Maplecroft

by Cherie Priest

  The lights were on, down there. The glow seeped up from between the steps, which were only wood slat things—I’d never installed anything sturdier, feeling that it wasn’t worth the trouble. The glow was yellow, not the vivid white of the gas lamps, and I told myself that it didn’t mean anything. I mumbled as I descended, insisting that it could’ve been worse—it could’ve been green.

  “Nance?” I called again, and my head still spun, for I was still half stuck in the dreams from which I’d been so rudely dragged. I forced myself to work against the drugs, planting my feet one in front of the other, going a tad more slowly, clutching the handrail as I went because I wasn’t sure I could get back up again, should I take another spill. My body already ached all over from the first one.

  I heard her voice.

  She murmured something, and I couldn’t hear it. One word, or one syllable anyway. It could’ve been anything, but it meant she was alive and that she was still capable of responding to me. My panic wasn’t entirely soothed, but such was my joy at hearing her that I took the last steps two at a time and almost fell again, but caught myself—using the axe as a cane to steady my balance upon my arrival.

  “Nance, where are you? What have you done?”

  My eyes answered both questions.

  She’d found the cupboard in the floor. The stones themselves had told her where they were, and how to find them, and what they wanted.

  She’d retrieved the box they were kept in, and now they were scattered around the ground, except for the one set in a necklace. It’d been Mrs. Borden’s. It was the necklace I’d taken, after she was dead. Now Nance wore it, and the sight filled me with misery.

  She was lying beside the hole in the floor, cupboard opened and box exposed, emptied. Its contents scattered. Her breathing was shallow, too fast, not normal at all. Her eyes were glazed over, and she stared at the ceiling—where there was nothing to see.

  I flung myself down at her side, dropping the axe and seizing her by the shoulders. I shook her, but she didn’t respond. I dragged her as far as I could, or as far as I dared, then I left her, gathered the scattered stones, and threw them back into the box.

  My safeguards hadn’t worked, but they were all that remained in my arsenal.

  I reached back to her and wrenched her fist open. I retrieved the stone she held there, too, and saw that it’d burned a weird shape into her skin, but what it meant (or if it meant anything at all), I didn’t know and didn’t have time to decide. I tore the necklace off her, shattering the clasp. I threw it into the box as well, closed the lid, fastened the bands, and dumped it down into the cupboard. I closed the cupboard door and dragged one of my desks over to it, as if the added weight would hold it down.

  Ridiculous superstition, just as Emma would’ve called it, but Jesus, what else did I have to work with?

  I returned again to Nance, who was lying as if catatonic, slack-jawed and lovely, there on the floor. She wasn’t blinking. Just breathing a quick staccato in and out, her chest fluttering. Her burned hand opening and closing like a flower.

  I slapped her cheek, gently at first. Then harder. Then I said her name as I did so, and I realized that I was crying and bleeding both—when the blood splashed down onto her nightdress. I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand, and left a trail of scarlet down my arm, but I did not care. I only cared about her, as inert as a doll except for that uncanny pace of breath.

  I couldn’t leave her there.

  I had to move her. Could I move her? I looked up at the stairs that would take us to the first floor, and I considered it. I had to try.

  I wedged myself under her shoulders, using my arm and my badly bruised legs to lift her, and haul her upright. She didn’t fight me, but she didn’t do much to help—though to her credit, when I made her stand, her knees locked and she remained upright, so long as I prevented her from falling over. I guided her through the cellar, around the repositioned table, past the damnable cupboard, over to the stairs, and I hauled her bodily up them. She cooperated only so much. Maybe she couldn’t do any better. Maybe she didn’t know how anymore. I can’t say, and I shuddered to consider—all I could do was insist to myself that she was only stunned, and would surely awaken any minute now.

  Any minute. That’s what I told myself as she languidly moved her legs up and down, not really catching the steps in order to climb them, but going through the motions through the sheer memory of her muscles. (Any minute, she’ll come to her senses. Any minute, she’ll find her footing. Any minute, and I’ll have her back.)

