The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  “A phantom that wants me to believe it has power over me. But we won’t let it win,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.

  My father stared at me. “You’re very brave.”

  I blushed. “Well—”

  And then Father turned to Jonathon, his eyes cold, and he surprised me with his vehemence: “And this is all your fault. If you care for her, Lord Denbury, you should leave her well enough alone. The magic began with you. Your curse. Your entrance into our lives has nearly cost my daughter hers.”

  I moved to stand between them, my heart in my throat. My voice failed me. There was a terrible silence.

  “I understand your concern, Mr. Stewart,” Jonathon said quietly, swallowing hard. “I’m not sure what I can say in my defense. If you think keeping my distance will help her…”

  “No,” I mumbled. I couldn’t lose Jonathon. Not now. He was my light, my angel.

  “You have to see it’s for the best,” Father said. “Perhaps some time away—”

  “Father, you don’t understand,” I protested. “We’re wrapped up in this together.”

  “And I will extricate you from it!” Father bellowed. “You have no more say in the matter, Natalie. You are not yet independent.”

  Tears fell from my eyes. Jonathon stared at the floor.

  Father took a deep breath, calming himself. “I’m not saying permanently, but there must be time away. Time to heal. Time for Lord Denbury to solve his own mess. Not you.”

  “He’s right, Natalie,” Jonathon said with sad realization. “You’re too close. Everyone around me has suffered. I should never have drawn all of you in. The demon could be using you to gain his revenge on me, and I will not have you suffer any more. Surely you will be safer if I go.”

  Jonathon turned and disappeared into Mr. Northe’s study before he could think twice, and my heart went with him, leaving me hollow inside.

  Father took me home for dinner. I held back any further tears and didn’t say a word. It was like I had no voice again. He filled the silence nervously, talking about nothing in particular. More than once he mentioned “Evelyn” and her thoughts on the various exhibition possibilities.

  I glared at him, rising. “You realize, Father, that if Lord Denbury hadn’t come into our lives, you’d never have become close to Evelyn Northe. So you’d best extricate yourself from her, too,” I said, turning on my heel, and I went to my room.

  “I love you and I’m scared for you, Natalie,” he called after me. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I slammed my door.

  The last thing on earth I wanted to do was sleep. How could I rest if I wasn’t sure which was safer, reality or dreams? Now that I was entirely on my own.

  Chapter 23

  After a restless night—but thankfully without any further horrors—I was awoken by breakfast in bed. All my favorites: eggs, juice, and pumpernickel toast. Father sat at my desk.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer but dove into the eggs. I was starving. Recent events had done quite a disservice to my appetite. I thought about Jonathon and ached, my stomach rebelling.

  “Come with me to the Metropolitan today.”

  “No. I’ll go to Maggie’s house today,” I managed. “It’s her calling hours.”

  “Are you sure? She was…unhinged when last we saw her.”

  “She’s confused. Mrs. Northe doesn’t tell her anything. That’s the problem. It’s made Maggie even more curious than she needs to be. She thinks I’ve taken her place. Maybe if I try to be a good friend to her, she’ll see sense.” I glared at Father again. “And if you won’t let me see Jonathon, then I need some kind of friend.”

  Father sighed and went to the door. “Just…don’t be alone anywhere. Not with a…curse over your head or whatever.”

  “I’ll try, but you know who I’d be safer with? Jonathon,” I declared, shutting the door on him. Father just didn’t understand. We were a team, and that’s what enemies wanted, for teams to splinter so the teammates could be picked off one by one.

  Getting dressed into one of the finer dresses Mrs. Northe had given me, I began to wonder if I had the strength or patience to visit with Maggie and try to talk her down from whatever delusions about Jonathon she still believed.

  Could I ever forgive Maggie for the advances upon Jonathon? I wondered if she could help it. Obsession did strange things to people. I had to be the better person, but my heart ached. The uncertainty of when I’d see Jonathon again, if Father ever let us be together, was its own terrible pain.

