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The next day Catherine informs us—with a pointed look at me—that she must go back to town, because the fabric she bought is too stained to use. Mother, who still doesn’t know the purpose of the fabric, has calls to make, and Ada needs supplies in town as well, so it’s agreed that an afternoon will be made of it. I beg off coming along, saying that I have a headache, but really I just can’t stand the idea of spending another afternoon with Catherine and her deceitful schemes. Father is at the mill, and Joe is driving everyone else so I have the house to myself. I’m enjoying a plate of cold pie on the floor in the library. Snip, my accomplice in crime, gobbles up the spilled crumbs so that Mother will never know I was eating on the carpet.
I’ve finally finishedMathildaand am just cracking openThe Romance of the Forest—an old favorite—when a clatter from somewhere in the house cuts the silence. I sit up, putting a hand on Snip’s back to keep him quiet. “Hello? Is someone there?”
I wait, listening for an answer. If they’ve come back through the kitchen, then maybe they don’t hear me. “Mother? Catherine? Is that you?”
Silence is the only answer. I sit perfectly still, straining my ear, but nothing else comes. Despite that, I have the prickling feeling that whoever—or whatever—made that noise, came from the dining room, and is still in there.
Gingerly, I get up, my legs full of pins and needles from sitting on the floor so long. Just like the night of the woman in the garden, I can’t stay in the library knowing that someone might be there. I must go and look for myself.
Even with the sun coming through the windows, illuminating the wood floors and catching the light of the crystal lamps, I feel as if I’m making my way through a dark, murky passage. My feet are heavy, as if they know something that my mind does not.
The door to the dining room is closed. It beckons me, yet repels me, exuding a sense of silent occupation. My ears buzz. A singsong chorus of whispers grows as I approach.
Are you ready?
I am here.
You attract them.
Are you ready?
Prepare for what lies ahead.
Prepare.
Prepare.
They mount and mount into a dizzying jumble of sound and I run the rest of the way to the door, my heart in my chest, my eyes squeezed shut. Grasping the knob, I fling open the door. The voices die away.
I knew it would be there. But it doesn’t stop me from gasping as every part of me curls back in on itself in horror. My blood turns to ice.
Seated at the table is a woman, or what used to be a woman. She sits as if she has every right to be there, as if she has always been there. A veil covers her face, but it is gauzy and threadbare, and I can see the contours of the features beneath. Her dress is old, black as night yet opalescent as the moon through a cobweb. Paralyzed with fear, I watch as it moves about her of its own accord, a soft undulation as if she were underwater. And though I can see her as clear as day, the veiled woman in our dining room, there’s a translucence to her, and the panoramic wallpaper is just visible behind her. She is like nothing and no one I have ever seen before, and yet she is familiar, as if I have always known her.
“Come, child.” Her voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, and when her words are finished, I have the unnerving feeling that they weren’t spoken aloud at all, but came from within my head.
She beckons me with a knobby finger, more bone than flesh.
I can’t drag my gaze away from her face, the sunken holes where there ought to be eyes, the lipless mouth, all teeth and blackness. The cold pie that I just enjoyed churns in my stomach and threatens to come up. She beckons me again, and I imagine those long, terrible fingers closing around my neck and choking the life out of me. I imagine them raking me across the face until ribbons of skin flutter from my skull. I stand my ground, unwilling to deliver myself up to her. She is the stuff of my novels, a grotesque horror that titillates on the page, but sends terror into my heart when in the same room as me.
She gives something like a grunt, and as if able to read my thoughts, says, “One hundred and thirty years of death is not gentle on a body. Come, do not gawk.” I dare not disobey her, so I force my leaden feet to move a few steps closer.
The smell of decay and death fills the room, sickly sweet and putrid at the same time. My stomach clenches at the memories the odor brings back of Emeline in her coffin. My throat is tight, my mouth cotton, but somehow I’m able to gasp out, “W-who are you?”
She makes a noise, something between a snort and a laugh, a scraping, rattling sound, though it’s devoid of humor. “Do you not know your own forebear?”
The blackness of her dress curls around her like a snake, but she sits as motionless as if she were carved of stone. Her stillness is suffocating, it dares the house to be silent, and punishes the sunlight for filtering in through the window.
Warily, I come to a halt at the edge of the dining room table. I don’t know what she’s talking about. “Forebear?”
“Have you not looked upon me since you were a babe? Do you not recognize in me what flows through you?”
“I...” But then it comes to me. The lace collar, though tattered and black as her dress, is unmistakable around her neck. “You’re the woman in the painting. Mother’s ancestor.”
The inclination of her head is small, barely perceptible.
“I saw you in the garden, when we first moved here. What do you want?”
That noise again that might be an impatient snort or a laugh. “It was not me you saw. You attract them. This is a haunted place and you attract the unhappy spirits that call it home. They know what you are. Haven’t I been telling you that for these two months past?”