A Shiver of Blue

by Everly Frost

  Exhaling, my blood pumped again. My thoughts kept flicking back to the lock on the door.

  A lock would never keep a shadow out. It would slide under the crack at the bottom, slither along the floor and up the stairs…

  My hands shook as I picked up the torch and the light flitted around the room.

  Down in the dirty end of the attic, a pair of eyes gleamed.

  I held my breath and stepped closer to the china doll in the pink dress.

  Rebecca had talked about it the day Caroline came back from town, the day the shadow girl told lies about what had happened. I shook my head, the pressure inside me crackling and steaming.

  I tried to look away and forget the doll.

  Caroline’s doll.

  And the way she dropped it the day I died.

  I stumbled backward. I tried to stop the flood, the wall of memories, but they slammed into me and the cocoon around me cracked down the middle, ripping me backward to the day of my death, to the same room, but another time…

  With a thud, I sprawled on the polished wooden floor in the blue room, my cheek pressed to the floor. My body was weak, sick. For months and months, I’d struggled to keep my food down, struggled to move beyond my bed. Day in and day out, my children’s voices called to me beyond the closed door, their laughter and the sounds of them playing like a rope tied around my heart, squeezing me, because I could barely turn to them anymore.

  Lying against the floor, I blinked at the metal cup next to my face. Blood leaked out of my mouth. I tried to touch my lips, but my hands wouldn’t move, stretched tight and bound behind me.

  The shadow cast over me.

  It was that girl. The one who lived in the house with us. The one who gave me medicine.

  She tapped the edge of the cup. “Drink it.”

  “No.”

  “It will make you feel better.” The shadow whisper twisted downwards, slithering into my ears. She grabbed my hands where they rested behind me. There was a crunch. Then lots of little pops, and I screamed and writhed as my hands turned to fire.

  The chipped metal cup tickled my cheek. “Don’t you want to feel better?”

  I tasted copper and it trickled through my teeth. My fingers weren’t responding. I shoved the cup with my forehead, trying to push it away, refusing the ghastly medicine. Why did I need it?

  Ah, yes, it was supposed to keep me calm. Because I’d found the shadow girl holding a pillow over Timothy’s face while he slept and when I screamed she’d turned it around on me. I was the irrational one. I was the one seeing things.

  “Let me drink it myself, with my own hands,” I said, tipping so I could see the edges of her form.

  She seemed surprised. “Why not?” she finally asked.

  There was a snap as the ties around my wrists separated. I rolled onto my good side, using my elbows to leverage into a sitting position. I tried not to let my eyes linger on the kitchen knife resting on the dressing table. There weren’t supposed to be any sharp instruments in the room; nothing that I could harm myself with. Yet, there it was.

  I struggled to my feet, scooping up the cup with my good hand, holding it to my lips as the shadow girl smiled at me.

  “Well, look at you, standing up.” Her smiled twisted into a snarl. “Why aren’t you dead already?”

  I wanted to scream, cry, rail at her, but I was too weak. I had only the strength for one last act, one final bid for freedom. I threw the cup and its foul contents at her face, darting toward the knife, snatching it up, trying to hold it with my broken fingers.

  But it was no use. As I turned and thrust it at her, my bones gave way and she grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers around the weapon, and turning my arm. Turning the knife back on me.

  As tea dripped between us, she drove the knife between my ribs.

  I fell to the floor, trying to breath, my vision fading as the shadow girl contemplated me from up high. While she loomed over me, her voice became a practiced whimper, her words overly panicked, her performance a rehearsal. “I couldn’t stop her. She got to the knife before I did. She killed herself.” An exaggerated sob died in her throat as her eyes met mine for the last time.

  She hissed. “You killed yourself.”

  I sank to the floor, turning away from the window and the sunlight that mocked me, toward the darkness where I was about to go.

  But there, standing in the doorway all the way across the other side of the room, was a little face with two bright, blue eyes. Wide eyes, frozen still.