  I looked in the mirror and saw Miss Rose. I was in a light, rose-colored gown. Putting the rose perfume behind my ears, I wondered if I was bringing on bad luck by embodying our code word for distress.

  If Mrs. Hathorn was taken aback by my unexpected and uninvited house-call, she didn’t appear so. She was exceedingly well put together in a cream day gown, as if she simply sat about the house in a perpetual state of expecting company.

  “Why, Miss Stewart—”

  “Natalie!” Maggie cried and threw her arms around me. I never knew when she wanted me to be her friend or when she wanted to insult me.

  “Mother, we’re taking tea to my room,” she said.

  She handed me a cup and saucer of the finest bone china, and I followed her upstairs. She hadn’t let me into her private quarters before, so perhaps she had gossip to share. More likely, she wanted to get gossip out of me.

  Her room was finely appointed, as I had expected. But it had taken on a flair of abandon. Scarves and fabric were draped everywhere; golden trinkets were lying about; and she’d taken over one wall with an elaborate chalk mural of colored lines swirling around a great eye, dragon wings on either side of it. I found it unsettling.

  “Did you draw that?” I asked.

  “Yes, do you like it?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  Even though the day was summer, the room was cold. I felt itchy. There was a distant buzzing sound, a low drone, like a swarm of bees.

  “Maggie, I just wanted to explain.”

  “I hoped you would.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you the truth. But please take care.”

  “Finally.”

  “It is Lord Denbury.”

  “I knew it was.”

  “Maggie, listen. The nature of his situation is so delicate that I don’t entirely understand what’s going on.”

  “Because you don’t understand that I’ve brought him to life!”

  “Maggie, no, I don’t think it works like that.”

  “Why, just because Auntie says it doesn’t? What does she know, really? What does she care about us?” Maggie’s voice was calm yet pleading. There was a truth in that. My head felt a bit foggy. All my nerves that had rubbed raw in regards to Mrs. Northe flared up.

  “Where is she, anyway?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t know. She’s gone. Left me to face something really dreadful,” I said, my tongue thick. “She makes you feel like you need her…”

  “Then she’s gone.”

  Mrs. Northe. She craved to be all things and everything to us, drawing us in so she could save us, a magnificent actress as mother and friend and usurper of my home, of my father’s attention. Always a little too sensible, a little too perfect, and we were far too beholden to her. We were all her special orphans. And look where that got us.

  A foreign anger flared any number of anxieties within me. The exterior drone grew louder.

  “She’s not my mother,” I spat. “Our mother. She can’t swoop in every time and play one. Not to me, not to Jonathon, Rachel, all of us ‘poor little lost children’ beset by demons, and she the vanquishing angel. I wonder if she brings bad luck upon us just to come boldly to our rescue. She could’ve done right by you, Maggie, but I don’t think you’re tragic enough for her,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words like venom. Maggie seemed as taken aback by my outburst as I was, but thrilled. “I’m
sorry,” I murmured. “I’m not feeling too well all of a sudden.”

  “That’s okay,” Maggie laughed. “I just appreciate that for once you’re being honest with me.”

  I laughed wearily. “I’m not sure about the truth anymore, really. Do you hear that? It’s like whispers.”

  Oh, no. Was the magic coming for me again? I had to warn Maggie. She wouldn’t know what to do. She bit her lip, her eyes sparkling at me.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” Maggie asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I stole something. Something really important. I’ve been dying to show it to someone, but I’m scared I’ll get in trouble.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you want to see?” she asked, bouncing a bit in her chair.

  “Sure,” I said. Maybe that’s why she’d been acting strangely. She’d stolen something and was worried about repercussions. Maggie moved to her closet door.

  “You’re really sure? You promise not to tell anyone—”

  “Of course.”

  The drone grew louder. It was chanting. Maggie opened her closet door, and a scream lodged in my throat.

