by Dahlia Adler
ROWAN:
Amen to that.
GABI:
Anthony wouldn’t like it. The deacons would never allow it.
CORA:
Forget the deacons.
ROWAN:
Definitely forget Anthony.
CORA:
Would you do it? If you could?
(Pause.)
GABI:
Maybe? I don’t know. I’m not sure if that’s the way I want to finally stand up there and speak.
ROWAN:
Fuck, yeah. You deserve a pulpit on your own terms.
GABI:
Like it’s that easy.
ROWAN:
Sure it is. Start a podcast, a YouTube channel. Write a book. I guarantee there’d be an audience for what you have to say.
GABI:
I’m not sure what I have to say. I’m not you.
ROWAN:
Lucky. Being the one who blurts out every thought isn’t always fun.
GABI:
It looks fun, to be honest.
ROWAN:
I always put on a hell of a show.
CORA:
So what’s the real you, then? If this is an act?
(Pause.)
ROWAN:
I don’t know. The honesty is real. The bluntness. I guess it’s just the part where it seems like I don’t care how people respond to it … that’s the act. Like, I gave this giant middle finger to Dad and the ministry by leaving, but he still follows me everywhere I go. His voice in my head.
You’re lucky, Cor.
CORA:
How?
ROWAN:
I know you think I’m an insensitive asshole to be saying this now, but you’ll get to make choices, decide your truth without risking the judgment or manipulation or fallout … I envy you.
CORA:
I grew up with him too, you know.
ROWAN:
I know, but—
CORA:
Anyway, I don’t even know my truth.
ROWAN:
But that’s okay! That can be your truth! What will you do, without Dad to stop you?
GABI:
Maybe lay off her, Ro.
CORA:
I want to find my mom.
ROWAN:
Wow. You had that ready.
CORA:
No, I … I hadn’t even thought about it. It never seemed like a possibility before.
ROWAN:
It wasn’t.
GABI:
It probably still isn’t, just realistically.
CORA:
I know. I don’t even know if she’s alive.
ROWAN:
But it’s sweet that you want to try.
CORA:
It’s not sweet.
ROWAN:
No, I—
CORA:
I’m not sweet! Or pure! Stop saying things like that. You’re not only saying I’m young. You’re calling me naïve and … and untouched, like I’ve somehow lived this idyllic life. You’ve been gone for so long, Ro, or wrapped up in running things, Gabi—neither of you know. Neither of you know what it’s been like for me!
ROWAN:
Cora. Fuck. Did he—
CORA:
No, don’t. Don’t ask if he touched me, like it matters. Like it’s worse if he hurt me with his body. How is it worse? He still got inside me. You know what that’s like. You just said, Gabi. Standing there as a child, sobbing to go to bed and having to listen to him tearing you down? None of that was different for me!
GABI:
You’re right. I’m so sorry. I just, I thought you were special.
CORA:
That’s the worst one. Nobody ever say I was special to him ever again, please?
ROWAN (to GABI): I thought you were watching out for her—
GABI:
I did everything I could! Maybe if you hadn’t left—
CORA:
Please. Don’t do this here, with him there. Still breathing, still sucking the oxygen out of the room. Still tearing us apart.
GABI:
You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
(Pause.)
ROWAN:
In his own twisted way, he brought us together with all these hoops he left us to jump through.
CORA:
That’s not why he did it.
ROWAN:
I know. But fuck his why, because we’re here now, together.
(Pause.)
GABI:
What if … what if we didn’t let him have the last word?
CORA:
If we didn’t let him tear us apart.
ROWAN:
What if the way we honor the good in his legacy is by standing up for the truth?
GABI:
But the truth—
ROWAN:
I know.
(Beat.)
CORA:
Together.
GABI:
Together.
(ROWAN takes the clipboard and signs the paperwork then hands it to GABI. GABI signs then sits with CORA on the love seat. ROWAN drifts over to the window, where she begins to sing softly, Amazing Grace.)
End Scene
ELSINORE
Inspired by Hamlet
Patrice Caldwell
First Clown: Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she willfully seeks her own salvation?
Second Clown: I tell thee she is. Therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sat on her and finds it Christian burial.
First Clown: How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defense?
Second Clown: Why, ’tis found so.
First Clown: It must be se offendendo. It cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act. And an act hath three branches—it is to act, to do, and to perform. Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
Second Clown: Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver—
First Clown: Give me leave. Here lies the water. Good. Here stands the man. Good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
—ACT 5, SCENE 1
28 April 1892
Darkness sweeps across the graveyard as my heart pounds with fear. The remnants of the gravediggers’ words—that Camilla, my best friend, didn’t deserve a Christian burial—fill the silence. The gravediggers sang and riddled as they prepared her hallowed ground. All the while telling tales about the late duke’s daughter, Anne—the late duke’s crazy daughter, Anne, whose madness—they claimed—was the cause of Camilla’s death.
