by Dacre Stoker
“It was her, I’m sure.”
“That was an old woman.”
“It was her.”
I reached to the ground and picked up the cloak. “This is Ma’s cloak. See this tear?” I pushed my finger through a small hole in the right sleeve. “She told me she caught it on the cellar door about a month ago.”
Tears began to well in Matilda’s eyes. “I don’t want Nanna Ellen to die.”
“I don’t think—” The dragonfly returned and flew directly into my eye. I slapped the air but missed. When a second flew from the woods at our left and darted between us, I ducked out of the way, my hand covering my injured eye. I turned to find Matilda fighting off three more.
Across the bog came a buzzing noise. Faint, but quickly growing in intensity. I peered into the haze at the far end and didn’t spot anything at first; then the white mist parted, and a black cloud came bellowing out from the center. The hum grew louder as it approached.
“What is that sound?” Matilda asked, slapping at the dragonflies circling her head. Two more joined the original three, and four others darted past me on the left. One landed in her hair, wings flapping incessantly as they became entangled. She cried out in disgust and tried to pull the insect free.
My eyes fixed on the black swarm drifting over the bog. Hundreds more, possibly thousands. I snatched the dragonfly from Matilda’s hair and thrust it to the ground, grinding it into the dirt with the sole of my shoe, before I pulled her from the water’s edge. “Come on, we need to go—”
As we darted back into the woods with the swarm at our backs, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye that haunts me to this day. A hand reached up from the bog, snatched a dragonfly from the air, and returned to the water.
* * *
• • •
I SAT UP IN BED. I was somehow back in my bed, the room’s dark marred only by a sliver of moonlight. I couldn’t recall returning home; the memory of the dragonflies was still fresh in my mind. I could still smell the bog, the musky scent of the peat-filled water.
I crawled out of bed and went to the window.
I was wearing my nightclothes yet had no recollection of changing into them.
Staring out into the night, my eyes found the tower of Artane Castle and the forest beyond. I tried to peer past the forest to the bog on the other side, but the distance proved to be, even for me, far too great.
Had I dreamed it?
* * *
• • •
MY ARM began to itch.
It was then that I spotted my shoes in the far corner beside the dressing table, caked with mud, glistening in the dim light. I had just started towards them when her voice scraped against the silence.
“You should not leave your room, Bram, not at night. Bad things happen to little boys who wander the forest in the dark.”
I spun around, expecting to find Nanna Ellen standing behind me, but all I found was my closed door and the twisted sheets of my bed.
“The forest is full of wolves. They’d tear the flesh from your bones. They’d dig their muzzles into your belly until their hungry tongues found your heart and liver, then they’d gobble them with a smack of their lips. At last, they’d suck your eyes right out of the sockets. Have you ever seen a vulture do such a thing? It’s an amazing thing to witness. Just a quick little pluck, and there is nothing left behind but a gaping black hole.”
* * *
• • •
NANNA ELLEN GIGGLED, a childish little laugh reminiscent of Matilda playing hide-and-seek, in the moments before I discover her beneath the bed. She always hid beneath the bed.
I pivoted full circle, my mind taking in every inch of my room, my eyes able to see perfectly even in the dark. There was no sign of Nanna Ellen.
“You have to be quicker than that!” she said.
A hand tapped the back of my shoulder, and I spun around again, ready to face her, yet there was nobody there.
“Stop this game!” I said.
“Shhhh,” she whispered at my ear. “You don’t want to awaken the family!”
I swatted at the sound as I had the dragonfly at the bog, but my hand found only air.
“It’s good to see you with so much energy! A week ago, you couldn’t stand there without help. Yet tonight you ransacked my room, sneaked outside, and ventured a great distance from home and back, without the slightest sign of exhaustion. If I didn’t know any better, I would say your Uncle Edward cured you with the tricks in that black bag of his!”
I dropped down to the floor and searched under my bed. Finding nothing, I darted across the room to my cupboard and pulled open the doors, expecting Nanna Ellen to come rushing out, but I found nothing inside except my clothes hanging above and my Sunday shoes side by side below. “Where are you?”
“I’m right here!”
Another tap on my shoulder.
This time I spun around in the opposite direction and simultaneously reached out with both hands. For a fleeting second, my fingertips slid across flesh, but she was simply too fast—gone from my grasp before I even got a look at her.
“Almost had me! My oh my, you are fast!”
Her skin was clammy, as if I had brushed a corpse. A shiver walked my spine, and I wiped my hand on my shirt, attempting to rid myself of the ghastly sensation.
“What was it like? To be covered in leeches? Could you feel those nasty little creatures sucking the blood through your pores? Your fever was so great I bet you didn’t even notice their tiny little teeth gnawing through your skin, did you? They looked like plump apples when your Uncle Edward finally peeled them away and dropped them back in his jar. He swore they pulled the illness right out of you, and I guess he was right; look at you now!”
“I know it wasn’t my uncle who cured me,” I said in a voice so low I wasn’t sure she heard me.
