“I have a surprise for you,” I said, unable to contain a large grin. I took her by the hand and guided her out of the crush to a place that would give us some privacy. Around a corner of the building, partially concealed by a row of hedges, I got down on one knee, pulled the box out of my coat pocket, and opened it. The ring glistened in the sunlight, and I moved it ever so slightly to emphasize the effect.
“Will you marry me?” I asked nervously.
To that point, I thought we were alone. The path between campus buildings was yards away, and no one on it was paying us any attention. The problem, I realized too late, was that we were situated directly in front of a window—on the other side of which was a classroom full of students. They, too, were taking their final exams. Every previous time I’d been by this spot, the room had been empty. I had assumed, wrongly, that it was unused. Even with the room occupied as it was, all eyes inside had been focused on their papers—until I exposed the distracting diamond to the light. Now, all eyes were on us. Even the professor in the front of the room watched.
Her lovely smile grew even larger, and she nodded.
“Yes.”
She had been looking at me and the ring the whole time, so I wasn’t sure if she had noticed our audience. An eruption of cheering from inside called her attention to it, however. Regardless, we hugged and kissed, triggering another round of cheers. Embarrassment set in at that point—at least for me. We waved and ran off while the professor tried to get his students to calm down and refocus.
When my heart rate slowed, I informed her of my plans for the evening. She had previously told me of her intention to leave the following day to visit her Aunt Marie and Uncle Thomas in Boston for a few days. Knowing that, I wanted to prepare a dinner for her and spend time with her before she departed.
Never knowing me to cook, she agreed with delight. I walked her to her sorority house, then went straight home to make preparations.
My landlady, Mrs. Bettings, greeted me at the door when I arrived.
“What did she say, Robert?” she asked me eagerly.
I smiled broadly, unable to conceal my glee.
“She said yes!”
Mrs. Bettings squealed with delight. She reached out with both arms to hug me, and I had to bend over to accommodate her, for I was nearly a foot taller than she. I was by far the youngest tenant in the building, the other men being in their fifties and sixties, or even older. On top of that, Mrs. Bettings was childless, and I came to sense that she favored me as a son. She had been running the boarding house by herself since the War, her husband one of its many casualties. I had a great respect for her, as did all of the men who lived there.
It was half past six when Elizabeth came to call. With the aid of Mrs. Bettings and the cooperation of the other tenants in the building, everyone had retired to their rooms in order to give us our privacy. We had the kitchen and dining room to ourselves. I served a meager meal of onion soup, fish, potatoes, and some deliciously fresh bread—baked, of course, by my landlady. We filled ourselves. The evening air was a bit cool, so I started a fire in the dining room hearth. We sat on the floor in front of the fire, snuggled close, and drank apple cider from ornate wine glasses, which Mrs. Bettings had removed from storage for the occasion.
“It will be a large wedding, Robert.”
“As large as we can afford, Elizabeth.”
“We can afford quite a lot,” she said with a knowing smile, then paused. “I’ve never spoken to you of my family, and I am grateful that you never pressed the issue.”
She looked at me, as if wanting me to guess what she might say next, but I simply waited for her to speak.
“My family is…quite wealthy, Robert. I had to be sure that you were not pursuing me because of my money.”
“No, I—I had no idea.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. “I know.”
The initial shock took a moment to wear off.
“But I do know that I love you.”
I held up my glass.
“To us,” I toasted.
“To us.”
We continued to enjoy the cider and spoke of all manner of things—our hopes and dreams, our future. The wedding would be in a year, we decided, following the defense of my doctoral thesis. After emptying the bottle, I kissed her on the forehead, stood up, and stretched. The fire was waning, so I added one small log, then took the glasses and the bottle to the kitchen. As I cleaned up some of the dishes, the clock struck eight. The last of the notes was fading when I heard her voice drift in from the dining room, the words forever etched into my memory.
“That’s odd. The fire is changing my shadow.”
