Page 7

I came back from the sanatorium with a fever in my head.

It wasn’t a real fever—I didn’t feel ill —but it baked behind my eyes and set my hands to trembling if I let them rest too long.

My father said it was grief and overexertion, and that I’d soon recover with sleep and prayer.

He’d never known the kind of nights that waited behind the closed doors of a place like that. He didn’t know what I’d seen.

A part of me blamed him for sending me there. But this was a mission—and if the apostles could risk their lives to save souls, boldly accepting their own deaths, how could I cower in fear? What I’d seen hadn’t come for me. That man, that thing , had come for her .

He tried to give me two days of peace, but even the parsonage seemed hollowed out, as if the cold from the sanatorium had followed me home and taken up residence in our walls.

My room, which I’d once found comfortingly small, now seemed like a cage.

I paced the boards until I wore a line in the floor, then knelt at my bed and pressed my forehead to the faded quilt.

I prayed for Mercy Brown, for her soul, for her family.

I prayed for myself that the memory of what I’d seen would scab over and heal, or at the very least dull to a bearable throb.

I always believed in the devil. I was certain of the existence of demons.

Even in an era of so much progress, where many believed that humanity had become its own salvation, I saw evil everywhere, waiting in the shadows, ready to pounce when we least expected it.

I’d never actually expected to encounter evil that way, not a demon in the flesh.

What else could it have been, that creature that ended Mercy’s life?

And why had it done it? Had she summoned it with her witchcraft, with her strange drawings?

Had she bidden it to take her out, a merciful death for a girl ironically named?

Sleep did not come. The dark outside my window was too perfect.

In the stillness, I heard every sound: the shifting of the foundation, the shiver of trees in the wind, the hush of my own blood in my ears.

I prayed harder. When my lips became numb from softly chanting psalms, I recited them silently in my mind, allowing the rhythm of the words to soothe me like the ebb and flow of the tide.

I woke from a trance—I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have—when a pounding at the front door echoed up through the house.

My father’s voice, gruff with sleep, cut through the silence.

He was not a man easily startled, but this was not a time of night for callers.

His footsteps moved quickly down the hall, the floorboards creaking in staccato.

I drew my shawl tight and pressed myself against the door, listening.

The voices in the parlor were hushed and urgent. My father, and another man. I recognized the other voice by its quiver: George Brown.

They did not come upstairs right away. There was a scraping of chairs, the hush of glass on wood, a faint clinking as my father poured something—a comfort, perhaps, or the illusion of one.

I pressed my ear to the cold pane of my window and saw nothing but darkness, and in the darkness, nothing but a growing dread.

When at last my father knocked at my door, I was already standing beside it. I opened it and found him there, the old lines in his face set deeper by worry.

“Mr. Brown is here,” he said. “He needs to speak with you.”

“Now?” I said. My voice was so thin it nearly vanished in the corridor.

He nodded, and the look he gave me was strange—a warning and a plea all at once.

Mr. Brown was waiting for me in the sitting room.

His clothes were rumpled and mismatched, as if he’d dressed by feel in a room with no light.

His hair, always combed so flat it shone, stood up in tufts.

His hands trembled, but not from cold; the tremor came from somewhere deeper.

He rose as I entered, but did not offer a greeting.

“Miss Bladewell,” he said. Then, more softly: “Alice.”

He looked older than his years, and more than that—he looked like someone who’d literally gone to hell and back.

I nodded, unsure if it was proper to speak.

He gestured to the threadbare chair opposite, and I sat. My father stood by the hearth, one hand resting on the mantle, the other hidden behind his back.

“I need to know what happened that night,” Mr. Brown said. He looked at his hands, as if surprised to find them still attached to his body. “They said you were there when Mercy died. I have to know, were you able to bring her to repentance?”

I couldn’t find the words. I shook my head.

“Did anyone come and visit? Before she died?”

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “I was there, and I—“ I could not finish the thought.

