The Seventh Miss Hatfield

by Anna Caltabiano

I nodded again. I found it strange that she knew my mother had come with her friends. After all, she hadn’t answered the door or even acknowledged their visit. How did she know?

  ‘Such a silly group of girls,’ she went on to say, though my mother and her society friends were far older than Miss Hatfield. ‘They think they’re so important just because they claim to be.’

  ‘You know them?’ I said, finding my voice again.

  ‘Know them? I—’ Miss Hatfield stopped, although I thought she was about to add something more.

  ‘Miss Hatfield?’

  ‘Miss Hatfield! Let’s dispense with that right away. Please, call me Rebecca. I look over my shoulder for someone else when people call me Miss Hatfield.’

  ‘Rebecca,’ I corrected myself. I felt strange calling an adult – much less a stranger – by her first name. ‘What do you know of my mother and her friends?’ For some reason, I was curious to find out what she’d been about to say but didn’t.

  ‘I know enough of them,’ she said cryptically.

  I thought her evasive answer was odd, but didn’t go overboard worrying about it. I reasoned it was probably just the kind of person she was. Most likely she didn’t have anything to hide – why would she?

  Miss Hatfield (as I continued to call her in my mind) suddenly stood up, knocking over the plate of cookies in front of her. In an effort to save them, I felt my body lunge forwards in sync with Miss Hatfield’s. For a second we were the same person, reaching out for the same goal, but when the plate shattered on the floor and splintered into unrecognizable pieces, the moment fled.

  I saw Miss Hatfield close her eyes for an extended second, and then she went about clearing up the broken shards without another word. Her actions looked a bit too jerky and tense to be natural, but again, it didn’t feel like much to be concerned with at the time.

  ‘There go our cookies, and another one of my plates,’ she said, more to herself than to me. ‘At least we still have our lemonade.’

  Miss Hatfield was pouring a glass of lemonade when my eyes were drawn to a golden clock hanging on the kitchen wall. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it before. It was such a vibrant golden colour that it outshone everything else in the room. The clock looked like an oversized pocket watch – the kind you need to wind up every morning like Gran used to have – except this one hung on a wall. It was circular like most clocks, but there was something different about this one. It had three hands, for the seconds, the minutes and the hours. But although the number of hours on the clock was the same as on every other, there appeared to be only half as many minutes marked as on a regular clock.

  ‘The clock …’ I frowned. I realized that the hand that should have been measuring seconds was moving abnormally slowly. I also wasn’t sure what it was pointing to. There appeared to be a second series of dashes that were outside of the normal marks for minutes and hours that I was used to seeing on a clock.

  ‘Ah, so you’ve noticed my pride and joy?’ Miss Hatfield’s voice drew my attention from the peculiar clock. ‘It’s my favourite thing out of pretty much everything here.’ She moved over to where I was standing. ‘It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it?’ she asked, lifting it away from the wall and turning the dials on the back, causing the hands to move. Suddenly Miss Hatfield felt overwhelmingly close to me – too close for comfort. Luckily, however, she soon went back to the lemonade, while I stood frozen in my spot by the golden clock. I noticed a tiny inscription I was sure hadn’t been there before, or at least I didn’t think it had. The letters were too small for me to read. I assumed it was the name of the clockmaker.

  ‘Um … Miss Hatfield?’ I called.

  ‘Rebecca,’ she corrected.

  ‘Rebecca, I think the time on the clock is wrong.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no matter. I’ll fix it later.’

  Miss Hatfield finished pouring the second lemonade from the heavy-looking glass pitcher. She stood on her toes to reach into a wooden cupboard above the counter and pulled out an empty vial, careful not to knock anything over this time. The vial was made of thick glass, worn smooth and flat in some areas. It was supposed to be clear glass, but the dust from the cupboard made it a smoky colour. She held the vial up to the light, turning it this way and that. I was tempted to tell her it was empty, but she appeared satisfied with whatever she saw inside. She unscrewed the top and held the vial completely upside down over one of the glasses. I didn’t know what she was waiting for until one lone drop plopped in.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Miss Hatfield mumbled to herself. ‘It’s all gone now.’ She tossed the glass vial into the trash, seeming to not give it another thought. ‘Here’s your lemonade,’ she said, handing me the glass into which she’d dispensed the drop.

