The House of Dead Maids

by Dunkle, Clare B.

  “I’m tired of this,” said Himself after waiting patiently for me yet again. “You hide now, and I’ll find you.” But I proved no better at hiding than I had been at finding, and he grew disgusted with me.

  Having examined the wing that held the kitchen, including the passages outside Miss Winter’s rooms, I turned my attention to the wing that held the front door. The man in the white shirt had been closest to this part of the house. Perhaps he had come through a doorway to an outside flight of stairs. If so, the door must be high in the wall. I began my investigation on the top floor.

  “I’ve stood by the banister there, watching you,” announced my charge. “You weren’t hiding. You meant to be rid of me. I’m master, and I shan’t bear this. If you won’t play properly, I’ll tell Mrs. Sexton.”

  “All right,” I admitted then, “I wasn’t hiding, and I haven’t been looking for you. I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m looking for the way into the courtyard we saw, where the man in the white shirt went. I can’t find a regular door, so you can help me look for cracks or keyholes, something unusual.”

  We had come to the room at the top of the stairs with the painted leather panels, where Himself had sulked inside the enormous buffet. It was such a lovely chamber, I thought, with its warm colors and its fine work, but my enthusiasm abated when I recalled that Izzy’s ghost had appeared here. Leather panels, I mused, attempting to put her from my mind. What better material to cover a secret door?

  “I see something unusual,” said Himself, standing in the middle of the room. “Someone’s come in here to dust.”

  I was running my hands over the leather, the flaking gilt from the painted flowers spangling my fingers. “Why’s that unusual?” I asked.

  “Because all these rooms are dusty, that’s why,” he said, “and this one was too. Rogue says to tell you you’re thick.”

  Himself was right, I realized, looking around, and quite possibly so was his pirate. This chamber had been full of cobwebs and grime the last time we had seen it. Since then, the floor had been mopped, the cobwebs pulled down, and every curve of the wooden overmantel polished until it gleamed. No wonder the chamber looked so nice.

  “But why?” I wondered.

  “Maybe they wanted the man in the white shirt to see it looking tidy,” said Himself.

  “Then the door is here. Where is it? Look for cracks that make the edges of a door.”

  We searched for some time, but we found no cracks, and I was put to some trouble dissuading my charge from prying off the leatherwork to make his own. Finally, Himself tired of the game and sent his pirate to explore the wide fireplace.

  “Don’t play in the ashes,” I said without turning around.

  “It’s clean here, too,” he said from the hearth. “Do you think they scrubbed off the soot?”

  “This room may not have had a fire in a hundred years. They’ve plenty of other rooms to heat if they wish.”

  “Then why did you tell me not to play in the ashes?”

  Now he lay between the brass andirons so that only his calves and bare feet were visible. “It’s a fearfully deep cave, Rogue,” he said. “There may be monsters.” After a minute, he crawled back into the room. “Rogue found a piece of moss,” he said, holding it up.

  The fragment looked as if it had been stepped on and then knocked off a man’s boot. Perhaps it had fallen from the stones of the chimney, which was unused and might be damp. Nevertheless, moss indoors was worth investigating.

  “Show me where it was,” I said.

  I bent below the stone lip of the mantel and discovered that the chimney was remarkably roomy. I could stand up if I wished, although I kept a hand before my face, anxious not to strike the side of a narrowing flue.

  “Here’s where I found the moss,” said Himself, standing beside me and pointing off to the right. “And look!” He trotted into the shadow at the right-hand side of the fireplace and kept going until he vanished from view.

  “Wait!” I gasped, scrambling after him.

  Ten or twelve stumbling steps in utter darkness, with cold stone walls on either side. Then came a crack of light and a gust of wind in my face. Himself had pushed open a door and was outside, with dark slates at his feet and long shreds of rain clouds scudding by just overhead.