He nodded, as if I’d confirmed something he’d long suspected. “You saw something, didn’t you?”

I tried to look at my father for guidance, but his eyes were trained on the fire.

“I did,” I said.

George’s jaw worked for a moment before he could force the words out. “I’ve seen her. Mercy. Since the day she died.”

That wasn’t the admission I had anticipated, yet it felt genuine, much like how some nightmares continue to feel real—you understand, even as you awaken, that the fear won’t disappear with the morning light.

“She comes at night,” he went on, voice so low I had to lean forward to hear him.

“She comes to the window, or sometimes she slips in through the cracks in the wall. Always at night. I’ve seen the marks on Edwin’s neck.

He won’t admit it, but the boy is pale and weak, and he’s afraid.

” George’s face contorted, and for a moment I thought he might collapse inward, like a house with its beams rotted through.

“I know what it means. I know what it is.”

He looked up at me, and the desperation in his eyes was so raw I felt my composure crumble.

“Tell me,” he said, “what did you see in the sanatorium?”

I tried to speak, but my mouth was full of sand. I closed my eyes and forced myself to remember. The figure at the window, the impossible way it moved, the hunger that bled from its eyes.

“There was a man,” I said, the words barely above a whisper. “Or—it looked like a man, but I don’t think he was.” I shuddered. “He was tall, and thin, and his eyes were…”

George’s face turned ashen. “They were red.”

“He drank from her,” I said, my hands gripping the arms of the chair so tightly I thought they might splinter. “He drank her blood, and then he looked at me. He saw me, but it was like he was looking through me. I was frozen, petrified. I couldn’t move.”

My father broke his silence at last. “This is madness.”

George shot him a look of contempt, then returned to me. “It is not madness. There are things older than the church, older than all your prayers. In the old country, we knew how to deal with them. Here, we pretend they don’t exist, and so they take what they please.”

I wanted to object, but the memory of Mercy’s face, twisted in its final satisfied rictus, held my tongue.

“I need your help,” Mr. Brown said, voice cracking. “You are the only one who saw it, the only one who can say what really happened. We require your testimony, if I’m to do what I intend.”

I shook my head, but he pressed on. “The demon who inhabits my daughter comes every night. I hear her scratching at the walls. I hear Edwin talking to her in his sleep. Sometimes I see her in the yard, standing among the dead stalks, her white dress shining in the dark. She has no shadow.”

I swallowed, trying to push the image away.

“You’re special, Alice,” Mr. Brown continued, his words tumbling out in a rush. “They say you are immune to the disease. Maybe it’s true, or maybe you just have not been claimed by it yet. But you survived, and she did not. I believe an angel protects you, an angel whose aid we require.”

“I can’t—“ I started, but he cut me off.

“You must,” he said. “If you don’t help, she will take Edwin. She will take the whole town. The thing that drank her soul that night did not finish its work. It left something behind.”

The silence that followed was as complete as a burial was supposed to be.

“What do you want me to do?” There was nothing else to say.

Mr. Brown leaned forward, his face inches from mine. “Come to the church tonight, after the last bell. There will be others there—men who know what must be done. We cannot do it alone.”

He looked at my father, who met his gaze with a mixture of anger and fear.

“We need you,” Mr. Brown said, and I saw in his eyes that he truly believed it. “My son’s life depends on it.”

He stood, and for a moment he seemed to waver, as if unsure the floor would hold him. Then he straightened, the old stiffness returning to his shoulders.

“I will see you tonight,” he said.

He did not wait for a response. He let himself out, the door slamming behind him.

My father and I sat in silence until the fire died down and the cold crept back into the room. I wanted to ask him what he believed, but I was afraid of his answer.

I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.

“You will do as Mr. Brown requests.” It was more a command than a request. “I am sorry, Alice. I never wanted to involve you in any of this.”

I couldn’t protest. It wasn’t my place. “Yes, father.”