House of Shadows

by Darcie Coates

  Joseph exhaled and pressed his fingertips against the bridge of his nose. He didn’t speak, but Sophie could sense his pain.

  “They left her body outside of the red door. Then… she came back.” Sophie pulled the blankets around herself more tightly. “She wasn’t a ghost. Neither were those things in the forest. They weren’t alive, but they weren’t spirits, either.”

  “No, they’re not.” The words were a low, defeated murmur.

  “And the red door hides more than disrepair, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  After a knock at the door, Joseph rose to answer it then brought back an armful of supplies. He left towels and hot water at the foot of her chair then returned to retrieve a tray of tea and a plate of biscuits.

  “Eat. They will give you strength.” He placed the biscuits on the table beside Sophie. Sitting on the edge of his chair, he nodded at Sophie’s arm. “May I?”

  “Only if you tell me what you meant when you said Northwood would kill us.”

  A faint smile lit up his face. “You’re tenacious. But yes, I promised I would explain. And I will. I won’t keep a single thing from you, no matter how unpleasant it may be to both of us. You deserve to know everything.”

  Sophie nodded and picked up the cup of tea. Her hands were shaking and threatened to spill it, so she placed it back on the table and took up the biscuit instead.

  Joseph tugged the corner of the blanket away, and his eyebrows contracted. “Forgive me. I could have prevented this if I’d been faster.”

  It could have been a lot worse, too, Sophie thought, but she didn’t say anything. She knew she had to keep her guard up against Joseph, no matter how good it felt to have his fingers brush over her arm and squeeze her hand. She had to stand her ground.

  Joseph dampened the cloth and began to dab the blood away from the cuts. It was almost a perfect replica of the morning he’d come home with scratches over his arms, but instead of doing the tending, Sophie was being tended to. The intensity in his eyes worried her so much that she turned back to watch the fire. Sensing that Joseph was gathering his thoughts, she ate the biscuit in silence while she waited.

  “I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I’ve done,” he said at last, throwing away the dirty towel to pick up a fresh one. “All I ask is that you’ll trust my intentions are now good, and allow me to help you as much as is in my power.”

  Sophie stayed silent.

  “I’ll tell you it all in the most logical order I can. It all begins with the house’s creation, four hundred years ago.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Secrets

  Joseph focussed on cleaning and dressing Sophie’s wounds as he spoke. His voice was subdued, and he seemed almost ashamed to meet her eyes. Sophie listened in silence, except for a few brief questions. The story was fantastical to the point of being absurd, but she couldn’t disregard it. She trusted the speaker, and what he told her dovetailed with her own experiences.

  “I tried to be truthful when I explained the house’s history this morning,” Joseph said. “But I didn’t tell you everything. Matthias Argenton, the man who built Northwood, was a noble who had lost his title and land. He was an outcast, disgraced and penniless. From what I can gather, he spent many years travelling the country, and ultimately found himself here—lost in the middle of a forest, days away from the nearest town, starving and resigned to death. A creature approached him when he collapsed from hunger, and offered him food. In all of his writings, Matthias never revealed the being’s name. My family calls it the Shadow Being.

  “The food restored Matthias’s strength, and having earned the man’s trust, the Shadow Being made a proposition. It offered to return Matthias’s fortunes five-fold over. It said it could provide him with endless wealth, with good fortune, and with unfailing health—not just for Matthias, but for his descendants, too. In return, the creature asked for two things: that Matthias build it a house to its exact specifications and for the use of Matthias’s body when he died.

  “The proposal seemed to offer so much and request so little in return that Matthias eagerly agreed. The creature made good on its word; it provided Matthias with a fortune—I have no idea how—that allowed him to hire workers to carve a glade in the forest and build Northwood exactly as the Shadow Being requested it. Matthias met and married a woman from town, and they had twelve sons. Each son married and had children of his own, and the Argenton family swelled to fifty members within just two generations.

  “The Shadow Being’s bargain initially seemed faultless. As promised, the Argenton family prospered financially. Sickness was unheard of while they lived within the house’s boundaries, and repeated good fortune came their way. In return, whenever one of the family members passed, the body would be left for the creature to take.”

  “If they had good health, how did they pass?” Sophie asked.

  “That’s the first of the creature’s loopholes. It promised good health, but not safety from calamity. Every one of the Argentons have died a violent death. My great aunt fell from the balcony. Her husband was murdered by his jealous son. That son was crushed by a felled chandelier. His wife drowned in her bath. Forgive me, Sophie—I didn’t mean to distress you.”

  Sophie had pressed her hand over her mouth, but she took it away with a resolute breath. “I’m fine. Please continue.”

  Joseph’s black eyes scanned hers. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. I want to know the full of it.”

  “Very well. Although we never see the creature—or, I should say, we see it very infrequently; I’ve only seen it once in my life—we’re frequently aware of its presence. It walks the hallways like us, although it can’t be seen. We can hear it breathe when it’s nearby.”

  Sophie thought of the footsteps that had stalked her in those lightless moments in the library, and again in the room that had dripped blood. She suppressed a shiver and nodded for Joseph to continue.

