Maplecroft (19 page)

I went back inside, where Emma had successfully come downstairs by herself. I didn’t take the time to be surprised; her energy came and went. Some days were better than others, and under different circumstances, we’d celebrate her vigor with a
glass of port—but I could only work with the spirits at hand, so there’d be no port.

“Brandy, maybe,” I said aloud, as I dropped to the floor beside Nance, who hadn’t moved.

Emma, ever to her credit, recognized my train of thought—or at least predicted its destination. “I’ll open Father’s cabinet, and find a clean glass.”

I didn’t really expect it to work, but it gave us both something to do.

I man-hauled Nance to the parlor settee and deposited her there, and soon Emma arrived with a decanter and a small glass. My hands shook as I filled it, and as I lifted Nance’s head in an effort to make her drink.

Much like her cooperative walking and stair climbing, she agreeably sipped the beverage and swallowed it. I hadn’t expected it, but I was relieved at this one small thing at least—she could drink, and presumably eat, and wasn’t quite so lost to the world that she might die of starvation.

And that’s preposterous, isn’t it? Starvation isn’t any real concern. If Nance is to die from this, it will almost certainly be at my hand. Whatever this illness is—be it infection, or some other form of affliction—it does not kill. It transforms, and inspires the victim to kill instead. They must be put down like rabid dogs, for the safety of everyone around them.

So already, kneeling on the floor beside her, with her lovely neck resting against my forearm as I propped her head into a drinking position, I was thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

“It might be,” Emma began softly, “she’s only stunned. You’ve been there yourself, and you’ve come back around again.”

“Not like this,” I said, and I would’ve sobbed if I hadn’t
been all cried out for the moment. My eyes were sore from it. “I’ve never been this far gone.”

“She may need a little time, and that’s all. Give her overnight, and she may surprise you. Look, even now her breathing is calmed. It’s practically normal.”

She was right, but I didn’t dare believe that it was so simple as that. “Doctor Seabury may know of some treatment to help awaken her. He’s been working with . . .” I stopped myself. The only patients I knew who’d suffered anything like this had murdered, and then been killed.

“He’s a brilliant man, and he may have ideas. He may see patterns that have eluded us thus far.”

Emma sounded unbearably weary. I’m sure I did, too, when I replied with what pitiful hope I could muster, “Between us, we may have collected enough details to see those patterns. If there are any.”

“Lizzie?”

“Yes?”

“Your nose . . . it’s bleeding again. Or still, I don’t know.”

I felt the trickle even as she pointed it out. I rubbed it with the back of my bare arm again, and a second streak of red joined the first, which now had flaked and faded. This time, I noticed the pain. I rose to my feet and went in search of a tea towel. Upon finding one, I held it to my face and remained standing in the space between the kitchen and the parlor.

“I must look a sight,” I said, my voice muffled by the fabric. “God knows what the Wilsons thought, when I knocked so desperately on the door for Jacob. But they didn’t say anything.”

“They were too surprised, I’m sure.”

I dropped onto the arm of the settee. It creaked beneath me.
But then the door rattled under the knock of a heavy hand, and I jumped to my feet once more.

“The doctor,” Emma breathed.

I opened the door and almost dragged him inside, babbling as I drew him into the parlor.

“It’s Nance, Doctor Seabury. She’s stumbled into my research, and she’s become infected, or afflicted, or I don’t know what word you’d use—I’m sure there’s a better one, something medical that applies, but I don’t know it, and she’s gone catatonic, and
please
,” I begged. “Please, will you help her?”

In a moment, he was at her side and unfastening the latch on his bag. He was rumpled, in that way of a man who’s been ready to settle in for the night—only to be rallied before bedtime. I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that I felt positively embarrassed.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, and he proceeded to poke and prod her with the diligence of a seasoned professional. He checked her pulse and her pupils, frowning at the state of her eyes and their failure to blink. He felt at her throat, and her belly; he clapped his hands in front of her face and received no response whatsoever.

He sat back on his heels. “How long as she been like this?”

Wretchedly, I confessed, “I’m not sure. Half an hour?”