  I slammed the cellar door, but didn’t lock it yet. I still wasn’t sure where the key was, and anyway, the damage was done.

  Emma was calling for me, but I couldn’t deal with her, not quite yet. Not when I had Nance out of the basement at long last, but sprawled now upon the kitchen floor and looking like a corpse.

  I slapped her again, until I was afraid I’d harm her should I hit her any harder, but I received no response. Her breathing slowed somewhat, as if distance from the cupboard had allowed her body to return to something like normalcy; but still she didn’t blink, didn’t answer, didn’t show any sign that she knew where she was or what she was doing there.

  Upstairs, I heard Emma shake the bell one last time and then in frustration, she flung it into the hallway. “Lizzie!” she shrieked, though her voice was almost gone. It came out in a fierce whisper with an edge like a razor.

  At a loss, I replied, “Coming!” and on the way up the stairs again, I realized I hadn’t used our secret phrase—but then again, I’d been replying from the kitchen, not the cellar.

  I dragged myself up the steps to the second floor, and by the time I reached Emma’s room I could scarcely stand. I was drained and aching, and my brain wouldn’t yet stop sloshing around in my skull. Whatever Nance had given me, it’d done its job well, and it wasn’t quite finished working.

  Emma was out of her bed, leaning against the tall wooden post at the foot. She asked me, “Well?”

  “Nance got into the cellar,” I replied, summing up the situation.

  She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “And?”

  “And I don’t know!” I put my face in my hands, but when I covered my eyes the world still wavered, as if I were drunk. I changed my mind and ran my fingers through my night-tousled, unchecked hair instead. “She’s on the floor in the kitchen, and she . . . she isn’t responding,” I said, trying to force myself to treat this like a scientist, as if this must be new data. But it wasn’t new data. It was my lover, and she wasn’t herself right now. For all I knew, she might never be herself again—she could twist and warp and transform into one of the monsters with the glass-needle teeth, and then I’d have to kill her, and put her body into the cooker, and pretend that the juices and stench that remained were never the soft flesh and warm hair of the woman I’d loved.

  “Go get Seabury,” she said, and even through the effort of speaking, and the exhaustion in her voice, I heard impatience and anger. “We need him. You’re bleeding.”

  “He won’t know what to do any better than we do,” I argued.

  “You don’t have any better ideas, do you?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll . . . I’ll send for him.”

  “Go get him yourself.”

  “And leave her here? Alone in the house with you? When we don’t know what she’ll do . . . or what she’ll be . . . when she comes around again?” I didn’t say the rest of what I feared, that of course, she might never come around again at all—and I didn’t know if that’d be worse. I was too afraid of too many things at once. They all swirled together fighting for dominance. None of them won. Or they all did, however you chose to look at it.

  “All right, then. Jacob, next door.”

  “Right,” I said, perking up at the scent of a plan. “I’ll go get him, right now. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  The neighbor’s boy was ten years old and constantly offering to do odd jobs for money. It was
late, and he’d be in bed—but a light still burned in a window at the big white house next door to ours, and I had no qualms at all about declaring an emergency. I said it was my sister, and we needed the doctor, but I couldn’t leave her. Emma’s condition was well-known, and it was the easiest, nearest lie I could offer and expect to receive any help.

  I offered his parents a fistful of coins, probably three or four times what he would’ve asked, even at that hour. The boy hopped on a horse, and was gone.

  I went back inside, where Emma had successfully come downstairs by herself. I didn’t take the time to be surprised; her energy came and went. Some days were better than others, and under different circumstances, we’d celebrate her vigor with a glass of port—but I could only work with the spirits at hand, so there’d be no port.

  “Brandy, maybe,” I said aloud, as I dropped to the floor beside Nance, who hadn’t moved.

  Emma, ever to her credit, recognized my train of thought—or at least predicted its destination. “I’ll open Father’s cabinet, and find a clean glass.”

