The Lord Came at Twilight

by Daniel Mills

“You told me your name was Louisa.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I did no such thing.”

  “We were at the ball. It was late, just gone three o’clock, but you—”

  “No!” she shouted with surprising vehemence. “It’s impossible. You’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m not who you think I am.”

  I rose from the bed.

  “You are,” I said and placed my hands around her waist. Her nightgown was pitifully thin, and I felt the ridgeline of her scar beneath my left hand—but surely it should have been under my right? Her expression was neutral, her eyes rendered bottomless by firelight.

  “You are,” I insisted and leaned in close. “You are all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Our lips touched. She went completely rigid.

  She slapped me across the face. Blood rushed to my cheek, filling the imprint of her palm. “Why would you do that?” she managed in a terrified whisper. Her lower lip trembled, wet with my saliva. “What kind of woman do you take me for?”

  My head spun.

  “Get out!” she screamed. “Go!”

  I wanted to run but found that I could not. I was too exhausted to move, too miserable and lonely to do anything but remember the night we had spent together, even as she continued to shout at me, to label me a bastard and a pig.

  Her anger seemed boundless, insatiable. But then she spotted the clock, its hands poised a hair’s breadth from three, and all of her attempts at rage evaporated.

  “Oh God,” she whimpered. “The clock.”

  “The clock?”

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you know she’s jealous of me? All that I have. All that she could never possess. The séance—didn’t you wonder how I did it? The music—that awful music.”

  “It was your servant,” I said. “The room was dark. He came in while we were distracted. We were listening to that boy, Rufus, or whatever—”

  “No,” she said. “There was no such trickery.”

  “Then what—?”

  “There was only her.”

  With a click, the clock’s mechanism engaged. The elephant’s trunk and tail—actually hammers—drew back and struck a concealed bell. After the third chime, the medium reached above the mantle and stilled the bell beneath her fingertips.

  “Only who?” I asked. “What are you so afraid of?”

  She took more than a minute to respond. Her voice was hoarse, so dry it seemed to crackle, but her answer made no sense.

  “Louisa.”

  Downstairs, the parlor doors slammed open. The medium—Louisa or Wilhelmina, I no longer knew what to call her—froze. For one wild instant, she looked at me, or rather, through me, her eyes like those of a fallen fox who knows the riders are near. To this day I have never seen such terror in a human face.

  We heard footsteps below us, passing through the foyer and onto the staircase. Each step possessed a cavernous quality, as had the raps beneath the medium’s table, and I recalled the manner in which they had been amplified by the hush of the parlor. A similar principle must have been at work here, for it did not seem possible that a single individual could produce such a dreadful, heart-stopping clamor.

  And yet the footsteps grew even louder as they ascended the stair until they were so thunderous that the entire house rumbled and pitched like a ship in a gale. Wilhelmina sobbed. I drew her close against my chest and rocked her as she shook. The strength drained from her legs, and I had to hold her fast to prevent her falling.

  The footsteps reached the second floor and proceeded down the hall. The house quaked. Ash swirled in a cloud out of the fireplace. Coals bounced from the grate like stones on a river’s skin. The clock wobbled dangerously, nearly crashing to the floor.

  Wilhelmina wept.

  I held her tightly, my heart racing for all of my attempts at reason. I had always viewed myself as a man of learning, a devotee of the natural sciences, but when the footsteps halted mere feet from the room, I watched the open doorway with the bated breath of a true believer.

  I waited, but no ghost or monster appeared there. Outside, a carriage passed and clattered into the night. Inside, all was calm. The blood drained from my ears as the room grew noticeably warmer. Wilhelmina trembled against me. I brushed the hair from her ear and watched the clock for a full minute before I spoke.

  “Look to the doorway,” I said. “We’re quite alone.”

  Her breathing steadied. The terror passed from her lithe frame, replaced in short order by something like resignation. She stepped away from me, but did not look to the door. Instead, she merely gazed at me, her face no more than a yard from my own. She closed her eyes.