“Closer to a full one,” Emma corrected me. “I heard her come downstairs. I heard her open the cellar door . . .” She stopped herself, unsure of how much she wanted to share. Then she continued, “I tried to summon Lizzie,” and then to the doctor, “I have a bell, you know. But it took her quite some time to come around.”

He turned his attention to me, understanding plenty at a glance, I’m sure. My pupils no doubt told him plenty in return.
“I won’t insult you by being overly delicate: I assume the cause is an opiate? One you’ve made a recent habit.”

I dabbed at my eyes with the bloodstained tea towel. “She’s been drugging me, at night,” I said, cocking my head toward Nance, though I hated to implicate her. “I don’t know what she used. I can go upstairs and search her things and see, or maybe she took something from Emma’s cabinet.”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow at Emma. “But you’re not inclined to taking the drops or syrups, are you?”

“Not routinely. But sometimes, when I absolutely
must
sleep—and the cough is more than I can bear.”

“I appreciate that you’re not the sort to become dependent on them. They fog the brain,” he said, casting another appraising look at me. “And your studies must prohibit it.” She nodded primly, and for a moment I nearly hated her. Always the teacher’s pet, wasn’t she? And she’d always disliked Nance, so here was one more thing to lay at Nance’s feet.

I fought the feeling down like bile. It wasn’t fair or kind, and we were all just trying to understand, after all. I swallowed so hard that I almost banished the great lump in my throat, and I said, “I’m not accustomed to these things, either. It’s hit me awfully hard.”

“As did something else, if I must judge by your nose.”

“The banister. I fell down the stairs, coming to check after Nance. I . . . it was so very hard to wake up.”

“Depending on what she used, it’s a wonder you managed at all. What was she looking for, down there?” he asked, returning his attention to Nance, who never stirred. He took her wrist in his hand and as he listened to my words, he listened for her heart.

I collapsed into the seat across from Emma, to the doctor’s
right. I was worn out, and telling the truth required my full attention. I couldn’t speak clearly and stand up at the same time.

“She wanted to see inside the cellar. I wouldn’t let her; that’s why she began drugging me. She stole the key from around my neck, and she was trying to keep me asleep long enough to investigate without my interfering.”

Calmly, more like a priest than a physician, he asked question after question—sometimes watching me, sometimes watching Nance.

“Why did you want to keep her from the cellar?”

“Because it called her. Or something inside the cellar called her; that’s what I mean.” I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, now that the first flush of mortal panic was finished with me.

“What are you collecting in the basement, Miss Borden?”

I sighed. “By now, you should call me Lizbeth, propriety be damned.”

“It usually is. What are you collecting in the basement, Lizbeth?”

“Evidence. Research. Samples. Nance was lured there by the contents of a box, which I’d sealed up as best I could—but it clearly wasn’t enough.”

“What was in the box?”

“Beach glass, to the casual eye. Tumbled rocks and gems.”

His eyes went distant, then focused sharply. “Beach glass?”

“Pieces I’ve found, here and there. They call me, too,” I admitted, though I hated to hear myself say it. “I’ve made efforts to study them, and determine—”

“Just . . . little pieces of glass, from the shore?” he interrupted.

“Green ones, usually. Sometimes I find them embedded in
sandstone or lime, or polished and set into jewelry. But they always speak the same way, call the same . . . well, it’s not a song.” I struggled for the words.

“I’ve seen them,” he said softly, but suddenly—before I could continue. “In the barrel at Hamilton’s, the odds and ends, bits and bobs. The ones Matthew collected for the shop.”

The connection clicked, in both our heads. Our eyes met.

I said, “They called him, too.”

“And your stepmother,” he said sharply, and with wonder. Like it’d only just occurred to him. “She wore something. I saw it on her once or twice. A necklace . . .” On some instinct, or half-spied detail he’d only just recalled, his gaze jerked down to Nance’s neck. A thin red line marked the spot where I’d pulled the necklace off, breaking it and leaving a narrow welt.

“Nance found it.” I offered it up as a whisper. I couldn’t bring myself to say it any louder. “She’d put it on. I took it away from her.”

Excitedly, he shifted to face me. “But you knew—you
knew
it was the necklace. And in time, you learned it was the stones themselves, and there were others like it.”