If only they knew the truth.
But how could they? They wouldn’t believe it. I barely do myself.
The church clock chimes, and my attention turns to the full moon. I shiver as a breeze rustles through my hair and crawls down my spine. None of it matters, not their words, not my mother’s conviction that my uncle (turned stepfather) is innocent. Soon we all shall know the truth.
Besides, maybe I am mad. Maybe Camilla and I are mad to believe what we do. After all, is not madness just what others do not understand? Believing in things that shouldn’t exist. Seeking revenge, not justice. As I have learned, you must redefine what is right and what is wrong when those who are supposed to be just are anything but.
And so, I deceived my mother—I deceived them all, playing the fool while Camilla played with her life. Why, just an hour ago, I climbed in her grave, danced about it, and begged to be buried alive with her until they all left, certain of my madness. My mother hesitated as she walked out of the cemetery. For a moment, I thought she’d turn back. Ask me what was really going on. Promise me that this time she’d listen, that this time she’d believe me. But she merely adjusted her coat and followed my uncle back to Elsinore. Reminding me once again that she would always choose him, and thus her status, over
me. I must—I will—end this pestilence upon Elsinore, the hall I used to call home, a home this place is not and will never be for as long as my uncle holds power over my family and friends.
The twelfth chime rings, echoing across the graveyard. Two fingers peek through the dirt, then an arm—pearlescent in the moonlight—then a face, then a body, until all of her is revealed. White dress clinging to her limbs in the breeze, still in the gown she wore when she’d supposedly drowned.
When she looks at me, she wears the wickedest smile. Camilla faces me, the near product of the monster we now face. Now I know, now I am certain: my father was killed by a vampire.
LETTER FROM THE DUCHESS OF ELSINORE TO LADY ANNE
18 April 1892
DEAR DAUGHTER,—You are a woman of seven and ten. It is my wish that you and your uncle stepfather, Andrew, can see past your differences, for your dear mother’s sake if not your own. I know you miss your father, but even he would not want you to mourn so—it has been two months. It is unbecoming for one of your upbringing to carry on like this. Come home, my daughter. You spend too much time studying. Even with your handsome dowry, your fondness for books over peers will make you very unattractive to potential suitors.
I urge you this time not to leave.
Your Mother,
Penny
Duchess of Elsinore
LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF ELSINORE TO LADY ANNE
19 April 1892
MY DEAREST NIECE,—Your mother tells me that you shall arrive in three days’ time. I am anxiously expecting you. I do hope that we can put my brother’s your father’s untimely death behind us and move forward as a family. For your sake if not your mother’s. I trust that your journey from the Wittenberg school in London will be a happy one and that you will enjoy your time back at home.
Your Stepfather,
Andrew
Duke of Elsinore
22 April 1892
LADY ANNE’S JOURNAL
Left London at 8:35 p.m. Should have left earlier, but the train was an hour late. And then, of course, there were even more delays on the tracks.
Arrived in Elsinore a couple hours later. The strangest thing happened. A woman, around my mother’s age, begged me to stay with her and her husband for the night. They claimed it wasn’t safe for a young lady to be out at this time. Not because of worries about my virtue. But because of a ghost that has been roaming these parts.
Yes, a ghost.
I tried not to laugh. I don’t think I hid it well.
I politely declined. I couldn’t imagine what my mother would say if I told her I was delayed because I feared ghosts. She’d think I was lying to get out of coming home. Of course, I’d prefer to not come home, but telling falsehoods wouldn’t aid me.
Besides, I truly did miss my mother. It was my uncle I could do without. Especially since they’d married before my father’s body was even cold.
My mother’s marriage to my father had been a loveless one. That was obvious to anyone. “Good morning” and “good evening” were the only words they ever exchanged. The two were introduced when my mother was younger than me, by a friend of her mother who was known for pairing “dollar princesses” (rich and beautiful American women) with indebted and titled English men. My mother, the sole daughter of an American financier, had the biggest dowry my father had ever seen. A dowry that led his family to overlook my mother’s heritage—her mother, my grandmother, was a Black freedwoman—in favor of her family’s ability to put forth enough money to allow them to fully repair their decaying estate, among many other things.
Of course, her marriage to my uncle seemed like just another transaction. Because I was a girl, my father’s title passed to his next male relative: my uncle. Therefore, by marrying my mother, he kept access to her money, and by marrying him, my mother retained the status she’d grown to love.
Still, she claimed she was in love with my uncle—words she’d never once uttered about my father—and so for her I would return home.