And then she screamed.
I was back in the dining room in an instant—but it was already too late. She was standing, screaming, flailing her hands at the flames that covered her entire body. I got her back down onto the floor and tried to smother the fire first with my bare hands, then with the upturned end of the rug. But it was no use. The inferno seemed to originate from within her, flames emanating from every pore.
Her agony did not last long.
As I watched, not believing, I saw her melt before my eyes. Flesh and muscles and bones shifting with a morbid liquidity, then disappearing from sight. She was fully consumed in a minute, her shrieks still echoing in my ears. Nothing remained but ashes. It didn’t seem possible. Only moments before, we were talking and laughing about our future together, and now there was nothing—no future, no present. Even the past was just a dream.
She was gone.
Three
Mrs. Bettings was first to arrive on the scene, opening the door of the dining room more forcefully than I would have thought possible. She asked where Elizabeth was. Nearly in a trance, I described the flames that I could not extinguish. The look of concern on the poor woman’s face turned to horror. She only stared at the bits of ash on the floor, mute with disbelief. It was only the arrival of Mr. Dunderhill, a boarder from the second floor, that brought her back to reality. With the commanding presence I had grown to respect, she escorted him from the room and told him to find a policeman. He knew her as well as I, and yielded to her request. After he had left, she closed and locked the door. We sat then, and waited, Mrs. Bettings trying her best to comfort me.
And all the time I watched the fire. I wanted to ask it how. Why. I needed to know. I hoped that it would whisper to me its secrets. But except for the occasional hiss or crack, the flames were silent.
A stout knock upon the dining room door announced the officer’s arrival. Mrs. Bettings showed him in, careful to keep out the rest of the small crowd that had gathered outside. His gaze moved around the room, settled in front of the fireplace: the ashes, the displaced rug. After a while, he removed a notebook and pencil from a coat pocket and looked at me.
“Your name, sir?”
“Robert Adderly.”
My answer went into the notebook.
“What happened, Mr. Adderly?”
“My fiancée and I had just finished dinner,” I began. “I left the room. I heard her scream. When I rushed in she was already covered in flames. I couldn’t put them out no matter how hard I tried.”
“And her name?”
“Elizabeth Wentworth.”
A pop from the fire, and a spark spiraled outward.
“A spark,” I added. “I left her sitting by the fire. A spark must have…”
Even as I spoke the words I couldn’t even bring myself to believe them. His expression indicated to me that he shared my opinion.
“No one else saw this? It was just the two of you?”
“Just us, yes.”
His eyes narrowed and he frowned.
“Thank you, sir. That’s all for now.”
Careful with the placement of his feet, he turned from me and moved closer to the fire. I watched him make a sketch of the rug, fireplace, and ashes. When he was through, he crossed the room and opened the door.
“Mrs. Bettings, please
come in. And the man who—yes, you.”
As a distraught Mrs. Bettings entered, the officer directed her toward me. She sat back down next to me again and held my hand. As soon as Mr. Dunderhill entered the room, the officer closed the door and pulled him to the side. They had a short conversation on the spot, with the policeman facing away from us and speaking very softly. Mr. Dunderhill tried to keep his voice down, but his answers were loud enough for me to make out most of what he said.
“No…screams and…”
“…both been living here…”
“No, no, no…I can’t believe…”
Mr. Dunderhill was then gently ushered out the door, looking more confused than when he came in. Questions were set to Mrs. Bettings in the same manner. She, I could tell, made a point of raising her voice to the point where I could hear her answers, but still low enough that the policeman couldn’t object to the volume.
“No, I didn’t see anything. We all agreed to give them their privacy.”
“Yes, she was most definitely here.”
“Robert has lived here for years, and I trust him completely.”
“I’d met Elizabeth several times in the past year or so. She was so pretty. Frail-looking, but still very strong.”
“I had all the fireplaces and chimneys cleaned a month ago. Krüger’s Chimney Service, on Elm.”
