The Hall of Shadows

by M. L. Bullock

  “Vivian, what do you want? Why are your arms cut to pieces? What have you been doing to yourself?”

  She rubbed her nose with the handkerchief; she looked so thin. So thin that the bones in her hands looked almost skeletal. Had she stopped eating? What was going on here?

  “You do not know, then? Of course you don’t. They don’t want you to know.” She twisted the handkerchief in her hands. “And if I tell you, they will send me away, won’t they?” She bit her fingernail thoughtfully and stared at the doorway as if she could see someone I couldn’t. I glanced in the same direction, but there was no one there. I hurried to close the door and walked back to her.

  “Let me see your arms, Vivian. I think I have some salve in my dressing room.” I touched her arm softly. Maybe Dan was right. Perhaps I had been too cruel to Vivian. Why should I hate her? She did not kill my father as I sometimes imagined. That was just a child’s fantasy.

  “No, no salve,” Vivian mumbled. The lovely brunette had the look of someone who was waking from a dream. One minute she was frail and vulnerable, but not now. “I think I hear your mother calling me.” She rose from the bed and flinched away from my touch. Her eyes were flitting about the room again; I could not see anything, but I believed I felt something. A moving of the air. A shadow that remained outside my direct line of sight. It hovered just at the edges, and no matter how quickly I turned my head, I could not catch full sight of it.

  Stop it, Joanna. You’re letting Vivian’s madness rub off on you. She’s having you on, making you see ghosts too.

  “You couldn’t possibly hear Mother calling from here, Vivian,” I corrected her, but I too heard a voice—no, make that voices. And they were just outside my door. They spoke over one another, but none of them were loud enough for me to discern. Curious now, I ignored Vivian’s shrinking posture and hurried to the door to get to the bottom of this.

  “Who’s there?” I asked as I swung the door open furiously.

  The hallway was empty. Nobody was there. It was pitch black, but that didn’t stop me from stepping outside my room and looking up and down. “Hello?” Still nothing to see and I now heard no voices, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there. I walked back into my room and saw Vivian whispering and pacing the floor. Her voice was soft and low and strange. Like the ones I heard in the hallway.

  “Vivian? What is it?” She paced faster and laughed in my face. Just a few seconds ago she was a weepy-eyed victim of some nefarious plot perpetrated by Mother. Now she was the Vivian I knew. Had this all been an act? I noticed to my horror that her left wrist was bleeding. How did she cut herself? I had no knives in here. Then I saw that her fingernail tips were stained with blood. She cut herself with her own fingernails!

  “Oh God! Vivian! What have you done to yourself?” Her expression had changed completely. The crying waif that woke me with her desperate attack had disappeared. The old Vivian, the one who despised me as much as I despised her, had returned with a vengeance. She raised her wrist and turned it so that her blood splattered on the carpet, and then as quick as a cat she raced from the room. I could hear her laughter travel down the hallway, and I didn’t know what to do except close and lock my bedroom door. I would never again sleep with the door unlocked. Never.

  I retrieved some towels from my water closet and sopped up the blood as best I could. Hopefully the carpet wouldn’t be ruined. I would have to have one of the housemaids clean it properly in the morning. Surely it wasn’t enough blood to do much damage. The rug was a thing of beauty, a Turkish prayer rug, a gift from long ago. Strange that Vivian would stain that particular relic with her blood. I tried to think about something else besides the weird happenings of this evening, but my mind kept returning to Vivian. What was I going to do about her? Clearly, she was disturbed. I would have to deal with her. No question. She could not stay at Morgan’s Rock any longer. This would simply not do at all.

  There were no more voices, no more whisperings, but the hallway sounded too quiet. No ticking of the clock. No footsteps. Nothing at all. Eventually my eyes grew heavy, and I settled into a restless sleep.

  And I dreamed about Vivian.

  She wore her veil again, the blue one with the painted silver stars. She was whispering, intensely. Vivian hovered in my face, speaking to me. I could not discern the words at all, but the message was clear. She was cursing me. Instinctively I swung my hand at her. I had to push her away, get her out of my face, but she wasn’t actually there. She was a shadow, an evil shadow.

