Teeth in the Mist

by Dawn Kurtagich

  The endless days of travel fatigue my body, but the farther away from London we go, the higher my spirit soars. For did not the Lord intend for us to go out into the heathen masses and convert them to his light? Did not he intend mankind to build and harvest and care for the land?

  I am, then, a missionary’s wife! Still I cannot stop my smile when I think that John and I are married. He is the most ambitious, wealthy, loving husband, and I am fortunate that I caught his eye when he and Father supped together last winter. The marriage was arranged between the two, and I had no notion, though I admit I took a liking to John the moment I saw him. Such deep brown eyes and thick, curling dark hair. He looks to be always thinking of something, a burning within his gaze. And he is wealthy. Perhaps more wealthy than Father.

  We are to travel again, and my period of rest is over. I shall miss this particular spot, which stands near a brook and overlooks a pretty patch of pink heather. I am being summoned. Farewell, diary! Until I open your pages once more.

  FROM THE DIARY OF

  HERMIONE JOHN SMITH,

  4 JULY 1583

  Chapter 11

  APPARITIONS

  Roan sits up in bed and presses herself to the wall.

  The sounds of a beast’s hooves echo as they clomp down the hall, followed, like the shivering echo of a deserted cathedral, by the snort of air through two menacing nostrils. Roan’s eyes widen and her skin prickles. This is not a dream. This is not a nightmare.

  C-clomp. C-clomp. Pfffffff.

  Four hooves, walking slowly, approaching her room from the long, dark hallway. What is it?

  Mule? Horse? Ram?

  Something large. Something sweating ice, steam rising from its haunches like smoke. And it is coming for her.

  She wants to yell, to demand that it stop and be gone. But fear twists her into knots, and she shivers, unshed tears rising to the brim.

  Pffff.

  With no escape, she is a wolf cornered, and the only thing she can think of is to get away. Flinging the blankets off and dashing to the window, she unlatches it just as the c-clomp c-clomp turns from a hoof on wood to a hoof on the reed carpet. It is behind her.

  It snorts.

  She slips out like a ghost and climbs down the stone wall, dropping the last few feet to rush out into the foggy morning.

  Behind, she can feel the beast watching her from a tiny upstairs window.

  Rapley kneels in the center of his room, hands clasped tightly together. Sweat pools between his palms and down his back, despite the frigid night. Straight ahead: a man. Not a regular man, and no one that Rapley knows. He is the form of someone no longer living.

  In his eighteen years, Rapley has seen ghosts a handful of times. He has seen most of them since he came to Mill House.

  The first, though, when he was three, and again when he was five. It was his mother. She was the same as before, except her skin had lost its luster, its color, even. She looked pale—gray almost. But the dust. That was what alarmed him. She looked like a statue that had never been cleaned; even her clothes, which were new and fashionable, were coated with it so that she looked old. So very old.

  He had tried to run to her. To hug her.

  Until he saw her face.

  She stared at him with dead, hollow eyes and a slack jaw, her mouth open at an angle no human could mimic. Too long. Too dark. She was a hollow thing. But more: she wasn’t alone.

  At five, Rapley was able to sense that there was something… else… with her. Within her.

  She was his mother no longer.

  The second ghost had been when he was eight. It was a tall man, thin and gangly. Long, almost inhuman arms hung loosely by his side. His legs bowed out at the knees. He looked, for all purposes, exactly like every depiction of a monster Rapley’s penny bloods booklets described. But he was smarter by eight. By eight, he knew exactly what he was looking at.

  An apparition.

  A rotted thing.

  A ghost.

  What he didn’t yet know was the fear. Or the pain.

  But when the man jerked with movement so sudden it was if he hadn’t moved at all, turning at once so that in one moment he stood lank and in the next his arms were bent, fingers clawed, hollow eyes and slack jaw facing Rapley head on—the fear was born.

  Ghosts could move.

  And more.

  He learned, that night, that ghosts could also hurt. They could tear and bruise and yell and howl if they were enraged enough.

