The Witch of Willow Hall

by Hester Fox

  The bottom is slippery and rotten; my toes curl around the slick rocks as I move farther out into the black. Water laps at my chin. I open my mouth. Putrid, stale. Oh, Emmy. I close my eyes. Stifling silence closes in around me, the steady chorus of peepers and owls far away and muffled as I slip below the surface. The only sound is the beating of my own heart, steady and unafraid.

  It’s peaceful, but in an awful, greedy sort of way. The night, the water, they want to take me. They want to swallow me up until I’m nothing more than a sigh, a forgotten secret. And I want to let them. Come, Lydia. There is nothing for you above, but down here you can have her again. You can be with your sister, forever.

  Slip away. How easy it is. Why is the darkness so feared in favor of light? In the day everything is laid bare, the truth naked and ugly for what it is. But in the darkness everything is possible. It is pure, forgiving. I can forget.

  Let go, Lydia.

  I let my fingers float out in front of me. The water softens everything. My vision blurs, my need for air replaced with my need to be with her. I’m so close. Only a little farther, a little longer, and everything will be all right.

  * * *

  A jolt. Something grabbing around my arms, hard. The silence gives way to a deafening roar as the force pulls me backward, upward, water rushing around me. I was so close. Just a little farther and I could have reached out and touched her, her auburn hair swirling around her pale face like a halo.

  I gasp, water and slime choking out of me as my body betrays me and fights for air. Darkness explodes with light. Arms tighten around me, lifting me despite my wet dress weighing me down.

  My body is lead and my lungs ache, but I’m not ready to come back. Blind panic takes over and I thrash out. My only thought is that I must get free. I must get free and find Emeline at any cost.

  “Lydia! For Christ’s sake, stop!”

  Mr. Barrett. My ears are clogged but his voice comes through sharp and familiar. I stop struggling, hoping that I still might be able to slip from his grasp and into the depths of the pond.

  But he locks his arms tighter around my waist, pulling me back to the shore, half swimming, half trudging in the thick water. Pondweeds wind around my ankles, loath to let me go. Every step back to shore is like a broken promise to Emeline.

  When we reach solid ground we collapse in a heaving tangle of limbs. As soon as I feel the damp earth beneath me, all my strength, all my fight, dissolves from my body. I’m deflated, empty. I failed in the one thing I thought I could control.

  The willow holds its tongue, and the night becomes ordinary again. Mr. Barrett lets go, rolling over onto his back, his breathing heavy and ragged, a limp arm draped over my stomach. To think of all the times I imagined his closeness, his touch, and this is how it has happened. I could almost laugh. I turn my head, the dirt cool against my cheek as I struggle to bring the world back into focus. Moonlight streaks pale and fleeting through breaks in the clouds, softening the edges of Mr. Barrett’s profile in the darkness. There’s a dark stain under his nose—blood?—and his hair is matted down to his cheeks. A pang of guilt runs through me.

  My throat is burning and I don’t think I’ll ever get the taste of slime out of my mouth. Rolling over, I retch. It’s not just the taste I am frantic to rid myself of, but the failure, the realization that I’m still here.

  When he’s regained his breath, Mr. Barrett sits up and rakes his hair back with shaking hands. “Christ,” he says, softly. He turns to me, peering through the dark, and I’m sure the moonlight is betraying the shame written all over my face. Why did he have to come? Why do I have to suffer this embarrassment on top of everything else? It could have all been over by now. I turn my face away, wishing the pond was an ocean like the day when I screamed and screamed, that it would lap up the small bank and pull me back in its receding tide. But the placid water just shimmers, dark and still.

  “You’re shaking,” he says, more to himself than me. I can’t feel anything, but there’s a warm, metallic taste in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue from chattering. His coat lays crumpled on a rock, as if thrown off in a hurry and forgotten. He slowly hefts himself up, grunting at some injury, and stumbles over to retrieve it.