The officer put away his notebook.
“I’m done here for now,” he stated. “There’s no body”—that comment being directed pointedly at me—“so there’s no need to disturb anyone further tonight. Don’t touch the area in front of the fireplace at all. Someone will be by first thing in the morning to take a closer look.”
Again he looked directly at me.
“And do stick around, Mr. Adderly. I have no doubt there’ll be more questions for you.”
With that, he let himself out. Mrs. Bettings hurriedly closed the door behind him
“Stay here and catch your breath for a while, Robert,” she whispered to me. “I’ll clear the hall for you.”
I heard her quietly dismiss the small crowd in the hall, and when that failed, not so quietly. I sat for a time, alternately watching the fireplace and the floor, still waiting for an answer, a revelation. The fire dwindled to candle flames, then glowing embers, and still I couldn’t trust it.
In all the time I sat there, filled with both fear and anticipation, nothing happened.
When even the orange of the embers faded, I let out a breath. The fire had merely been a fire then. But the fact that my irrational fear of the flames proved to be exactly that did nothing to help matters, explained nothing. Elizabeth was still dead. It was then that the reality of the situation struck me. How could this have happened? Could the Devil himself have reached up from Hell and grabbed her? But why? She was innocent. Was it something to do with her mysterious family? Any mention of them had always been colored with sorrow. Were the sins of the parents being visited upon the children? Without her to ask, there was no way to know. A few hours previous, I’d been ecstatic, the happiest man alive. And now…
A tremendous wave of despair overwhelmed me, and I succumbed to it. The tears poured out of me. I grieved for my lost love.
I couldn’t spend the night in that building. I had to get out, go somewhere—anywhere. I began to walk, no singular destination in mind. The streets were mostly clear of passersby, and for that I was grateful. The puzzle of Elizabeth’s demise filled my mind. But something nagged at me. Some detail of the bizarre event raised a flag in my subconscious, but I couldn’t lock onto it.
I walked for at least an hour. As I ambled numbly through those decadent streets, I experienced the world with only one sense—smell. There were no sounds to be heard but my own footfalls; all else was deathly still. There was precious little to see, for illumination from artificial sources was almost entirely lacking, and light from the moon was minimal that night. But the odors…the smell of decay hung over the world as a fog, in some places devastating in its intensity. The stench of refuse and sewage—in all of their myriad forms—constituted the bulk, while traces of mold and mildew seemed to be threaded throughout, binding everything together so as to prevent it from dispersing. But in the midst of that, an unnaturally pleasant scent grabbed my attention. From where it wafted I shall never know—an open window, perhaps—but for a fleeting instant, I experienced the heavenly aroma of lilac. Elizabeth had used just such a perfume occasionally.
Elizabeth.
I relived that final scene once again. Her arrival at the boarding house, our dinner together, our conversation afterward. Her hideous death. Her wails, the unquenchable flames, burning, consuming every bit of her.
I had it!
There had been no smell of anything! That was the bit of information for which I had been sifting my memory. I was dumbstruck. There hadn’t been the least amount of the horrid smell of burning flesh or hair. I stopped dead on the sidewalk and looked down at my hands. They should have been covered with gruesome burns. A fire intense enough to incinerate a human being should have caused me serious injuries. But they were undamaged.
All at once, I realized where I was. My meandering walk had led me to a crumbling neighborhood on the outskirts of Arkham, a place inhabited by the outcasts of society. Aside from drunks and thieves, the area had a reputation for inexplicably savage murders. During times of lucidity, it was a place that I avoided even in broad daylight. What had led me there that night? I reversed direction and got my bearings, but in my haste to make my way out of that noxious district, I turned a corner and nearly collided with a very tall gentleman. I did not sense him until I was upon him. I stopped and nervously excused myself, but received no response. Assuming that he did not hear me, I was about to speak again when a strange iciness gripped my heart and stole my breath. The effect lasted only a moment before my heartbeat tripled, spurring me forward, and I continued on around him. After going some distance, I looked back to find him, but he had already been swallowed by the darkness.
