by Krista Wolf
She picked up her pace, keeping her eyes on the mist. She could smell it now; an electric smell. A wet, ozone-like scent that reminded her of walking around after a thunderstorm.
Melody looked up again. She blinked her eyes, but could barely make things out anymore. As the last of the figures faded into the grey, she stopped walking. Only she and Eric remained.
“Where’d they go?” she asked in wonderment.
Eric shrugged. He was staring into the mist.
“Eric, I said—”
“I don’t know, okay?” he snapped. He wasn’t angry though. He looked more confused than anything. Even… frustrated.
He knows… but he doesn’t know.
It was an impression she got. A reading. And it was probably right. Melody decided to back off. She glanced around, and suddenly realized they were standing in the middle of something.
“Is this the Veranda garden?”
Eric shook his head solemnly.
“Then where… what...”
She looked again, and then she saw. Small, faded stones jutting up from the earth. Some rounded, some squared off. Some even broken, like stained white teeth.
“Oh my God!”
Eric nodded his head. He looked suddenly uncomfortable.
“This is Evermoore’s graveyard.”
27
A chill shot through her as Melody stepped barefoot among the ancient tombstones. The earth felt soft and spongy here. It could’ve also just been her imagination.
“Why would they come here?” she asked Eric. “And where did they go?”
She could tell he knew little more than she did. They stood together for a moment, looking from stone to stone. Unconsciously Melody found herself reading the names of the deceased. Their epitaphs. Inscriptions from loved ones.
And all the while… keeping a sharp eye on the living, breathing mist.
“I see dates from the 1720’s,” she said. “Up to the middle of the 1800’s.”
Eric nodded. “This is place is old,” he said. “It predates the manor.”
After a minute or two of looking, Melody stumbled on a series of fresh prints. Multiple footprints, from people in a group.
“They went this way,” she said. “Over here.”
She walked softly, picking her way through the graveyard. Trying not to step on ‘people’, but not exactly doing a very good job of it. There were just too many stones, set at too irregular of angles. Some were missing too, yet in those spots Melody could tell that someone was obviously buried.
“Here. They were standing right here, and—”
Melody’s voice died in her throat. She was looking down at a single stone, a newer stone. One that was only recently set into the earth:
SANFORD
Beneath the surname were two first names, one on each side of the arched tombstone:
ANABELLE & EMILY
Oct 21 1811 — Apr 18 1840
Jan 2 1831 — Feb 11 1840
Melody’s heart ached. She thought of the little girl, missing from the table last night. Of her mother, all forlorn and despondent.
“It’s them, isn’t it?”
Eric said nothing, and his silence was wholly unnerving. There wasn’t a single sound from any direction. There wasn’t even any wind.
“How can this be?” she asked. “These dates are months apart. And I just saw them! We just saw them!”
She backed away from the stone, but never took her eyes from it. The whole time, Melody kept thinking she’d find a mistake. That the names or the dates would change. They never did.
“I… I don’t get…”
The ozone smell was back in her nostrils, and now it was stronger than ever. Melody stiffened as she realized she’d backed up against the wall of mist. It was just behind her now. Roiling. Surging…
“Don’t move,” said Eric.
She didn’t. She was absolutely terrified.
“Don’t even breat—”
Her companion stopped, mid-sentence. His eyes dropped downward, somewhere around her breasts. “Look! Your pendant!”
The jewel around her neck was glowing. It gave off a deep blue light, and with it, a distinct warmth.
Melody took a step forward, away from the mist. As she did, Eric took a step nearer to her.
“W—What’s it doing?” she asked fearfully. The pendant was even warmer now. Almost uncomfortably hot. “Why is doing that?”
“Let me see it,” said Eric.
He held out his hand.
Mechanically Melody reached behind her head and began unslinging the gold chain from around her neck. Halfway through she stopped.
“Here,” Eric shook his hand impatiently. “Give it to me. Let me see.”
Remembering Xiomara, she dropped her arms back at her sides.
“No.”
His expression changed instantly. It went from wide-eyed fascination to something more sinister, even venomous.
“Melody let me see it. I want to—”
“NO,” she said again. “I’m not taking it off.”
He took another two steps, very quickly, one after the other. She gasped as she realized she was trapped between him and the mist.
“Listen to me,” he said evenly. “You’re handing me that pendant.”
His jaw was clenched and he was talking through his teeth. The look in his eye was almost murderous.
“You don’t even know what—”
Eric stopped abruptly and whirled as a something else stepped into view. Melody looked up and saw a figure — tall and broad. A figure who moved incredibly fast.
“Get back to the house,” Lucus told her, stepping between them. Though he was talking to Melody, he never took his eyes off of Eric.
“Now!”
28
She wanted to say something. To stand beside Lucus, and help him fight if need be. But there was something in the smith’s expression that told her she shouldn’t. A little voice inside her head, screaming for her to listen.
Slowly she backed away.
