of the gun. I had time to glimpse its dark, wood-marbled surface before it connected with my cheek and threw me backward. I lost my footing and fell to the floor. Pain shot through my skull. I rasped for breath and looked up at him from the floor as the warm wetness of blood began to flow down my skin.

  Barry blinked, as if unsure for a second who had just hit me; then I watched his expression settle again. The sound of the birds was louder now, and he couldn’t deal with them and me at once. “Just stay still, for God’s sake,” he said. “Just stay still!”

  He retreated up the stairs, backing slowly, the gun still pointed at me. He needn’t have bothered. I could only lie on the floor, cradling the pain in my face, feeling it overtake me like a living thing. Dimly I was aware of the beating of birds’ wings, somewhere overhead, and the strong metallic smell in my nose. I closed my eyes. Don’t go up there, I meant to say, but I didn’t have the words.

  The door closed; I heard the click of a lock. I had to stop this from happening. I had to. I searched my mind for Maddy. She was here; I could feel it. Maddy, I thought. Maddy, don’t, please don’t, please. But there was no answer. I could not even tell if she heard me.

  I heard Tom Barry’s heavy footsteps upstairs. I heard him mutter, and curse; he went up a second staircase, out of listening range, and then he came back down. His steps traveled back to the kitchen, where I heard the tinkle of something breaking, and another curse.

  There was a sharp cracking sound—almost like the report of a gun, but not quite. Tom Barry’s steps came again, running now. He cursed. And then he shouted—a quick, barking shout, hoarse and strangely high-pitched.

  A jumble of confused sounds then. Thumps and crashes against a wall. Something crashing down. Once, a curious dragging sound. But Tom Barry’s voice didn’t come again—not a yell, not a curse—and he didn’t fire his gun.

  After a time, all was quiet.

  I lay on the cellar floor, cradling my injured cheek. It was over, then. I had done nothing, prevented nothing, and Matthew was still up there somewhere. I cried until the pain overtook me in a sort of fog, and I laid my face against the floor.

  I was still there when Constable Moores came, sometime later, to clean up the blood and the bodies.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Consciousness came slowly, and I thought I heard footsteps and a voice. I opened my eyes.

  The voice was big, booming, and familiar. “Police! Police, I say! If you’re here, show yourself!”

  I stood on shaky legs. My head throbbed horribly, and for a sickening moment I thought I’d lose my balance. I pushed myself forward, up the cellar stairs, trying to make a sound from my hoarse throat. Finally I rattled the cellar door, pounded on it, and shouted for help.

  The constable’s expression, when he opened the door, went from surprised caution to utter shock at the sight of my face. He had a gun in his hand, though it was lowered to his side. He backed up a step. “Are you alone down there?”

  I could hardly speak. I pushed past him and ran down the hall to the sitting room. Matthew was still on the floor, still and quiet, though he had been turned on his back. I ran to him and fell to my knees.

  I pulled him into my lap and started to cry again, this time from helpless relief. He was warm to my touch, warm under my hands, though his face was stark white and I could trace the blue veins of his temples. I pulled him to me and bent over him, weeping helplessly.

  Constable Moores’ steps approached slowly from behind. “He’s alive, though it looks like he’s had a nasty knock. I’ll call for a doctor. Do you mind telling me what happened?”

  “Where are the birds?” I asked.

  “Birds? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Tom Barry killed Maddy Clare,” I said over Matthew’s head. I could feel the beating of Matthew’s heart under my hand. “Matthew came to question him about it. Tom Barry killed Maddy Clare with Roderick Nesbit and Bill Jarvis.”

  “That’s what Mrs. Barry said. Her own husband.”

  “She was away at her mother’s. She didn’t know.”

  The constable huffed through his nose. “Well, Nesbit is dead,” he said, almost conversationally. His steps moved away to the window. “Shot himself with his rifle, though it must have been damned difficult. I’ve just come from there. Bill Jarvis had some kind of seizure in the woods. Do you mind telling me where Tom Barry went?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and it was the truth. “I came for Matthew. Barry found me, took me to the cellar, hit me with his gun, and locked me in.”

  “Well, something happened in here.” His voice told me he didn’t quite believe me, but I didn’t care. He was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “There are tracks outside.” His steps came closer to me again. “Will you stay here, or will I come back to find you gone?”

  I looked up at him. “Are you mad?”

