The Companion

by Katie Alender

  “Okay.” She clearly meant it as a gift, but in the moment it felt oddly like a bribe. Like she was buying her way out of the situation. Her earlier words were just now beginning to seep in. I must stay? Why?

  I couldn’t bear to ask, though. I was way past my maximum allowed number of emotionally draining conversations for the day.

  “Did you like the soaps?” she asked. “I make them myself.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s amazing. They smell so good. How do you do it?”

  “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” She tried to look modest, but I could tell she was pleased. “Drink your tea. I find chamomile so relaxing, don’t you? Oh, I make a chamomile lotion you should try. I’ll bring you some tomorrow.”

  A huge yawn rolled through my body. I was already tired, but I reached for the teacup and took a sip of the warm, mildly sweet liquid.

  “Good girl,” Laura said. “Now, don’t worry about Agatha in the morning. I’m sure we’ll be downstairs before you’re awake.”

  I took another long drink. “If you need help, I can get up early.”

  Her smile was kindly approving. “That’s very thoughtful, but no need. We’ll figure out the routine later. Tonight, rest.”

  She stood up and started to leave, then turned back around . . . and gently kissed my forehead.

  After she left, I finished the tea, turned off the light, and burrowed under the covers. Her kiss still burned on my skin, and I let memories of my old life coalesce around me.

  Mom came in to say good night after stopping in for one last peek at my little sisters, who’d been asleep for an hour. Next, she would head downstairs and prep the coffee maker for the morning, then surf the internet on the kitchen computer until Dad’s show (anything about military crime solvers would do) was over. They’d go upstairs together, holding hands. I would hear their whispers and soft footfalls pass my room, a distant echo at the back of my dreams. They were especially animated because they were planning a surprise for us—a road trip to New York City for spring break.

  And then, like in every dream, the images began to melt into blackness, and I sensed myself sinking, frigid water drenching me as it poured into the car. I felt a shock of panic—water filling my mouth and nose—

  Breathlessly, I opened my eyes into the utter darkness of reality.

  We never made it to New York, I reminded myself as I rose into consciousness. We died halfway there.

  I always thought of it that way. We died. We. All of us.

  By then, I was wide awake, but I didn’t bother to correct myself. I checked my phone—1:15 a.m. I set it down and closed my eyes, waiting to fall back to sleep.

  But as I lay in the dark, trying to force the dream into a secret closet in my head, I realized that I could still feel the water in my nose.

  Oh, not this. Please not this.

  I sat up and switched the lamp on, looking at the pillow in horror.

  It was smeared with bright red blood. And so were the sleeves of my fancy new pajamas.

  I hadn’t had a nosebleed since leaving Becca’s house—the day I ruined her great-grandmother’s heirloom quilt. My heart beat fast in my chest as I tried to assess the damage and watched another drop of blood hit the pillow, spreading in slow motion through the fine weave of the fabric.

  No, no, no. I looked for a box of tissues—why weren’t there tissues in here? I found myself irrationally annoyed at Laura’s lack of forethought. Shouldn’t they have assumed I was going to cry all the time?

  I pinched my nose shut and tipped my head back, hurrying to the bathroom and then leaning my head over the sink, where more blood fell in lazy drops and mixed with the water from the faucet. I managed to grab a wad of toilet paper and press it to my face, finding that it was the supersoft kind that left lint everywhere and made me sneeze, which was gross.

  Finally, the bleeding stalled, and I went to my room to survey the damage.

  It was worse than I’d thought. The pillow looked like a murder scene, and there was blood smeared on the sheets from my hands and sleeves.

  For a while I stood there, feeling hopeless and lost. I couldn’t let Laura see any of this. It felt like a personal insult. It felt . . . disrespectful.

  When the bleeding finally seemed to have stopped, I removed the pajama top and slipped on one of my T-shirts. Then I pulled the sheets off the bed and the case off the pillow and balled them up.

