Shadows Falling: The Lost #2 (18 page)

“
In here! Help! Burglars!” Prue shouted, as the footsteps came closer.

“
What happened to her grandmother?” Luke asked Prue, as we climbed out the window like thieves. “Please tell me!”

“
She died alone, I suppose,” I heard Prue answer, as I dropped to the ground. “She never got her mind back, poor thing. Didn’t know any of her loved ones, not even her own daughter. It wasn’t her fault, poor thing. Poor Nora.”

22

The coincidence about Nora is almost more than I can bear. I want to shake it off, this dreadful feeling there may be more truth to Rose’s tale than I originally thought, but I’m not ready to make that leap. So, there are suddenly two women in my life with the name of Nora. So what? It’s not as though it’s an uncommon name.  Two women named Hildegard in my life suddenly; now that would warrant some alarm.

Even if my Nora
is
Rose’s Nora, there is still no reason for anxiety. After all, she’s the appropriate age to be Rose’s grandmother, and besides, if they met at the hospital, then it’s no small wonder Rose includes her into her delusions.

Right?

Even so, I want to talk to Nora again. First thing in the morning, as soon as I check in with Miss Helmes, I’m going to speak to her and find out what she may know about Rose. My mind made up, I settle back down into bed and check on my candle. My torch had died recently, and my lantern is out of oil, so I’ve resorted to old fashioned lighting. It should feel romantic and warm and cozy; instead it feels as though it doesn’t light up a single corner and my flat is dark and cold and a bit fearsome. I have forced Hamlet to abandon his midnight wanderings and confine himself to my bed. He lies obediently at my feet, washing himself. He makes me sneeze, but I love his company. It gets so lonely here at night. Sometimes I even miss the orphanage. I am unused to silence; it unnerves me, even after a year of living alone. I miss the noisiness of the other orphans, the routine, the structure, the predictability, the chaos. Even the quiet days had their noises: the clink of dishes, the humming of the girls, the doors opening and closing. Here, in my flat, it’s silence all the time. Some people would love that, but not me. I think that’s why I don’t mind Bedlam so much. The noise agrees with me.

I wonder if Mina would live with me. Not here, of course, but someplace nicer. We could study medicine together and walk to work together. Her mother would hate it, of course, but Mina would be game; I
’m sure of it. I’ll have to ask her what she thinks. Most girls lived with their parents until they married, but Mina is a modern woman, and she’s in no hurry to marry, as far as I can see.  It’s not a bad idea, not bad at all. A lot of modern girls are getting their own places these days. It’s very chic. Mina loves chic.

My thoughts turn back to Rose. I wonder if she
’s hiding out in the old hospital. In order to say why I think it’s a possibility, I’d have to tell someone about my night there, and I’m not about to do that. For one thing, it’s completely against the law for me to have been there in the first place, and I wouldn’t put it past Miss Helmes to can me over it; for another, I can’t be sure about anything that happened. I can’t chalk it up to imagination—it was far too real—but there was something supernatural about it. Mostly I just want to forget about it, I certainly am not going to go back.

I could drop some kind of a hint to Sam though. Maybe he could check. If they are as close as he claims, she might not attempt to scare the living daylights out of him. I could admit to him that I went back there that night, for the diary, and I could simply say I felt like someone was watching me. I could mention her name on the wall. He
’d believe me. The more I learn about Rose and her violent ways, the more I don’t really want her wandering around society. I don’t exactly want to lock her back up where I’d ironically have to take care of her, empty her bedpan, tuck her in at night, read her Ethan Frome, but I don’t want her in the outside world either. As a nurse, I have a duty to my patients.

My candle is burnt nearly all the way. I watch it flicker, waver, lose its luster. I feel the heat leave even before I see the flame go out. The cold envelopes me faster than the dark.