Upon arriving home, I crept into the dining room and inhaled deeply through my nose. I smelled the smoky remains of the fire and the omnipresent rosy scent of Mrs. Bettings’ perfume, but there was nothing untoward; nothing that might suggest the awful scene that had occurred only hours before. I tried again, filling my lungs, and received the same results.
Instead of turning on the overhead lamp, I reached up for the candleholder on the shelf beside the door. Even lighting that small flame inspired some trepidation in me. But I couldn’t allow it to continue; that ridiculous new fear needed to be conquered. Holding the candle in my right hand, I put my left over it, hovering just above the flame. The pain grew as I moved it closer, and before I lifted it away entirely I lowered it into the flame for a full second. The results were simply what any sane person would expect—it hurt, but I did not catch fire. Next, I singed the hairs on my wrist that extended beyond the sleeve of my coat. As they hissed and shriveled, the odor of burning hair was obvious and unforgettable.
The room seemed to be the same as I had left it. Next to the hearth, I knelt down and closely examined the floor. It was unmarred—and nearly clean of the ash, of which there had been remarkably little to begin with. I put the candle down and lowered my head to the floor, concentrating on a tiny bit of the grey, ghostly matter, careful not to disturb it in any way. The pile seemed to be smaller than I remembered. And indeed, over the span of the next several minutes, it shrank in size. It was astounding but true: The ash was evaporating. It would surely be gone by morning. The rug, too, was undamaged. In that room, there was no physical evidence whatsoever of any flame beyond the edge of the fireplace.
I had not even the start of an explanation for any of it. How could a linen rug emerge from a raging inferno without being singed? How could a human body be so completely consumed by fire? And what physical process could cause the remaining ashes to evaporate into nothingness?
Four
In the morning, Mrs. Bettings knocked on my
door to wake me up. When I went downstairs, the officers were waiting for me, faces stern. The table had been pulled away from the hearth as far as possible, with Mr. Dunderhill, Mr. Hunt, and Mr. Harrison attempting to enjoy their breakfasts. Mrs. Bettings bustled around, serving food, refilling coffee cups—and listening in as best as she could.
“Mr. Adderly, my name is Lieutenant Ryan. The officer who was here last night wrote in his report that there were ashes on the floor in the vague outline of a body. He drew a picture of the placement.”
I only nodded, waiting for a question.
“And yet there are no ashes here this morning,” he said. “We asked your landlady about this and she insists she knows nothing. In fact, as it stands now, there is no evidence at all that Elizabeth Wentworth died here last night.”
“Sir, I told the other officer exactly what happened and he wrote—”
“Interfering with a crime scene is a serious offense, Mr. Adderly.”
“I assure you, no one has interfered with—”
“Unless there was no crime as described. We have witnesses to the fact that she arrived here. She presumably ate dinner, based on the dishes in the kitchen. But that’s all. After that, she simply disappeared.”
“Yes!” I hissed, not caring if my voice carried to the table. “She disappeared! Burned alive! The flames were so fierce, I was unable to put them out!”
I stopped and lifted my left hand to show him. The lie came easily.
“My hand was burned in the attempt. I didn’t realize it at the time. Everything was so confused.”
He examined my hand and wrist, not showing any sign that he believed me.
“That burn is trivial,” he said. “It could have been faked. This whole story is nothing but an elaborate hoax, isn’t it, Mr. Adderly? A college prank?”
I had no response for that. The suggestion was outrageous, and yet from his perspective, the reasoning was logical.
“That’s absurd,” I declared flatly.
The other officer approached from behind and tapped him on the shoulder. They walked to the far corner of the room and conferred quietly for a short time, then approached Mrs. Bettings.
The Shadow Beyond Page 3
