Page 19 of A Lullaby for Witches

After lunch, Augusta trudged back up to her office. Hauling out the stack of books Jill had left her, she began idly flipping through one, hoping for inspiration to strike. How many other women were written out of the history of Tynemouth, of this house? Women whose names didn’t even appear on a family tree or a census? Margaret Harlowe at least had some record of her existence, even if it was nothing more than speculation. There were probably domestic servants, enslaved people even, and others who were lost to time completely. It was a melancholy thought; would Augusta leave behind some sort of legacy, or would she someday be forgotten, as well?

Jill stuck her head in the office. “Hey, I’m going to go grab a coffee and a muffin—do you want anything?”

Augusta had only had a cup of yogurt for lunch, and hunger gnawed at her insides. “No, thanks,” she said automatically.

Jill hesitated, looking like she wanted to say something else, but then nodded and left.

Tuesdays at Harlowe House were quiet because they were closed to the public, and aside from Jill and sometimes Sharon and Reggie, Augusta had the house to herself. She hadn’t had any more hallucinations since her first day, when she’d been overtired and hungry, full of nerves. Still, she couldn’t help but get goose bumps occasionally when she was alone with the sounds of the house. She’d worked in old properties before and she’d never been scared or bought into the ghost stories that inevitably sprang up around them. But as she flipped through the books alone in her office, there was a very eerie, very real sense of the air pressing in around her and lifting the hairs on her neck. She went completely still. She wasn’t alone.

Footsteps, coming from downstairs. Slowly, she pushed back her chair and stood up, careful not to make any noise. It could just be Jill back already. She had to remind herself that just the other morning she’d thought she’d heard someone, and it had turned out to be nothing at all.

But as soon as she stepped foot into the hallway, the air turned cold, and the edges of her vision blurred. Just like her first day, her surroundings grew unfamiliar, the electric wall sconces fading away and replaced with oil lamps. The floral printed wallpaper morphed and swirled until it was a dark geometric pattern. Her stomach dropped.Oh, no. Please not again.

When she was younger, she’d had a book of ghost stories and unexplained phenomenon. It was mostly hokey stuff that was obviously fake, but a few of the stories had stayed with her over the years. One in particular stood out in her mind now. In it, two women had been visiting an old estate in England in the 1980s, and had experienced some sort of shared paranormal vision. Both of them reported seeing people dressed in Victorian garb, and, thinking that they had stumbled upon some sort of reenactment, they tried approaching and speaking to someone, only to find that the person could neither see nor hear them. Afterward, they had described everything they had seen in detail, including a Victorian-style greenhouse that had been absent from the modern building. A historian had been able to confirm that the house had indeed once had an attached greenhouse. Could something like that be happening to her? And what did it mean? The story had been an unexplained phenomenon, with skeptics claiming that the women were only looking for attention. Yet why would they make it up? And if it had happened to them, were there other people around the world who had similar experiences?

She wanted nothing more than to turn around and flee back to her office. Or better yet, run outside into the broad daylight and throw her arms around the first pedestrian she came across and reassure herself that the modern world was still there. But some invisible force drew her forward.

Although her heart was pounding loud and fast in her ears, she had the impression of a different kind of silence in the house. Gone was the hum of appliances, the muffled sounds of traffic from far beyond the walls. The air was fresher, a sharp floral scent that was at once foreign and familiar lingering around her.

She didn’t know where she was going, but she found herself heading for the stairs. They, at least, were much the same. They creaked under the same spots as always, and a series of framed miniatures hung over the banister. Through the window downstairs, she could see linens hanging to dry in the yard, undulating gently in the breeze. From somewhere just beyond her vision she could hear the murmuring of two men in conversation. They were speaking English—she was sure of it—but no matter how hard she strained her ear, she could not make out their words.

It was all so strange, like moving through someone else’s dream, yet somehow familiar. There was an ache in her chest that felt very much like homesickness. No, not homesickness exactly. Loss. It felt like the sharp sting of loss after her father had died. Not the days immediately afterward when the world was upside-down and throbbing with fresh pain, but later, when she’d gone back to school and the sympathy cards had stopped coming. It was that numb, persistent ache that she had carried with her even as she got on with her daily life. As frightening and unsettling as the hallucination was, it was the loneliness that made her want to huddle into herself and cry.