  My hand rose automatically to take the glass from her, but froze just in time. A range of thoughts went through my head, but none was as clear as this one: What did she put into my glass? Was it poison? Did she mean to kill me with it? Why me?

  Miss Hatfield chuckled. ‘Do you think I just put poison into your glass?’ she asked, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. ‘You can rest assured that’s not the case; far from it, in fact. Besides, why would I slip poison into your glass in plain sight, with you obviously watching? It’s just a little addition to make the lemonade taste … better.’

  I realized she had a point and took the glass from her.

  ‘To a lasting friendship,’ Miss Hatfield toasted. A thought crept into my mind. Should I ask exactly what Miss Hatfield had added to my drink? I shook my head free of that thought. I didn’t want to look childish. Besides, Mother always told me that only children ask useless questions and we should leave everything up to the adults.

  I clinked my glass with Miss Hatfield’s as I’d seen adults do frequently, and downed the lemonade as she did the same with hers. The drink tasted like lemonade was supposed to, and why shouldn’t it? I felt silly for having doubted her and worse for imagining her to be some kind of murderess. Of course she wasn’t.

  ‘I want us to be good friends,’ Miss Hatfield said once we’d emptied our glasses. She sat at the table in front of me. ‘You can tell me anything you wish, and in turn you can ask me anything.’

  And so I did. I told her what I knew; my mother, my father, my teacher and my friends. I told her about Judy, at whose house I was supposed to be soon, to which she replied, ‘Pish-posh.’

  Miss Hatfield listened attentively to me, as if she wasn’t an adult at all, but rather someone of my own age. She asked all the smart questions – the ones most adults call silly and pointless. When I told her about the presents I’d received for Christmas, she asked me how many and which was my favourite, not the total cost of them like Judy’s mother had. But when it came time for me to ask questions about her, nothing came to mind.

  ‘Surely there must be something pressing upon your mind that you want to ask me? Anything at all?’ She smiled encouragingly.

  I thought hard, but still I drew a blank.

  ‘Maybe something about my house?’ she persisted. ‘Did you perhaps wonder about the antiques I have here?’

  I responded that, in fact, I had. ‘I especially like the portraits you have hanging in your parlour,’ I found myself saying, though I really just found them creepy.

  ‘Oh, thank you. I’ve been collecting them over the years.’

  I nodded, waiting for her to direct the conversation. She continued, ‘I have some other pictures of people I think you’d like even more. Do you want to see them?’ Miss Hatfield asked as she stood up.

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  I followed Miss Hatfield back to the parlour, where she crouched in front of the pea-green couch and unbuckled the steamer trunk. The heavy lid fell open in a flurry of dust, but once that cleared I could see stacks of photo albums inside – some older than the furniture around us and some brand new, as if they’d just been bought yesterday. Miss Hatfield shuffled through a stack of albums until she came to the one she sought, which wa
s covered with pink lace and frills. It looked like a baby photo album – one of the ones that proudly declare It’s a girl! on the cover to anyone who cared to notice.

  As Miss Hatfield flipped through the album, her fingers lingering on its pages, I saw that it contained pictures of a mother and a father, and of a baby who grew as the pages of the album progressed.

  ‘Where did you get this from?’ My voice caught oddly in my throat, coming out sounding raspy. I couldn’t breathe and wanted to run away, but somehow I couldn’t make myself move from the couch.

  ‘What do you mean? You don’t think I stole this, do you? This is mine,’ she insisted.

  I felt myself shaking my head from side to side in disbelief. ‘That can’t be,’ I muttered. ‘That baby … is me.’

  I was certain of it. The photos were of my mother and father and me. They showed me from all angles, but I was never once looking at the camera. Some had been taken through windows; others which were magnified had obviously been taken from across the street. I saw a picture of my parents walking me to my first day of school, but I didn’t see their faces. Whoever took these photos did so without being noticed.