  One small hand rose in shock, her china doll dropped in the doorway. Burning tears and a scream of terror.

  My daughter—my Caroline—had beautiful eyes.

  My throat choked with blood, gurgling, bubbling through my teeth. A moment of clarity burst through the drug-riddled haze.

  I took a final breath, my last imprisoned breath, and screamed as long and as hard as I could, throwing my voice out into those eyes, throwing myself, my whole soul, my whole being, away from the shadow, away from my life, across the blue-tinted air.

  Into that little head.

  Into Caroline’s mind.

  Chapter 23

  Me

  I WAS SO small, staring through the wide-open door.

  Mommy’s scream pierced my ears until it stopped. Until she stopped and her face dropped away from me.

  But I’d screamed too and now the shadow saw me. She looked at me with two bad eyes.

  She wiped her hands and glided over to me, sidling toward me like a cat. Two shadow hands reached out and snatched my shoulders. I shouted and tried to run, but the shadow had me.

  “What did you see?”

  “You.” I pointed at her and a sensation I didn’t have a name for coiled around my stomach. It was hot and boiling and it made me want to hurt her. I pushed away from her. “You!”

  The shadow got mad as mad can be.

  She lifted me up and threw me over her shoulder. I wriggled and kicked her as hard as I could, but it didn’t do any good. She carried me down the hallway, past the other bedrooms, down the stairs, and out the front door. Still I kicked and scratched and tried to bite her, but as we passed through the front door she slammed my head against the doorframe.

  My vision swam. Something warm slid across my scalp, dripping red down my hair. I couldn’t kick her anymore.

  Then she walked and walked. For a long time, there was only the black grass moving along underneath us.

  Then there was a tree root and another.

  The air smelled damp and mucky. I lifted my head enough to see the woods all around us. I couldn’t see the house. I couldn’t see a path through the trees. I didn’t know the way home.

  The shadow dropped me to the ground and ordered me to walk until we stopped in front of a tree with a big vine twisting around it.

  “Do you see this tree?” asked the shadow.

  I nodded.

  She pushed me against the tree and pulled down a vine, wrapping it round and round my neck as my teeth chattered and I scanned the darkness, trying to see the way back. The vines pinched my skin as she grunted and I rose off the ground. I tried to breathe, held my toes pointed, balancing.

  The shadow smiled at me. “If you don’t forget what you saw, this tree will come and get you and put a vine around your neck while you’re sleeping. Then it will squeeze and squeeze and you’ll be dead, dead, dead.”

  The shadow backed away, giggling. “The tree will come and get you, Caroline.” She skipped away into the dark, singing until I couldn’t hear her anymore. “The tree’s coming to get you. It’s coming to get you…”

  I tried hard to get the vines off my neck. I struggled and cried. But the more I tried to break free, the tighter the vines became, and the harder it was to breathe. I stopped as my breathing wheezed and the dark leaves swished up high and little animals crackled around in the dead leaves.

  An ant crawled up the back of my neck, under the vines, and I couldn’t get it out and it bit me while I tried. Someb
ody started screaming and I didn’t know it was me until my mouth closed and the sound stopped. I squeezed my eyes shut and tugged and pulled. I struggled so much I got rips on my fingers just like Mommy. My neck hurt and my arms hurt. I cried some more. But it did no good.

  By the time Daddy found me, all frostbitten and terrified, barely breathing, I couldn’t remember why I was there.

  I came back to myself, screaming and retching onto the attic floor.

  “Get out! Get out of me!”

  But she wouldn’t. My mother wouldn’t let me go.

  I wobbled to my feet, my stomach turning. I touched my neck. No choking vine, but the doll still peered at me with eyes glowing in the torchlight. I pulled it from behind a box, covered in grit and leaves. The china doll in a frilly dress that might once have been pink.

  As I picked it up, chips fell away from the back of its empty, broken head.

  I threw it against the wall, shattering what remained, but there was no clatter of metal falling. The key was gone. If it was ever there.