  We stood at the top of a straight flight of rusted metal steps that ran down the side of our wall, turned a corner, and continued down the adjacent wall. They were accompanied by a railing of straight iron bars higher than I could reach and so closely spaced that Himself couldn’t wedge his head between the bars to see what lay below, in spite of his determined efforts to do so. Accordingly, he raced down the flight of stairs, ignoring my call, and I hastily followed.

  We were in a space about twenty feet square, unroofed and defined by the four walls of the house that surrounded it. The top ten feet of the walls were covered with slates; the rest was rough brown gritstone covered with the mold, soot, and grime of centuries. Not a single window or architectural flourish broke the monotony of the sheer walls, and their blank faces rose four stories or more around the central cavity to block the light of the overcast sky. The shadows of a mock twilight enfolded us as we descended, and I took care to watch my footing. Someone had scrubbed the steps recently, a surprising attention to pay in that neglected and dismal place.

  I reached the bottom and discovered that the whole of the courtyard lay under thick moss except for a large rectangular hole and the dark earth cast up beside it. Rich, exuberant growth covered everything else with such a brilliant green hue that it appeared to glow in the dusky gloom. By the steps, the moss had been trampled flat, but most of it was pristine, a soft, delicate blanket. We were below ground level here, and the sheer walls ended in a series of arched openings that ran along the four sides like an old-style cloister. On three sides, black shadow lay beyond the arches: the cellars of the house, I assumed. In the fourth direction, I could see a glimmer of daylight in the darkness some distance away.

  Himself trotted to the center of the enclosure and peered into the hole. “Stand back from there,” I ordered, following him. The hole was deeper than I was tall and at least six feet on a side, with its great pile of muddy earth beside it. At the bottom was a puddle of rainwater reflecting the cloudy sky, a mirror waiting to catch a glimpse of our faces.

  Two rows of rubble stretched beside the square hole, like stone fences that had tumbled down. The thick moss had swallowed them up and softened their contours. On top of the rows, small brown sticks stuck in the moss. I walked towards the nearest row, sinking into green fuzz, worrying about my shoes. Only when I saw the skull did I understand.

  The brown sticks were bones. The twin rows of rubble were more bones, great ancient piles that had accumulated there for centuries. The hole was a grave, filled many times, empty now, waiting to receive a new member into this family that was related, not by birth, but by death.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The grisly revelation left me strangely calm. I felt as if I were floating. “The dead walk because their bones are nearby,” I whispered. So many bones. So many dead.

  They were old, these bones, the fruit of centuries. And yet, they were so small and pitiful. Old master, old maid. Young master, young maid. The young ones had best be on their guard.

  “Look at me! I’m king of the castle.”

  Himself had scrambled up an odd boulder that heaved its bulk out of the ground to block one of the archways. The action of water dripping down it for ages had scooped out its top so that it looked like a gentleman’s chair. There sat my charge, kicking his heels and waving his pirate in the air, the young master of Seldom House, directly before the grave that had held the last young master. The grave that I was sure lay empty now to hold him. To hold the pair of us.

  My composure gave way so suddenly that I thought I might scream.

  “Come,” I said, running to the boulder and holding up my arms to pull him down. “We need to leave before someone sees us. But we
won’t go up the stairs. We’ll try a new way.” And I pulled him towards the glimmer of daylight in the cellar.

  A heavy scent of mildew assailed us there. As the light from the courtyard failed behind us, I felt my way through a forest of square brick pillars. Gravel crunched and shifted under my shoes.

  “Let go, clumsy girl!” cried Himself. “You’re smacking me into the poles.” But I didn’t dare let him go.

  We came to a wall—more brick, my fingers told me—and there was an opening in it. Paving stones were under our feet then, and a good straight passageway around us. The glimmer was a beam of light now, directly ahead of us. In another minute, we came through the arched doorway I had seen in the hillside, on the path between the village and the house.

  Where to run? Not to the village, surely, where the dull inhabitants would emerge from their cottages to watch our every move. Not to the ridge, where the household would doubtless spy our escape from the kitchen windows. A new direction, then, towards the barren land to the north. We might starve, but we wouldn’t be murdered there. I pulled Himself off the path and hurried across the face of the hill.