“No? Who, then?” she replied. “Because you look much better now than you have in all your days. I wouldn’t venture to say you’ve been cured, but you look much better, much better by far.”
“You asked if I trusted you, and I said I did.”
“Did I?”
“Then you did something to me.”
Again, she laughed. “Something, yes. Maybe. Maybe I did.”
I paced the chamber, my eyes sweeping over every shadow in search of Nanna Ellen. Her voice seemed to be coming from all around me yet from no direction in particular. She was close, though; I could feel her nearby. That cord which bound us together was pulled taut. I closed my eyes and focused on that image now, reeling in the line through sheer willpower, forcing the distance between us to close.
Nanna Ellen let out another laugh, this one so loud I was certain the others would be shaken from their slumber. “Perhaps your young age plays a part, but I have never seen someone accept and attempt to master a new skill so easily. Maybe it’s because adults lose the ability to imagine, to believe in that which is unknown. Children accept a mystery as fact, and move past it as clear as day, giving it nary a second thought. Nonetheless, I am impressed by you, young Bram.”
I pulled the cord tight, but it was still to no avail. Like her voice, she was all around me yet nowhere, a wraith loose in the void.
My arm itched, and I fought the urge to scratch it. “What did you do to me?” I regretted the words the moment I uttered them, for I wasn’t quite sure I wanted the answer.
“Well, I walked you back from the Gates of Hell last night and rescued you from the Devil’s touch, of course. Is that not what your sweet sister said?” The words came so close at my ear I swore the warmth of her breath touched me. This time I didn’t turn, for I knew she would not be there. I remained still, my mind focusing on the cord, attempting to reel it in a little closer. I took a step towards the window.
“Oh, you’re getting warmer! Red rover, red rover, send little Bram on over!”
The leaded glass window rattled as thunder rumbled somewhere off in the distance. The first drops of rain found the glass and ticked against the pane, first only a few, then the sky opened up and it came down so heavy the world washed away.
“What were you doing out at the bog? We saw you go into the water and you didn’t come back out.”
“Yet I am here.”
“Are you?”
I reached for the window latch and gave it a twist, then pushed the window out into the night on squeaky hinges. The rain felt like ice on my skin, yet I welcomed it, for like stepping out into the forest earlier, being touched by nature reminded me that I was, indeed, alive.
“Careful, Bram. You’ll catch your death!”
I wanted to believe that I could no longer get sick, that whatever Nanna Ellen did to me cured me of all my ailments, but even as the thought entered my mind, I felt the tickle of a cough at the back of my throat. The ache in my bones that had followed me my entire life was there, too, although not as strong as before; the pain remained, a reminder that my sickness wasn’t gone but resting, preparing to return. “I know I’m not better, not completely.”
At this, she did not respond.
I scratched at my arm, unable to ignore the incessant itch any longer.
Then I thrust my head out the window into the pouring rain and glanced side to side and up and down, my eyes squinting through the downpour at the walls of our house. I didn’t know why I thought I would find Nanna Ellen clinging to the worn stucco, but I did think just that. Yet I found nothing but the rain-drenched roads, and I pulled myself back inside.
“I thought you said I was getting warmer?”
“I did, but now you are so very cold.”
Nanna Ellen dropped from the ceiling.
I spotted her out of the corner of my eye and tried to sidestep her, but she came down too fast, unnaturally so, as if she weren’t falling but had pushed off from the ceiling with tremendous force. As I tried to move out of the way, I watched her come at me, her arms and legs outstretched like a spider pouncing upon some unwitting prey. Her eyes were no longer the pale gray of the woman we spotted out at the bog, nor were they the blue I remembered most, but the fiercest red, burning through the otherwise dark room.
* * *
• • •
“BRAM!”
The call of my name came as if from a great distance, as if I were at the bottom of a well, and someone shouted for me from the mouth of the hole high above.
This place was so dark not a glint of light survived, and it was filled with the stale odor of rot. When I tried to move, I found my muscles no longer worked; I was trapped within a lifeless body.
The dirt of my grave, packed good and tight.
I saw it all again: Nanna Ellen coming at me, dropping from the ceiling, covering me and pinning me to the floor beneath her weight.
Then she breathed in my ear, “Sleep, my child.”
With that, all was lost, and I knew no more.
“Bram!”
I heard my name again, this time much closer than before, and with it came a red light, faint but quickly growing in intensity as it either approached me or I approached it; I could not be sure, for I felt like I was in motion while at the same time the room was in motion around me, carrying me from this place to that.
My body shook, and my eyes snapped open. I found Matilda hovering over me.
As she came into focus, strength returned to my arms and legs, and my entire body came to life all at once, flailing this way and that, then finally pushing off the top of my bed with such power I left the surface altogether, hovered in the ether for a brief moment, then came crashing back down.
Matilda stared at me, her mouth agape, and I suddenly grew both embarrassed and afraid all at once.
* * *
• • •
“DID IT HAPPEN?” I asked.