  “Stop it! Stop it, Vivian!”

  And to my surprise, she did stop, but her face was completely covered by her veil. Was this Vivian? I could hardly think to ask. It was then that she cocked her head at me. My skin crawled and I felt sick, but I could not move or take my eyes off her veiled face. My fingers shook as I reached for the fabric. With a quick tug, I pulled the cloth off her head.

  I expected to see her beautiful face, maybe a disdainful sneer, but that’s not what I saw. A skeletal face stared back at me, and suddenly the face opened its mouth and screamed at me.

  I woke up and vomited in my bed.

  Chapter Three

  Present Day

  It took all my strength to fling back the covers, and when I did, I immediately felt sick. What was going on? Where was I? This wasn’t my bed. I shouldn’t be here!

  “Vivian?” I whispered as I blinked my eyes against the bright light that appeared to fill every corner of this room. Wait, I knew where I was. This had been my room when I came here as author Megan Pressfield. This had been Megan’s bedroom, on the bottom floor of Morgan’s Rock. Joanna’s bedroom had been upstairs. This big empty bed had been mine, but I wanted no part of that life now—I’d chosen Joanna’s.

  I struggled with the nausea as my mind raced to get a handle on what was happening. I never wanted to be Megan Pressfield again. Never. I had made another choice! I had spent too much time writing about the things that Joanna experienced, too much time, and I had allowed life to pass me by. Too much time reading about adventures and heroines…but being Joanna, I had the chance to do both. And I was in love. As Joanna, I loved someone.

  Paden! Paden Kincaid!

  I sobbed as I realized he was lost to me. Even as I whispered his name, my mind was effectively burying his image as if he’d been a figment of my imagination or someone from a dream. Some part of my subconscious. Yes, my mind worked against me as all memories of him began to fade.

  No! Stop! How can I forget Paden? I love you!

  Paden’s warm skin. His shaggy blond hair. His ability to laugh at every one of my fears. I had loved him completely. Had I been wrong to do so? Maybe. Perhaps it had been morally wrong, but it had been my choice to make. Or had it been? The past apparently rejected me now, but why? What had I done to deserve this?

  “Paden…” I whispered as I sighed away the remnants of him.

  And then I could not recall his face at all. I couldn’t conjure it no matter how I stilled my breathing or clamped my eyes shut. I was here in the present. Back where I belonged. Without Paden or any good memory of him. But others…I could remember them.

  Danny. Vivian. Mother.

  Something had happened with Vivian. Yes, those eyes of hers, they bore into my soul. She wanted me to remember, and I could see the blood. Her bloody arms. What have you done, Vivian? What have you done?

  But she did not answer, and I could not summon anything else to help me recall her message. I clutched my stomach and let the tears fall freely. I felt such grief. Such overwhelming grief. I turned on my side facing the wall as if that would change the truth of my new reality.

  I had returned to Morgan’s Rock, but I was no longer Joanna Storm.

  Chapter Four

  “Since when did you start smoking?” I heard Alex’s voice before I saw him. That was the only disadvantage to the Great Room. The stairs opened up practically in the middle of the room and the treads were carpeted. The floor may have creaked a little when h
e walked up, but I’d been lost in my thoughts and my notes. And that letter. More than anything in the world, I wanted to show Alex that note. I wanted to get his opinion, but he wasn’t open to hearing about it right now. I picked a piece of tobacco off my lip and defiantly took another deep drag from my cigarette.

  “Since you’ve been gone,” I popped back flatly. I shuffled the papers in my lap together and stubbed the cigarette out in the crystal ashtray on the side table next to me.

  “I’ve only been gone a few hours, Megan. What’s the matter with you?” he asked as he slid a box of office supplies onto my desk.

  “Did you come to pick a fight with me? Because I’m game if you are, Alex Wagner.”