  The lanky man had been. Rapley bore the scars of that night long into his adolescence.

  Rapley was nine when the third ghost appeared. He was in this very room, kneeling in this very spot, praying to a God he still believed in. The ghost was a woman this time. She stood over him with her hollow eyes and her slack jaw, and the jaw worked up and down, creaking and snapping. Her head was on upside down so that her jaw clacked hard, teeth against teeth, as she worked it.

  He had pictured a bubble around himself, a safe space only a few inches away from his body, thinking: Don’t touch me. Don’t hurt me.

  She moved in that too-fast, creaking way, and he wet himself. But he held on to the bubble—his shield.

  The ghost reacted as though it was real. And it was real, from that moment on. He had built it since then, making it wider, stronger. He felt it like a pressure in his body, and maintaining it was like keeping a single thought. It took years of concentration. Single-minded focus. It was the only way to contain a thought in his mind, constantly, with no distractions.

  But now… this is different.

  This is not one disgruntled ghost. This isn’t two, or three, or four.

  Ghosts surround him on every side. He tries not to feel them pressing in on his shield, but they are many, and they are strong. He has never felt such strength from the dead before.

  Why? Why now?

  He allows himself to pray while holding the thought, ignoring the hollow eyes and slack jaws all around him. Ignoring a tiny movement to his left or right, or farther back in the crowd.

  He can feel their eyes, singularly, on him. They are rabid. They are ravenous. They are rage.

  Men, women, and children, all contorted, bent—wrong.

  He is life. He is living, and they crave it.

  But none of them is alone. Each and every one carries something else. A strange kind of shadow. Something inhuman. He can hear a steady growling sound humming beneath them all.

  He shivers and begins to speak.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…”

  A ghost moves. They all have, he realizes. Each one’s head has tilted to the side.

  He licks his lips. “Sed libera nos a malo… libera me, Deus meus… libera me.”

  One of the ghosts is closer. Right beside him. His breath quickens. “Libera me…”

  Another on the other side, face pressed against his, teeth bared. He can feel them on his skin, can feel the cold, foul breath. Smell the sickening odor.

  The pain is sudden and sharp, and he hisses in a breath, shield faltering. It is enough. A ghost has his head. Another has his heart.

  He forces his shield up again, though the pain is like a seizure in his limbs. Rapley focuses on his shield harder. “Libera me, Deus meus! Libera me!”

  Until at last, there is nothing.

  Rapley collapses on the floor, still as stone, and at last… lets his shield go.

  As he pulls his hands away from each other he cries out. The pain racks his body for long hours.

  But they are gone.

  For now.

  He stumbles to his feet and blows out his candle and watches the mocking sun rise.

  Roan is floating.

  The walls are taller now than when she is in her body, skewed, as though they narrow the higher they climb. Shadows accentuate this dance. All at once, she is near the ceiling, looking down at the wide, fish-eyed floor, the floorboards fat in the middle, taperin
g out strangely at the edges like long fingers.

  The fuggy slowness that is always there when she first leaves her body passes, giving way to a speed she could not match on two legs.

  And she flies.

  Father?

  Is he here, with her, in this strange half dream? This is the one thing she had always kept from him… her nighttime flights. What would he have done had he known? Locked her in the cellar permanently, instead of simply when she could not control the Conjures?

  She turns and explores, always calling with her mind. Father? Are you here?

  Corridor follows corridor, windows pass by, and house turns into attic and then sky.

  She is above the storm and the clouds and the lightning; she can see each star, crystal clear, like firebrands burning the black-blue, nothing of the Universal tapestry behind. She knows she could go on, higher and higher, past the moon and distant stars. There is so much to see out there. Beyond.

  But Father is not here.

  She can sense the house below her, can sense the warmth of the people inside. The coolness of the Nothing above is pleasant, but she knows it would turn icy, alien, and hostile if she were to go farther. She is at the limit. One more inch and the cord would break. No getting back after that.

  Lost forever.

