The Woman in Silk

by R. J. Gadney

  Very slowly, the light was drawn down as if from the wick stub of a paraffin storm lamp, its flickers elongating shadows of a crouching jungle predator ready to leap at his throat.

  He blinked and then, from his right, a new and savage light pierced his eyes and he opened his mouth in a silent scream.

  25

  He felt his breath sucked out of his lungs, his throat tightening, a violent pressure around his neck, his eyes pulled open forcing him to confront the travesty of a human face deformed by putrefaction.

  Hemispherical plastic cones with grated surfaces hid the oozing eyes in the ocular cavities. A thin trail of bloodied adhesive gel had been applied to the edge of the hanging eyelids. Its cheeks and lips had contracted; the membranous whiskered facial tissue scarred taut.

  Surgical thread had been stitched in a crisscross pattern through the base of the purple-and-black gums fastening the shrunken mouth open, fixing it in a monstrous grin that revealed teeth pared back to the roots of the protruding jaw, its point glistening with streaming mucus.

  He fought to control the spasms in his chest. His mind never did reveal exactly from which direction the wailing rose in chorus or the source of the immensely powerful light.

  The kaleidoscope of searing lightning slashed his eyes; its electric forks illuminating two women

  —in nurse’s cardigans: one bright red; one pale lilac

  —their short-sleeved dresses cut below the knee

  —with waist belts fastened by sparkling nickel-plated clasps

  —one dress bright white; one pale blue

  —both wore nurse’s shoes.

  Their eyes were wide open with looks of familiarity and knowing innocence.

  He fled the wailing, his knuckles striking the walls, oblivious to the grazes and the bruising, his legs leaden.

  The grating chorus grew louder, chasing him through the maze of twisting landings and passageways that became narrower until he reached the vertiginous and slippery flights of the backstairs that would take him to his room.

  Darkness faced him like a steel curtain. He was lost; held back by unresponsive muscles, restrained from escaping that hideous face and the demonic figures in close pursuit. He felt he’d spent all his energy.

  Dim light flickered across the bars of a grille ahead. He saw the nooses of padlocked ropes dangling from the diamond-patterned grille of the disused Waygood water hydraulic elevator. Suddenly, to his left and right, a pile of rusted bed frames blocked the corridor.

  He tried to heave them aside but the moment he gripped the nearest frame he overbalanced and his head crashed against the wall.

  Face-high a window hung open, the wind whipping melted snow across his face. He clutched the bars of the elevator doors in a desperate attempt to yank them open, to put the bars between him and the creature baying in the darkness like a hound excited by the scent of quarry, his arms shaking with such violence that the vibration dislodged a startled rat. The squirming creature spiraled squealing and kicking to the floor and vanished.

  26

  From a black hole, some gap of no return in deep space, the flashlight shone down the passage.

  Francesca hurried toward him.

  “You saw her?” she said.

  “I saw Teresa. I saw you.”

  “Mom’s not there, Hal. I wasn’t there either.”

  “I saw her. I saw you. A white dress, a red top … You were there … I saw both of you … and that vile, hideous thing. You were there. What the hell were you doing?”

  She stared at him with bewilderment. “I wasn’t doing anything. Please—let’s get out of here.”

  “You went to the gallery, Francesca.”

  “Only for a minute. Then I went to my room.”

  “Hand me your flashlight.”

  He shone it up and down her body. She was wearing a long-sleeved velour shirt over black pajamas. “When did you dress for bed?”

  “Just now. Then I heard you call out, went downstairs. The dog was yelping, wailing. It knows there’s something evil happening. I went through the hall and went up the staircase and, just for a second, I saw Priscilla —then I heard running footsteps. I thought it had to be you. But you’d vanished and I went around looking for you. Then I heard you screaming and shouting. Hal—please, do you mind? Stop your shaking. Stop holding your breath. Come back to the warmth.”

  “We’ll go to the kitchen,” he said.

  The whole way there she held on to him for dear life.

  “Shouldn’t we take a second look,” she said. “Shouldn’t we go back—put your mind at rest?”

  “Not too fast, Francesca. There are things I need to get straight with you.”

  “Stop it. I can’t stand this madness much longer.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  “The stress, Hal. It’s bad for you. I’ve got a whole lot of tranquilizers in our medicine cupboard. Stuff that’ll make you happier. Whatever.”

  “Brandy will do.”

  “One of us is … both of us are … seeing things.”

  He lowered his voice: “Before someone gets hurt, I want you to help me.”

  “You’ve only to ask. You see, I know things I can do to help you. Like Mom, I’m psychic.”

  “Then explain one or two things.” He nodded in the direction of the sideboard. “Tell me who tampered with that telephone.”

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “I’ve no idea. It was someone who could take the thing apart and then reassemble it. Who could do it surreptitiously so you and your mother wouldn’t know. Someone who could get in the house on their own without anyone knowing. Who has keys?”

  “Me. Mom. Mr. Warren. Perhaps Sophie Peach. Ryker. Perhaps his wife, Betsy. Dr. Mackle has a key. But I think he gave it back to Mom. Must have by now.”

