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“Catherine, you—”
Suddenly she’s animated, struggling to prop herself up and reaching out to grab my wrists. “We have to. My...my child needs to be buried. Besides, Mother can’t know. She just can’t. It would destroy her.”
I wonder when Catherine became so concerned about our mother, but maybe she’s right. By some miracle no one is home yet, but Catherine isn’t in any state to go outside and do this unthinkable task. Which means it falls to me.
She slumps back down into her pillows. It’s hard to read her expression in the thick darkness. My hand trembles as I touch her fingers. “Cath, it’s too dark out. I can’t.”
How is this real? I get up and light the lamp, avoiding the far corner. “We’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, and hope that Mother goes out.”
“I’m not sleeping with that thing in my room... You have to do something with it!”
“And you need to calm down!” She’s sitting up again, making as if she’s going to jump out of bed.
“Stop yelling at me!”
“I’m not yelling,” I say, taking a deep breath and lowering my voice. “But think, Catherine. Where? How? I don’t even know where Joe keeps a shovel.”
For some reason the shovel, this particular detail, sends a shiver down my spine. There’s a little misshapen body in the corner next to the beautiful blue-and-white ewer and the yellow damask curtains, and we are going to bury it.I’mgoing to bury it.
The sound of wheels clattering cuts through the sharp stillness. Our eyes lock. “There’s no time. Keep your door locked and I’ll go down. I’ll tell Mother that you’re ill, that the blood is from... I don’t know. I’ll think of something, but you have to stay in here.”
“You can’t leave me in here with...withit!”
So much for “it” being her child. I hurriedly splash my hands with water from the basin, suppressing a shudder at the heap of cloth next to it.
Catherine fumes, cursing under her breath, but she gives up, sinking back into her bloody sheets. Those will have to be taken care of too without Ada knowing. She’s pale and for a moment I waver in my decision to leave her alone, wondering if she’s in any danger from succumbing to her ordeal. Maybe I should fetch the doctor. Almost as if she’s reading my mind she narrows her eyes. “Fine. But swear to God, Lydia, swear on Emeline’s grave that you will not call the doctor.”
I wince at her choice of words, but I swear.
The latch turns in the door downstairs. I force a few calming breaths, check my dress for any remaining streaks of blood and then go down to lie to my mother.
* * *
The moon hangs behind a hazy bank of clouds that night, as I wait until the last sounds of the house settle; Ada closing the grates, Father lumbering upstairs after dragging himself away from his study, and then the lighter, swifter steps of Mother following him.
Mother had been more concerned with the stains on the carpet than the lie I told her about Catherine having a bloody nose. She had asked if she should send for the doctor, but she’d already been looking around for something to clean the blood up with, frowning that Ada had run out of vinegar. I should have known that Mother wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss, that she wouldn’t care enough to take me aside and make sure Catherine was really all right.
Catherine is fast asleep when I slip into her room, lightly snoring as if she were tired from a day of shopping or dancing at a ball. Anger surges through me. She’s dragged me into another one of her messes and as usual I have to clean it up. I could wake her up, force her to be a party to what I must do now. But as I stand beside her peaceful figure, pale and faintly frowning in the dim moonlight, the anger fades, replaced with pity and guilt. It hasn’t escaped me that the very thing I so longed for, that I was so near to making sure occurred myself, has happened of its own accord. What a horrible coincidence. It doesn’t make me feel any better that I got what I wanted. I let out a weary sigh, and then leave my sister to her sleep.
* * *
The night is cold and still, the woods every bit as watchful as the last time I made this trip. My breath comes out in short, white puffs as I struggle up the hill, one arm wrapped around the lifeless bundle, the other clearing thorny brush and dead branches out of my path.
A sound behind me—or is it in front?—and I stop, holding my breath. The dry rustle of naked branches in the breeze, and the faraway echo of an owl fill the emptiness. I move faster, with purpose. What if someone is following me? Ada or Joe, or even Mr. Barrett? What would he think of me, out here alone with a dead baby in my arms?
“Emeline?” I whisper out into the darkness. “Emeline, is that you?”
The only answer is the sweep of breeze that lifts the hem of my skirt.
“What are you doing?”
I freeze. My blood goes cold as I slowly turn around. “You.” My voice comes out in a choked whisper. “What do you want?”
The pale little boy laughs, the unsettling sound that has plagued my dreams and spilled over into my waking moments. He wears the same clothes as in the portrait that hangs over Mr. Barrett’s desk, but they are ragged and sooty. The tip of his nose and fingers are singed black, and he looks at me from lidless eyes that never blink. “I asked you first,” he says, sticking out a scorched tongue. How could I have not seen what has been in front of me all these months? The little boy laughing in my dreams, Emeline’s mysterious friend and Mr. Barrett’s dead little brother are all one and the same.
Something tells me he already knows what I’m doing. I shift the bundle to my other arm trying to maintain a steady composure. Every instinct in me makes me want to recoil and flee as far and as fast as I can. But I won’t let this little spirit see my fear. “Why are you following me? What do you want?”
He regards me with eyes that are so like Mr. Barrett’s that I find myself powerless to look away. My anger grows. “You took Emeline from me. You lured her to the pond to have a playmate. Isn’t that enough for you? Why do you continue to plague me?”