Page 55 of Darkest at Dusk
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Harrowgate, 14th November 1830
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My dearest Rhys,
It grieves me more than I can say to tell you that your Uncle Owen has gone after our sweet Helena. The physician calls it an Apoplexy, taken on Tuesday, yet I think it was sorrow that struck him under his ribs. We laid him yesterday beside her. The earth was iron hard and the bells very soft. I know how dear he was to you, and I fear this blow will find you where your studies cannot shield you. Your father is sorely struck by his brother’s death. He does all that must be done, but I see the blow in the set of his mouth and the long nights he keeps.
Your cousin Catrin is with us now. She is brave to outward show, but her grief is profound.
Will and Ned are very quiet. Both ask me daily when you will come home. Your brothers miss you sorely. I have told them you will come to us at Christmas.
Your most affectionate Mother.
P. S. If you have the heart, write Catrin a few lines addressed here. Your hand will do her more good than physic.
The library blurred and steadied. Sorrow rose, clean and unexpected.
He has known grief, she thought, not the gentleman’s abstract kind, but the raw kind that leaves fingerprints on a life. She pressed her thumb to the tidy signature, then folded the sheet along its old wound and laid it back as she had found it. Her fingers hovered over the next letter, one corner already bent back as if in invitation, or dare.
As her fingertip made contact with the letter, the fire gave a quick, low crackle. A wave of heat rolled through the room then fled, leaving the air cold as a mid-winter night. The lamp at her elbow flared and guttered. Somewhere in the walls, a metal flue ticked.
Across the room, a book toppled from a high shelf and hit the floor with a solid thud. Another slid after it, landing atop the first. Beneath her hand, the brass box shuddered, and she snatched her fingers back as the lid snapped shut. The skin of her palm prickled as though it had been kissed by steam. The air grew heavy with the stink of wet ash and old roses rotting on the stem.
Isabella surged to her feet and turned toward the library door.
The girl she had seen before stood between Isabella and escape. She looked older now, not a child anymore, but neither was she an adult. Her nightgown hung straight from narrow shoulders, pink satin ribbons at the throat and cuffs, the hem singed black. She lifted one pale hand and at the lazy sweep of her fingers the nearest shelf bucked and swayed, pitching volumes from their places, leather and paper drumming the floor with muffled blows.
Fear rose cold and clean to shiver along Isabella’s skin. All her life the wraiths had been a constant, thin as frost, insubstantial, sighing and silvery, there but not there, unable to so much as lift a curl of hair. She had borne them, endured them, pitied them sometimes.
This one was not that. This one had weight. It occupied air. It cast the faintest shadow where no shadow ought to be. And it could move items in the physical world at will.
“Who are you?” Isabella asked. “What do you want of me?” Because there was the truth of it. This creature wanted something from her.
The girl stared at her with fathomless eyes. Her head turned to the right, chin grazing the line of her shoulder. Then, obscenely, it kept turning, slow and deliberate, until her nose pointed toward the small bumps of her spine. From her wrist, a pink ribbon slipped free and slithered to the floor, crawling across the carpet to touch the tip of Isabella’s boot. There it lay like something shed, pale satin against burgundy nap.
The wraith’s head unwound and with a sharp snap faced Isabella once more.
The ribbon struck, snake fast, coiling Isabella’s ankle, climbing her skirt, biting tight at her wrist. With a gasp, she jerked back. Heat and cold flared together. Pain lanced to the bone. A stink rose, like tallow and charred meat and for a terrible instant, she thought it was her own flesh.
A crackle ran the ceiling followed by a roar. A wall of heat slammed her. Isabella jerked her arm up to shield her face and stumbled back.
“Enough,” she said, and heard her father’s tone from that day at St. Jude’s in her own voice.
The ribbon slackened; the heat dropped away. Somewhere, a latch lifted with a soft click and the crushing pressure in the room released. Isabella steadied herself with a hand against the desk and looked about.
The library was empty.
Would that she could pretend she had imagined the whole of it. But the books from the nearby shelf lay scattered across the floor and a single length of pink satin ribbon lay at her feet, burned black at one end. She bent with shaking knees, wrapped it once around her fingers, and slid it into her pocket.
Anger bled through what fear remained.
“You want something of me,” she said into the hush. “Whatever it is, you will not win by terror.”
She went to the box and turned the key, locking it once more then slipped the chain back over her head and tucked it away so the metal lay against her skin. Lifting the lamp, she set her shoulders and left the library.
Somewhere deep in the house, metal scraped along stone once, twice, and then stopped, satisfied as a cat that had trapped the mouse.