The house was barely visible now. The mist seemed to be closing in on all sides. Squinting hard Melody could just make it out, looming from a great blanket of swirling grey. She ran hard again across the soft wet earth, clutching the pendant that dangled from her neck. Resisting the urge to look back at the men squared off behind her.
She reached the Veranda, then circled around the front of the manor. The double doors were closed, but not locked. Melody swung them open and burst inside, somehow still conscious she’d be tracking dirt and mud all over the beautiful oaken floors.
One look around told her she didn’t have to worry.
The house was an absolute wreck.
Everything inside the manor was either broken or blackened. Shattered into pieces, or left in a complete state of disrepair.
Melody’s mouth dropped open in shock. The once-magnificent foyer was a mess of debris. The staircase looked absolutely treacherous; aside from shredded carpet and jagged holes in the stair risers, half the banister was missing. Melody walked the first floor, room by room. It was like being in a dream. Only it wasn’t a dream, it was reality, and the reality was exactly as Lucus had predicted it would be.
Something happened to this place.
Whatever it was, it was happening now.
Something terrible that happens again and again, and it can never be stopped…
Melody spun around, taking it all in. The inside of the manor was somehow darker than ever. Outside, through one of the windows, she could see the sun had already gone down.
“That’s impossible,” she said aloud. “It’s not even noon yet!”
Half the windows were broken. The air had taken on a humidity that made the place smell like rot. Everywhere she looked she saw swollen wood. Disjointed paneling. Wallpaper peeling away in long curls, from the darkened, moldy walls.
Voices floated in, from somewhere off to her left — people talking in low tones, speaking words she couldn’t ma
ke out. Melody willed her feet to move in that direction. Cautiously she went to them, not knowing what to expect.
The dining hall.
She peeked inside, afraid to go in. Supper was being served again, as it always had been. And just like the rest of the house, everything had changed…
The man at the head of the table was old now, his hair gone completely white. He looked positively venerable. His back was bent, his face contorted with pain. He presided over an empty table, with virtually no food at all.
The Colonel was gone. His seat sat empty. In his place, his hat rested on the table in his honor, right where his plate would be.
Anabelle and Emily’s seats were of course vacant, as was the old woman’s. But the most profound change was in the banker. Thin wisps of hair were combed over his flaky scalp, and beneath that, two dark, sunken eyes. All of his excess weight was gone. His body now appeared so thin and wasted, his suit hung off him like it was draped over a skeleton.
What little dishes there were appeared pale and wilted. Some of the entrees even looked rotten. The young boy Melody had spoken to only two nights ago was now full-grown man, picking at a small plate of shriveled potatoes. None of them spoke. They barely even looked at each other.
The only person in the room who looked the same was Miles. Still seated at the end of the table, he raised his head slowly and looked straight into Melody’s eyes. She saw nothing but despair in his two silver orbs. A profound, unending sorrow. Melody frowned sympathetically. She bit her lip in frustration, then forced herself to look away.
Upstairs. The egg…
Missing from supper, as always, was Lady Neveux. If she was still in the house — hell, if she were even still alive — now would be the time to find her.
Melody fled from the dining hall, sprinting back into the foyer and taking the staircase as fast as she dared. This time she ignored the second floor completely. Continuing onward, past the manor’s ever-blackening walls, she gained the third floor landing and stopped with her hands on her knees, huffing and puffing.
The hallways were especially dark up here. Dank and musty. Melody tread through them barefoot, trying not to step on anything sharp or painful.
She thought about Eric, and about how everything Lucus said about her companion had been true. However long he’d been here, his goal wasn’t the egg. All along, it had been her.
More specifically, her pendant.
The Heart of Isolomara had stopped glowing the moment she stepped away from the mist. She wished it glowed now. She could use the heat, and the light as well. As it was, Melody could barely see anything.
A strong odor reached her nostrils. It was a familiar scent, musky and pungent and foul.
The smell from the hallway…
She continued more slowly. Each door she passed was open, leading into virtual darkness. Barely any moonlight penetrated the chambers up here. The windows were mostly broken, the curtains flapping wildly through the jagged, glass-strewn openings.
But no people. No occupants. Only beds, and bedrooms, empty and forgotten.
The smell grew stronger, then stronger still. As she reached the last opening in the hallway, Melody found the door closed… but not locked.
Her hand shook as she turned the knob. It creaked beneath her knuckles. The sound it made was shrill and violating, even though muffled by her trembling fingers.
Slowly the door squeaked opened, revealing a darkness more absolute than anything else in the manor house. But there was something there. Something set against the opposite wall, at the far end of the chamber.
Melody’s heart pounded wildly as she stepped inside.
29
Nothing could’ve prepared her for the sight in the last bedroom. Or the smell, either.
The room itself was larger than the others, and this one actually had stuff in it. Wall to wall, it was filled with bookcases and tables. All of them were filled with trinkets and knick-knacks, too. Ancient tomes with fading, moldy spines. Sculptures of glass and marble and wood, along with unknown items of brass and bronze.
