by Quenby Olson
I wonder why my own behaviour should take on more of a secretive quality, now that I'm hidden away inside. A few seconds of scrabbling through my pockets, the scrape of a match, and there's a burst of light between my hands. I watch the flame flicker and threaten to die out before my trembling fingers set it to the blackened wick of a candle taken from a dusty sconce fastened to the wall, the light fading to blue before a few motes of dust spark it into a yellow teardrop of illumination.
It is the flash of light that alerts me to the presence of another person in the room. It was only for a moment I saw the face, a whiteness of pallor sickly enough to match my own. I catch sight of the mirror on the wall, my own reflection faded to that of a ghost's by the film of dust that clings to the surface of the glass.
A moment passes before I trust myself to breathe, and my pale eyes meet their own twins above the guttering flame, and the question is there, waiting for my reply.
Where is she?
I can't bring myself to admit that I don't have an answer. I feel nothing, as if there is no other presence inside the house apart from myself. Perhaps my aunt is not here. Perhaps Lady Francesca was wrong, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and I'm all alone. And so I may even be able to entertain the option of escape. Simply turn around and walk away. Out the door, across the macadam, away, away, back to any available room that will admit me, to the cold comfort of a bed that is not my own.
But have I really convinced myself that I will be any safer somewhere else, lying atop a filthy blanket, dabbing at the sweat that gathers between my breasts, counting the seconds that bridge every breath while I wait for the next layer of perspiration to form? Will the voices desert me there? Or will they remain here when I make a run for it, trailing behind me for a few paces until I finally lose them somewhere around Oxford Street?
It's too much to hope for. And so I return my attention to the hall mirror, the door still hanging open behind me, my heels scraping only inches away from where my father's head once rested on the stoop.
There is nothing else now but to move forward. And I do, ignoring the staircase and the rooms above. Their bare walls and floors hold little interest for me, riddled as they are with the vestiges of unimportant memories, nights curled up in my bed, standing in the doorway to my mother’s bedroom, watching her dress for dinner, the ivory column of her neck glowing in the candlelight as she reached up to fasten the clasp of a necklace.
The parlour is to my right, the door opening easily beneath my touch. This alone should make me pause, that the house seems so inclined to welcome me, every door swinging on hinges that glide as if they had been freshly oiled moments before my arrival. Even the floors seem reluctant to offer a creak or a groan, anything that would make me aware of my own presence.
And perhaps this is the building’s gift to me, that it should allow me to pass through its rooms uninhibited, and so smooth is my entry into the parlour I could almost be fooled into believing that should I continue towards the wall, I would simply drift through the man-made barrier, my flesh dissipating into the ether.
But I don’t go so far as the wall. I halt partway into the room, near where there would have been a table, wood and round and bare, with the fingerprints of a dozen pairs of hands pressed upon it.
There are more memories, but if it was my wish to while away an afternoon in careful rumination, my intentions are cut short by the soft tread of a woman’s step in the hall behind me.
My Aunt Ann’s tread, but I'm loath to admit if the sound is recognizable because I have a wonderful gift of memory, or if I'm underestimating the extent of my own prescience.
"My dear, dear Thea."
That she uses my first name, my Christian name—and even the shortened form—should not be marked as significant. I heard it from her mouth no fewer than a hundred times before I was yet ten years of age. But the tone of her voice startles me. Its familiarity is unnerving, as if we had spoken with one another only a few hours before, her final words still a prominent echo inside my head. And yet I’ve no time to dwell on the strangeness of everything around me, for another sound must take precedence.
An inhalation of breath. That is all.
When I speak, I'm surprised at the amount of confidence in my voice, in the way my shoulders straighten beneath her gaze.
"I watched you die," I say, the words sliding out without a hint of interrogation. It could be nothing more than a comment on the weather, so calm is my tone. I turn towards her and I see nothing but darkness. Dark hair, dark clothing, but for a glimmer of green and gold in her eyes, their changeable colour picking out the light from the candle on the wall.
"Your eyes lied to you." There is a slight lift at the corner of her mouth, and I'm struck once more by the resemblance between her and my mother. Though, my mother was taller, I believe. But it’s been so many years, and I have grown so much in the interim, I can no longer be sure.
"But my mother, my father? The reverend?"
She moves forward, not towards me, but nearer to the shuttered windows, her steps taking her on a circuitous path about the room. I hear the soft swish of her skirts, the strike of her shoes on the bare floor, and yet there is a dull quality to the sound, as if I'm hearing it from a great distance, or through some invisible barrier that lies between us.
"Your mother never fully appreciated your talents." A shake of the head, a click of the tongue, and there! With that simple commentary on my mother’s failings, I'm thrust back to my childhood, to the petty complaints and biting words that were often traded back and forth, back and forth, until they had been polished and refined like the most brilliant of gems. "You were a trained creature, brought out before the assembled company and told to perform a few tricks before being shut back inside your gilded cage."
