Serafina and the Black Cloak

by Robert Beatty

  She had watched them all, but none of them ever saw her—not even the dog. Lately she’d been wondering just what would happen if they did. What if the boy glimpsed her? What would she do? What if his dog chased her? Could she get up a tree in time? Sometimes she liked to imagine what she would say if she met Mrs. Vanderbilt face-to-face. Hello, Mrs. V. I catch your rats for you. Would you like them killed or just chucked out? Sometimes she dreamed of wearing fancy dresses and ribbons in her hair and shiny shoes on her feet. And sometimes, just sometimes, she longed not just to listen secretly to the people around her, but to talk to them. Not just to see them, but to be seen.

  As she walked through the moonlight across the open grass and back to the main house, she wondered what would happen if one of the guests, or perhaps the young master in his bedroom on the second floor, happened to wake and look out the window and see a mysterious girl walking alone in the night.

  Her pa never spoke of it, but she knew she wasn’t exactly normal looking. She had a skinny little body, nothing but muscle, bone, and sinew.

  She didn’t own a dress, so she wore one of her pa’s old work shirts, which she cinched around her narrow waist with a length of fibrous twine she’d scavenged from the workshop. He didn’t buy her any clothes because he didn’t want people in town to ask questions and start meddling; meddling was something he could never brook.

  Her long hair wasn’t a single color like normal people had, but varying shades of gold and light brown. Her face had a peculiar angularity in the cheeks. And she had large, steady amber eyes. She could see at night as well as she could during the day. Even her soundless hunting skills weren’t exactly normal. Every person she’d ever encountered, especially her pa, made so much noise when they walked that it was like they were one of the big Belgian draft horses that pulled the farm equipment in Mr. Vanderbilt’s fields.

  And it all made her wonder, looking up at the windows of the great house. What did the people sleeping in those rooms dream of, with their one-colored hair, and their long, pointy noses, and their big bodies lying in their soft beds all through the glorious darkness of the night? What did they long for? What made them laugh or jump? What did they feel inside? When they had dinner at night, did the children eat the grits or just the chicken?

  As she glided down the stairs and back into the basement, she heard something in a distant corridor. She stopped and listened, but she couldn’t quite make it out. It wasn’t a rat. That much was certain. Something much larger. But what was it?

  Curious, she moved toward the sound.

  She went past her pa’s workshop, the kitchens, and the other rooms she knew well, and into the deeper areas where she hunted less often. She heard doors closing, then the fall of footsteps and muffled noises. Her heart began to thump lightly in her chest. Someone was walking through the corridors of the basement. Her basement.

  She moved closer.

  It wasn’t the servant who collected the garbage each night, or one of the footmen fetching a late-night snack for a guest—she knew the sound of their footsteps well. Sometimes the butler’s assistant, who was eleven, would stop in the corridor and gobble down a few of the cookies from the silver tray that the butler had sent him to retrieve. She’d stand just around the corner from him in the darkness and pretend that they were friends just talking and enjoying each other’s company for a while. Then the boy would wipe the powdered sugar off his lips, and off he’d go, hurrying up the stairs to catch up on the time he’d lost. But this wasn’t him.

  Whoever it was, he wore what sounded like hard-soled shoes—expensive shoes. But a gentleman proper had no business coming down into this area of the house. Why was he wandering through the dark passages in the middle of the night?

  Increasingly curious, she followed the stranger, careful to avoid being seen. Whenever she snuck up close enough to almost see him, all she could make out was the shadow of a tall black shape carrying a dimly lit lantern. And there was another shadow there, too, someone or something with him, but she didn’t dare creep close enough to see who or what it was.

  It was a vast basement with many different rooms, corridors, and levels, which had been built into the slope of the earth beneath the house. Some areas, like the kitchens and the laundry, had smooth plaster walls and windows. The rooms there were plainly finished, but clean and dry, and well-suited to the daily work of the servants. The more distant reaches of the understructure delved deep into the damp and earthen burrows of the house’s massive foundation. Here the dark, hardened mortar oozed out from between the roughly hewn stone blocks that formed the walls and ceiling, and she seldom went there because it was cold, dirty, and dank.