  I’d been operating on pure adrenaline, but now that I was slowing down, I felt fuzzy and drained. Part of me was tempted to just spread one of my other T-shirts over the pillow and climb into bed. Deal with it in the morning.

  But I couldn’t do that, not on my first night. What, then? Should I wake Laura? No, terrible idea. The mere thought of tracking down their bedroom in this sea of closed doors, then knocking loudly enough to get her attention, then dragging her out of bed to see the chaos I’d brought into her perfectly controlled home was enough to make me need to sit down and catch my breath.

  I had to clean up my own mess, and I had to do it before anybody saw.

  Agatha was still and silent as I crept through the nursery and tried to silently open the hall door. The old knob made a distressing series of clanks and whines, but she showed no sign of waking.

  Now to find the laundry room.

  I stood in the dark hall, looking around at the somber, melancholy paintings that lined the spaces between doorways. Serious women and sad farmers with droopy-eared dogs . . . No happy summer scenes, no portraits of smiling children. Copeland Hall, for all its beauty, was not a cheerful place.

  First, I tried to open the doors of the other upstairs wings, but they were locked. Then I remembered the service hallway Laura had pointed out as a place I’d never need to go.

  I hurried downstairs and tried the door, which thankfully opened, and flipped a light switch to reveal a hall much plainer than the one upstairs; there were paintings on the wall, but they were simpler— landscapes of empty fields and moonlit lakes.

  Next to the first door, a small metal plaque read HOUSEKEEPER, and under it was a neatly typed label in a tiny frame: MRS. BYERSMITH. The paper was yellowed with age, and I guessed that Mrs. Byersmith was long gone. Dead, I thought, and a cold tingle went up my spine.

  Curious, I pressed on the door, and it quietly opened. The room was spacious and austere, with a tiny kitchen area, a fireplace, a wooden table with two chairs, and a neatly made bed. Under the small window, with its short, ruffled white curtain, was a bookcase that was nearly empty, except for a paperbound telephone directory with yellowing pages.

  My curiosity sated, I carried my bundle of sheets and pajamas into the corridor beyond.

  Here, safely out of view of the family, function ruled over form. The floor was tiled with linoleum and the walls were bare of decorations. There were clocks, schedules, a wall calendar from 1964, and numerous faded posters reminding passersby to Serve with a Cheerful Heart and Take Care in All Tasks, Great and Small.

  Now I looked in earnest for the laundry room. At the end of the hall—miracle of miracles—I found it. With a sigh of relief, I opened the washing machine and stuck the soiled items inside. Then I found a box of powdered laundry soap and sprinkled in what I hoped was a reasonable amount.

  The machine looked ancient, but sturdy and clean and with mercifully few options to choose from. I turned the dial to REGULAR, pressed START, and prayed for the best. Water began to spray onto the sheets and pajamas, and soon they were being tossed in a sudsy bath.

  It was out of my hands now.

  All I had to do was fill the time until the clothes were ready for the dryer. Because this machine was about fifty years old and there was no digital display, I had no idea how long that would take. Thirty minutes? An hour?

  I went back and began exploring the hall. There was a massive storeroom with mostly empty shelve
s and a mop leaning in the corner with its ropy head turning to dust on the floor.

  The next couple of doors revealed small bedrooms very much like my own little room. They’d been abandoned in a pristine state, beds made, hangers left on their hooks. Even now, the only thing unkempt about them was the fuzzy coating of dust on every surface, including the Bibles centered neatly on each nightstand. At one point I found myself gazing at one of the beds, entertaining a mini-fantasy of lying down just for a moment and sleeping until the washing cycle finished. But no, it was too risky. What if I slept the whole night? What if Laura found me in here in the morning?

  After a while, I heard the washing machine’s distant whir die, and I went back, pulled out the ball of wet things, and turned on the light to inspect them.