  I could hardly have wished that sight upon anyone, and I’d seen it with my own eyes. But to see it again so horribly reconstructed…

  I was too stunned to say anything. I could only stare at the open door and what hung at the back of the empty closet.

  It was the painting.

  The portrait that had imprisoned Jonathon’s soul within it. Maggie had removed all her clothing from the closet, and only he remained, with an altar at his feet.

  There was the golden frame, slightly askew. There were the long strips of canvas. Upon release from his painted prison, Jonathon had torn them apart. But now they were side by side again. Maggie had recreated the canvas as best she could. And the subject of the portrait was the terrible, monstrous visage that had been swapped out when Jonathon regained himself, his life, his body.

  Below the frame on the floor, Maggie had erected a disturbing shrine. Powder outlined in a pentagram pattern, similar to the symbol she’d made at the museum. I’d been taught that right side up, the pentagram was an omen of protection. But upside down, it could be devilish. There was a candelabrum where candles had been lit, at long hours clearly, for red wax had dripped everywhere in what looked like frozen, bloody strings. Stones were placed in small clumps. Dead flowers were strewn about. Was that a bird’s skull in the corner?

  “What do you think?” Maggie breathed. “Isn’t it wonderful what I’ve done? It’s almost back to normal.”

  No wonder Maggie thought she’d brought Lord Denbury to life. She thought she’d cast an elaborate spell to draw him out. But didn’t she recognize that a charred gargoyle of a nightmare masque stared out from the painting, no longer a handsome lord but a monster in a fine suit? It would have been comical if it weren’t so grotesque. The paint was peeling, and there was an odd moisture on the strips that had been carefully tacked together and placed back upon the frame with meticulous care. The elaborate production revealed the deeper seeds of Maggie’s unraveling mind. Had someone helped her down this darker path, or by seeking it, had she led the darkness directly to herself?

  I stepped forward. Did it move? Did I see the beast’s long, gray-clawed finger move?

  “Natalie, say something,” Maggie whispered. “What? What do you think?”

  I could hear it. The demon. He was in my head and around my ears.

  The whispers were all around me, like a swarm of biting, stinging, hissing insects. Just like my dreams. The dark magic was calling to me. It knew I was there.

  Its fingers did move! Beckoning. But then they clenched into a fist.

  “I thought I was done with this!” I whimpered.

  “What do you mean?” Maggie asked defensively. Jealously.

  But no, we were never done. There was always something else. There would always be another issue. Then another. That’s how it was with people like us. We were really just game pieces. My vision darkened. I felt itchy. Though all the windows were open, it was warm. Too warm. And I was so angry. My edgy nerves crackled like the sparks of spirits down wires of reanimation.

  “I mean,” I said slowly, “that I’ve been face to face with this once before.”

  Maggie’s door slammed shut of its own accord. It was just her. And me. And the remains of the portrait. And that was when it tried to kill me.

  Chapter 24

  The windows of Maggie’s room all slammed shut. The gas lamps that had been burning high and bright to banish the shadow of the room guttered entirely, plunging the room into wan, gray light. I tried to cry out, but my voice was cut to the quick. My voice, so often strong for others, proved weak when serving only me.

  Maggie screamed. “Natalie, what are you doing? Stop it…Stop it.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” I managed to choke out.

  The hissing murmurs surged again, crashing over me like a wave dragging me under. My arms seared with pain. Blood pooled on my wrists and wetted the lace cuffs of my sleeves as I was again marked and mauled by the magic. The furniture of Maggie’s room shook.

  The frame began to glow. The runes carved into the wood pulsed with light and angry power, like a lit heartbeat. My skin throbbed in rhythmic pain. I tried to turn, to move, to run, but I was frozen in place, staring in horror as the eyes of the beast on the canvas began to glow. All the rest of him was peeling, but his eyes were sulfuric fires. I could feel bile rise as I choked, an unseen hand clamping around my throat.

  All of this had been foretold in dreams.

