by Alma Katsu
Lillian. Enraged. Despairing.
* * *
—
Annie didn’t know how long she’d been curled, silent and alone, in the dark room. She’d begun to feel as if she’d been buried alive, and, disturbingly, a part of her didn’t mind. It wasn’t a land burial but one at sea, like Teddy’s. She was wrapped in gauze, floating in the deep, weightless. Peaceful. For the first time in a long time, she knew exactly where she was going, where this journey of pain and loneliness was leading. She knew the destination.
When she awoke, however, she was still in this room. The ordeal of the past few days wasn’t over. There was still a mystery to be solved, a spirit to be exorcised. She had to get out of here somehow and to let Stead know that she’d figured it out. Someone had been possessed by the spirit of Lillian; and, whoever it was, they were doing terrible things on board this ship, all in the name of getting Ondine back. But how could you take back your child if you were already dead?
She couldn’t panic. She had to get hold of herself. To remain in control. Even if she got out of here soon, no one would ever take her seriously if they thought her mad. She had to behave, had to soothe herself, had to think.
She reached into her apron pocket and, out of what had become a new habit, drew out the brooch. Ran her fingers over it. She’d looked at it so many times that she’d memorized the design, the curves and whorls cut into the metal. By now, it was almost like it was her own. It made her feel better somehow, like she wasn’t so alone, so lost, so trapped.
Her fingers found the latch instinctively.
Latch?
She hadn’t known there was a latch.
And yet . . .
The heart popped open with a satisfying little snap. It was a miniature snuff box.
And there was something in it—or there had been.
She breathed in the scent of the powder. She knew what it was: Caroline’s “medicine,” the medicine she privately indulged in when she thought no one was looking. Afterward, she would be steadier, calmer.
There wasn’t much left, just a rim of compacted powder. Annie licked her finger and ran it around the edge. She could feel the dust wick moisture off her fingertip. Before she could stop herself, Annie stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked the powder from it.
Nothing.
She chipped at the ridge of powder with a fingernail, breaking off a sliver no bigger than a splinter. She swallowed it.
Nothing.
She worked the remaining bits of compacted powder loose, yielding four more little slivers. They were bitter as bicarbonate.
They melted onto her tongue, now like tiny icicles.
Ice.
Ice floating in the water, lying in wait for the ship.
The child, floating in the water. Blue as a corpse.
Ondine.
She knew the name, now that she thought about it. Ondine was the name of a mermaid in one of her grandmother’s stories. It was a myth, wasn’t it? Annie wasn’t supposed to know about myths. Like novels, like fairy stories, they were full of sin.
The Lord favors good girls, Annie.
She wanted to weep. She had to do something, but how could she, trapped in this frigid cell in the bottom of the ship? When she was frozen herself, like a sleeping princess in a fairy tale, locked in her casket, staring out of it forever.
Waiting for her prince. Waiting to be freed.
Why was she here again? She touched her head, as though her touch might release something. Yes, she remembered it was because of the messages, yes. The ice. No, because of Lillian.
No, because of Caroline and this brooch. This empty brooch that had once held a very powerful medication. And had been in the hands of the Astor boy when he went into a seizure.
She saw the truth now: it wasn’t Caroline, or any evil, calculating spirit who’d killed the boy. The brooch itself had killed him. Or what had been inside it.
With aching surety, Annie saw now what had been happening. She looked at the brooch in her hand like it was a hissing cobra, waiting to strike at her.
Caroline was responsible for Ondine’s wasting away. Caroline had been making Ondine sick. On purpose. The brooch hissed the truth to her. Caroline had been poisoning her child this entire time, right under everyone’s noses.
But Caroline wanted Ondine. Why would Caroline have gone to so much trouble to make Ondine hers, only to try to kill her?
There’d been a fisherman’s wife outside of Ballintoy caught poisoning her own children with arsenic. She claimed it drove out the evil spirits and she was doing it to save their souls, but her own sister had said the woman had grown weary of raising them by herself, the husband out at sea, leaving her alone in her misery. Said motherhood could be its own kind of grave. There was no escaping it, except in one hideous way or the other—their deaths or the mother’s.
And, too, Annie’s grandmother Aisling had told her of a woman who had abused her children for the sympathy it brought her—not to mention the parish alms. Women did mad things, didn’t they? Hysterical things.
Hysteria.
The stories flitted through her mind now, a dizzying cycle. Stories she’d heard or read, stories she’d perhaps only dreamed.
Annie snapped the brooch’s lid shut, regretting she’d used up all the powder. She had no proof, only suspicions. No way to prove that she wasn’t the mad one after all.
Chapter Forty
It had to be near midnight, but William Stead resisted the urge to dig out his watch. It was buried in his vest pocket, hidden beneath several layers of wool. He was buttoned up tight against the cold winter night. He had to have been out here close to an hour—in near-arctic conditions. The ship had to be at one of its northernmost points on the journey and the spring weather had taken a turn for the frigid tonight. His nose and cheeks were stiff, his lips tight and uncomfortable. He stamped his feet to ward off the cold, wishing he’d brought a flask of hot tea with him.