  She turns toward the house, feels the magnitude of the thing at her back, and—

  The silver cord at her waist seems thin—too thin—fragile as a spider’s web. She can only see it because it glints as it moves, otherwise she might think she flew alone. Untethered. Free.

  Lost.

  I don’t like this.

  The space behind expands, darkness rushing in, or perhaps her rushing out. The house below her seems to shrink, pulling away.

  I don’t like this—

  No. No!

  Roan wakes at the same moment she hears the smash, and the cry. She is disoriented from her nightwalk, her soul not quite snug in her flesh. She hears a boom and another crash, glass shattering, and jumps from the bed.

  The floor hits her in the face, but she stumbles up on shaking limbs, her vision clearing with every step.

  She opens the door on a scene of chaos. The corridor is filled with glass, leaves, and small branches. A large tree has fallen against the house and through the high glass windows. The wind whistles as it thrashes at the tree, the leaves; the corridor is a mini-cyclone of air and water.

  A scream again. Emma.

  The glass is everywhere, so Roan leaves her body without a thought. Her spirit rushes up and her body collapses. The fall is slow, as all things in the world of flesh are. She pushes forward, toward the sound of the tears, until she finds Emma, staggering from her bed, a cascade of blood running down her thigh. Behind her, a shattered window—glass falling inward in all directions.

  This was meant to be my room. I put her here.

  That is all Roan can think. But then Emma falls, cries out again, and there is blood. So much blood. A shard of glass the length of Roan’s forearm protrudes from Emma’s thigh.

  “Emma!” Roan cries, and Emma screams again.

  Roan is in her body before it hits the floor. Dizzy, she rushes forward, heedless of the tiny shards that glisten on the floor. Emma no longer staggers. She is in a heap by the dresser, her room an ungodly cyclone. Glass and debris fly everywhere, tiny stings that Roan ignores. She bends down and drags Emma from the chaos; her bloody thigh leaves a grotesque smear along the floor.

  Strong arms encircle Roan’s, taking Emma’s weight completely, taking her own weight too, and they are lifted up and carried down the rest of the corridor and out onto the second-floor landing.

  “Seamus,” Emma whispers. “Someone check on Seamus.…”

  “I’ll do it.” A man’s voice. Rapley.

  He is wet, dripping and bedraggled as though he has been out there in this storm with nothing but the shirt on his back.

  “Try to dress that wound,” he calls back, running down the opposite corridor where Seamus has been housed.

  Emma collapses onto her back, staring at the ceiling and panting. She is pale. Too pale. Roan rips a strip from her nightdress, balls it up and shoves it into Emma’s mouth. If she is rough, Emma does not complain.

  “Bite down hard.”

  Emma nods, fiery determination searing through her gaze.

  Do it, it seems to say. I am no delicate flower. Do it, and be damned.

  Roan rips at her nightgown again, biting when the material does not give, until she has a long strip of sturdy cloth.

  She does not wait. She does not give warning. She pulls the shard of glass from the raw flesh, and a spray of blood slaps her in the face. She tastes it, wants to spit the coppery filth from her mouth, but does not. For propriety’s sake, she swallows instead, then ties the strip of cloth around Emma’s leg, high up, above the wound, knotting it as tightly as her strength will allow.

  give more.

  tighter.

  you know how.

  give in.

  “No,” she spits, and yanks on the knot again. Emma gives a feeble cry and then her eyes roll into her head.

  “Emma!” Seamus’s cry is pure fear, and Roan wishes Rapley had not brought him.

  But no—not Rapley. Andrew is pushing him.

  harder

  or

  kill her

  “We need to send for a doctor,” Roan tells Andrew, teeth clenched. “Can you go?”

  His voice is surprisingly low and calm. “Rapley has gone for Dr. Maudley.”

  Roan nods, noticing his shirt. “Take that off. Give it to me.”

  He doesn’t hesitate, for which Roan is grateful, and throws it to her.

