Darker Still (19 page)

She suddenly knelt, brooch in hand. Using the dainty edge to unwind the screws holding in the nameplate, she had it off in a moment. As she removed the thin brass strip, I saw that something was painted below. Another set of runes. No, not runes. Hieroglyphs.

Mrs. Northe flipped open a small pad of paper and copied down the markings. Outlined by an oval on its side, the set of markings resembled another cartouche of sorts. Mrs. Northe just as efficiently returned the shining gold nameplate to its position on the edge of the frame. “I’ll look this up tonight,” she said. “These are disparate pieces. But together they’ll make a whole.”

And she returned me home.

I’m left to contemplate what questionable bravery is ahead of me.

• • •

From the Desk of Mrs. Evelyn Northe

June 16, 7 a.m.

Dear Natalie,

I do not know if I’ll be able to meet with you today, and in the interest of your father (and Maggie—dear Lord, the girl asks me too many questions) not thinking we’re up to something suspicious, I shouldn’t see you daily. But I must tell you this:

The frame truly is a door, Natalie. The hieroglyphs found below the nameplate mean “ba.” It signifies a doorway through which the spirit may enter. The Egyptians believed that the soul had seven parts: the
aakhu
, the
ab,
the
ba,
the
ka,
the
khaibut,
the
khat
, and the
ren
. One of these, the “ba” part of the soul, passes through a false door set into the stone of their tombs. Ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with death almost more than life. This furthers my idea that the fiend has created and perfected the ability to split the soul (including, it would seem, the reasoned consciousness) from the body and cast it across a “ba” threshold and into a prison: a box, a painting, perhaps anything.

The frame as a doorway explains the duality of Denbury’s body both outside and inside the frame. It also confirms that the fiend has created a veritable portal that has a certain flexibility, and it is my hope that where you have been granted the ability to travel between, so may the devil that created the threshold. The trick will be switching them out, one for the other.

“Vessel” is writ on the cartouche around his neck, and “ba,” the spirit door, writ upon the frame. The building blocks of the spell are clearly labeled. I hope to determine yet further ingredients. Tell me if you glean anything more from Denbury.

And I’d like to take you shopping next Sunday. A seamstress, then a milliner. What think you? You don’t seem to own any mauve, and I think you’d look charming in mauve.

Yours, Evelyn

I received that letter first thing in the morning, and thankfully Father had left for work. I had feigned disinterest in going to the museum. (It would not do to seem predictable. Father knew me as a woman of many moods. I needed to remain consistently unpredictable so he wouldn’t question what had become of the daughter he knew.) But the daughter he knew was changed. Different. Haunted.

In love.

And scared.

But there’s much to do! I’m thankful for having the day to do it unhindered. If I’d spent time with Mrs. Northe, I most likely would have confessed my plan and she’d surely have stopped me.

This spying in disguise is not the only possible plan hatching in my feverish brain. Something else is burning at the edge of my mind, thoughts of a confrontation yet to come. The thought of it hangs like that billowing bit of white lace and the maddening Whisper of my childhood, truth just on the edge of my sight, a sound too faint to be heard.

But first…espionage.

I’m not sure where my bravery has come from, save for the simple knowledge of what must be done. This course is as clear to me as a mathematical equation with only one solution, an adventure plot with a single way forward. For as impossible as things have become, the choices I face are startlingly clear. My instincts feel guided by some higher force. Still, I’m stewing with nerves.

Considering what I am about to undertake, I wonder if I’ve gone a bit mad, at last cracking under all this strain.

10 p.m.

(The house is asleep.)

Staring into the mirror, I don’t look half bad.

A pretty youth.

Beauty, no matter its gender, has opportunities and advantages—an English lord surely knows that.

But my inability to speak worries me most. My vocal success, thanks to the world of the painting, has not translated into my reality. All I can emit are strangled sounds unable to be connected into words. I know I need to practice, but I can’t bear the sound or the idea that my household might discover me healed and rush to entirely readjust my world as I know it. No, one upheaval at a time. And on my terms.

As for how to justify my silence, being simply mute as I dare to enter a den of iniquity would be begging for trouble. How could I lend my silence a threatening quality? The answer made me grin despite myself.

I went to a small box I cherished from school. A makeup kit.

When the Connecticut Asylum attempted a theatrical production, it was a pitiful event, but I admired the teachers for their optimism and their efforts. I was the resident wizard of the brush; my artistic skills with greasepaint and prosthetic were legendary. Our presentation of
A
Midsummer
Night’s Dream
was the height of irony, for our Titania was blind and could not see when Bottom had gained the head of an ass, and so the entire comedy of her infatuation was moot. However, the effects I offered the fairies and mechanicals were highly praised.

This evening, in under an hour I created such an ugly, off-putting gash around my throat that no one dared question why I was silent or, hopefully, the type of company someone with such a token would keep. It would be my most identifying mark, one that would disappear at the end of my night.

And where was I headed? Well, wherever the demon would lead. If his first strike was any indication, and if, like ghosts, he was a creature of habit, he would go again to the Five Points.

The infamous, legendary Five Points. A few miles south from my home but a whole world away. While the crime in the area was severe, I wondered if legend had made it larger than life. I recall some of my father’s friends championing the area as having been one of the most culturally interesting places in the city—a place where boundaries hardly existed and cultures mixed freely. That was the area’s virtue and its bane.