  I clambered down the stairs and pushed them upward until they clicked. Slithering to the floor, I took the torch and left my mother’s blue room, heading back to my father.

  I stopped when I saw him. The room tilted but I managed to stay on my feet. I turned away from his dead eyes, choking back what rose into my throat. How could I feel sorry for this man? When he let my mother live in hell? When he decided she was the sick one?

  Yet I did. As deep as a dark dam, as deep as lungs that longed to drown to make the pain stop, I felt sorry for him.

  When everything stopped spinning around me, I found myself staring at the wall, up high. I reached it in two strides, snatching up a gun and hiding it in my clothing.

  I stayed there a moment longer, the cold metal pressed against my skin, forcing myself to think it through, to plan my next move. First, I went to the bedside table and pulled out the wad of notes Dad told me to take. There was a smaller wad of signed checks there, too, one each addressed to members of the staff.

  Then, I prepared myself before I opened the door, but the corridor was empty. I raced through the hall to my room and jammed the rocking chair up against the door. Off went the nightgown and on went my riding clothes—the most practical things I owned. I snatched up a satchel and stuffed everything into it that I thought would be useful—or was of value. Half the money went into the bottom.

  I stopped at the door, staring at the rocking chair still rammed under the doorknob, wondering how far I’d get, how many steps into the trees before the shadow and vines came for me, but I had to go.

  I had to end it.

  I slipped out into the hallway and padded down the hall, past the empty rooms and down the stairs, but as I came to the bottom, the shadow leaped out and snatched my arm.

  “Did he tell you the truth about our mother?”

  My nerve endings shrieked. “Whose truth, Edith?”

  She smiled. “I guess he didn’t.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “Why? Where are you going?” Her forehead was pinched so deep there was a groove above her nose.

  “I’m leaving. Dad’s dead. There’s nothing here for me anymore.”

  “He’s dead?” She withdrew a little, only her mouth visible in the dark, all turned down.

  I said, “Where’s Mrs. Drew? I’m going to say goodbye.”

  My sister pointed down the hall, her arm disappearing into the dark. I pushed past her to disappear, too.

  “Goodbye,” came the shadow whisper behind me.

  Mrs. Drew rocked back and forth in a chair, her arms clutched around her torso while Collette hovered next to her. Incense burned in one corner of the room as I entered and paused. “My father’s dead.”

  Collette crossed herself and swore in French. Mrs. Drew continued to rock. I was worried she was in shock and might not listen to me.

  I crossed the room and dropped a bundle of notes into the old lady’s lap, along with the check that had her name on it. “You’re no longer needed. This is for you.” I held up another bundle for Collette, who took it with a frown.

  Mrs. Drew stopped rocking since the check had enough zeros on it to see her through the next few years.

  “There’s one condition.” I bent to capture her attention. “You have to leave. Right now. Don’t go upstairs. Don’t stop to gather your things. Go to the stables, take one horse each, and ride away from here. The horse is yours. The money’s yours. But you are never to speak of my family. Ever. Just go and forget about us.”

  The old lady picked up the money and the check, but simply stared at it. Then her bright eyes met mine. “What about Victoria? Are we supposed to forget about her, too? That girl deserved better than she got.” She drew a steadying breath. “I know it wasn’t your fault, what happened, Miss Caroline. I don’t mean to be angry at you, but that girl was bundled out with nothing but the clothes on her back.”

  I grabbed one of her hands, felt it trembling with repressed rage. “Mrs. Drew, I’m going to make that right. My brother loves her and now that my father’s dead, there’s nobody to stop them being together. Please, can you tell me where she went?”

  She shook her head. “Collette and I, we already tried to send word out, to have people look for her, to help her, but the mail here is so slow. We have no idea.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but you have to go now. You too, Collette. Please. I need you to go.”

  The older lady heaved herself out of the chair, shoved the money into a deep pocket, pulled a coat from a hook by the kitchen door, and handed the younger woman one, too. She took a torch, and without another word, she flung open the door and they stepped out into the night.