********************

Nora is in a mood this morning. She hasn
’t spoken a word to me; in fact, she acts like I’m not even in the room. It’s highly irritating. I usually have patience with my patients, but she’s wearing me out. Plus, I didn’t sleep very well—I dreamt of Rose chasing me through White Chapel, and I couldn’t run fast enough because of my cursed ball gown. I woke up when I ran into Jack the Ripper, literally ran into him. I think I looked straight into his eyes, but then I woke, and the whole dream was fuzzy and blurry around the edges. I couldn’t remember what he looked like in my dream, but I had a funny feeling I knew him at the time. Try as I might, I couldn’t manifest his looks after I woke. I only remember he smelled like blood, the way my hands smelled when I scrubbed the not-stew off the wall that day. I blow my hair out of my eyes with an impatient puff of breath. I haven’t braided it since yesterday afternoon with Mina; she taught me how to set it at night so that it falls in waves, and I’ve pinned one side back with my one and only sparkly clip. The side that isn’t pinned tickles my face. It’s irksome.

“
Nora? Come on, dear. Won’t you talk to me? I have to go check on the other patients now. I wish you’d talk to me. Tell me about your friends here.” Nothing. A different tactic then. “Tell me about the Grays.”

She startles. Just a bit, but I saw it: the tremor in her hands, the blink of her eyes.

“Do you remember them? Was your daughter Carolina Gray?” I come closer, and sit down. I had found her all alone at the big dining table. “Do you remember your daughter?”

“
No,” Nora finally speaks, and her voice is shaky, like she hasn’t used it in too long. “I don’t remember anyone.”

“
Do you remember Rose? From not so long ago, not like Carolina. From the hospital?”

“
I don’t remember anyone,” she repeats, hollowly. “Not anyone. I don’t remember me.”

How unbearably sad. I blink back a tear and swallow the lump in my throat. I hate crying; it gives me a headache and once I start, I can
’t stop for ages.

“
Well, I remember you,” I say, brightly. “I remember how much you don’t like Ethan Frome and would like to switch to Pride and Prejudice. Now, tuck your feet in, and I’ll read to you a bit.”

“
Don’t you have chores?” She sounds a bit more cheerful now. I’m still trying to place her accent.

“
Nothing that can’t wait. Here we go. ‘
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife…’ “

********************

I don’t like thinking about what Prue told me about my grandmother. It gives me the creeps that she was like me and that it didn’t go so well for her, not in the long run. Perhaps she abused her powers? Perhaps she wasn’t quite as adept as I at turning the tide? Who knew? I wouldn’t waste time wondering about it. I needed another plan to track Sonnet and my father. Luke and I wasted time, wandering through London, in case they were hiding in plain sight, laughing at us. It seemed as though wretched Emme’s family had disappeared with my own, too.

I was beginning to regret our wedding and the delay it had caused everything. I was short tempered and given to long periods of silence, when I fumed. I bit my nails so far down that my fingertips bled almost constantly. Luke was at his wits
’ end with me. Nothing he could say or do or suggest made anything any better, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him one thing: that I was seeing my mother all over the place. Was she watching me, or haunting me, or was my mind playing tricks on me? I didn’t know. I only knew she unnerved me. I felt as though she had come for me, to drag me down with her into death. I tried to ignore her. She never came too close, the vision of my mother, and she never touched me.

Yet.

But she did stop me from things. Once, we decided to take a train out of London, and when I stepped up on the platform, I saw my mother inside. She was watching me. I faltered, and I couldn’t go in.

Another time, I saw her across a busy street, right before Luke and I were about to cross. I had to stay on the opposite side until she faded away. Luke couldn
’t cajole me away, or convince me to move. He was patient with me, but he didn’t understand.

I had even lost my appetite for cake, which meant I was eating almost nothing. This made it difficult for Luke to hide my medication. He thought I never knew when he was slipping me something, but I always do. The cake tastes grainier, and chalky, when there
’s a foreign substance tucked inside. After eating it, I would feel drowsy and my senses would be dulled. But I wouldn’t see my mother for a while, and that was… nice. For the first time, I would take the medicine with a glass of water, and Luke wouldn’t have to hide it. He was pleased with my progress in that regard.