What they—Guggenheim, the Duff-Gordons, the captain—must think of me out here by myself in this weather. Crazy old man, they’re probably saying right now. The captain had already sent a crewman to check on him. “Might you be more comfortable indoors, sir?” he’d asked politely, nudging Stead toward the door like a border collie. He finally gave up when Stead made it clear he’d go inside when he was good and ready. Maybe this was how his public career would end, he thought stoically. As a joke. The speaking events were already starting to dwindle; invitations to holidays in the country, even dinner parties, drying up. It was bad enough being infamous; he couldn’t afford to be known as a crackpot, too.
“Who are you? What do you want from us?” He spoke softly, saying the same words over and over and as he made slow circuits of the promenade. Normally the deck saw its share of passengers, even at this hour, but the freezing temperatures had driven everyone else indoors. As cold and tired as he was, he continued because he was sure there was something lurking aboard this ship, and what’s more, that something was going to happen soon, perhaps tonight. There was an electric charge crackling through the air, a special charge that only certain people could feel. People who were attuned to the other plane. People like himself.
If the spirit was malevolent . . . if something terrible were to happen, Stead would not be able to live with himself. He felt sickened over the death of the servant boy (though of course the blame lay with the Astors, treating the child as though he were a pet). Just as he felt gutted about what had happened to Eliza Armstrong.
He would not let another innocent suffer.
He made another slow lap of the promenade, his legs stiffening up as the temperature continued to drop. He called to the spirit under his breath and with his heart and mind. He could feel something in the air just beyond his reach. Something tantalizingly real, absolute.
It wasn’t until he’d returned to his starting p
oint near the smoking room that he noticed a thickening of the mist over the water. It hung like a figure in the air, suspended over the black lapping waves. It wasn’t fog, Stead was sure of it. He knew what it was. He’d seen it before. The spirit was trying to answer him. It was attempting to materialize, to become the corporeal body it once was. Stead’s heart swelled with hope and amazement—and fear, too, for how could he not be afraid? As much as he wanted to witness a materialization, it was as frightening as seeing a corpse claw its way out of the grave.
As he waited, he became aware of the tremendous cold pressing down on him as though it had weight. As though the cold were a presence. He felt like nothing, a mere insect, confronted by this huge, annihilating manifestation. He felt the weight of the other world, the gravity greatest because the two worlds were so close. It was a feeling he’d never known before.
But as the mist took shape, it was no figure, no person coming closer, but something vaster, amorphous. These were not limbs being made from crystalized breath. The presence grew larger and larger, and whiter. Until there was no mistaking what was coming at him, what had emerged from the clouds hovering just over the surface of the ocean.
As tall as any building in London. And as massive.
An iceberg.
Chapter Forty-One
Mark and Annie lay side by side in a field beneath a flowering cherry tree, pink blossoms raining down on them like snow. His gaze was soft, his mouth tense. There was no question in her mind that he was about to kiss her.
The anticipation was almost as sweet as its realization.
His hand met her cheek and she shivered. . . .
As their lips met, she felt his breath against hers, felt them breathing as one. His mouth parted hers, hesitant. Then he pulled back.
“We shouldn’t . . .” he whispered.
Only he wasn’t Mark.
He was Des.
Desmond Flannery. The boy she loved. The boy she was not allowed to love. Because he was already sworn to God.
But the Lord couldn’t truly deem it a sin to do this—not when it felt like heaven. Could He? In that moment, it just didn’t seem possible. In all the earth, there was only the two of them: Annie and Des. Intertwined in the field. Waves crashing beyond the cliffs in the distance. Where nothing, not even God’s wrath, could touch them. Des holding her hand over his heart. Des saying, “Why do you do this to me?” Des murmuring, “Lord forgive us,” over and over and over again. A cry and a prayer together.
* * *
—
Annie snapped awake, feeling as if a scream had wrenched her in half. She’d been sobbing in her sleep, and now she shook as the terrible noise continued echoing outside her, everywhere, overhead and around.
The sound was indescribable—a deep, reverberating groan beneath an avalanche of glass. A roar and a screech, like a sheet of old metal wrenched backward against its will.
Then came the juddering, as if the vessel itself were seizing.
Overhead, it seemed as though the entire ship had awakened—she could hear a commotion of voices and screams. Instinctively, she lunged for the door. She tried the handle, but the door was still locked. She pressed her ear against the wood, listening. Of all the noises—crying, shouting, footsteps on stairs, running through the alleyways—which were closer? In which direction was the running headed? The voices were muffled so the words were indistinct—what were they saying?
Her mind felt fractured, slowed by the weight of her dreams, the fear of the spirit, of Lillian’s photograph, and the strange spell that white powder had put on her. How much time had passed?
And then she remembered everything: Caroline, poisoning the baby.