  Alex frowned as he unpacked the box and set the contents neatly on my work space. He’d brought me spiral notebooks and blue pens, my preferred mediums when brainstorming chapters. “I’m not interested in fighting with you, Megan Pressfield, since we’re using our full names today. I’m just here to help. If you want to smoke yourself to death, that’s your business. In the meantime, I think I got everything on your list. You should know that the publisher is really anxious to take a peek at a few chapters, but I’m sure you could get away with a partial. Maybe the first few paragraphs. It’s just a formality.”

  “I know the drill, Alex. You’re all business, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question, more an observation or an accusation. Why was I so unhappy with Alex all of a sudden?

  His eyes narrowed, and he plopped down in the chair beside the desk.

  “Out with it, Megan. What’s going on with you?”

  “Why do you naturally assume it’s me that has the problem?”

  “Are you saying you don’t have a problem? Because I can’t think of another reason for all this hostility toward me.”

  I slapped my folders on the desk and walked away. Wait. Why was I leaving? This was my home, not his. It was my name on the deed. What I needed was a good, stiff drink. And another cigarette. You know, the funny thing was I couldn’t even tell him where I bought those cigarettes. I’d found the pack lying on the table. So if they weren’t his or mine, who did they belong to?

  He wasn’t going to let this argument go because he followed me as I strolled toward the Victrola.

  “I couldn’t find you when I left. Is that when you popped out to buy these? And now that I’m back, you’re like a completely different person. I’ve heard of creative indulgence before, but this takes the cake, Megan. Now tell me what’s going on. Is this about Glenn?”

  “It’s not Glenn.” I shook my head as I dropped the needle on the record. Immediately the scratchy record began to play the Charleston. Images of Danny banging on the piano, his normally perfect hair looking wild as he jangled the keys in perfect time, filled my mind. I caught my breath as I saw myself dancing. I clutched the Victrola as the room wobbled around me.

  No, that wasn’t me. That was Joanna.

  “Megan, please. Don’t shut down on me.”

  “I can’t explain it.” I didn’t want to look at him directly for fear that he would know. He would know that I had fallen in love with Paden Kincaid and that I would never love him like that, and I didn’t want to be having this conversation. All I wanted was to go back, and all I could feel for Alex was sympathy and my own guilt. No, I couldn’t face him.

  “Try anyway. You’re a writer, for goodness’ sake. Get creative. Tell me what you’re feeling. Don’t hold anything back. I’m a big boy, Megan. I can take whatever it might be. If it’s me…if you don’t want me here with you, I will leave.”

  “Yes and no,” I said as I bit my lip. Did I really want to do this? If I wanted to find my way back to Paden…Alex should go. It would be a lot easier if I were by myself. If I were alone at Morgan’s Rock, I could search wherever I liked whenever I wanted to.

  “Explain that,” he said as he touched my shoulder. His hand didn’t linger, which I was grateful for.

  Time to face the music, Joanna. Tell him the truth and be done with it. You belong to Paden Kincaid.

  “I’m not sure we can keep seeing each other, Alex.”

  “You’re not sure. What does that mean?”

  I swallowed and ignored the small part of my heart that begged me to stop before I said or did something I would regret. “I mean what I said. I’m not sure we should keep seeing each other.”

  “Out with it, Megan. We either are seeing one another or we aren’t. There is no ‘not sure.’ Just say what’s on your mind. Like I said, I can handle it.”

  “Have it your way, then. We can’t see each other anymore. It complicates things, Alex, and I don’t need complications right now. I’ve got to…do some things. Things I don’t think you’ll understand.”

  To my surprise, Alex nodded his head and said, “I agree with you. You’ve got a book to finish, and I’ve got other clients who require more than a few phone calls from me. More than anything, I need to go out to see Andy. And maybe a few others. Besides, I know I’m getting in the way of you getting that book finished. I’m glad we’re thinking along the same lines because I wasn’t sure how to bring this up.” I didn’t know what to feel about that. Relieved but also a little angry. He continued like he didn’t notice my back stiffening and my fingers turning bone-white as I struggled to keep my bearings. I felt so sick all of a sudden. “We’ve had some good times, and I genuinely care about you, but it’s not the right time for either of us.”