  “What are you about now?” he complained, dragging his feet. “I want to go back there and look at the bones. I wanted to keep a skull.”

  “No skulls,” I told him. “What a barbaric notion! Don’t tell anyone what we saw back there—it’s an evil that shouldn’t be talked of. We’re going away this very instant. This is no fit house for Christian children.”

  My charge planted his feet and set all his strength against me. “Then you go. I like it here. I’m master, and that’s what I want. And besides, I’m not a Christian child.”

  On the previous afternoon, I had run with him tucked under an arm. Now I had the greatest difficulty shifting him. We struggled together on the hillside not fifty feet from the path, and Arnby found us there as he walked up from the village.

  “What’s this?” he cried, moving quickly, and soon caught up to the pair of us. I noticed that he wore a white shirt. “Little maidie,” he told me, “you shouldn’t be out playing in this weather. It’s threatening a downpour.”

  “She’s running away, but I’m not,” said Himself. “She fair pulled my arm off. Arnby, you knock sense into her for me, you’ve a good broad hand.”

  Arnby didn’t strike me, but he surveyed me darkly, shaking his head. “Always the maids,” he muttered.

  He marched us up the path and around to the kitchen door, where he knocked for Mrs. Sexton. “I caught them outside, running off,” he told her, thrusting us into the kitchen. “A fine state of affairs that would be. You ought to take better care.”

  Mrs. Sexton turned back to her pots and puffed on her pipe. “Not my lookout,” she grunted.

  “Please don’t think me ungrateful,” I begged them. “I was trying to fetch help. The boy’s life and mine are in danger.”

  “In danger, eh?” Arnby asked me. “What do you know about it?”

  “I believe, sir, that Mr. Ketch and Miss Winter have brought us here to kill us.”

  “If you must know,” said that reprobate, without turning a hair, “the old master and maid don’t do the killing. They’ve only nominated you, in a manner of speaking. Us villagers cover you over, decently scattering the dust like folks do for any burial, but the old earth herself takes your lives to rebuild her—bone, body, and blood. Don’t look so down in the mouth. You should be proud to be chosen. It’s an honor to be given to the land.”

  I don’t know how I looked. I could scarcely breathe. I gasped, “You mean to bury us alive.”

  “Tonight, as soon as it’s full dark,” he agreed. “Mrs. Sexton, take the girl and lock her in her room. I’ll keep the young master with me.”

  The housekeeper didn’t leave off her task. She blew out a cloud of smoke. “I feed ’em. I don’t pen ’em,” she answered.

  So Arnby had to take me himself, and I saw to it that the task was not an easy one. My charge, watching me being chivvied along, set up a commotion as well. The old man was hard put, but he wasn’t rough with us—preserving our bodies undamaged, I suppose, for the good of the land that would eat us.

  As we battled one another down the hall, Mr. Ketch appeared in a doorway, holding a bottle of spirits in one hand and a glass in the other. His face was the color of old ivory.

  “What the deuce is going on?” he asked shakily.

  “See that fine gentleman there, that capital fellow?” I asked Himself. “He brought you here to be killed. He means to watch you die tonight.”

  Mr. Ketch went white around the mouth. “It isn’t as if I enjoy it!”

  At that, the child bared his teeth and told Mr. Ketch what he should do to him if he had the means, employing the most picturesque and disagreeable language I have heard from that day to this. Mr. Ketch seemed genuinely fascinated; cheeks sagging, eyes bulging, he drifted along behind us, unable to tear himself away.

  “Give me a hand with this pair,” puffed Arnby, hauling us up the steps, but Mr. Ketch took care not to come within reach. “Whey runs in your veins these days. A fine yoke you two are, you and that harpy yonder, there’s no knowing which is the man and which is the maid! The luck’ll leave this house if you don’t look sharp about it. I’m sorry I’ve lived to see the old ways so treated and the earth so badly used.”