  “Emma! What’s happening to her? Oh God, don’t let her die!” Seamus is sobbing, but Roan cannot think of that now.

  She balls up the shirt and presses down on Emma’s wound with all the strength she has left.

  “Let me,” Andrew says, beside her now, taking her place.

  “Oh my God!” Jenny cries at the top of the stairs. None of them heard her approach. “Oh no! Oh, miss!”

  “Jenny,” Andrew says, his voice firm. “Go and get some alcohol. Brandy, rum—anything. Bring the bottle.”

  Jenny stands shaking her head, biting on her nails. “Andrew—”

  “Jenny. Go now. I need that rum! Go on, lass.”

  Jenny tears her eyes away from Emma and nods, then hurries down the stairs.

  Roan suspects that he set that mission only to distract her.

  Emma cries out feebly, lifting a lifeless wrist as if to smack Andrew away.

  “Gods, where is that man?” Andrew snaps, then glances quickly at Roan. “Forgive my manners.”

  “I should like to know where he is as well.” She manages a faint smile.

  Footsteps on the stairs alert them to Rapley’s return. Behind him: Dr. Maudley.

  He storms across the room like a hurricane, his arm sweeping the air.

  “Move aside,” he booms, and all in the company, save one, obey. Seamus, Andrew, and Roan stumble back with the force of Maudley’s authority. Only Rapley does not flinch, nor move. He frowns down upon the scene solidly, like a rock on the mountain. Slate, through and through.

  Dr. Maudley is beside Emma before Roan has seen him kneel.

  “She needs sewing,” Roan says, all the while Emma has begun her weak thrashing once more.

  He ignores her. “My case.”

  Rapley places the black bag at the doctor’s side, and Roan notes with unease how his knuckles and fingernails are bloodied.

  Maudley pulls his bag open with deft, nimble movements, removing a bottle of clear liquid and some cotton cloth. He puts on a pair of gloves, balls up the cotton, says, “Stand back,” and then dampens it and holds the thing to Emma’s mouth.

  Her eyes flutter for a moment and her body resists, but then she goes limp. Roan takes another step back. She is sensitive to ether, and Maudley has used no ether mask. Surely they are all at risk.

&nb
sp; “Do not be alarmed,” Maudley murmurs, his voice low as he tests Emma’s awareness. “Chloroform is a new substance, but I have experience with it.”

  “I can smell it,” Roan says. “It is… sweet.”

  “Yes. Chloroform is stronger than ether. But she will feel nothing. Nothing at all. And we shall not be affected at this range.”

  He then pulls out a small box containing strangely curved needles and waxed suture thread. Andrew and Seamus both look away, leaving only Rapley and Roan to witness Maudley’s skill firsthand. He is fast, delicate, and careful. By the time the wound is closed, Emma has a thin line of sutures along her thigh, not the gaping wound of only moments before. Roan is astonished at his skill. Sewing through both muscle and various layers of tissue and leaving only the thinnest line.

  Amazing.

  In another life, she might have assisted a surgeon.

  Dr. Maudley wipes his gloves and then removes them, getting smoothly to his feet. In all tonight, his movements have been like water, subtle and smooth. But his presence is once again a storm now that his work is done.

  He looks up at her, dark eyes focused between heavy lashes. “You did well, putting a tourniquet above the wound.”

  Roan falters. “How did you know I had done it?”

  His eyes flicker down once, and then back. She can suddenly feel her exposed legs where her pale blue nightgown should be.

  “Warm her,” Maudley says to the room. He hands his medical bag to Rapley, who takes it with a clench of his jaw and hard eyes.

  Andrew steps forward to lift Emma into his arms. “I will remove her to her bedroom.”

  “Her room is chaos,” Roan says. “The window gave in during the storm.”

  “She may have the Roman sofa in the Blue Room, if you do not mind sharing?” Maudley says, glancing at Roan.

  “It… it was the Blue Room that was destroyed.”

  Maudley frowns. “You did not like the Blue?”

  Roan swallows. “Too much space for me.”