But the horrific Draft Riots had changed all that when I was a toddler. Negro men, women, and children were chased, mobbed, and beaten, a man even torn to pieces by angry Irish mobs who resented being drafted into the Civil War when the rich could buy their way out. So the ward certainly had its historical demons, let alone any who wished to terrorize it today.

As for the logistics of getting to this infamous neighborhood, I’d follow the demon’s lead and take a carriage—I would have one waiting for me. Handing a large enough bill to the driver would ensure service. I dearly hoped my poor father didn’t count his bills each day, lest he miss these few grand ones that would hopefully gain me entrances and keep me alive. I’d beg fresh ones from Mrs. Northe and claim dire necessity. Surely she’d understand the urgency.

I have tucked my small yet trusted knife into my pocket. One may wonder how a young lady might come to be in the possession of a knife. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I’d gained it by disarming a boy at school. Having threatened me, this boy justly deserved to lose the ivory-handled piece. If I’ve learned one thing about boys, it’s that they dearly need to understand the notion of consequences for their actions.

Here I pause to recall the moment of glory. I disarmed the cretin myself (I grow prouder of this moment the more I recall it), and while he was far larger than I, I was a quick study.

I’d been watching a fighting class from my window, looking down onto the green where the deaf and the mute boys (not the blind ones, of course) practiced fencing, sword fighting, and basic moves with a staff. I stole any moment I could to practice thrusts and parries, a stick in hand, while watching from two flights above.

I was, at least in perfect imitation, quite good. And so when the heathen (certainly no gentleman) brandished the knife in front of me, I disarmed him. He was appropriately shocked and too embarrassed to ask for it back, and I wouldn’t have given it to him anyway, as I had earned it. But I digress.

This is the story of my trip to the Five Points, not about my personal armory. However, the knife story is one that should go down in my annals, and so it has, to bolster me. But enough of proud memory. I tucked the knife in my trousers, in a place of close reach, and there it remains. A small comfort against the enormity of my nerves. Say prayers for me, dear diary. I’ll need them.

Later…

Here I sit in my hiding place at the museum, waiting for the fiend’s visit.

I could have easily walked the distance from home to the museum, but when I saw an available carriage, I hailed him by stepping in front of his lanterns.

Holding out a previously written note for the driver, I stared at him with hard eyes that didn’t wait for him to ask why I didn’t speak instructions to him. He nodded, and I jumped in. In moments I was out again and starting up the museum stairs, wondering how long I’d have to wait before a familiar, beautiful face with the shade of a devil might tread these same stairs.

The moonlight was bright and illuminated the redbrick and gray granite details of the museum, making it look like a Gothic palace in a haunted tale. I’d heard talk of renovations and expansions to create a building that would loom large and luminously white over Fifth Avenue. How much more grand and ghostly would the museum look in the future?

I had no guarantee that the beast would come here. But instinct—and my dreams—told me that his visit was likely enough for me to try.

As I ascended to the arched doors, I held the keys Mrs. Northe had made for me tightly, feeling guilty for having lied to her. I had promised her I would do nothing rash and nothing alone. Denbury exists in the painting, a friend in this odd quest, though trapped and unable to lend a hand. But I couldn’t put Mrs. Northe in jeopardy in what’s clearly my task. I have been chosen for this. Forces beyond me have stated this implicitly. Perhaps I was born for this. I am just as capable as the young men I’d read about in adventure books (save that I’m mute and a girl). Then again, adventure often favors the improbable.

At the door, I flashed the guard a note saying I had been hired as a rear post. The note was stamped with a Metropolitan seal that I’d gained from Father’s desk. The guard could have cared less and opened the front doors for me. I’d hoped the guard would be lax, but his indifference did make me fear for the safety of the art.

As I descended to the exhibition room, I straightened masculine coat sleeves that felt oddly at angles on my body and wondered what Jonathon would think. There was no turning back, I thought, as I drew back the curtain. I did not hesitate to slip my fingers onto the canvas and into the cool pool, and to step through.

I fell, as usual, against him. But instead of the embrace I’d grown unashamedly accustomed to, I was greeted with: “Who the devil are you?”

“It’s Natalie,” I replied.

Jonathon gaped. “What on earth are you doing dressed as a boy?”

“When your double comes to call, I plan to follow him,” I replied.

His eyes widened. “You cannot be serious.”

I shrugged. “I cannot involve the police. They’d arrest your body, and then what would you do? We need information! We need to know about the runes and the poetry, the carving on your arm, the cartouche, and the ritual. We need to discover our lynchpin, to find out how it all comes together. I won’t interact with the beast, merely observe.”

Shaking his head, he stated, “I cannot allow you to undertake such risk on my account, to descend into the very depths of Hell itself.”

“It’s not Hell, it’s the Five Points. Though I have heard the two equated.”

“I will keep you here by force.” He grabbed my arm, his face flushed, defiant, and never more handsome.

“And what good will that do either of us? Let me take my hiding place in the alcove around the corner so that I may listen, slip out behind him, and see what occurs.”

“You’re mad!”

“Do you want out of this mess or not?”

Jonathon gaped at me. “You’re not frightened?”

My subsequent laugh sounded a bit hysterical, my nerves now on display. “Oh, quite. But Mrs. Northe has assured me that our fates have become entwined whether we like it or not, so I might as well try to be useful.”