  Suddenly, the footsteps changed direction. They came toward her. Five screeching rats came running down the corridor ahead of the footfalls, more terrified than any rodents she had ever seen. Spiders crawled out of the cracks in the walls. Cockroaches and centipedes erupted from the earthen floor. Astounded by what she was seeing, she caught her breath and pressed herself to the wall, frozen in fear like a little rabbit kit trembling beneath the shadow of a passing hawk.

  As the man walked toward her, she heard another sound, too. It was a shuffling agitation like a small person—slippered feet, perhaps a child—but there was something wrong. The child’s feet were scraping on the stone, sometimes sliding…the child was crippled…no…the child was being dragged.

  “No, sir! Please! No!” the girl whimpered, her voice trembling with despair. “We’re not supposed to be down here.” The girl spoke like someone who had been raised in a well-heeled family and attended a fancy school.

  “Don’t worry. We’re going right in here…” the man said, stopping at the door just around the corner from Serafina. Now she could hear his breathing, the movement of his hands, and the rustle of his clothing. Flashes of heat scorched through her. She wanted to run, to flee, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.

  “There’s nothing to be frightened of, child,” he said to the girl. “I’m not going to hurt you…”

  The way he said these words caused the hairs on the back of Serafina’s neck to rise. Don’t go with him, she thought. Don’t go!

  The girl sounded like she was just a little younger than her, and Serafina wanted to help her, but she couldn’t find the courage. She pressed herself against the wall, certain that she would be heard or seen. Her legs trembled, feeling as if they would crumble beneath her. She couldn’t see what happened next, but suddenly the girl let out a bloodcurdling scream. The piercing sound caused Serafina to jump, and she had to stifle her own scream. Then she heard a struggle as the girl tore away from the man and fled down the corridor. Run, girl! Run! Serafina thought.

  The man’s steps faded into the distance as he went after her. Serafina could tell that he wasn’t running full-out but moving steadily, relentlessly, like he knew the girl couldn’t escape him. Serafina’s pa had told her that’s how the red wolves chase down and kill deer in the mountains—with dogged stamina rather than bursts of speed.

  Serafina didn’t know what to do. Should she hide in a dark corner and hope he didn’t find her? Should she flee with the terror-stricken rats and spiders while she had the chance? She wanted to run back to her father, but what about the child? The girl was so helpless, so slow and weak and frightened, and more than anything, she needed a friend to help her fight. Serafina wanted to be that friend; she wanted to help her, but she couldn’t bring herself to move in that direction.

  Then she heard the girl scream again. That dirty, rotten rat’s gonna kill her, Serafina thought. He’s gonna kill her.

  With a burst of anger and courage, she raced toward the sound. Her legs felt like explosions of speed. Her mind blazed with fear and exhilaration. She turned corner after corner. But when she came to the mossy stone stairway that led down into the deepest bowels of the subbasement, she stopped, gasping for breath, and shook her head. It was a cold, wet, slimy, horrible place that she had always done her best to avoid—especially
in the winter. She’d heard stories that they stored dead bodies in the subbasement in the winter, when the ground was too frozen to dig a grave. Why in the world had the girl gone down there?

  Serafina made her way haltingly down the wet, sticky stairs, lifting and shaking off her foot after each slimy step she took. When at last she reached the bottom, she followed a long, slanting corridor where the ceiling dripped with brown sludge. The whole dank, disgusting place gave her the jitters something fierce, but she kept going. You’ve got to help her, she told herself again. You can’t turn back. She wound her way through a labyrinth of twisting tunnels. She turned right, then left, then left, then right until she lost track of how far she’d gone. Then she heard the sound of fighting and shouting just around the corner ahead of her. She was very close.