  “The second of the bargain’s loopholes was what happened to us after death. The Shadow Being claimed it needed to absorbs the body’s residual energy—what’s left after the spirit has gone—as a source of food. As far as I can tell, that’s accurate, but it’s not the full story. The bodies become re-animated and bent to the creature’s will. They are what attacked you in the forest.”

  She saw Marie lurching out of her wardrobe, sharp teeth exposed, arms stretching towards Sophie’s face. It wore Marie’s face, but it was something entirely different.

  Joseph had finished cleaning the blood away from the cuts and applied a salve. “As these detriments became more and more prominent, many of my ancestors became resentful of the bargain. Here is the third and worst loophole: simply by being born into this family, we are considered part of the Shadow Being’s bargain. If we try to break the contract—if we leave Northwood—we die.”

  “But you came to town,” Sophie said. “You were there for weeks.”

  “And that was the limit of what I could endure. Short excursions from Northwood are permissible, as long as you have the intention of returning. But within a few days, you begin to feel unwell. The sickness increases, and if you don’t heed it and return to the house, you eventually succumb. I was away for exactly three weeks; that’s the longest that has ever been allowed. You remember I had to leave you the same day as our wedding. The sickness had progressed more quickly than I’d expected and forced me to ride almost incessantly to return to Northwood in time.”

  He looked unwell in the carriage, and the innkeeper had expressed concern over his health, but he seemed fine when he greeted me at Northwood’s gates.

  “I told you that many of my ancestors died during a splitting of the house. Two paths of thought had developed—those who believed the bargain was still beneficial and those who thought it a toxic, parasitic relationship and wished to be free. This developed into a war. Two factions, trapped in the same house, with building paranoia and mistrust… a great deal of blood was shed over the course of two mont
hs. At the end of it, very few of them remained. And that’s when the contract began to truly hurt.”

  Joseph paused for a moment as he bandaged Sophie’s arm. During his story, she’d almost forgotten about the cuts. She was surprised to realise she couldn’t feel them any longer.

  “While the family was large, the Shadow Being took the elderly almost exclusively. There was a death every three or four years, and our numbers were easily replenished with new births. We had balance. But with just a dozen Argentons left and only a couple of them able to bear children, the creature began claiming young lives. It needed to feed just as frequently, but there weren’t enough family members left to sustain it. Men and women of all ages—even children—began dying.

  “You can imagine the pain this caused to their survivors. While it had been possible to accept the deaths of the elderly as a natural part of life, it was insufferable to lose those who were still young.”

  Joseph had finished tying the bandage, but his hands lingered on her arm, as though he were reluctant to lose the contact. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I was a child during the second massacre. It was begun by the death of my younger sister, who was only a baby. My mother, a good, sweet woman, was crushed with grief. She rallied almost all of her remaining cousins and siblings to join her in a fight against the monster. They intended to kill it and end the contract. But they failed. Weapons pierced its hide but couldn’t extinguish its life. And its retaliation was swift and brutal.” His eyes fluttered closed. “I was there to see it eat my mother.”

  The pain in his face was almost too much for Sophie to tolerate. “Joseph…”

  He released her arm and sat back on his chair with a bitter smile. “Don’t pity me yet, my dear. You haven’t heard the full story. Give me a moment.”

  She didn’t like the twisted, pained smile he wore. He poured them both fresh tea and sipped his in silence for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was thick but steady. “After the failed resistance, there were only four of us left: myself, Aunt Rose, Uncle Garrett, and his wife, Emily.”

  “Wife? I thought Rose—”

  “Rose is Garrett’s sister. No, don’t be embarrassed—you made a natural assumption about their relationship, and I said nothing to dissuade you from it. It was simpler to not have to explain why both of their partners died young. I shouldn’t have concealed it.”

  “Then Elise…?”

  “Garrett’s wife, Emily, gave birth to Elise six years after my mother’s failed resistance. The Shadow Being hadn’t claimed any lives in that time, but it took Emily during childbirth. Following that, we remaining three—Garrett, Rose, and I—came to an accord: we would not inflict our curse on anyone else. The Shadow Being would take us one by one, and when it was done with us, its reign would end.

  “I believe the creature has realised our numbers are dangerously reduced, which is why it has allowed us to live undisturbed for the twelve years since Emily’s death. It must have hoped one or several of us would marry and produce more heirs. But we haven’t, and it began punishing us for our resistance. For these last four months, it has been tormenting Elise.”

  He stared into his empty teacup as his voice reduced to a raw whisper. “You’ve seen the drawings she’s produced, and I’m sure you’ve noticed how unwell she seems. She wakes screaming from bad dreams. She goes into trances. She’s stopped eating. We were accepting of her death—of all of our deaths—but it won’t come. The message is clear: increase the Argenton family or watch Elise suffer.”

  He broke off and pressed the back of his hand to his lips. Sophie’s heart ached for him; she wanted nothing more than to drop her tea and embrace him, to stroke his brow clear and kiss away his paleness, but she made herself stay still.

  “I wasn’t strong enough to endure it,” he continued. “Watching her suffer day after day while it was within my power to relieve it… so I left for the city with the intention of finding a wife.”