Oh, look! I see it now. Finally, the coach is coming!
Left the station at 11:42 p.m.
The journey to Elsinore Hall was darker than I remembered. The sliver of moonlight reflected in the swelling hills of the surrounding village, painting them in wonderful shades of purple and blue.
I leaned out the window, and the driver looked back at me. Be careful, he said, once again touching—no, gripping the cross on his chest. The night is chilly and many ghosts roam, he said.
The villagers have always been a superstitious bunch but now seemed even more than usual.
I murmured something, humoring him as he continued to ramble.
It is said that even the ghost of the dead duke roams.
At that I perked up. I’d been away at school for years; he likely didn’t recognize me. Glad I had not revealed myself, I posed a question. What do you mean the duke’s ghost?
It is said that the duke is restless and cannot yet be at peace. That he walks these parts looking to— Just then, he stopped. Down the road, maybe in a distant farmhouse, a dog howled. A howl so loud, I thought it wolves. But wolves do not live in these parts.
I shook my head. The man’s tales were getting to me, making me hear things that clearly weren’t there. What would my mother say? That it was unbecoming for a young lady of my status to believe in such childish things as ghosts.
But then the howl happened again. The man jerked; he clearly heard it, too. And the horses strained and reared. The driver spoke to them in a low tone, but they kicked at the dirt as if fending off something in their path. When I looked out the coach, I saw a faint blue light that disappeared as soon as it came.
The horses reared up again. The driver yelled, but it did no good. The coach tumbled onto its side, and I fell out. Quickly, I scrambled up. Are you okay? I asked the driver. The horses bolted away into the dark.
I squinted as a figure approached in the distance. My blood grew cold. It was clad in military regalia that had once hung in my father’s office—an outfit he’d always say to me that he wished to be buried in. The figure looked me in the eye. At once, I was filled with dread.
Papa? I asked.
As I took it in, there was but one thing I knew: the driver had been right—it was my father’s ghost.
He leaned into me, and then he whispered.
One, that he had been murdered.
Two, that his brother, my uncle, had himself done the deed.
23 April 1892
LADY ANNE’S JOURNAL
8:31 p.m.
It’s been a day since that dreadful night in which my father’s ghost came to me. Since then, my sleep has been restless, my dreams plagued with the words he whispered to me.
One, that he had been murdered.
Two, that his brother, my uncle and now stepfather, had himself done the deed.
And so, I did the rational thing. I told my mother. Well, not entirely rational, as she didn’t believe me. She went so far as to claim I had lost my mind.
But I know what I saw.
I’ll never forget what I heard.
And so, I left her room, swallowing my tears like I used to all those years ago, back when my mother cared more about impressing society ladies who’d never accept her than spending time with me. My father was the one person who understood me, who supported my dream of going to Somerville College, who convinced Mother to let me go to boarding school rather than be tutored at home like most girls my age. Now that he was gone, she would force me into a society lady in order to secure a proper marriage—one that would finally give her the acceptance she wanted.
Clearly, I was on my own again.
I paced in my chamber, trying to sort everything out. I didn’t know much about my uncle. He had always been distant growing up. Taking trips constantly here and there. Never before desiring to marry and settle down. He had never been kind to me, but never cold either. He treated me simply as if I didn’t exist.
My dead father would have nothi
ng to gain from blaming his brother for his death. But my uncle would have everything to gain from killing his brother. And if he really did kill him, then he didn’t just rob me of a parent, he took away my future—my dreams of college—too.
My mother thinks me mad.
I must keep this to myself.
I must find evidence to convict him. I need proof.
And I shall chronicle every moment here lest my mind do deceive me.
10:03 p.m.
I was sitting at my desk, looking out the window into the courtyard, when a lady in white walked by. She was in the courtyard holding a candlestick. The wax was dripping down her hand, but she didn’t flinch, she didn’t shiver—even though she was wearing but a nightgown. It was as if she herself were a ghost. A fact I might’ve further considered if she hadn’t turned her head, just so, in my direction. The moonlight hit her pale skin, and I knew she was very much alive. For it was my childhood friend, Miss Camilla.
Last I heard from her, she was visiting her brother at Oxford. What was she doing here?
But when I looked back up from my journal, she was gone.
I must investigate. I shall return.
LETTER FROM MISS CAMILLA WHITBECK TO MR. SAMUEL WHITBECK
24 April 1892
MY DEAREST BROTHER,—Forgive my delay in writing. I’m sorry I had to leave you so suddenly. As you know, the Duchess of Elsinore asked me to come and stay with her, saying I would bring comfort to her after her husband’s untimely death. She has always watched out for me, just as much as you, ever since Mama passed. So, I felt I owed her that.