  The blood was mostly gone, the stains now so faint that they might not be noticed until my standing with the Suttons was more secure. If I folded the pajamas carefully and turned the pillow to face the wall, Laura probably wouldn’t know anything was wrong. With a sigh of relief, I stuck it all in the dryer and turned it on.

  I went back out into the hallway, continuing my exploration. When I opened the last door and found a stairway winding up, I felt a twinge of uncertainty. But Laura hadn’t said I couldn’t look around, had she? I wasn’t going to hurt anything.

  I flipped a switch on the wall, and about half of the lights came to life, filling the air with a grumpy buzz. Then I climbed the stairs.

  On the next landing was a door with a label next to it: ACCESS TO GREEN WING.

  Should I enter? Well, the alternative was to sit around downstairs, possibly fall asleep in one of the maid’s rooms, and wake to find Laura and John standing over me, scandalized. So . . . onward.

  The green wing was, as one might have guessed, green. The carpet was a dull hunter-green shade and the walls were papered in olive-toned stripes. In general, it was much messier than the main hall. The sconces on the walls were tarnished brass, and the frames of the pictures—not to mention the pictures themselves—were coated in dust.

  I walked silently past the closed doors. Anterooms? Dressing rooms? What else had Laura said was in here?

  I paced the length of it and then back. And just as I was about to go downstairs again, something caught my eye.

  One of the doors wasn’t like the others.

  Specifically, the knob was different. Instead of being antique brass and smudgy like all the rest, it looked newer. If it hadn’t been covered in a quarter inch of dust, it would have been the bright, showy gold of the 1980s. And above it was a dead bolt—the kind you needed a key to open.

  Except when I pushed on the door, it was unlocked. I opened it and looked around, turning on the light. An ornate fixture hung in the center of the room, but only one of its six bulbs was still working.

  The room itself was nothing special, really—there was a bed with a dark green bedspread centered on a dull-colored rug. A dresser on one side, a small desk on the other, with a heavy-looking leather-upholstered chair and a lamp with a green glass shade.

  As I looked around, I became conscious of a low, repetitive sound:

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  It wasn’t loud. It was just slowly insistent.

  Then a small movement caught my eye—across the room, at one of the two windows, the shade was gently moving back and forth as though it was caught in a breeze. Every time the bottom hit the window frame, it made the sound: Thunk. Thunk.

  At that point, I would have happily left and gone back to the laundry room. But it seemed rude to leave the window open—what if it rained and water got inside? So I crossed the room, lifted the shade, closed the window, and then turned to go.

  With a small pop!, the last light bulb went out.

  In the sudden darkness, I tripped on something hard and heavy. It crashed to the ground with a bang that seemed to reverberate through the night. I bent down and saw a metal trash can on its side. As I stood it up, I saw something caught in the bottom, in the corner where the metal pieces were joined together.

  I pulled it out and stared at it in the faint moonlight. It was a single small sheet of paper—thick, expensive stationery. There was a name at the top, in fancy raised letters: LILY COPELAND. And it was completely covered in messily scrawled sentences that were so chaotically arranged I couldn’t even read what they said.

  Lily? Who was Lily? Laura hadn’t mentioned her . . . She was probably someone who had lived here sixty or seventy years ago. Maybe even Laura’s grandmother or something.

  I picked up the trash can and carried it over to the desk, where it seemed to belong. But I didn’t put the paper back inside—I thought Laura might find it interesting, this little message from the past. I pulled the chain on the desk lamp and set the paper down in the light to see if I could make out what it said. I lowered myself onto the leather chair and felt a flutter of excitement, thinking it might be something cool and fun.

  But it wasn’t cool and fun at all.

  It was kind of disturbing.

  The first line of text was, The moral sense of the world is reflected in the individual soul, and only with the greatest care can we avoid the descent into the darkest and most vile tendencies of human nature.

  It went on to ramble about the struggle between our divine natures and our animal selves and then turned into a rant about the iniquity of the modern age.