  He looked at Matthew and me, his tired, hooded gaze taking us in. If he thought I would leave Matthew, he was very much mistaken. He would have to tear me away from Matthew with his bare hands, a fact I watched sink into his mind. “Well, then. Just sit tight and don’t move, and for God’s sake don’t touch anything.” He turned and left the house.

  Matthew shifted in my lap, sighed faintly. His eyelids fluttered. I smoothed the hair back from his forehead and watched his eyes open, his gaze blurred and confused.

  I bent down, kissed his cheek, the corner of his mouth.

  “Sarah,” he breathed.

  “It’s me.”

  He looked at me now, his gaze starting to focus. I watched as he saw the injury on my cheek, which I could feel swelling. I had dried blood on my skin. He raised one hand, touched the fingertips gently to the side of my face, his gaze darkening even as I shook my head.

  “I’ll kill him,” he murmured.

  “Hush. I’m fine.”

  He closed his eyes. “I’ll kill him.”

  “No. It’s over, Matthew.”

  “Sarah.” I felt the moment he slipped out of consciousness again. I pressed his hand to my face, kissed his palm. His blood was soaking my skirt, and I didn’t care.

  “I love you,” I said to him.

  And then, I felt Maddy behind me.

  I can’t say how I knew she was there. I simply knew. She was standing behind me, where Constable Moores had been only a moment ago. I waited for the crackle of rage, the jolt of fear that always accompanied Maddy, but they did not come. Instead, I heard the quiet shuffle of bare feet on the floor.

  I looked back. It was agony to turn my head, and my puffed cheek obscured some of my vision. I saw bare feet, impossibly white, the hem of a simple serge skirt. My gaze traveled up to a cheap white blouse under a bolero jacket that I knew, with sudden certainty, had been the smartest thing she owned. She had worn her best jacket that day—to make an impression, she hoped, when she asked the women of Waringstoke for work.

  The face above the bolero jacket was young and elfin, under a mass of long, black hair that fell nearly to her waist. She watched me with big, dark eyes, her arms limp at her sides. I realized I could see, behind her, the open front door through her translucent skin.

  “Maddy,” I said softly. “Go.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me; she made no response for a long time. Finally she spoke, though I never saw her lips move. But it wasn’t the terrifying voice inside my head any longer. She sounded like a nineteen-year-old girl.

  “I didn’t want to,” she said, and her voice was an exhausted sigh. “I’m so tired.”

  “I know,” I told her. “Go.”

  I peeled my gaze away from her and turned back to Matthew. I was surprised to find his eyes were open again, and he had turned his head to watch Maddy.

  He brought his gaze back to me. �
��She’s gone.”

  I caught a flash of movement from the window, and when I looked up, I saw her briefly, walking away from the house. She was headed toward the woods, the wind lifting her long hair from its heavy place on her back. There was such a pretty sway to her walk, the way her arms swung carelessly, the way her hips moved. A pretty young woman, walking on a sunny day. As I watched, Constable Moores came from the other direction. Her elbow could have brushed his—he passed so close to her—but he passed her without turning his head, without seeing a thing. If he felt a shiver up his spine, he didn’t express it.

  I turned back to Matthew. “The constable will be back soon,” I said to his upturned face. “He said he’d bring a doctor.”

  “He got me in the back of the head with the butt of his gun. I nearly had him, though. I nearly did.”

  “I know.”

  He raised his hand to my cheek again. “He got you, too.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I said, and he laughed a little, then winced.

  He turned serious again. “Don’t tell them about Maddy.”

  “There’s nothing to say now.”

  His fingertips slid over my cheek. “Do you really love me?”

  I kissed the corner of his mouth again. “Yes.”

  We sat for a long moment, his cheek against mine, his hand still cradling my cheek. I felt his breath and knew I would feel every one, down the years, until I felt his last.

  “Good,” said Matthew finally. “That’s good.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Constable Moores wasn’t happy with any of it. We could tell. He tried his best to put the pieces together, this way and that, to implicate one of us, but he never managed it. Still, he always knew there was something he was missing, and that we somehow held the key.

  Tom Barry was dead. There were queer tracks outside the house, and even queerer ones at the edge of the woods—tracks that looked, to the police who saw them, like the twin lines of a man being dragged. But the angry half-moon marks of heels digging into the dirt indicated this was no unconscious body being dragged into the woods, but a live man, with a size 10 shoe, kicking and, quite possibly, screaming.