  I didn’t really expect it to work, but it gave us both something to do.

  I man-hauled Nance to the parlor settee and deposited her there, and soon Emma arrived with a decanter and a small glass. My hands shook as I filled it, and as I lifted Nance’s head in an effort to make her drink.

  Much like her cooperative walking and stair climbing, she agreeably sipped the beverage and swallowed it. I hadn’t expected it, but I was relieved at this one small thing at least—she could drink, and presumably eat, and wasn’t quite so lost to the world that she might die of starvation.

  And that’s preposterous, isn’t it? Starvation isn’t any real concern. If Nance is to die from this, it will almost certainly be at my hand. Whatever this illness is—be it infection, or some other form of affliction—it does not kill. It transforms, and inspires the victim to kill instead. They must be put down like rabid dogs, for the safety of everyone around them.

  So already, kneeling on the floor beside her, with her lovely neck resting against my forearm as I propped her head into a drinking position, I was thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

  “It might be,” Emma began softly, “she’s only stunned. You’ve been there yourself, and you’ve come back around again.”

  “Not like this,” I said, and I would’ve sobbed if I hadn’t been all cried out for the moment. My eyes were sore from it. “I’ve never been this far gone.”

  “She may need a little time, and that’s all. Give her overnight, and she may surprise you. Look, even now her breathing is calmed. It’s practically normal.”

  She was right, but I didn’t dare believe that it was so simple as that. “Doctor Seabury may know of some treatment to help awaken her. He’s been working with . . .” I stopped myself. The only patients I knew who’d suffered anything like this had murdered, and then been killed.

  “He’s a brilliant man, and he may have ideas. He may see patterns that have eluded us thus far.”

  Emma sounded unbearably weary. I’m sure I did, too, when I replied with what pitiful hope I could muster, “Between us, we may have collected enough details to see those patterns. If there are any.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your nose . . . it’s bleeding again. Or still, I don’t know.”

  I felt the trickle even as she pointed it out. I rubbed it with the back of my bare arm again, and a second streak of red joined the first, which now had flaked and faded. This time, I noticed the pain. I rose to my feet and went in search of a tea towel. Upon finding one, I held it to my face and remained standing in the space between the kitchen and the parlor.

  “I must look a sight,” I said, my voice muffled by the fabric. “God knows what the Wilsons thought, when I knocked so desperately on the door for Jacob. But they didn’t say anything.”

  “They were too surprised, I’m sure.”

  I dropped onto the arm of the settee. It creaked beneath me. But then the door rattled under the knock of a heavy hand, and I jumped to my feet once more.

  “The doctor,” Emma breathed.

  I opened the door and almost dragged him inside, babbling as I drew him into the parlor.

  “It’s Nance, Doctor Seabury. She’s stumbled into my research, and she’s become infected, or afflicted, or I don’t know what word you’d use—I’m sure there’s a better one, something medical that applies, but I don’t know it, and she’s gone catatonic, and please,” I begged. “Please, will you help her?”

  In a moment, he was at her side and unfastening the latch on his bag. He was rumpled, in that way of a man who’s been ready to settle in for the night—only to be rallied before bedtime. I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that I felt positively embarrassed.

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised, and he proceeded to poke and prod her with the diligence of a seasoned professional. He checked her pulse and her pupils, frowning at the state of her eyes and their failure to blink. He felt at her throat, and her belly; he clapped his hands in front of her face and received no response whatsoever.

  He sat back on his heels. “How long as she been like this?”

  Wretchedly, I confessed, “I’m not sure. Half an hour?”

  “Closer to a full one,” Emma corrected me. “I heard her come downstairs. I heard her open the cellar door . . .” She stopped herself, unsure of how much she wanted to share. Then she continued, “I tried to summon Lizzie,” and then to the doctor, “I have a bell, you know. But it took her quite some time to come around.”