She glances at me, and though she is still several feet away, I notice the shadows that linger beneath her eyes. Not a colour in their own right, but more an absence of any other shade, as if her face were a portrait the artist had neglected to finish.
"If I could have been allowed to teach you, to guide you…"
And now she pauses, yet the sounds that accompany her progress seem to be delayed. So the rustle of her dress, the dull echo of her final footfall reach my ears a moment after I witness the same cessation of movement with my eyes.
"You have suffered so much, and sometimes I ask myself if more could have been done on my part to prevent it."
Her next move takes me by surprise. She steps towards me, her hands reaching forward as if she will take hold of me, as if she will embrace me. But I lift one hand, my palm outward, and it stops her so suddenly that I watch the stunted energy ripple through her like someone struck.
"I watched you die."
It is no longer than the length of a breath, but in that short amount of time, her entire manner is altered. That quirk of a smile I had witnessed earlier, the almost maternal benevolence shown towards me crumbles away before she returns to her path around the edges of the room, around me.
"I was caught unawares, that night." Her right arm sweeps in a graceful gesture, and again I'm able to see the table, the glitter of my mother’s jewels, and the sheen of her gown. "I had not thought he would be able to come through so soon. But I had been inattentive, and my sister insisted on keeping such a tight rein on you."
As she moves, I watch the play of light across her features, at the lines and creases that decorate her face. She has aged, more than what a few years of steady living should provoke in a woman’s appearance. But there is something strange about her visage, something I could almost describe as artificial. For while her skin is marked with age and wear, the smooth face of her youth—the face more in line with the look my memories attribute to her—still resides beneath the surface.
"Your mother…" She begins again, now that the subject has been broached.
"My mother is dead, among others. Tell me what you’ve done."
She shakes her head as she turns her back to me. "Yo
u don’t understand, the amount of power that exists just beyond our reach. All one needs is a way through." She looks back over her shoulder, showing me the sharp lines of her profile. "You are that way through. The spirits, Thea. They cling to you, congregate around you. Wherever you are, the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest, and once you’ve learned to control it, to pick and choose which entities you wish to allow passage through…" She spreads her hands open, and all manner of possibilities are laid out before me.
"That night," I begin, repeating those two words as the realisation dawns upon me that I may never be able to reference that evening in any other way without it breaking me. "Something came through, something you say is possessed of extraordinary strength."
I cannot allow her to see how disturbed I am, but I must encourage her to speak, to coax her into telling me everything. For with each and every word to come out of her mouth, I feel a small piece of my own guilt slip irrevocably away from me.
"It was more, so much more than I could’ve asked for." There is fear, I think, underlying her words. But also a kind of reverence, and I find that more frightening than any horror she might have chosen to exhibit. "But I wasn’t ready for it, and so he was left unchecked, for a time."
The expressions of those who had been gathered in my mother’s parlour, in this very room, are things of which I think I will never be rid. I remember open mouths, soundless cries of terror as their lives were stolen from them. "Unchecked” seems like such a paltry word, better used to describe a youth’s foolish indiscretions or a wayward patch of ivy, rather than an event that culminated with the deaths of four… No, not four. I look at my aunt, standing a few feet away from me, face and arms and legs very much animated with life.
"It took some time to regain my own strength," she explains. "You cannot imagine. And all while attempting to harness him, to bring him under some semblance of control."
Behind her, the candle flickers. My eyes remain on her face, and it is with that subtle change of illumination in the background that I notice the lines that fan out from her eyes, from her mouth, and even flanking her delicate nose. They shift, it seems, writhing across her skin in time with each breath she takes.
"And then there was you." She looks at me, facing me directly as if she were my reflection in a full-length mirror. "I thought I’d lost you. And you, you’re integral to everything. So much more important than my sister ever let you know." A pause, long enough for the jab against my mother to settle in the air above us. "All I wanted was to keep you safe, to keep you alive."
On that final word, a thought sparks to life inside my head. Before I can stop myself, my hands clasp in front of me, my thumbs taking turns gliding over the raised welts that cut across the skin on my wrists. But the thought slips away from me in a moment, and my aunt steps forward, rapidly closing the distance between us as she reaches for my hands.
"I am so, so sorry I could not be there for you, and when you were most in need of someone by your side." She squeezes my fingers until I feel the bones ache beneath the pressure. "Then, when I had finally recovered enough of my strength, I discovered you under the care of that Marta Summerson."
As soon as the words are out, she must realise she’s gone too far. And so she recedes, my hands are released, and my space given back as she begins her circle of the room all over again. Her gaze, though, she keeps averted from me, and I wonder if she must sense how the shadows move over her, twisting and reshaping themselves in every dip and hollow of her skin.
"To hear of you being on the stage, no better than some common—" Her lips press together, and her chin lowers until there is hardly any light visible between the line of her jaw and her chest. "But I did what I could, sending Lord Ryall to you, making sure to always know of your whereabouts."