  He steps over my shoes and stockings, arranged so neatly, smug that they would never be worn again. Seeing them like that, empty and still needed, cracks open something deep inside of me. Despite my hoarse throat and lingering breathlessness, a broken wail cracks out of me, followed by a torrent of tears. It’s nothing like the scream the evening Emeline died; this wail is mine and mine alone. It doesn’t churn the water or send clouds scudding across the sky. It is my misery and grief distilled into a single, plaintive note.

  Mr. Barrett doesn’t say anything as my sobs gradually subside into miserable hiccups, he simply sits me up and wraps the coat around my shoulders. When I’m snugged tighter than a mummy, he stays crouched beside me, cupping my face in his hands and brushing a stray tear away with his thumb.

  “I know, I know. There now, you’ll be all right,” he says with unbearable tenderness. “Everything will be all right.”

  How I wish I could believe him. How I wish I could lean into his warm, capable hands and let all my problems fall away from me. But he can’t know that everything will be all right, and his words promising otherwise are the kind that a parent offers to a child with a scraped knee—meant to comfort, but without any real meaning behind them. If only he hadn’t come.

  Crying has left me hoarse and it’s hard to form my words, but I can’t stop myself. He leans down to hear me, so close that my lips nearly graze his ear.

  “You saved the wrong sister.”

  Slowly, he pulls back. His face contorts in something like pain, a spreading realization of betrayal as if he were Caesar and I Brutus. I want him to reproach me for saying such a terrible thing, or to rush to assure me otherwise even if it’s not true. Anything. But he just levels a long, unreadable look at me. When he does speak it’s softly, with words so heavy with pity and disappointment that I think I will die of shame.

  “Oh, Lydia.”

  He stands up, and I suppose he’s finally had enough of me. It must be time to go home. I close my eyes, curling my fingers into the loamy dirt. At home there will be questions, more hurt looks.

  He doesn’t say anything else as he scoops me up, draping my arm behind his neck, his trembling hands digging into my flesh. His shirt is cold and wet, but underneath his chest is warm. I’m exhausted, my body inside out and spent, but still he clutches me as if I might try to escape back into the pond.

  The breeze sighs with regret. I crane my neck back, watching as the water recedes into the night, indistinct and black. It might not have claimed my life in the end, but as I let my head fall against Mr. Barrett’s chest, his heartbeat strong and fast against my ear, I know that nothing will ever be the same again.

  My eyes are heavy and tired, but just before they close, I catch a glimmer of movement. Emeline.

  She stands beside the water, still as a little statue. This isn’t the mirage of a desperate mind, or imaginings, delusions, visions. She’s there, as real as anything. The whispered promises that drew me to the pond were not hollow.

  I open my mouth to call out to her, to beg her to give me some sign that she sees me, but my throat is too hoarse, too dry. When Mr. Barrett feels me renewing my struggles, he tightens his grip, his fingers curling into my wet clothes. It’s no use. I’m spent of energy, and so I watch Emeline grow smaller and smaller until the night swallows her whole.

  16

  EMELINE. EMELINE IS DEAD, but she is not gone. It was her, I know in my heart of hearts that it was. The pale lady, the writing in the mirror, the voices on the wind...if they are all real, then why not the vision of my dear sister? My mind swirls with questions, my heart swells with hope. Will I see her again? Why has she come back?

  The
pile of books I keep by my bed has nearly doubled over the past few days. I can’t seem to read anything cover to cover, growing distracted with thoughts of Emeline and abandoning the stories I used to love after only a few pages. I run my fingers across the softened paper, the black letters jumbled and meaningless, but the musty book smell is comforting. When I think that I might never have held a book again...

  I chuck aside the German ballad Lenore with a sigh. The first time I read it, the heroine’s midnight horseback ride with her lover sent delicious chills down my spine. But now I know that the man she thinks is her William returned from war is nothing more than Death in disguise, and he’s bearing her away not to their wedding bed, but to her grave.

  Something wet presses against my arm and I jump. Snip stares back up at me with imploring eyes, giving me another nudge with his nose and then looking under the bed. His little wood ball is stuck. With a sigh, I heave myself out of bed and get it for him, watching him scamper over the clutter, upending my sewing basket and a pile of books as he goes.