“Yes, but I don’t know what they mean, or where they come from. I don’t know how they call, or . . . or . . . Doctor, I’ve tried everything. That’s what’s in the cellar: my laboratory, where I’ve performed what experiments my limited knowledge and resources have contrived.”

“I must see it. You must show it to me,” he said eagerly, and I wasn’t sure if I was thrilled or worried by the enthusiasm. I didn’t have time to decide, for it was in that narrow space between the two that Nance began to speak.

I knelt down next to her and collected one of her hands, squeezing it between my own. Doctor Seabury stood aside so I
could reach her more easily, I could stroke her face, I could kiss her forehead and breathe the smell of her hair.

“Nance, darling, what is it? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

One word she puffed softly, over and over. At first I didn’t hear it, she said it with so little force, just half a breath and the puckering shape of her lips to send it along.

“Out . . . out . . . out . . .”

Doctor Seabury inhaled slowly, deeply, in the hard reverse of a sigh.

“What’s she saying?” asked Emma, who was seated a little farther away.

“Out?” I replied uncertainly, for it almost sounded like a soft cry of pain instead. “Doctor, have you ever heard anything like it?”

He nodded, but I knew he would. I could see it in his face when the word first became loud enough to understand.

His obvious concern left me flustered. I floundered. “What does it mean? Does she want to go out? Or is she warning us that something . . . something’s coming out? From the cellar?” I was grasping at straws.

His certainty was terrifying when he said calmly, “She
wants
out.”

“We should, we could . . . turn her loose and see where she goes,” Emma suggested, and for the second time that night, I would’ve dearly loved to slap her.

“We aren’t turning her loose!” I snapped. “She’s not even
standing
yet. She’s not going anywhere.”

But the doctor said grimly, “She will stand. She will rise, and find a way out.”

“And then what?”

“Then . . . ?” He shrugged tiredly, with his hands up and his
shoulders sagging. “Then she’s gone, one way or another. I’ve seen it once before. Twice, I suppose. I witnessed it once myself, and heard that it was said of Matthew, but he never spoke in my presence, to cry ‘out’ or anything else. By the time I was summoned to check on him, whatever had him in its grip . . . it’d rendered him mute.”

“Then she’s not so far gone,” I said to reassure myself. “Not beyond hope or help. There’s time to investigate, still. Time to figure out what’s wrong with her, and do something about it. Did you hear that, Nance? There’s time,” I said, crushing her fingers in my own.

“Lizzie.” Emma called my name like a warning.

“Oh, hush,” I spit back at her. “She’ll be fine, soon enough. And even if she won’t, let me say it out loud in case words mean something, and can make a thing true.”

“Lizzie,” she said again, and this time it was more dire. “Do you hear that?”

I sat up straight, and released Nance’s limp fingers. I didn’t hear anything, but Emma’s ears were sometimes keener than mine. “Where? What?”

My sister’s eyes tracked around the room, seeking to pinpoint whatever had snagged her attention. Her ears settled on a corner back on the other side of the kitchen, if I read her correctly, and assumed she wasn’t hearing rats in the walls between here and there.

“What are we . . . ?” the doctor began, wondering what we were listening for, or to, or what on earth we were going on about. But he was kind enough to keep from saying so, at least not without leading in gently.

I spared him the trouble by cutting in. “There’s something outside the house,” I said quietly. “You must stay here.”

He rose to his feet. “I’ll do no such thing.”

“Doctor, I really must ask you . . .” Now it was my turn to half finish a thought. I heard it. I was confident, yes—the scratching, scritching, fussing noise of something nasty feeling its way around the walls outside. “Stay right here,” I commanded him, having no idea whether he’d obey or not. “I’ll take care of this. Please, stay with Emma and Nance.”

“Out . . . out . . . out . . . ,”
whispered Nance, with something closer to urgency than idle directing.

“Miss O’Neil, wishing to go outside. And something outside, wanting to come in?” he guessed. “These two things must be related.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But you
must
stay here!”

I decided to take the front door. I could surprise it, if I came around the far side of the house, for yes, my ears told me it was tracking to the east.