  When I could finally speak, I snapped at him. “Glad you have it all sorted, Alex. That’s convenient, isn’t it? Having me do the dirty work, saying what you didn’t want to say. Why couldn’t you speak your mind instead of forcing me to be the bad guy?” I said with surprising vehemence.

  “There are no bad guys here, Megan. What are you talking about? I’m not forcing you to do anything. You started this conversation. Remember?”

  “Yeah, but you were thinking it. I’m just the one who had the courage to say it. But at least we agree it’s time to part ways.”

  “Part ways? Wait a minute. I just meant we should slow down, not stop seeing one another forever. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you want.”

  For some reason, the music blared; it was getting noticeably louder, like someone had turned up the volume. I didn’t remember this record doing that before. I mean, it was scratchy-sounding, yes. But escalating volume? No. Alex reached over and lifted the arm of the phonograph, and I cringed at the sound of the record being scratched. Why was he so angry? He just admitted this was what he wanted too.

  “I can’t explain it further. I do like you, Alex, but…”

  “But what?” His cheeks reddened slightly.

  It was my turn to stammer now. “Why are you making this so difficult? You agreed with me…you said that not ten seconds ago. What am I missing here?”

  “This is about Glenn. You’re getting back with Glenn, aren’t you?”

  “What? No. Of course not. I never want to see my ex-husband again.”

  “But there is someone else. It’s written all over your face.” Alex paused as he watched me try to deny it. I felt so vulnerable now; I was an open book. I knew he couldn’t read my mind, but this wasn’t getting any easier.

  “Yes, Alex. There is, but it’s not like you think,” I began as I took a step toward him with my hand raised to touch his arm. Maybe he would understand. He knew that strange things had happened here before. He knew full well that Morgan’s Rock was a spiritual hotspot although neither one of us knew why. I sure couldn’t explain it. Alex and I had talked about this very thing on many occasions.

  “Really? What am I thinking?” His voice broke. I was surprised at all the emotion I heard.

  “I went back, Alex. While you were gone. I went back, and I could see what she saw, feel what she felt. I was Joanna Storm. I still am. I know it sounds crazy, but I was her…I am her. I can’t leave that life behind.” There, I’d said it. I’d put all my cards on the table, but my confession didn’t impress him. Alex didn�
��t speak for a few long minutes, and when he did, I could tell he felt nothing but hurt.

  “You don’t believe that. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to believe that. That you would be willing to throw your life away and give it to a ghost. Or maybe you’re just avoiding this relationship, Megan. Maybe that’s what this is all about.”

  “You don’t get to tell me what I believe. You don’t get to do that, Alex. I’m telling you I put the dress on and I was there. It was like before but different. It was more intense—more real than any of this.”

  Alex rubbed his face with his hand and paced around in a half-circle as he watched me. “You’re talking about the peacock dress? You put it on again?”

  “Yes. That’s the one. I put it on and went back. Joanna was younger the second time, though. The first time, I was…I was with Paden, but then somehow, I can’t remember how,” I said, biting my nail as I sat on the edge of the desk, “it all changed. I was the younger Joanna. It was Mother’s birthday and Vivian wore this veil and Danny was playing the piano. The Charleston…” I felt my excitement fade under Alex’s stern gaze. He didn’t believe a word of this.

  “Please stop this, Megan. Once was enough. We handled all that. We settled the score, remember?”

  The air between us stilled. I could hear the ice in his voice, not that I blamed him. “It’s not over, Alex.”

  “Even if I believed you, even if I could accept that you don’t want to be with me anymore, I can’t accept your willingness to give your life over to a ghost. Joanna Storm is dead! Dead and gone forever. You can’t bring her back.”

  “I have to try. I wish you could understand. I feel like I’m torn between two worlds.”

  Alex shook his head as if he couldn’t believe his own ears. “I don’t think you’re torn at all. I think this is exactly what you want and how you want it. Well, I won’t fight you, Megan, but I think you need help.”