  He turned his attention to me, understanding plenty at a glance, I’m sure. My pupils no doubt told him plenty in return. “I won’t insult you by being overly delicate: I assume the cause is an opiate? One you’ve made a recent habit.”

  I dabbed at my eyes with the bloodstained tea towel. “She’s been drugging me, at night,” I said, cocking my head toward Nance, though I hated to implicate her. “I don’t know what she used. I can go upstairs and search her things and see, or maybe she took something from Emma’s cabinet.”

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow at Emma. “But you’re not inclined to taking the drops or syrups, are you?”

  “Not routinely. But sometimes, when I absolutely must sleep—and the cough is more than I can bear.”

  “I appreciate that you’re not the sort to become dependent on them. They fog the brain,” he said, casting another appraising look at me. “And your studies must prohibit it.” She nodded primly, and for a moment I nearly hated her. Always the teacher’s pet, wasn’t she? And she’d always disliked Nance, so here was one more thing to lay at Nance’s feet.

  I fought the feeling down like bile. It wasn’t fair or kind, and we were all just trying to understand, after all. I swallowed so hard that I almost banished the great lump in my throat, and I said, “I’m not accustomed to these things, either. It’s hit me awfully hard.”

  “As did something else, if I must judge by your nose.”

  “The banister. I fell down the stairs, coming to check after Nance. I . . . it was so very hard to wake up.”

  “Depending on what she used, it’s a wonder you managed at all. What was she looking for, down there?” he asked, returning his attention to Nance, who never stirred. He took her wrist in his hand and as he listened to my words, he listened for her heart.

  I collapsed into the seat across from Emma, to the doctor’s right. I was worn out, and telling the truth required my full attention. I couldn’t speak clearly and stand up at the same time.

  “She wanted to see inside the cellar. I wouldn’t let her; that’s why she began drugging me. She stole the key from around my neck, and she was trying to keep me asleep long enough to investigate without my interfering.”

  Calmly, more like a priest than a physician, he asked question after question—sometimes watching me, sometimes watching Nance.

  “Why did you want to keep her from the cellar?”

  “Because it called her
. Or something inside the cellar called her; that’s what I mean.” I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, now that the first flush of mortal panic was finished with me.

  “What are you collecting in the basement, Miss Borden?”

  I sighed. “By now, you should call me Lizbeth, propriety be damned.”

  “It usually is. What are you collecting in the basement, Lizbeth?”

  “Evidence. Research. Samples. Nance was lured there by the contents of a box, which I’d sealed up as best I could—but it clearly wasn’t enough.”

  “What was in the box?”

  “Beach glass, to the casual eye. Tumbled rocks and gems.”

  His eyes went distant, then focused sharply. “Beach glass?”

  “Pieces I’ve found, here and there. They call me, too,” I admitted, though I hated to hear myself say it. “I’ve made efforts to study them, and determine—”

  “Just . . . little pieces of glass, from the shore?” he interrupted.

  “Green ones, usually. Sometimes I find them embedded in sandstone or lime, or polished and set into jewelry. But they always speak the same way, call the same . . . well, it’s not a song.” I struggled for the words.

  “I’ve seen them,” he said softly, but suddenly—before I could continue. “In the barrel at Hamilton’s, the odds and ends, bits and bobs. The ones Matthew collected for the shop.”

  The connection clicked, in both our heads. Our eyes met.

  I said, “They called him, too.”

  “And your stepmother,” he said sharply, and with wonder. Like it’d only just occurred to him. “She wore something. I saw it on her once or twice. A necklace . . .” On some instinct, or half-spied detail he’d only just recalled, his gaze jerked down to Nance’s neck. A thin red line marked the spot where I’d pulled the necklace off, breaking it and leaving a narrow welt.

  “Nance found it.” I offered it up as a whisper. I couldn’t bring myself to say it any louder. “She’d put it on. I took it away from her.”

  Excitedly, he shifted to face me. “But you knew—you knew it was the necklace. And in time, you learned it was the stones themselves, and there were others like it.”