  In the next moment, she was seized from behind and lifted from the floor. She hurtled backward into the fireplace, striking the mantel with such violence that her eyes rolled white inside her skull.

  I dashed across the room and dropped to my knees before her fallen body. I listened for a heartbeat: she was breathing but unconscious. I took hold of one arm and hefted her weight onto my back. There was no one else in the room—I was sure of it—but there was undeniably something, some other entity that was invisible to me. I felt it drawing closer: a nearly indiscernible darkening at the edges of my vision, like the shadow that precedes a megrim.

  It took hold of Wilhelmina. It ripped her from my arms and pitched her through the air, knocking me off-balance. I tumbled forward into the hearth, spilling headlong with my arms extended, crying out in pain as the flesh burned from my hands.

  I stumbled to my feet and looked to the bed where the medium had landed. By now she had regained consciousness. Her eyes were open, but she did not cry out, not even when the bedclothes were ripped out from under her, leaving her sprawled atop a naked mattress.

  Impossibly, the duvet began to rise into the air of its own accord. Suspended two yards above the bed, it twisted itself into a fibrous cord, the stuffing spilling out as the fabric shredded. White down filled the air, feathered and fine like spring snow.

  I lunged for the duvet but missed. On my second attempt, I managed to grasp hold of it, only to have it torn from my grasp. The air moved before me, taking on a rippled translucence, as of a fist submerged in a frothing river. Too late I attempted to dodge the coming blow: it took me hard in the stomach, and I collapsed to the ground.

  The invisible entity then returned its attention to the knotted duvet and to the medium who lay prostrate on the bed. Blood dribbled from Wilhelmina’s right ear where she had struck the mantelpiece. Recovering my breath, I attempted to rise, but was slammed back into place by a blast of pure heat. The room went white. Sweat dripped from my brow.

  When my vision had cleared, I saw to my horror that the remains of the duvet were cinched firmly about the medium’s neck. The ends had been twisted into a kind of coil, which tightened slowly, slowly. Helpless, I watched as Wilhelmina’s face turned red, then purple. Blood filled the whites of her eyes, and I knew that she was dead. But still the rope continued to strangle her, the cord pulled tight as a wire, loosing a spray of arterial blood.

  Finding my strength, I leapt to my feet and sprinted for the door, barreling down the stairs into the foyer. I crashed through the front door, letting it shut slam behind me, and ran until I had reached the glare of the nearest street lamp. There I paused to regain my breath, panting in the cool air until the panic had departed. I glanced behind me, but the street was quiet.

  I could not go to the police, of course. No one would believe my story, and there were no other witnesses to her death. If the sitters were questioned, it would surely emerge that I had been observed outside her house on more than one occasion, and it would be clear that I had waited until her servant had gone before entering.

  Reporting her death would gain me nothing but the noose—and I doubted that even death could deliver me from the memory of Louisa. Even then, as I steadied myself against the street lamp, I imagined she was somewhere close by, which was impossible, for I had seen her killed before my eyes, strangled for reaso
ns I could not possibly understand.

  I heard footsteps from the end of the lane—an officer completing his rounds. I had no choice. I could not let myself be found near the house. I lit for the shadows and scuttled home through a city that seemed increasingly more corpse-like than somnolent. Houses folded into headstones as I passed. Naked trees blackened and slouched toward an inevitable, all-consuming rot. From somewhere far off, I heard the peal of a church bell.

  It was four o’clock.

  *

  You might recall the sensation that attended the death of Miss Volkov. That was not her real name, of course. She was in actuality one Wilhelmina Davenport, formerly of Falmouth in Vermont. She had changed her surname and relocated to southern New England in order to capitalize on the success of Mme. Blavatsky.

  According to the papers, which I followed with obsessive interest, her manservant returned home on the morning following my visit to find that she had been murdered. Her mangled corpse was discovered in the master bedroom beneath a dusting of white down.