I hadn
’t been back to Bedlam in a while. It had been curious that my last travel, the one that brought my whole family plus their miserable guests, had deposited me on the streets of London and not inside the hospital, like usual. I suppose London itself was close enough? Knowing me and my sad luck though, I’d end up back there soon enough. If not after my next travel or two, then because I’d be bound to do something stupid and someone would take me in forcibly. It had happened before; I remembered after the Bodley, kicking and biting as the people drug me to my new home. I think it had even crossed Luke’s mind recently to take me in. Oh, he wouldn’t say it, but I think he thought it, once or twice, during one of my silent spells or my violent fits. The last place he likes to see me is there, but I know he always hopes eventually a doctor will be able to help me find normalcy. They didn’t help my grandmother though, did they? Or did they? Perhaps she’s found rest and happiness, after all. But to never travel again? What sadness. Poor grandmother! I resolve not to end up like her. I wish I had her recipe though, so I could write my own ending.

Finally, Luke ran out of patience. He realized I had to do something to put my past to bed, and staying in London was making me worse. I couldn
’t seem to make myself board a train, and obviously Sonnet and everyone were long gone. For all I knew, they had all gone to Africa with that doctor and his griddle-wielding wife. I had been to Africa before; it’s ridiculously large. The thought of searching it—with my luck, in the dead of summer with its humid heat—made me tired. We needed something more substantial to go on.

“
Harry and Matthias,” Luke convinced me. They were the old brothers from America, from when I first met my sister. “It’s easy enough to go back and find them. They’ll be right where we left them. They don’t know you. They know me, but they won’t know I’m Lost, and they won’t know of my connection to you, or anything that happened in London. I can simply reconnect with them. They might have an educated guess at least where they would go if the year were 1888. Hell, we can go back to the very next day, after your family disappeared. We can live in Sonnet’s house if you want. Maybe we’ll find something there even. All right, love?”

It was a good enough plan, better than anything else I could come up with. I couldn
’t explain why I was nervous about traveling again. Probably all that talk about my grandmother. Did she really get worse with every travel?

We went to sleep that night, me in my red calico dress, Luke in his white collared shirt and brown pants. I set my inner clock, as it were, and remembered the old lady
’s house across the street from Sonnet’s home. I remembered the old abandoned house outside of town, where I had locked my sister inside and wondered if she’d die there. I remembered the smells of the coffee shop, and the soup kitchen where I had eaten a couple times when I got bored waiting for Luke. I fell asleep thinking of Sonnet’s bed, where I had curled up once before, over a hundred years from now, and when we woke, I was in that same bed.

I have a headache from deciphering Rose’s handwriting. I wish she’d pop over to a more modern century and steal a typewriter, for goodness sake. At times, her writing is studious and painstaking, like a grammar schoolgirl learning her letters, but most of the time, it’s a loopy, scrawling mess of spider leg marks, rubbed out words, and downward spirals. I’m sure a handwriting expert could tell me all sorts of interesting things about my Rose Gray.

“
See how the ‘I’s loop up at the corners? Yes, that’s a sign of a murderous mind. And how the ‘O’s are more oval shaped than circular? Yes, she has mother issues. And the tightly wound ‘S’s? Yes, she has a way of invading one’s personal space and taking up residence there.” And how!

I rub my temples and set the diary aside. I
’m nearly finished with it. I thought I would want to savor the last few entries, but instead, I am dreading them. I’m not certain why, but I worry about what I will find at the end, or perhaps what I won’t find. Will there be another journal for me to locate somewhere? It doesn’t seem as though there will, but I don’t know how I know that. My inclination is that this one was not penned so long ago. I am nearly up to present time with Rose, though present time, and time in general, is a funny thing with her.

Where is she hiding? Is she holing up in the old hospital? I feel a stab of guilt in the pit of my stomach, wondering if I
’ve left her there and been too cowardly to ferret her out. What is to become of that place? My thoughts turn to the old building. Will it stand forever, abandoned and teeming with ghosts of the past?
But back to Rose and the situation at hand: did she lose Luke in their travels to confront the men she called Harry and Matthias? Obviously, she came back, from wherever it is they go, or the diary wouldn’t be here…unless of course, she planted it at the Bodley and then traveled. By traveled, of course I don’t mean jumps through time; I don’t think I do anyway. I hardly know what I mean anymore.