  It’s been three days since Mr. Barrett carried me back in silence from the pond, and I haven’t left my room since. Ada helped me into bed that night. Mr. Barrett explained to Mother that he’d been cutting through the woods back to his house when he found me walking. He said that I must not have seen the water in the dark and accidentally stumbled in. Mother didn’t say anything, but I caught the long, meaningful look that passed between them.

  The next morning, Mother had come by to ask me how I was feeling, her tone cold, skirting what she knew to be the truth. I waited for her to come sit on the bed with me, brush the hair from my forehead as she used to do when I was little. But she just stood in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her tiny waist, staring in at me as if I were a stranger in her daughter’s room. “What were you thinking, Lydia? How could you?”

  It had all seemed so clear at the time, like it was the only natural thing to do. I haven’t let myself think too much about my rescue, but now as I remember the way that Mr. Barrett looked at me in the moonlight, the way I fought him in the water, I let out a little whimper that becomes a groan. How many times will he have to bear the marks of my anger? How can I ever repay him? How can I erase the terrible way I acted? And that’s to say nothing of what I saw—who—I saw standing beside the water as Mr. Barrett carried me away.

  A knock at the door pulls me out of my thoughts. I want to tell them to go away, but before I can say anything, the door opens and in glides Catherine.

  She stops short at the foot of the bed, a look of surprise when she sees me. “Oh,” she says. “You’re awake.” Snip stops chewing his ball to cast a reproachful eye at her. “I... I thought you would be sleeping. I just came to bring you these.” She holds out a little bouquet of parched flowers.

  I give her a short nod of thanks, feeling as on guard as Snip.

  “You look awful,” she says casually, the way one might comment on the weather, but she catches my expression and tries again. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes, a little.” I could say she doesn’t look so wonderful herself, but it wouldn’t be true. She’s fresh and radiant this morning, dewy skinned and bright eyed. The clean, sweet smell of lavender in the bouquet makes her seem even more out of place in my messy, stale room. When I don’t say anything, she sighs and sits down, arranging herself amid the folds of her crisp, white morning dress.

  A smile tugs at the corner of my sister’s lips as she stares out the window, her eyes unseeing as a light rain begins to fall. Here I thought I was going to get a lecture or a few cold words, not silence. We haven’t spoken since the other night, and it’s been a welcome stay of execution. What could we possibly say to each other after her revelation, and her behavior toward Mr. Barrett?

  “Yes?”

  Catherine comes to her senses with a little jolt, as if forgetting she was the one who came to me, and the bouquet slips from her hand. She bends down to retrieve the flowers and puts them in a vase by the window. “I cut these from your garden. It’s been cold the last few nights and I wasn’t sure how much longer they would last out there.” She slants me a curious look. “It seems a little late for plants to be growing, but what do I know.”

  My poor garden. I’ve neglected it for weeks, long before I took refuge in my room, and the lavender and coneflowers stare back at me accusingly from the window. Weeding and cutting things back for the coming frosts should be a good reason to start getting out of the house—out of bed, for that matter—yet every day when it comes down to it I just can’t find the will.

  When the flowers are arranged to her satisfaction she sits back down, hands fidgeting in her lap now that she doesn’t have anything to hold. “I... How are you feeling, really?”

  “What do you care?” I say coldly.

  The smile vanishes and Catherine’s face darkens. She seems to struggle with what she’s about to say, opening and closing her mouth several times and staring into her lap. “I was wrong. I’m sorry, Lyd. Really. I shouldn’t have said those things the other night. I...” She looks up, and must see my skepticism because her bottom lip comes out in a pout, reminiscent of Emeline. She doesn’t mention her behavior toward Mr. Barrett, how she all but threw herself at him. “Look, you’re not making this easy for me.”