  During the coming weeks, the police posted regular notices in the papers, but no one came forward with information. Eventually, public interest waned and the investigation was discontinued—much to my relief, as I had lived for weeks in constant fear that I had been spotted near her house. Following the investigation, the medium’s remains were sent home to Vermont and buried in the family plot.

  Six months after Wilhelmina’s death, I had reason to travel to Falmouth. While there I visited the cemetery in which she was buried. It was a miserable day, pelting down with rain, and I spent the better part of two hours pacing amid the graves. When the downpour intensified, I sought shelter beneath a red cedar and was reminded once more of her green eyes.

  The day had dimmed into twilight by the time I located the Davenport plot and found the stone beneath which she lay. Above me, the sky sprawled, gray and dead. By its faint light, I kneeled before her grave and squinted to make out the names inscribed there.

  WILHELMINA DAVENPORT

  1867-1894

  LOUISA DAVENPORT

  1867

  It was well after midnight when the minister found me. I was babbling to myself as I wandered between the stones, soaked to the skin and feverish with pneumonia. The minister took me by the arm. He attempted to lead me from the graveyard but I refused. Later, he returned with the sheriff, who bound me in cord like a hog and dragged me from the cemetery. “No!” I screamed. “Take me back! We must wait ‘til three! We must wait ‘til she comes!”

  Or so I am told.

  In a year’s time, I made a tentative recovery and stepped from the shadow of the long loneliness in which I had dwelt since my parents’ death: that black sea receded, and I staggered toward shore. My friends welcomed me back into their circle, and I took up a career as a dealer in fine art. This choice of livelihood further served to drag me into the light, and eventually, I shook myself free of my old fears altogether. I sold my father’s house and purchased new lodgings in a more fashionable quarter.

  My newfound position took me to many society functions, where drink flowed freely and dancing lasted into the early hours. It was at one such ball that I found myself earlier this year. I had just introduced a potential sponsor to a young artist whom I had taken under my wing. While they spoke, I stood to one side, drink in hand, and guided the conversation toward the subject of patronage. The clock in the room struck three—it must have, though I admit I did not hear it—for someone touched my elbow, and I heard a familiar voice in my ear.

  “We’ll meet again,” she said.

  I turned round, but she was gone.

  THE TEMPEST GLASS

  Or, How Love Deserted the Reverend Danforth

  I am not a religious man. All my life, I have avoided the church as studiously as the more devout might seek to avoid the lure of the bottle, say, or the pleasures of the flesh. Though I have summered in Westminster since the age of thirty, I have never attended services at the local meetinghouse. Thus it was only by chance that I met the Reverend Abel Danforth.

  I had heard rumors, of course. He was reputed to be a Calvinist of the meanest sort, said to rhapsodize each Sunday on the horrors of Perdition. He was tender in one moment, unforgiving in the next, and delivered his sermons with a certain urgent terror, as though he too feared the descent of fire from heaven.

  The Reverend Danforth had driven some to despair and many to convert, while motivating many others, like myself, to keep as good a distance from the man as propriety allowed. Having heard the stories, I felt certain I knew him through and through. My father was likewise a religious man, unfailingly harsh in his convictions. Through him I learned not only to fear God, but to fear those like my father who would claim to understand His Will. And yet the Reverend, when I finally met him, proved not at all like I had imagined.

  It was a Saturday in July, getting on toward noon. The morning’s storms had departed, leaving behind some faint clouds and a lingering humidity. I took my coffee on the lawn, as was my custom in those days. The grass sparkled before me, making diamonds out of the sunlight, and damp steamed out of the flowerbeds, whirling in the soft glow that filtered through the beeches. I concerned myself with the morning mail, a task I had long delayed. Thoroughly absorbed, I did not even notice the man until he was midway across the lawn.

  He must have come from the woods, though he now appeared oblivious to his surroundings. His speed was ponderous, that of a man in a reverie. A pair of spectacles dangled from a chain round his neck, while his suit was black and shabby. His white collar, though sweat-stained, glimmered faintly.