  She hesitated, frightened, her heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst. Her body shook all over. She didn’t want to go another step, but friends had to help friends. She didn’t know much about life, but she did know that, knew that for sure, and she wasn’t going to run away like a scared-out-of-her-wits squirrel just when somebody needed her most. Trembling all over, she steadied herself the best she could, sucked in a deep breath, and pushed herself around the corner.

  A broken lantern lay tipped on the stone floor, its glass shattered but the flame still burning. In its halo of faltering light, a girl in a yellow dress struggled for her life. A tall man in a black cloak and hood, his hands stained with blood, grabbed the girl by the wrists. The girl tried to pull away. “No! Let me go!” she screamed.

  “Quiet down,” the man told her, his voice seething in a dark, unworldly tone. “I’m not going to hurt you, child…” he said for the second time.

  The girl had curly blond hair and pale white skin. She fought to escape, but the man in the black cloak pulled her toward him. He tangled her in his arms. She flailed and struck him in the face with her tiny fists.

  “Just stay still, and it will all be over,” he said, pulling her toward him.

  Serafina suddenly realized that she’d made a dreadful mistake. This was far more than she could handle. She knew that she should help the girl, but she was so scared that her feet stuck to the floor. She couldn’t even breathe, let alone fight.

  Help her! Serafina’s mind screamed at her. Help her! Attack the rat! Attack the rat!

  She finally plucked up her courage and charged forward, but just at that moment, the man’s black satin cloak floated upward as if possessed by a smoky spirit. The girl screamed. The folds of the cloak slithered around her like the tentacles of a hungry serpent. The cloak seemed to move of its own accord, wrapping, twisting, accompanied by a disturbing rattling noise, like the hissing threats of a hundred rattlesnakes. Serafina saw the girl’s horrified face looking at her from within the folds of the enveloping cloak, the girl’s pleading blue eyes wide with fear. Help me! Help me! Then the folds closed over her, the scream went silent, and the girl disappeared, leaving nothing but the blackness of the cloak.

  Serafina gasped in shock. One moment the girl was struggling to get free, and the next she vanished into thin air. The cloak had consumed her. Overwhelmed with confusion, grief, and fear, Serafina just stood there in stunned bewilderment.

  For several seconds, the man seemed to vibrate violently, and a ghoulish aura glowed around him in a dark, shimmering haze. A horribly foul smell of rotting guts invaded Serafina’s nostrils, forcing her head to jerk back. She wrinkled her nose and squinched her mouth and tried not to breathe it in.

  She must have made some sort of involuntary gagging noise, for the man in the black cloak suddenly turned and looked at her, seeing her for the first time. It felt like a giant claw gripped her around her chest. The folds of the man’s hood shrouded his face, but she could see that his eyes blazed with an unnatural light.

  She stood frozen, utterly terrified.

  The man whispered in a raspy voice. “I’m not going to hurt you, child…”

  Hearing those eerie words jolted Serafina into action. She had just seen what those words led to. Not this time, rat! With a burst of new energy, she turned and ran.

  She tore through the labyrinth of crisscrossing tunnels, running and running, certain that she was leaving him far in the distance. But when she glanced over her shoulder, the hooded man was flying through the air right behind her, levitated by the power of the billowing black cloak, his bloody hands reaching toward her.

  Serafina tried to run faster, but just as she came to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main level of the basement, the man in the black cloak grabbed her. One hand clamped her shoulder. The other locked on to her neck. She turned and hissed like a snared animal. She whirled and clawed in a wild circle and broke herself free.

  She bounded up the stairs three at a time, but he followed right behind her. He reached out and yanked her head back by her hair. She screamed in pain.

  “Time to give up now, little child,” he said calmly, even as the tightening of his fist slowly tore strands of her hair from her head.

  “I ain’t never!” she snarled, and bit his arm. She fought as hard as she could, scratching and clawing with her fingernails, but it didn’t matter. The man in the black cloak was far too strong. He pulled her into his chest, entangling her in his arms.