  Of course I’m not going to make this easy for her. I’ve been living with a deviant this whole time. The Catherine I thought I knew was bad enough, but that was nothing compared to what I know her to be now. Catherine’s condition and what it means might make me sick, but finding a solution to it is the only way to save our family further humiliation. I will never, ever be able to truly forgive her, but I will act the part for the sake of what’s left of our family. I take a deep breath.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I force myself to say the words.

  Catherine looks up sharply, mouth parted, as if she was already prepared to argue. But then she nods and goes on, her voice dropping as she wrings her hands in her lap. I try not to stare at her stomach. “When I saw Mr. Barrett coming back with you the other night and you were... You looked like Emeline that day, all wet and limp. And you didn’t even care. You looked like you wish he hadn’t found you, and I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear it if you died, Lyd. Maybe we’ll never be friends, but that doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

  “We may never be friends, but you don’t want me dead,” I echo, amused.

  She pouts. “Look, I—”

  I wave off her objections with a tired hand. “I know. Thank you.” I have a hard time believing this revelation of hers will last long, but I’m too weary to spar with her. “Is that what you’re smiling about?”

  “Was I?” She looks down and compulsively smooths a hand over her stomach. “I had a note from Mr. Pierce come by messenger.” She looks up conspiratorially, her green eyes dancing with excitement. “He not only sent his regrets about having to leave early and missing the dance, but also some very pretty lines about...well...” She trails off with a dreamy look.

  “I’m glad, Catherine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” It will give Mother a reason to be happy, or at least, to save her from further heartache. It’s at least one fewer thing to worry about, and perhaps now Catherine can leave Mr. Barrett alone.

  Catherine takes out a piece of paper worn with folding and unfolding. “He says he has to go to Boston but he’ll be back in one or two weeks’ time. Apparently, his mother has rallied and is expected to live after all.” She puts down the letter and frowns. “The woman sounds awful. I hope she doesn’t try to talk him out of a proposal. But if all goes well I think we could be married within the month. Just think, a wedding to plan!”

  I’ll never understand her. How can she claim to feel such a passionate love for one man and still sound so honestly excited about a marriage proposal from another? But I suppose the pressure of her situation is stro
nger than anything else at the moment, and if I know one thing about Catherine, it’s that her vanity runs deep. Flattering, pretty words, no matter whom they’re from, are as necessary to her as water and sunlight are to a growing plant.

  She rises to leave, smoothing her skirts, the corners of her mouth lifting as she continues scanning the letter, and I watch her float out of the room in a cloud of dreams and grand plans for the future.

  * * *

  It’s cooled considerably in the past few days, summer gracefully bowing out as autumn claims her throne. After Catherine leaves I feel a bit lighter, like I’ve made a first step in the right direction. Getting some fresh air in the room would be another good step, so I force myself out of bed and throw my shoulder against the protesting window.

  No sooner does the window gasp open than the sound of footsteps and voices float up from the drive. I can’t see him from this angle, but I instantly know who’s speaking. A moment later Ada is knocking at my door, peeping her head inside.

  “It’s Mr. Barrett, miss. Your mother is trying to send him away, but he’s insistent, saying he must see you.” She casts a glance at the messy room, my disheveled hair, and looks at me expectantly. “I thought you might want to know.”

  I’m up in a flash, wrapping a clean shawl over the dress I’ve been wearing for three days straight, and sweeping my greasy hair up into a loose bun. “Thank you, Ada.”

  She’s already gone, and then the sound of brisk footsteps clipping down the hall grows closer, accompanied by frantic murmurs. A moment later Mr. Barrett is striding through the door, Mother hot on his heels. Snip gives a joyful yelp and forgets his ball when he sees his favorite person.

  “Mr. Barrett, please. She hasn’t been well. I—”

  Mr. Barrett stops abruptly, nearly tripping as Snip weaves between his legs. I stiffen when I see the dried cut on his lip and the bluish red bruise on his cheekbone, realizing that both were my doing. He’s vibrating with silent energy like a violin string long after the note has died, and I can hardly blame him. Now that I’m out of immediate danger he must be furious with me.