I open my mouth to speak, and for a moment, I almost cannot find my voice. Watching this woman—for though she resembles my aunt in every feature, there is something disquieting about her presence that prevents me from fully acknowledging her connection to me—as she prowls about the room feels akin to watching a seasoned actor tread the boards, and so how can I bring myself to interrupt such a skilled performance? And yet the words must be spoken, and she is standing there, waiting for me to provide my portion of the dialogue.
"You never thought to show yourself to me? In all that time?"
"Oh, Thea, dear. You have to understand! For such a long time, I was of no good to anyone. And as time passed, I could not trust how you would receive me."
My teeth clench. I cannot let her see the distaste I feel for her, and I cannot let her see the pain that even now squeezes my skull. For the darkness that has sheltered within her for the last twelve years has now set my mind to screaming. But I must keep her talking, anything to keep her talking, because I know that it cannot be much longer now. Even though I can barely control the direction of my thoughts, there is one that remains clear, and it is that I must keep her talking, I must distract her, for as long as my body will allow me.
"The girls." I force the words out, my jaw still rigid. "The girls in the photographs. What had you to do with them?"
Her posture stiffens before I’ve even finished speaking, and I see a measure of that pettiness I had already witnessed her exhibit towards my mother return to her.
"A fortune is a fortune. My husband chose to acquire his through some less than reputable means. Does that diminish its value in your eyes? My sister," she pronounces, injecting no small amount of venom into those two words, "believed it to be a blight on my status. But do you believe there is a single well-appointed gentleman in all of London—in all of England—whose fortune does not bear the taint of scandal?"
That she feels compelled to defend herself when I’ve raised no accusation against her is more than enough for me to identify the guilt she must carry in her own breast. I give her a moment, quickly followed by another. She does not anticipate a reply from me, and so I do not take the trouble to offer one for her perusal.
"Some photographs of a few girls, hmm?" She sniffs, shoulders pressing back, elbows pushing out from her sides as if she is preparing to anchor herself in place with those slight joints. "If only you were acquainted with the worst of it."
There is darkness, slowly seeping from her pores. Or perhaps it is only my eyes seeing false things as the pain tightens its grip on my skull. I blink in hope of clearing my vision, but the shadow remains on her skin, gathering in the creases, small rivulets joining with others as they trickle down… down… down… until I think her sleeves and her cuffs may be soaked in it.
The sensation is a strange one, watching the entity move over her, so close to her person that I have trouble differentiating between the two. But I cannot stop watching her, even as I hear the uneven tread in the hall outside the parlour. Aunt Ann is in a better position to see him as he enters the room, and so instead of witnessing his entrance, I'm instead able to watch the mingled shades of surprise and confusion as they play across her features.
My curiosity sated, I turn towards him as well, and I see the glint of the pistol he holds in his hand. In his right hand, I notice. Because every detail, no matter how mundane, seems to impress itself on my mind in this moment.
"Chissick," I breathe, and I fear I could collapse into a mound of soiled clothing and quaking limbs if it were not for the brightness in his gaze, holding me in place. "Please. Stay right there. Don’t come any closer to either of us, if you would be so kind."
Chapter Twenty-Three
* * *
* * *
Chissick holds the gun against his thigh, his arm seemingly relaxed, his stance casual, but I have no idea how quickly he could move if given reason to do so.
There is blood, I notice, staining the skin on the back of his hand. Farther up, and I see the marks of it on his shirt, dried to the colour of rust on his ruined collar. And even higher, there are the makeshift bandages still wrapped around his head. But the blood there is old, from when I left him hours befo
re, and so I try to calm myself with the knowledge that the wound has not taken to bleeding freely once again.
"How did you find us?"
It is my aunt who speaks first. There is no surprise in her tone, but instead a heavy dose of chagrin—bordering on weariness—at Chissick’s sudden arrival. There is a part of me that wishes for nothing more than to step back and ponder all of the happenings that have led him here; this poor man who came into my room at Mrs. Selwyn’s only days ago, bearing a battered bowler and a yellowed newspaper clipping in the recesses of his jacket.
"Someone told me." His eyes never flicker towards mine, and for that, I give him a great deal of credit. But I watch as he swallows, the quick rise and fall of his Adam’s apple against his filthy collar. And I see the perspiration, too, shining on his brow, his upper lip, mingling with the paleness of his complexion to create an image of someone hardly strong enough to remain standing on his feet.
What a pair the two of us must make! The weight of a feather could succeed in laying the both of us flat, and yet here we are, facing off against something that has killed at least a half dozen people.
"I’ve kept an eye on you for some time. Mister Chissick, is it?"
He makes no reply. I watch his hand tighten and relax around the handle of the revolver, and then he is still.
"Your reputation precedes you," she continues, and I still cannot determine how irritated she is by his presence. Did she anticipate his arrival? It hadn’t occurred to me until now to even wonder if her dabbling with such otherworldly beings has gifted her with the ability to see beyond what the eyes can perceive. Or perhaps… perhaps she had been too full of hope that her Lady Francesca had put an end to him with a single swing of a cast iron shovel.