  “Who would know whether he did or he didn’t?”

  “Mom. And Dr. Mackle would know, wouldn’t he? There may be others I don’t know of. People come go, Hal. Don’t they?”

  “Think hard, Francesca. Can you remember when the telephone stopped working?”

  “The day before yesterday. Perhaps the day before that even. I don’t remember. It has to have been a poltergeist. Or just a fault on the line to do with the snow and stuff.”

  “Someone disconnected it deliberately.”

  She sat rigid in her chair, then raised her hands in resignation. “I don’t know. Mom has a telepathic link she shares with spirits. You should ask her.”

  “Bloody right I’ll ask her. There’s another thing. Outside the kitchen here is a cupboard full of old newspapers, shoe-cleaning gear and do-it-yourself junk. I took a look inside it and found an envelope addressed to me. A brown envelope—you know what I’m talking about?”

  “No.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Please. I don’t.”

  He remembered that he’d been carrying his jacket with the envelope inside it when he’d climbed the Gothic staircase. He must have dropped it there.

  “Spirits move things,” she said. “They can help you find things. They can tell you where things are. They must have been trying to help you find the photographs.”

  Photographs? So she knew the envelope contained photographs. She must have either seen them herself or Teresa had told her about the contents.

  However tempting it was to ask her straight, he decided not to point out her slip of the tongue. She might, or might not, know what was in the envelope. She must surely have been party to its removal from his room. “I have to tell you, Francesca that I never found my cell phone or its charger. I left it in here.”

  “So you said and I don’t know what happened to it.”

  “You’re as white as a sheet. Are you feeling all right?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t blame you for feeling terrible. I do too. Are you up to talking about it a bit more?”

  “About what?”

  “About the face.”

 
“Your mother’s face?”

  “It wasn’t my mother’s face, Francesca. She’s dead and buried. That was an apparition, a delusion, phantom. Hallucination. Spirit. Call it what you like. My mother’s dead.”

  “Listen to me, Hal. What I know is that The Towers has been taken over by tragedies. Your mother said she and your father fought a bloody war for years against the evil. They sacrificed themselves. They gave up their lives for the struggle with demons. It was in their blood to be soldiers of the spirit. People don’t come here voluntarily.”

  “You did.”

  “Because Mom and me are shielded from the spirits. Otherwise Priscilla would never have employed us in a month of Sundays. There were plenty of other applicants for the job of caring for her. Not one of them would take it. Your mother said they went away fearful. Don’t tell me you aren’t haunted by the memories that live here. You’ve heard the noises, you saw your mother’s face and she’s not the only one stalking the darkness. The spirits live and breathe in the empty rooms, imprisoned with locks and keys and chains. In the basements. In the attics. In the Great Bell Tower. In the Turkish baths. The Chapel and the Crypt. Everywhere. They possess the place and no one’s disturbed them in years. Not until now, Hal. Not until you came here to take possession of The Towers. Up until you arrived here everything was peace and quiet. Everything was in control. And now Priscilla’s passed over there’s no one to control them except you. The power is in your genes and blood and in your mind.”

  “Then tell me, frankly, why on earth did you agree to come here? … Surely the atmosphere alone must have chilled you from the very start?”

  “Why do people do anything? For the money, Hal. And because Mom and I can deal with what’s happening here. You have to understand why. The spirits respect us. That’s what it’s about, Hal. Respect. All they need is to feel somebody wants to communicate with them. That there’s someone on earth who will love and understand. And that, if you don’t already know it, is what life’s about, isn’t it? Loving and understanding our fellow beings.”

  “Then how do you explain that monstrous thing at the top of the stairs?”

  “What we saw together, you and me, explains itself. Nightmares spring from evil truth within us, see? Priscilla, God rest her, appeared to you because you don’t respect her spirit. Listen to me, you may think she isn’t your mother. You and me, we know she is, don’t we? If you refuse to admit her in your head and heart … then she’ll come at you again and again, until you respect her living soul. So don’t you resist her anymore. Work through it. And, swear to God, you’ll find the peace you crave.”

  “Why are you talking to me like this?”

  “Because it’s my job. You must share your innermost feelings. You aren’t alone, Hal. You’ve a long walk ahead of you and I’ll be with you always. And something else. You’ve grown too used to telling others what to do in the Army and all. To having everything your own way. It’s time you listened to your inner voices. Time you tuned in to others and yourself. If you don’t, the pain will get much worse. Look at you. Your face … all twisted up. You’re so … taut, I mean, you’re taut in mind and body. You’re grieving. You’re hurting. Grief’s an extreme emotion … and extreme emotion causes us to hallucinate and lose our fragile hold on real life. That’s why you need nursing. Professional nursing and tender loving care. You need pampering. Cosseting. By Mom and by me.” She rose to her feet slowly and looked at him with tenderness. “I’ll see you to your room. Make you comfy.”

  “I want to go back to the staircase.”

  “And say goodnight to Mother?”

  “To see if that thing’s still there, Francesca.”

  “She’ll have gone.”

  “Let’s check. I’m going to take a look—”

  The sound of the Hofmeier UhrenFabrik chiming clock banging out XII startled him.