Three candles were lit from a single sconce near a large, four-poster bed. At first the bed seemed empty. Yellow and stained, a series of crumpled up blankets lay discarded in the center.
Melody took another step forward, then covered her mouth with both hands and gasped.
The blankets weren’t blankets.
They were a person.
The thing in the center of the bed — and by now it certainly was a thing — looked only vaguely humanoid in appearance. It was emaciated and dessicated. Curled up in a vaguely fetal position, its wrists and ankles were bent at horrible, terrible angles that could speak only of pain and agony.
Then the thing moved, and Melody lost it.
She turned to one side and retched, right onto the floor. Her stomach was empty. It was more a dry heave than anything else. But the smell…
The whole chamber smelled of urine and feces and… and of something else. Something foul and wretched that just didn’t belong.
There’s a sickness here.
It was awful, but it was truth. And Melody knew it was true… somehow without even knowing, without even reading the thing on the bed.
A terrible, damnable sickness…
She covered her mouth instinctively. It did nothing for the smell. Whatever it was had seeped into every corner of the room.
What the—
The thing moved again. Shifted uncomfortably on the surface of the sour linens. And then Melody saw it on the night table, right next to the bed; a small, intricate stand. Carved from something, ivory perhaps. A four-legged stand that would hold an object that would have be rounded. An object somewhere around eight or ten inches tall…
Her eyes scanned the room frantically. Searching. Looking…
It has it.
The idea frightened her more than anything else since she’d arrived. More than the thing in the hallway. More than her nightmare…
It’s holding it. Clutching it…
She forced herself to look at the thing on the bed. The thing she somehow knew was a person. A woman.
The thing that once been Lady Neveux.
It took her another full minute to approach the bed. Even afterward, her body steadfastly refused to move.
“A—Are you okay?”
The question was rhetorical. Of course the thing in the bed wasn’t okay. Still, she had to ask it. She had to know if the Lady of the House was unconscious or alert. Comatose or delirious or—
It shifted again. This time in her direction.
Melody covered her mouth with her hand again. It was all she could do. A profound sadness came over her, the idea that this poor thing… this woman could be left here like this. Abandoned by the rest of the house. Confined to her room like some sort of animal, the whole time she was here.
She noticed a crystal decanter next to the bed, half-filled with water. Melody reached for it. Her hands still trembling, she extended her arm outward in a gesture… an offering…
“Lady Neveux,” she said.
The thing shifted again, even more this time. It almost half sat up.
“Please, take some water. You have to be thirsty.”
Melody tried to ignore the smell. Or the fact that the water she was holding already had some kind of film or scum formed over the top of the meniscus. She sloshed it around a bit. Extended her arm even more.
“Are you able to—”
An eye blinked open. She caught its face.
OH MY GOD…
Lady Neveux’s skin was stretched over her cheekbones so tightly it had actually cracked. Sores covered her face, open pustules that ran red beneath a cheesy, white substance. It was gruesome. The apogee of unimaginable pain.
The creature on the bed opened its mouth and screamed in what could only be horrific agony. Melody gasped, but still held the decanter. Her entire arm was shaking. She grit her teeth… just as the creature pushed itself up on one arm and reached o
ut for her.
The old woman’s hand was a shriveled claw. The skin had pulled back long ago from her yellowed fingernails, creating even more cracks and wounds that were terrible to behold. She was almost touching the decanter now. Melody leaned forward, bringing it to just within her reach…
Tears streamed down Melody’s face. She was crying openly. Lady Neveux’s corpse-like fingers closed around the vessel, her lips spreading — no, cracking open — in anticipation of bringing the water to her mouth.
Suddenly the door burst open. It had swung closed behind her, but now it banged so violently into the opposite wall Melody heard the wood actually splinter. Startled, she allowed the decanter of water to slip from her hand. It slipped through Lady Neveux’s mummified grasp too, then dropped to the floor and shattered into a thousand crystalline pieces.
Melody whirled in a mixture of terror and disappointment. Then she screamed.
Eric stood in the doorway, his chest heaving with the exertion of having just run up two flights of stairs.
Head to toe, he was covered in blood.
30
Melody put her back to the wall as her ex-companion approached. She began looking around the room for something — anything at all — she could use as a weapon, a distraction, whatever.
Eric’s attention, on the other hand, was focused solely on her. He advanced on her without warning, making a beeline straight for her.
“Give me the pendant,” he snarled. “NOW!”
The blood streaming down his face was his own — Melody could see what looked to be a deep gash somewhere over his left eye. The blood on his arms however, belonged to someone else. Her stomach lurched as she thought of Lucus. Of him lying out near the graveyard, badly hurt or bleeding or even worse.
Eric reached for her, and she scrambled over the bed. There was enough room to avoid the mummified figure of Lady Neveux. One bad step, one wrong move and she could’ve fallen on the woman. Maybe snapped an arm or even a leg as easily as a dry twig.