  I flipped to the last page of the album. There was only one picture in the last slot; it was of me eating breakfast at home. I looked at what I was wearing and what I was eating. The picture had been taken yesterday.

  My hands shook, the light pages of the photo album rustling with the tremors. I kept my eyes down as I tried to think of what I should do. I didn’t dare trust my voice, but neither could I remain silent. I forced myself to look up into the distant eyes of the woman next to me.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Chapter 2

  ‘Who am I?’ She repeated the question right back at me. ‘I’m Rebecca Hatfield.’

  Her answer sounded small and far away. It sounded so well practised that it almost felt like the truth. But not quite.

  ‘Who are you?’ I repeated. As I stood up from my place on the couch, the album fell from my lap. Photos spilled out from its pages and floated down to the floor in the room’s still air, but neither of us moved to pick them up.

  ‘I’m Rebecca Hatfield.’ Her answer was stronger now, firmer. But how could I believe a single word she said? ‘I haven’t lied to you. I’ve only told the truth. I am Rebecca Hatfield.’ She gestured for me to sit back down on the couch, and maybe it was because she was an adult and I was a child that I complied.

  ‘I was someone else, once—’ Her voice was very faint now. ‘But that was long ago. Now I’m Rebecca Hatfield.’

  ‘I thought you just moved here,’ I said, motioning to the photo album now lying in disarray on the floor.

  ‘I did, but prior to that I visited quite often.’

  ‘And what about the pictures of me and my family? You’ve been following me.’

  I saw Miss Hatfield pause at my question. Rather than answer, she changed the subject and said, ‘I need you for something.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry if I gave you any reason to think this was anything more than a polite conversation between two neighbours.’ I stood up and began walking towards the door. I was suddenly aware of how much I sounded like my mother. I shook it off. ‘But I really must—’ The rest of the sentence died in my throat as my hostess suddenly slipped between me and the door.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said breathlessly. There was something wild about her eyes now, something feral that didn’t belong there. It made me catch my breath and take a step back.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand and I don’t want to. Nor do I need to. Please, I have to go.’

  ‘There’s no going back. You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Of course I do. I always have a choice,’ I said. ‘Now please let me go. Someone’s expecting me.’

  ‘I’ve called Judy’s mother to tell her you won’t be going.’

  ‘You called her? And she believed you?’

  ‘I told her your throat started hurting and your mother thinks you might be sick.’

  ‘My mother—’

  ‘I also told her that your mother was out running a quick errand, which is why she asked me to come over to keep an eye on you. I said you just remembered you were to spend the night at their house and asked me to call for you, since your throat’s too swollen to talk.’

  ‘But I didn’t hear you make that call,’ I said, realizing that after I told Miss Hatfield about Judy and my plans for that night, she hadn’t left my company at any point.

  ‘You’re right.’ She paused and smiled at me. ‘You are a clever girl, aren’t you? A quick thinker. And your thinking has only improved with age. I made the right choice. I called before you came. I overheard you and Judy talking about your plans at the park yesterday.’

  ‘So you knew I was coming?’ I asked, uncertainly.

  ‘I did,’ she confirmed. ‘It was easy to bait you to come to me. I know you play outside your house until dinner. I simply sent a package to myself, knowing what time the mailman comes around, and that he grows lazy in the late afternoon.’

  I shook my head mutely, again in disbelief. This had to be a dream, or maybe some kind of nightmare. My voice finally came back.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I’m rescuing you from your life. I know you’re miserable. I’ve watched you playing with your doll. You don’t fit in with your friends or your family. You can’t fit in because you’re not meant to – you’re meant for something greater than a normal existence.’

  ‘So you spent time … years … planning all this?’

  This time it was she who shook her head slowly. ‘No. I was merely observant.’ She laughed quietly.

  I shuddered at the thought of a stranger watching my life through the lens of a camera while I was growing up.