The heaviness pressed harder in her chest as she made her way to the kitchen. The differences were the most stark here. There was no microwave, no refrigerator, no brightly lit countertops. Instead there was a large wooden table in the center of the room, and the wall was lined with white dishes displayed in an oversize hutch. A simmering pot of something savory sat on the iron range, the aroma of herbs filling the air. As she continued moving dreamlike to the door, her body met with something solid, something flesh and blood. She jumped back, her heart rate spiking.

Disembodied arms shot out and steadied her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa...are you okay?”

In an instant, the wooden table and simmering pots vanished, the scent of herbs gone. She was back in the bright staff kitchen looking up into the concerned face of Leo. “Oh, Jesus Christ.” A whoosh of relief rushed through her as she steadied herself against his solid forearms. “Did you see that?”

Leo looked around, frowning. “See what?”

“The kitchen—it was all different. There were sheets outside in the wind and pots on the stove except the stove was iron and...” But just by looking at his face she knew that he hadn’t seen anything, that it had only been her. It all had been in her head, again. “I thought...” She trailed off, not sure what she had thought, what she had experienced. The ache in her chest lingered, but everything else was back to normal; outside she could hear a car horn and the distant drilling of a jackhammer. “I thought I heard someone down here,” she said, unconvincingly. “I came down to look.”

He studied her, and she tried not to focus on how warm he felt, how safe. He was a balm to the crushing loneliness, and she wanted to press herself into him. Self-conscious, she took a step back.

“Nope, just me,” he said with a wry smile. “Is Jill around?”

Augusta shook her head. “She just went out to get some coffee. How did you get in?”

“Reggie gave me the code the other day. Are you sure you’re all right? You look pretty shaken up.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied, her head still spinning. On top of the lingering fright, she was mortified that Leo had stumbled upon her in such a state.

“Are we still on for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. Right.” She felt as if she was in the hazy aftermath of a dream. The lights were too bright, the buzz of the electricity too loud. “I’m going to go back up to my office. Just give me a shout if you need anything.” She didn’t wait for him to answer as she quickly retreated, pounding up the stairs to the safety of her office. Below, she could hear him moving about the kitchen and then heading to the ballroom to work.

Taking a long drink from her water bottle, she took a few deep breaths and forced herself to concentrate on her research. It was nearly impossible to clear her mind of the hallucination, though. She played it over and over in her head like a movie on repeat. It had been soreal, from the way the light slanted in from the windows to the smell of food cooking. It wasn’t just that she had seen the house as it must have looked one hundred and fifty years ago—she had really been moving through the space as if she was part of it. How could she explain that away? Maybe she had some sort of undiagnosed psychosis that had never manifested until now. Jesus, what if she had a brain tumor? The idea that there was something wrong with her mind was a frightening one, but at least it was one rooted in science, in reality. The alternative was something she didn’t even know how to begin to approach.

Her eyes glazed over as she sightlessly scanned the pages in front of her. She frowned. The book on the desk wasn’t one she remembered pulling from the shelf, and it was open to a page she definitely did not remember reading. Glancing at the cover, it appeared to be a collection of stories taken from an oral history of Tynemouth in the 1970s. It was open to an interview with an old woman who had been in her eighties, and was probably long since dead. The woman reminisced about her childhood in Tynemouth, and the people and places that had made lasting impressions on her.

Harlowe House was rumored to be haunted, and us children had a game of daring each other to run up to the porch and knock at the door before running away again. This was before the house was a museum of course, but after it had been abandoned. The name of the ghost was Margaret Harlowe, and it was said that she would appear on the night of the full moon, walking the grounds of the property, looking for her body. You see, after she disappeared, her body was never found.

Augusta sucked in her breath, her hallucination momentarily forgotten. Margaret Harlowe had disappeared, and the story implied that she had died. This wasn’t proof that she had existed—after all, it was an old woman remembering an urban legend—but itdidshow that at the very least the name Margaret Harlowe had been around for decades before the museum came along. She flipped forward a few pages, scanning the lines of text, but the story moved on from Harlowe House to other local haunts for the town children. Leaning back in her chair, Augusta stared down at the book, lost in thought as her water bottle perspired in her hands. What on earth had happened to Margaret Harlowe?

My efforts have not gone unnoticed. Every time she muses on my name, every time she discovers a little piece of me, I grow stronger. Fragments of myself fly back from the ether, a skeleton regenerating flesh, a spring bulb dying in winter only to grow back again the next year.

I existed, I still exist, and I shall exist again.

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