  He pushed us into our room and locked the door. We shouted and beat our fists against it, but to no avail: we heard his boots clump back down the stairs.

  I found that my teeth were chattering, and I couldn’t make them stop. I climbed the wooden stepladder, undid the ties, and let the green curtains shield the bed. Then I lay down in the gloom with my knees drawn up to my chin, shivering as though I had a fever.

  Himself parted the curtains and crawled into bed beside me. He looked as if he might have been crying. “I can’t find Rogue,” he complained. “It’s your fault I lost him, you dragged me about so.”

  I might have observed that Arnby had done plenty of dragging, but instead I took him into my arms. He was shivering too.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I meant it.

  “Sing me a song,” he said as we lay there together in the darkness.

  “Bless you! I can’t sing,” I said, half sobbing.

  “I knew a beautiful lady,” he whispered to me. “Her hair was soft, and she used to let me stroke it. I loved to hear her sing; I used to tell her to, and she sang just to please me.”

  “Was she your mother?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.

  “Then it was all shouts and screams and fire everywhere, just like they say hell is, and devils running into the houses and killing people. I hid in the bread oven, and they didn’t find me there. I heard her call me, and then I heard her scream, so I crept out to see. She was on fire, waving her arms in the air, and two devils took their spears and pushed her into the hottest flames, making a joke of her burning. I ran and hid, and ran and hid some more, and I left the beautiful lady behind in hell.”

  I meant to tell him that this was not hell, although it sounded horrible. But before I could, he spoke again.

  “Are we going to die tonight, truly?”

  I didn’t answer, but only wept.

  “Well, I’m not sorry,” said Himself. “I like it here, and I’ll be master at any rate; dead or alive, I’ll stay with the house and the land. I can join the other ghosts and play tricks on the living. I’ll soon have Master Jack’s hair turning white.”

  That made me laugh through my tears.

  The little boy twined his arms around my neck and snuggled close to me. “We’ll lie just like this when they cover us up, won’t we?” he whispered. “And then we won’t be scared. And I’ve a score to settle with that old master who had the fit. I hope when I’m dead my hands will stop slipping through him.”

  I felt sorrier for the poor child at that moment than I had ever felt before, and my pity for him dried my tears. The thought of dying terrified me, but I knew the promises, and I had fait
h that God’s mercy would see me safe to the kingdom of heaven. My bones would be here, but I would be with the justified who sang before the throne of the Lamb.

  But this poor heathen boy knew nothing of that. He had no greater prize to hope for beyond this world than the privilege of brawling with a ghost. If I could not save my charge’s body, I could still save his soul. And yet, how should I express the invitation so that it would fit into his faulty understanding? Asking him to renounce his evil ways wouldn’t do. We had no time for proper instruction.

  I sat up and pushed aside the curtain. A gleam of golden light came through. I climbed down the ladder, took up Alma Augusta from the chair next to the hearth, and laid her gently in the hiding place beneath the clothes press. Beside her, I placed Izzy’s humble knitted sock. I owed the dead that much. And all the while, I pondered what to say.

  Himself sat on the edge of the bed now, holding back the curtain, watching me with those lively black eyes. My heart softened again at the sight of him. After all, he was a good boy.

  I walked to the washstand and hefted the pitcher. “This land isn’t so much,” I said. “Shouldn’t you like to inherit a kingdom?”

  It was all a matter of asking the right question.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Arnby came for Himself when dusk fell, at the head of a group of village men. But I held my charge fast and wouldn’t let them take him.

  “You’re throttling me, you ninny,” he complained.

  “The boy’s too young. I won’t leave him,” I said. “He needs me by his side.”

  “That’s a good lass,” said Arnby. “You’ll be by his side, never fear. He just comes in a different way, is all.”

  “If you don’t turn me loose,” said Himself, “I’ll kick you in the shins.” So I released him and let the men take him away.