  I’d been so focused on Jonathon, Samuel, Rachel, and Preston, on that hospital corridor, that I hadn’t given my original foe much thought. I hadn’t thought what really might wish revenge upon me. Its magic was still fresh and fed by the ignorance of Maggie; it had grown powerful by her doting. This foe knew me. It remembered me, wanted me dead…

  “Hello, pretty,” came a horrid voice, half in my mind, half a whisper outside my ear, and any sense of reality slipped away.

  “Lord Denbury?” Maggie asked meekly.

  The shredded portrait shifted, its subject stepping forward, and as he did, the room faded, blackening to one long corridor where the essence of the demon, a dark silhouette that appeared more like a grotesque moving statue than a human, took his dreaded steps toward me. Maggie hovered somewhere on the edge of my vision. My nightmares shifted into reality, or perhaps I simply lost my mind.

  “Lord Denbury, come to me,” Maggie called. “It’s me. I’m the one that’s brought you back.”

  But the demon only had eyes for me. It approached slowly, time stretching into something malleable.

  “This is how I come upon the helpless, little girl,” it growled, “and always have in my turns around this globe that have made me what I am. This corridor lives alongside you. You and everyone. I wait for a door, a window, a path to open onto you, and that’s where I take over. The helpless and the poor in spirit are ever easy to overcome.” It turned a skeletal head toward Maggie, snorting derisively.

  Blasphemy. My mind screamed, though I could make no audible sound, my voice failing me as I gasped. No. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

  “What are you saying?” Maggie cried, reaching out toward the demon. “Natalie, tell him to look at me. Show him what I’ve done for him!” Her voice was that of a hurt child. And then she turned vicious. “Why is it you?” she shrieked. “Why is it always you, Natalie? What makes you so special?”

  The demon lifted one shadowy arm and backhanded Maggie so hard that she flew across the room and slumped like a rag doll. I prayed she was still alive. She was stupid and deluded, but it was just like the Society to prey on the vulnerable. And goodness if Maggie hadn’t given food for the demon. Still, she didn’t deserve this. Neither did I.

  I renounce thee. I tried to say the words. I couldn’t. But the words, even in my mind, caused frissons of light, like spider-
silk thin veins of lightning to thread down around me. A sliver of hope, perhaps? Where was my angel now? Jonathon, my mind screamed.

  The demon’s coal black eyes burned in the back of their sockets with yellowish hellfire. This thing was misery and the worst of humanity made solid.

  I struggled to move, to breathe. I was not as helpless as it thought I was. I’d proven that once, but it knew I was scared. And the first time, I’d had the advantage of surprise. My preoccupation and my pride had underestimated what might still live in the scraps of the painting, lying in wait.

  Why has everyone abandoned me? Where was Jonathon when I needed him? Mrs. Northe? Blessing? Rachel? Anyone?

  The hissing murmurs became those terrible chants pounding in my head and all around me, thrumming in my veins, shaking my bones. The maid or Mrs. Hathorn would find our dead bodies, and someone would have to tell Jonathon the terrible news.

  “You and countless others,” the demon said in a gurgling voice. “I will carve your names in blood on your own flesh. Names written in the Book of Death. And when your name is called, you will follow me. The Society will rest upon the shoulders of the restless…”

  I renounce thee…I strained in my mind.

  A shadowed hand on my throat clamped tighter, even though the demon kept walking inexorably closer and had no actual hand upon me. All the properties of time and space were void. I was between dream and awake, life and death, where truth was suspended. A dangerous place where the dim flicker of life seemed easily snuffed out.

  “You cannot stop what has been set in motion,” the demon growled. “Your small band of stupid mortals against gathering forces, the futility amuses me. Come, tread this walk as a restless spirit, ’round and ’round the globe. You’ll see. There are greater truths than you know.”

  I renounce thee. Mother…Mother, if you were ever watching over me, I need you now.

  It seemed as though the beast could have snapped me in half if it wished, but something held it back. Something of my struggle, my fight, my resistance was keeping it from breaking me…