  I braced myself. The next one would be harder.

  The door to the Lodge swung inward the instant I knocked.

  Jack looked more haggard than I’d ever seen him. “What’s happening? How’s Harry? Is the doctor here?”

  I shook my head. “He’s dead, Jack.”

  The cattleman froze a moment and then dropped his head into his hands. “Dead. After everything.”

  I didn’t wait. I shoved a fistful of notes at him. “You have to go, Jack. Right now. He told me so. And when you see Robert West coming in the other direction with the doctor, you tell them to turn around.”

  “But—”

  “Jack! Just do what I tell you to do.”

  “Miss Caroline, you sound like your father.”

  My eyes burned. “Better than sounding like my mother.”

  He turned a shade of gray. He broke contact and peered at the money that I pushed against his chest. His eyes widened at the check. It was a small fortune. My father gave him four times as much as the women, but he’d earned it.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Jack, not really, but if you ever need anything, you find my brother. Find Timothy. I know he’ll help you.”

  As I spoke, there was the shuffle of horses and two figures rode away from the stables. Jack shot into action behind me, shoving his few belongings into a satchel, including the money. Last of all, he took two rifles from the wall, loaded them, and handed one to me. I shook my head, patting my satchel and revealing the glint of metal.

  “Take it anyway,” he said.

  It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I could just pocket, but I took it anyway. I said, “Keep the horse you take.”

  “Wait.” He stopped with one foot hovering over the top step. “You’re coming with me, right?”

  When I shook my head, his expression became alarmed. “Miss Caroline, if I’m supposed to leave, then you’re supposed to leave, too.”

  “No, that’s not the way my father said it. He said to tell you to get out of here, and then I have to do something else.”

  “What? What else?”

  I closed my mouth.

  He put down the satchel. “As if I’m going to ride off and leave you—holy mother!”

  I stared from my fist to his bleeding lip as he checked
his jaw. I pointed the loaded rifle at him and dropped the end of it right on his heart. “Get out of here, Jack, or I’ll blow you apart.”

  His nostrils flared. “Now you sound like your mother.”

  I shoved the tip hard into his chest. He backed up and around, grabbed up his satchel, and hobbled down the stairs. Despite the gun pointed at him, his arm was long enough for his fingers to touch my cheek. “Little Caro, if you leave this place alive, come find me and I’ll tell you about her.”

  “You should have told me about her before.”

  He backed away. “Yep. I should have.”

  After he vanished into the dark, I ran into the Lodge and snatched up the kerosene lamp. I waited in the circle of light with the weapon brushing my leg, cold now, as Jack’s single figure rode away, his dark outline revealing a rifle at the ready.

  Then, I ran to the stables, found a horse already saddled, and cursed Jack one last time.

  Up over the ridge, down past the dam, and out to the flat land. I pressed a hand to my splitting head, caressed with the metal I clutched. I’d only ever fired a rifle once, and that had left me with a bruise for weeks.

  I stopped in front of the trees and slid off the horse. The mare shied and skidded, sensing something bad in the trees. I grabbed the reins while she tossed her head, shivering across her flanks as though there were flies buzzing around her. Tying the reins to a tree in a knot that wouldn’t give, I said, “Sorry, girl, I’d let you go if I could, but I need you here, waiting.”

  My hands were sweaty. The rifle was heavy. Jack had loaded two shots.

  I fumbled for the smaller gun instead and ended up cursing myself when I realized why it was so light. “It’s useless without bullets.”

  I tried to breathe. I dropped the empty gun back into my satchel and left it tied to the saddle.

  Then, the rifle and I went into the quiet woods.

  Chapter 22

  I THOUGHT I COULD make out the shape of a path in the gloom, but maybe that was wishful thinking. The opening in the trees twisted and I came to a fallen log. I lifted the lamp to study the broken trunk—it must have fallen in the storm. It wasn’t rotted so it didn’t collapse when I climbed over it.