Before I finished the sentence, Matilda was nodding her head. “The last thing I recall is running from the dragonflies in the forest. Then I awoke in my bed with the light of morning against my cheek. I do not know how we arrived home, and I don’t remember getting undressed or crawling into bed. Yet I awoke in my bedclothes, tucked in under the blankets as I would any other night. At first, I wasn’t sure, either, but I found my coat covered in burrs from the forest.” She paused, then frowned. “You’re bleeding—”
“What?”
She wiped at the corner of my mouth with her finger. “It’s dry. A few hours old, at least. I don’t see a cut, though; only a little dried blood. Did you bite your tongue?”
“Maybe,” I said, although I felt no pain.
“What is the last thing you remember?”
I thought about this, for I, too, remembered running through the forest in an attempt to escape the dragonflies. I also remembered the hand reaching up from the water of the bog and snatching one of the flies midair. The hand was fat and wrinkled like a prune, as if it had spent an eternity beneath the water. And the way it grabbed that dragonfly! I was reminded of a frog’s tongue striking out lightning fast.
But then I was home, back in bed—the time transpiring between these two events utterly lost to me.
And then there was my encounter with Nanna Ellen.
“You must tell me what you remember,” Matilda said, as if divining my thoughts.
So I did; I told her everything.
When I finished, she was not staring at me with the disbelief I expected; instead, her face only deepened with concern and worry. “I found your window ajar when I came in. Look, the rainwater is still puddled beneath . . .”
Ma would have sealed the window before going to bed; she always did. Even during the most stifling of months, she shut my window and locked out the night air for fear of me catching a cold, or worse. My ailment simply wouldn’t tolerate such conditions. I had opened the window last night, just as I remembered.
* * *
• • •
“SO WHY DON’T WE remember coming home?”
Her question lingered in the air, for neither of us had an answer.
Matilda’s eyes shifted; she looked down at my arm. I scratched at it, in an absence of mind. I stopped and tried to move my arm under the blanket. Matilda would have none of it; she grabbed my arm and pulled it towards her. “You’ve been scratching at this since you got better; you must let me see!”
I pulled the arm back with such force my hand cracked into the headboard with a loud thwack. So loud, in fact, I would not have been surprised to find a crack in the oak. Yet my hand seemed fine, unmarked. I quickly tucked it under the blanket.
Matilda stared at me in awe. A few days ago, she was much stronger than me—easily able to hold both my arms back with a single hand, as she had done on so many occasions, yet now I pulled away from her with such ease.
“What has become of you?” she said in a low voice. “Did she do this to you?”
I did not respond; I simply didn’t know what to say.
“Let me see your arm, Bram.”
* * *
• • •
BENEATH MY BLANKET, my arm began to itch again, not a little itch like that brought on by a spider walking across your forearm but the kind that would be brought on by a dozen fresh mosquito bites. I tried to ignore it, but it grew fiercer. I rubbed my arm against my torso, but this did little good. Only my nails would appease the itch.
Matilda said, “You’re twitching, Bram. Let me see. You can trust me.”
I could take no more, and I pulled the arm out from under the blanket and scratched through my nightshirt with enough force that had I been dragging my nails across the surface of a table I surely would have left gouges. When the itch finally subsided, I reached for the cuff of my sleeve and tugged it up with one quick motion, my eyes fixed on Matilda.
My sister stared down at my
arm, at my pale flesh. She drew closer, then closer still. When she finally spoke, she kept her eyes fixed on the appendage. “I don’t see anything.”
“No, but you should. The last time Uncle Edward bled me with leeches, the welts they left behind remained for nearly two weeks. First, as red blotches, then blotches surrounded by black and blue. Eventually, they scabbed over and began to fade. Only two days have passed, and there is no sign of what he did, only this incessant itching.”
“Maybe he did something different? Maybe he didn’t leave them on quite as long?”
I was already shaking my head. “I healed faster. I know I did. Then there is this—”
I pulled up the sleeve on my right arm and showed her my wrist. Like my left arm—and my legs, for that matter—all signs of the leeches were gone. My flesh was smooth and pure as the day I was born, all but for my right wrist.
Matilda took my hand in her own. The two small pinpricks of red glistened, scabs freshly scratched away, two tiny marks about an inch and a half apart, just below the wrist bone over the vein—the itch greatest here most of all.
Neither of us heard Ma come in and stand in the doorway until she spoke. “Have you seen Nanna Ellen? Her room is empty, and all her belongings are gone.”
* * *
• • •
MATILDA AND I bounded from the bed and raced down the hall. I heard Ma’s gasp as I ran past her—she was staring at me, at just how quickly I moved. I reached the door of Nanna Ellen’s room before Matilda and stared.
The floor was spotless; all the soil we found yesterday had vanished—not just swept away, for that would have left traces, but as if it had never been there. The window that had been covered was now bare, and light was streaming in, washing over the space. It seemed like a different room, no longer the void we had found yesterday, but instead a simple, empty chamber. Soft cooing emanated from Baby Richard, who was observing us intently as we stepped inside, both his tiny little hands clutching his elevated foot.