  I realized at once whom he must be and was surprised foremost by his youth (he was no older than thirty, and quite handsome as well) and also by his manner. For this fearsome firebrand, heir to Edwards and his kind, appeared to me much closer in disposition to Goethe’s Werther: bookish, thoughtful, and decidedly troubled.

  He carried himself with an aura of near-implosive introspection, as though he struggled to resolve some as yet ill-defined question. The best part of a minute passed, during which his plodding course brought him within ten yards of where I sat, watching, at once perplexed and (admittedly) a little amused. However, my enjoyment of this queer scene died the moment the Reverend strayed from the gravel path, and I could only look on in horror as he trampled through a bed of my nasturtiums, leaving a trail of shattered blossoms behind.

  This was one offense I could not stand. “You there!” I shouted. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  The minister spun around. In truth, he appeared every bit as surprised to find himself in my presence as I was to have him there. He knew me, I was sure, if only by reputation.

  By that time, I had achieved the status of Westminster’s most infamous summer resident: an unreformed drinker, connoisseur of fine tobaccos, and a dedicated man of leisure. Any of these facts would have been enough in itself to render me anathema in the eyes of the pious townsfolk, never mind my professed agnosticism and oft-repeated criticisms of the church.

  To Danforth’s credit, he did not take this opportunity to lecture me on the dangers of my lifestyle or the necessity of personal salvation. Instead, he stepped gingerly over my nasturtiums and approached me where I sat with the mail.

  He offered his hand.

  “I am terribly sorry,” he said, speaking stiffly. “About your flowers”

  “No apology needed.” I took the offered hand and squeezed, though I did not go so far as to offer him a seat beside me.

  “Thank you. It’s good of you.”

  “Yes, well, what I may lack in Grace, I make up for in graciousness—or so I like to believe, at anyrate.”

  Danforth showed no sign of having heard. Evidently he was a man with little time for wit.

  “I forget myself sometimes,” he said. “When I walk. My thoughts turn toward matters of the Fall and human depravity, the Flood and the old covenant. It is easy to become lost in such things. Maggie tells me I cou
ld do with a little more worldliness.”

  “Is that so?”

  “She’s joking, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure. “Whereas I have altogether too much of it. Worldliness, I mean.”

  He looked at me carefully, saying nothing.

  “Perhaps you and I might try a hand of bridge sometime? Between the two of us, we might effect the perfect partnership. Your sanctity, my depravity. What do you say?”

  His brow furrowed. He sucked his lower lip, and I could see that he was considering the best way in which to refuse my offer while leaving his well-tended sense of Christian charity intact. It appeared that irony, too, was a concept with which he was unfamiliar.

  I threw him down a lifeline. “But perhaps Mrs. Danforth would not approve?”

  “There is no such person.”

  “Oh. And Maggie?”

  “We are to wed this winter.”

  I congratulated him and said the usual kinds of things. He smiled awkwardly, looked at his feet, and said (again) the usual kinds of things, though I sensed the topic of marriage made him distinctly uncomfortable. With all of his talk of depravity, I shouldn’t wonder.

  As we spoke, the sky clouded over again, throwing us into the shadow of the now-hidden sun. It became clear that Danforth was anxious to move on and resume his meditations elsewhere, presumably someplace well-clear of idle wit.

  I wished him good day, and he apologized once more before stalking off. This time, he stepped carefully over the flowerbeds and followed the downhill slope of the lawn to Morse Brook, which fed into the Connecticut half-a-mile away.

  He was nearly out of sight when he halted. He remained stationary for a time, standing with his hands at his sides, looking up. I followed his gaze into the west, where the faintest trace of a rainbow was visible—but not for long.

  The day was turning. In the distance, the cloud-cover thinned and dissolved, punctured by a profusion of visible rays. When the sun emerged, wiping the last traces of color from the sky, the minister lowered his head and continued on his way.