  The folds of the black cloak rose up around her, pulsing with gray smoke. The awful rotting odor made her gag. All she could hear was that loathsome rattling noise as the cloak slithered and twisted its way around her body. She felt like she was being crushed in the coil of a boa constrictor.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, child…” came the hideous rasping voice again, as if the man wasn’t of his own mind but possessed by a demented, ravenous demon.

  The folds of the cloak cast a wretched pall over her, drenching her in a dripping, suffocating sickness. She felt her soul slipping away from her—not just slipping, but being yanked, being extracted. Death was so near that she could see its blackness with her own eyes and she could hear the screams of the children who had gone before her.

  “No! No! No!” she screamed in defiance. She didn’t want to go. Hissing wildly, she reached up and clutched his face, clawing at his eyes. She kicked his chest with her feet. She bit him repeatedly, snapping like a snarling, rabid beast, and she tasted his blood in her mouth. The girl in the yellow dress had fought, but nothing like this. Finally, Serafina twisted out of his grip and spun to the ground. She landed on her feet and leapt away.

  She wanted to get back to her pa, but she couldn’t make it that far. She fled down the corridor and dashed into the main kitchen. There were a dozen places to hide. Should she slip behind the black cast-iron ovens? Or crawl up among the copper pots hanging from the ceiling rack? No. She knew she had to find a better place.

  She was back in her territory now, and she knew it well. She knew the darkness and she knew the light. She knew the left and the right. She had killed rats in every corner of this place, and there was no way she was going to let herself become one of those rats. She was the C.R.C. No trap or weapon or evil man was going to catch her. Like a wild creature, she ran and jumped and crawled.

  When she reached the linen storage room, with all its wooden shelves and stacks of folded white sheets and blankets, she scampered into a crumbling break in the wall, in the back corner beneath the lowest shelf. Even if the man did notice the hole, it would seem impossibly small for anyone to fit through. But she knew it provided a shortcut into the back of the laundry.

  She came out in the room where they hung and dried the fancy folks’ bedsheets. The moon had risen outside, and its light shone through the basement windows. Hundreds of flowing white sheets hung from the ceiling like ghosts, the silver moonlight casting them into an eerie glow. She slipped slowly between the hanging sheets, wondering if they would provide her the concealment she needed. But she thought better of it and kept going.

  For good or ill, she had an idea. She knew that Mr. Vanderbilt prided himself on installi
ng the most advanced equipment at Biltmore. Her pa had constructed special drying racks that rolled on metal ceiling tracks that tucked into narrow chambers where the sheets and clothes were dried with the radiant heat of well-sealed steam pipes. Determined to find the best possible hiding place, she made herself small and pressed herself through the narrow slot of one of the machines.

  When Serafina was born, there had been a number of things physically different about her. She had four toes on each foot rather than five, and although it was not noticeable just by looking at her, her collarbones were malformed such that they didn’t connect properly to her other bones. This allowed her to fit into some pretty tight spots. The opening in the machine was no more than a few inches wide, but as long as she could fit her head into something, she could push her whole body through. She wedged herself inside, into a dark little spot where she hoped the man in the black cloak wouldn’t find her.

  She tried to be quiet, she tried to be still, but she panted like a little animal. She was exhausted, breathless, and frightened beyond her wits. She’d seen the girl in the yellow dress consumed by the shadow-filled folds and knew the man in the black cloak was coming for her next. Her only hope was that he couldn’t hear the deafening pound of her heartbeat.

  She heard him walking slowly down the hallway outside the kitchen. He’d lost her in the darkness, but he moved methodically from room to room, looking for her.

  She heard him in the main kitchen, opening the doors of the cast-iron ovens. If I’d hidden there, she thought, I’d be dead now.

  Then she heard him clanging through the copper pots, looking for her in the ceiling rack. If I’d hidden there, she thought, I’d be dead again.