  Sophie couldn’t watch his face anymore. His lips were white, and his black eyes were so full of anger and frustration that it felt like knives slicing through her chest. She focussed on her hands instead.

  “I never intended to choose a gentleman’s daughter. My plan was to find a widow reduced to poverty or a street worker or a lady suffering from an incurable illness—anyone whose life was too miserable for them to have much want of continuing it. But I made a mistake: I took advantage of my brief freedom from Northwood and went to the theatre. And I saw you.”

  She dared to look at him and found the gaze returned. Adoration, want, and regret filled his countenance.

  “You were beautiful. So sweet and gentle. I was captivated. My situation was empty of all of the comfort and joy you seemed to offer. When I looked at you, I imagined what my life could have been like if I weren’t tied to Northwood. I would call on you, attend events with you, and attempt to win your affections.

  “And in a fit of petulant selfishness, I thought, why shouldn’t I have some brief happiness in this bleak existence? Why shouldn’t I enjoy the company of a beautiful woman? And the house knew.” He closed his eyes. “The house knew, and it gave you to me.”

  “The shipping disaster…” Sophie breathed.

  “Yes. I didn’t ask for it to happen. It was never my wish to harm you or your family. When the event was made known to me the morning I was to visit you, I was furious at myself for my weakness the night before. But it was too late to take back; I could have you as my wife and ensure your family were taken care of or I could leave you fortuneless.” He bared his teeth in a humourless smile. “Though I now suspect you might have preferred the latter.”

  Sophie opened her mouth to reply, but she didn’t know what to say. On one side, she would have given almost anything to not have come to Northwood—except cause her family suffering. Her next thought was that she wished she’d never seen Joseph in the first place, but that wasn’t honest, either. The fluttering emotion in her chest was beaten and bleeding, but still, it lived.

  The fire was growing low, so Joseph rose to throw another log on it. He stood with his back to Sophie as he finished his story. “Most of the rest you already know. The house wouldn’t allow me to stay in the city for long, and I dreaded what might happen if I returned to Northwood still unattached, so I married you as quickly as was possible.

  “When I set out to find a wife, my plan had been to give her to the Shadow Being the same night we arrived home. Elise’s suffering would be alleviated, and we would have peace for at least a few more years. But the more I saw of you, the more impossible that seemed. Do you remember our first dinner together, when I became angry at you for finding the red door? I’m sure you saw me shake my head at Garrett. He had been asking if I was to give you up that night. But I couldn’t. And the more I grew to know you, the more agonizing the idea of losing you became.”

  Sophie wrapped the blanket around herself more tightly. “Elise is still suffering. And she’s going to continue to suffer until I die, isn’t she?”

  Joseph lowered his head. The fire silhouetted his black hair, making it seem even darker than normal. “While I was in the city, I heard something that gave me the smallest seed of hope. A gentleman named Crowther was travelling through the region. He was well-known for his research into cryptozoology—that is, the study of creatures that are widely regarded as mythical or fictional. I’ve been in communication with Mr Crowther, but he was extremely reluctant to visit Northwood. Even when I offered him most of my fortune, the closest he would come was the nearby town, where he invited me to meet him at the inn.”

  “That’s why you left,” Sophie breathed.

  “Yes. I had hoped to convince him to return with me to Northwood. I believed he, above anyone else, might have the knowledge and abilities to defeat or expel the Shadow Being.” Joseph finally turned to look at Sophie, but his face was dark. “It was my last hope. If he had been able to help, I could have saved both you and Elise. We could have left Northwood, as you desperate
ly wanted to. I could have put right all that was wrong.”

  “He didn’t come back, though.”

  Joseph grimaced. “When I arrived at his room, I found him dead. I cannot say what from—whether it was one of the seizures I had heard he suffered from, and unrelated to our situation, or if the house’s power had extended to quash him before he could threaten it. I believe it may be the latter, but I hope it was the former. I have enough blood on my hands already.”

  Sophie’s insides felt cold and hollow. She wanted to go to Joseph and feel his arms around her, but she couldn’t muster the energy to rise to her feet. “Is it certain I’m tied to the bargain?”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “By marrying me, you’re now a part of the Argenton family. And the Shadow Being has always taken outsiders—that is, those who marry into the family rather than being born into it—first. As I said earlier, I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I will do everything in my power to protect you.”

  Sophie let her breath out slowly. All of the questions that had haunted her were either nearly or completely answered, but there was one thing she still wanted to know. “When you left to go hunting, you weren’t seeking wolves, were you?”

  “No. There are no wolves. I told you that to keep you away from the forest.” Joseph turned towards the window, where the treetops were barely visible. “The Shadow Being’s pets—the bodies it re-animates—live outside the house. They used to stay in the woods, but since the Shadow Being started punishing Elise, it has allowed the bodies to creep closer to our home. The deer you saw dead below your window was one of their victims. I can’t kill the bodies, but if I break them, they take several days to knit back together. I’ve been hunting them in an attempt to keep them away from you.”

  “How many are there?”

  “More than a hundred Argentons, as well as countless staff members.”

  Sophie’s mind flashed to Marie. “They don’t suffer when the creature takes them, do they?”