  She shook her head. “You want to go there alone?”

  “I’d rather you came too.”

  “Aren’t you frightened about what you might see?”

  “It’s what I can’t see that scares me.”

  “You mean what’s in your head.”

  “I mean what’s out there waiting for us.”

  27

  Beams from his flashlight sparkled across the puddles of grimy melted sleet. All gone. Vanished into thin air. Neither his mother nor his jacket with the photographs was there. Their absence reinforced the terror he’d felt standing on the staircase so short a time ago.

  “Here,” he said. “This is where I saw it.”

  “Me too. She’s only gone because you’ve returned to bear witness.”

  “She’s gone, Francesca, because she was never here in the first place.”

  “She’s here, Hal. Almighty God didn’t give us eyes so that we might be deceived. He gave us eyes that we might see. You and me. We’re no different from anyone else.”

  “Where’s my jacket, then?”

  “God knows. How do I know what you did with it?”

  “I know what I did with it, for Christ’s sake. I dropped it. It’s here somewhere.”

  “But it isn’t now, is it, Hal?”

  She was right. The jacket had vanished.

  “C’mon, Francesca. You took it, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I didn’t take it. Why would I? I never saw it here. I last saw it in the kitchen, didn’t I? What is it you want to hear me say?”

  “I want to hear you tell me everything you did after you left the kitchen. You went to the gallery—”

  “I’ve told you,” she broke in. “I went to see The Light of the World.”

  He took her by the hand. “Show me the route you took.”

  She pointed at the Gothic staircase behind them, its long sweep curving into the darkness across the hall below. “I came up the stairs to where we’re standing now,” she said. “Then I turned left—here. Follow me and I’ll show you …”

  They walked along the passage, through a heavy wooden doorway and entered the main gallery, passing picture after picture: darkened Stirling ancestral portraits: a poor Franz Xaver Winterhalter of Queen Victoria and another, its companion piece, of Prince Albert; minor Pre-Raphaelites: Leighton, Windus, Hughes and Sandys, Waterhouse and Alma-Tadema.

  She suddenly let his hand drop, walked ahead of him and broke into a run.

  He heard her let out a strangled sob.

  “No. I knew it. LOOK …”

  *

  The beam from her flashlight shone directly into the face of Christ. Rivulets of water were running down His face.

  “Look,” she said. “He’s weeping,”

  “It’s only gutter water running down the glass.”

  “Jesus is weeping. Jesus wept … it’s written.”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. The shortest verse in the Bible. ‘Jesus wept.’ Now come away.”

  “Don’t you believe your eyes?”

  “It’s cold, Francesca. And there’s a whole lot of nasty water on the roofs. And the attic’s waterlogged. The ceiling plaster’s sodden. It could collapse any moment. So let’s just get away before things gets worse.”

  Far below his bedroom, the Hofmeier UhrenFabrik clock chimed I.

  Francesca had brought candles to his room and they sat watching the contorted shadows play across the walls. She sat on his bed curled up in the silk eiderdown. Hal paced slowly around the room.

  “Your Japanese woman,” she said, “she isn’t going to come here, is she?”

  “She has a name. Sumiko. And she’s coming with her daughter Yukio.”

  Francesca looked pained.

  “I’m going to make the place as comfortable as I can for them,” he said. “And I’d like you to help me.”

  “They mustn’t come here.”

  “You try and stop them.”

  “You must stop them. I’ve told you—you need peace and quiet and loving care.”

  “Which is what they’ll give me. Neither you nor Teresa has any right to make me chan
ge my mind.”

  “Your mind is what we care about. You must let us heal it. Think of what the future has in store for you.”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “You do, Hal, The Towers. The Towers is your future. It’s your past, your present and your future. Without you—it’s nothing, is it? What might happen to this place if you weren’t here to love and care for it? If you were to—?”

  “—die? If and when I die, you mean—what then?”

  “What then?” she echoed quietly.

  And he remembered what Warren had said. Word for word: “… should you die without an heir or a spouse The Towers and the estate pass jointly to them in their entirety …”

  “What do you imagine,” he asked, “will happen then?”

  “Who knows?” she said.

  “Has your mother ever discussed your future with you?” he asked.

  “I’m an adult. I can see the future. God may have wounded me but He’s merciful. He allows me to see the path of life ahead. You must let me teach you how to trust in Him. You will see His way. Come to me, Hal. Come to Francesca. Let me massage your neck.”

  “Some other time. You’d better get to bed.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t be alone. Please, Hal. Mom will be back here in the morning. Then everything will be back to normal. Be gentle with me. If you don’t mind, please, I’d like to stay here with you, just for tonight. Please.”

  “If you must. I’ll stay up.”

  “You need your beauty sleep too.”

  “I need to find out what’s going on. I’m not sleeping until it’s daylight.”

  “I’ll stay awake with you.”

  “You do what you like.”

  “You need your medication. It helps you sleep.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ll take it later. Look, I’ve told you, I’m staying on sentry watch. You sleep if you like.”

  “I know I can help you. I’ll keep watch over you.”

  “I’m fine. Just let me get on with my life, okay?”