The sound of bells broke into her thoughts. This was how they communicated with the staff. Bells told the stewards—spread throughout the ship—if there was a problem and if they were to report for orders. When Mr. Latimer had gone over emergency procedures in orientation that first day, Annie had panicked, but Violet had assured her not to worry. “We’ll never need them,” she had cooed, patting Annie’s arm. “Only if there was a really bad storm and the ship was taking on water.” Annie had trusted her. Violet was wise to life on the sea.
Violet—did she guess where they’d put Annie? Would she come to rescue her now?
She began to bang on the door—frantically and so hard her fist hurt in seconds. She screamed out, but no one seemed to hear.
The bells drowned out everything else.
She tried to calm her mind and focus. Focus on the chimes. Judging by the pattern, the stewards were being recalled. That meant it was an emergency. That would never happen unless it was something bad.
And then she remembered: the telegrams. From other ships, telegrams containing coordinates and warnings: Ice sighted. The messages that had flown from her hands when she’d tried to report them to the captain.
The panic—as cold and impenetrable as a block of ice—closed in on her from all sides.
Oh God. What had she done?
She resumed her pounding until her fists bled against the door. Footsteps sprinted by. Still no one stopped.
The locks on the lower levels, crew’s quarters and in third class, were known to be flimsy; maybe she could make it pop open. She began pulling on the doorknob with all her might, but it quickly became obvious that her shoulder would dislocate before the door opened.
She kicked at it, threw her weight against it, screamed for help. The seconds ticked by, faster and faster, then whole minutes, and her calls were still drowned out by the sounds of people running on the stairs and down the halls, the shouts of stewards shepherding their passengers. In their panic and fear for their own lives, had everyone forgotten about her?
Then she heard feet scuffling in the alleyway. Right outside. She was sure of it. She pounded her fists against the door once more. “Is someone there? Help me, please! I’m trapped in here. Help!”
The doorknob rattled. “It’s locked.”
She gasped. A man’s voice. She couldn’t place it.
“Mr. Latimer has the key,” she yelled out. “The chief steward.”
“No time,” the man grunted, his voice strangely muffled through the thickness of the closed door. “Stand back.” Annie had barely stepped to the back of the cramped space when she heard a weight slam into the door. The door shuddered but held. The man threw himself against the door again and again, until finally, the frame splintered and the door swung open.
It was one of the boxers, the bigger and kinder one. He reached for her hand. “What are you doing down here, miss? Don’t you know there’s an emergency—”
“A—a misunderstanding,” she stammered. No time to explain. She could hardly tell him what she’d done anyway or that they thought she’d lost her mind. “What’s going on?”
“We hit an iceberg.”
She pictured the white slips of paper flitting from her fists, flying through the air, sinking into the black water. The wireless operators had been wrong not to tell the captain sooner. It was their fault, not hers. Wasn’t it?
The man was pulling her along, practically dragging her through the narrow hallway toward the stairs. Strangely pounding at other closed doors as they passed. “They’ve told passengers to put on life belts and wait for further instructions, but not everyone is listening to them. They’re clinging to the hope that the ship is unsinkable, but I’d just as soon not find out.” He craned his neck to look down the sparsely lit alleyway. “Is this where they keep the prisoners? You don’t know if there’s another person locked up on this hall, do you?”
“Are you looking for someone?”
“My pal Les. He had a, uh, misunderstanding, too. They said they would keep him in the chain locker— Do you know where that is?”
He cared for his friend very much—she could hear it in the thin strain of his voice. “I’m sorry, but
I don’t know where that is. From the sound of it, I’d say it’s probably on the very lowest deck.”
The boxer rubbed his upper arm, the one he’d used as a battering ram. “I’ll keep looking, then,” he said, nudging her up the steps. “You’d better get above deck in case they start evacuating the ship.”
“I thank you.” She wondered if she should offer to help him look for his friend, but at that moment, all she cared about was Ondine. It might be that no one was looking after the baby. A cold terror gripped Annie by the throat: if anything happened to Ondine, she would never forgive herself.
She raced up the stairs, past passengers stumbling about in confusion, crying, searching for family members, many of them in their sleeping clothes. She wanted to help them—to help them all—but the captain could lock her again in the bowels of the ship when the emergency was over.
She moved in the opposite direction of the thickening crowd. They were straining to get up to the deck, bulkily padded with life belts, losing their tempers. A few froze where they stood, refusing to take another step. But Annie pressed on. Past a pair of women from third class who smelled of sardines and cheese, their fleshy arms linked to keep from being separated by the crowds. Around a trio of white-haired men in funereal garb moving slowly up the stairs, huffing and puffing every third step. She practically knocked aside a pair of crying children trailing behind their mother and father, and paid no heed to the string of epithets the father hurled in her wake. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered right now.
As she scratched and clawed and struggled past the others, she could not shake the growing feeling that every one of these people was going to die. For all that was said about the Titanic, how superior it was, how well designed, how glorious and noble—as though it were a person, with a person’s traits—it would do nothing to save them. The Titanic was indifferent to the humans crawling on its decks and would willingly sacrifice them to the sea.