  ‘I–I’ve got to go home. My mother will be worried.’ I tried to push past Miss Hatfield, but she stood her ground in front of the door. I didn’t know whether I wanted to scream or cry in my panic. ‘Please, Rebecca –’ I thought if I used her first name as she preferred she might let me go ‘– you don’t need me. You can find someone else for whatever this is about.’

  ‘If only I could, but what’s done is already done. I couldn’t reverse it even if I wanted to. Immortality transcends time.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense. Please, I just want to go home. You’re scaring me.’ I began to feel frantic.

  Thoughts raced wildly through my mind. This woman’s mental state clearly wasn’t stable, and quite frankly she terrified me. She hadn’t tried to hurt me, but I didn’t know what she would try to do next.

  My head snapped around quickly as I looked at one wall, then another … I had to find a way out. I was getting desperate now. I caught a glimpse of something in a frame hanging next to an old faded watercolour painting of irises. It was such a curious sight that my head stopped moving as soon as my eyes passed over it. At first I thought it was another painting or a photograph, but there was something unsettling about it.

  The scene was an interesting one, filled with the buzz of emotion and energy. It was of two young women having an intense conversation. One appeared to have grown tired of the banter and had moved her gaze towards the viewer. The other young woman looked flustered and was blocking a door as if denying the other young woman entry … or possibly exit.

  The familiarity of the scene dawned on me, but I couldn’t believe it at first. I forgot about everything around me and for that moment my whole world was centred on that framed image. My body was tautly strung as I walked towards the picture. It didn’t take many steps to reach it, but each one felt like more than a mile to me. My hand unthinkingly went to my face, but what I felt wasn’t me at all. My cheeks weren’t as plump as they had been before. My face was longer than I had remembered it to be, and my chin seemed more angular. When I looked at my body, I was no longer a young girl. My body was proportioned more like Mother’s.

  I watched in horror as the woman in the frame copied
my movements, motion for motion. When I touched the scene in the frame, the woman inside did the same. I found it cool to the touch and wondered if she did, too.

  ‘What did you do to me?’ My words were slow, as if they were someone else’s. They were hopelessly caught, just as I was.

  ‘Only what had to be done. I tried to tell you earlier.’

  ‘You tried to tell me earlier? When? You couldn’t try to tell me before you did … whatever you did?’ My voice had a hysterical edge to it now, but for some reason it didn’t sound like my own voice any more. It was much too old, and even my sobs were foreign to me.

  I felt my knees buckle as my legs gave away beneath me. The hard ground met me halfway.

  ‘I thought you’d have noticed,’ Miss Hatfield said. ‘Your improved vocabulary, your voice, even the way you walk – it’s all changed. Now you must see why you can’t go home.’ Miss Hatfield crouched down beside me. I didn’t want her anywhere near me. I wanted my mother and my father, but she was all I had. ‘Your parents won’t recognize you – you didn’t even recognize yourself. This is for the good of everyone. Even you. You’ll see.’

  I felt Miss Hatfield grab hold of my shoulders and help me up before guiding me to something soft to lie on. I watched the world through a veil of tears as everything I knew became disfigured and mangled. The colours were all blurred together, running into each other. I felt as if I was slipping away into some strange dimension where I recognized nothing – not my surroundings, or my feelings, but most terrifyingly of all, not even myself.

  Chapter 3

  I woke with a faint thrumming inside my head. Everything felt like a bad, foggy dream, yet here I still was – in a stranger’s house, looking at fingers too long and slender to be my own. I couldn’t understand what had happened to me, couldn’t get my head around the impossibility of it all.

  I sat up to look around at the room and found myself on a plain mattress set atop a four-poster bed with an ornate golden headboard. There were no blankets on the bed or nearby. The logical conclusion was that I must have cried myself to sleep without even realizing where I was. Floral wallpaper peeled from the walls and ceiling, and tears or slashes in the paper revealed grey wooden boards beneath. Bunches of white primroses and blue flax swam in front of my eyes. Somehow I knew that these flowers had once made people feel comfortable and at home, but now they only made me feel lost and intimidated.