  I only made it through a few lines before the harsh, unforgiving tone made me too uneasy, and I pushed the page away. These weren’t the words of a well-balanced mind. And sitting in a small pool of light in a strange, dark room only made me feel that more deeply. I stood up and stretched my stiff legs, then folded the piece of paper and stuck it in the pocket of my pajama pants. Because I was creeped out, I didn’t turn off the desk lamp until after I had opened the door to the hall, letting light spill in through the doorway.

  Then I made my way back downstairs to check on the sheets and clothes.

  In the laundry room, the dryer was silent—so soon? Was it broken? I opened the door, dreading the sight of wet sheets. But to my surprise, it was all totally dry. And not just dry, but not even hot as you’d expect from a just-finished cycle; it was all only slightly warm.

  There would be time to figure that out later. I grabbed the clean linens and my pajama top and headed back up to the nursery. I opened the door quietly, keeping a careful eye on Agatha to make sure she hadn’t woken. Soon, I was safely in the small bedroom.

  I made the bed and changed back into my fancy pajama top, then climbed under the covers.

  As I prepared to let my eyes fall shut, I reached over and checked the time on my phone.

  Suddenly I was wide awake.

  It was 5:14 a.m.?

  That was impossible. If it was past five o’clock, that would mean I had spent four hours in that hallway, when I was positive I’d only been there for . . . I tried to piece together the time in my head. Less than an hour for the washing machine, and how long for the dryer? Fifteen minutes?

  No. Clothes don’t dry in fifteen minutes.

  They certainly don’t dry and cool to room temperature in fifteen minutes.

  I remembered how tempting the beds had looked. Had I napped without remembering?

  Then an image came into my head—well, not a single image as much as a collection of sense memories:

  The way the scrawled text seemed to swim in front of my eyes. The stiff soreness of my legs and back when I stood up to leave the bedroom . . . How long had I sat there? It felt like minutes, but if the time on my phone was correct, it had been much, much longer.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about it. Not wanting to dwell on how close I may have come to being discovered out of bed, exploring rooms I had no right to explore, bleeding my gross orphan nose-blood on their fancy bedsheets.

  And dark, spidery suspicions crept around the
edges of my thoughts—Laura’s questions about my health, about lingering effects of the accident.

  I fell asleep, that’s all, I insisted to myself. And if I was smart, I’d get some more sleep so I wasn’t a zombie all day.

  I crushed my eyelids shut.

  Then I heard a sound from the nursery.

  Had I woken Agatha? I held my breath and listened, hearing nothing else, but still feeling a tingle of suspicion that someone was moving around out there.

  Finally, I swung my feet to the floor and got up, opening the door and peeking out.

  Agatha stood in the center of the room. The faint light from the lamp behind her turned her silhouette into a glowing halo.

  Somehow, though I’d expected to see something, I hadn’t expected to see her, standing there, in that peculiarly intense posture. I clutched my chest and let out a gasping “God, you scared me!”

  She didn’t move. Had she forgotten who I was? Had I scared her?

  I held my breath for a moment, then said, “It’s okay, it’s just me. Margot.”

  She seemed to sway slightly, but didn’t speak.

  “Go back to bed,” I said firmly. “It’s not morning yet.”

  She turned and walked away, and I shut the door and returned to bed. I would have locked myself in my room, but the door didn’t have a lock, so I had to settle for shifting the small nightstand over a few inches to block the doorway. Then I kept my eyes on the knob, waiting for any sign that she was trying to enter.

  The thought of Agatha scurrying soundlessly and maliciously around the nursery while I was trapped in here made me feel shaky and restless.

  Laura and John clearly believed Agatha was a silent, well-behaved angel.

  But I wasn’t quite so sure.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I FINALLY MANAGED to go back to sleep. Later (maybe after an hour? two? four?), there was a soft knock on my door, and I got up and opened it before I remembered that I was a little afraid of Agatha.