The Witch of Willow Hall

by Hester Fox

  “You can’t leave me in here with...with it!”

  So much for “it” being her child. I hurriedly splash my hands with water from the basin, suppressing a shudder at the heap of cloth next to it.

  Catherine fumes, cursing under her breath, but she gives up, sinking back into her bloody sheets. Those will have to be taken care of too without Ada knowing. She’s pale and for a moment I waver in my decision to leave her alone, wondering if she’s in any danger from succumbing to her ordeal. Maybe I should fetch the doctor. Almost as if she’s reading my mind she narrows her eyes. “Fine. But swear to God, Lydia, swear on Emeline’s grave that you will not call the doctor.”

  I wince at her choice of words, but I swear.

  The latch turns in the door downstairs. I force a few calming breaths, check my dress for any remaining streaks of blood and then go down to lie to my mother.

  * * *

  The moon hangs behind a hazy bank of clouds that night, as I wait until the last sounds of the house settle; Ada closing the grates, Father lumbering upstairs after dragging himself away from his study, and then the lighter, swifter steps of Mother following him.

  Mother had been more concerned with the stains on the carpet than the lie I told her about Catherine having a bloody nose. She had asked if she should send for the doctor, but she’d already been looking around for something to clean the blood up with, frowning that Ada had run out of vinegar. I should have known that Mother wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss, that she wouldn’t care enough to take me aside and make sure Catherine was really all right.

  Catherine is fast asleep when I slip into her room, lightly snoring as if she were tired from a day of shopping or dancing at a ball. Anger surges through me. She’s dragged me into another one of her messes and as usual I have to clean it up. I could wake her up, force her to be a party to what I must do now. But as I stand beside her peaceful figure, pale and faintly frowning in the dim moonlight, the anger fades, replaced with pity and guilt. It hasn’t escaped me that the very thing I so longed for, that I was so near to making sure occurred myself, has happened of its own accord. What a horrible coincidence. It doesn’t make me feel any better that I got what I wanted. I let out a weary sigh, and then leave my sister to her sleep.

  * * *

  The night is cold and still, the woods every bit as watchful as the last time I made this trip. My breath comes out in short, white puffs as I struggle up the hill, one arm wrapped around the lifeless bundle, the other clearing thorny brush and dead branches out of my path.

  A sound behind me—or is it in front?—and I stop, holding my breath. The dry rustle of naked branches in the breeze, and the faraway echo of an owl fill the emptiness. I move faster, with purpose. What if someone is following me? Ada or Joe, or even Mr. Barrett? What would he think of me, out here alone with a dead baby in my arms?

  “Emeline?” I whisper out into the darkness. “Emeline, is that you?”

  The only answer is the sweep of breeze that lifts the hem of my skirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  I freeze. My blood goes cold as I slowly turn around. “You.” My voice comes out in a choked whisper. “What do you want?”

  The pale little boy laughs, the unsettling sound that has plagued my dreams and spilled over into my waking moments. He wears the same clothes as in the portrait that hangs over Mr. Barrett’s desk, but they are ragged and sooty. The tip of his nose and fingers are singed black, and he looks at me from lidless eyes that never blink. “I asked you first,” he says, sticking out a scorched tongue. How could I have not seen what has been in front of me all these months? The little boy laughing in my dreams, Emeline’s mysterious friend and Mr. Barrett’s dead little brother are all one and the same.

  Something tells me he already knows what I’m doing. I shift the bundle to my other arm trying to maintain a steady composure. Every instinct in me makes me want to recoil and flee as far and as fast as I can. But I won’t let this little spirit see my fear. “Why are you following me? What do you want?”

  He regards me with eyes that are so like Mr. Barrett’s that I find myself powerless to look away. My anger grows. “You took Emeline from me. You lured her to the pond to have a playmate. Isn’t that enough for you? Why do you continue to plague me?”

  He doesn’t answer me, just launches into an intense fit of coughing. Blood and soot come up, which he spits on the ground. I flinch. Then he turns a terrible grin on me. “You should go away from here and leave John alone. You should go away and never come back.”

  “Why, Moses?” My voice is steady and even, but my heart is pounding against my ribs.

  He laughs again. “Ask John. Ask John what he did and then you’ll see.”

  Before I can ask him what he means, he’s gone. He disappears in the time it takes me to blink. I stand there for another moment, the air around me heavy in its stillness.

  I sprint the rest of the way to the pond, tripping once and clutching the bundle tighter, scraping my palms against an outcropping rock as I brace my fall. Ignoring the stinging, I hang on and keep going. I don’t look back until I reach the clearing, my breath coming in painfully shallow gulps. Moses is nowhere to be seen, and again I almost wonder if it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me, a product of my overburdened mind. I never seem to sleep soundly anymore so it wouldn’t be any wonder. But by now I know that it’s not my imagination, that nothing that has happened to me at Willow Hall has been my imagination. The sooty boy with blistered burns and lidless eyes was as real as what I carry under my arm.

  The pond is visible only by the smallest reflection of clouds on the glassy surface. Before I go any farther I poke around in the dark, and my hand closes around a small rock, then another. I plunge them into the silk folds of the bundle, praying that my hand doesn’t touch what lies within.

  One thing, I tell myself. I just have to do this one thing and then this nightmare will be over. Mr. Barrett will come on Friday and Catherine won’t have reason to interfere anymore. It will all be over.

  I take a deep breath and wade out into the blackness, the icy water nipping my ankles but somehow making me warm. There’s no siren call from the willow this time, no Moses watching me, and when the water reaches my knees, I stop. The air is so thin, so devoid of life that you could hear a lone bird sigh a hundred miles away.

  Carefully, I take the bundle out from under my arm and, closing my eyes, toss it out in front of me. The splash echoes off the trees and rocks, the blanket of clouds. When I open my eyes, only the faintest ripple on the inky black surface betrays that the water has accepted its offering.

  Tuesday

  By some miracle Catherine is already awake the next morning when I stagger downstairs to breakfast. Her face is drawn, her eyes vacant. Her dressing gown hangs limply from her shoulders, and with dawning horror I realize that she’s still wearing her shift from yesterday under it, blood specks visible around the hem when she leans for the teapot.

  I glance at Mother and Father to see if they notice, but Mother is listlessly studying the enamel grapevine border on her plate while she pushes her creamed wheat around with her spoon. Father is buried in his paper, blindly groping for his plate from behind it. If ever there was a day when I wish I could slip into the panoramic wallpaper and its world of gentle sloping banks, carefree ladies in rowboats and picnicking children, it’s this morning.

  “Look here,” Father says without emerging from his newspaper fortress, “the Boston Manufacturing Company is buying up more land in the Merrimack Valley, and they’re paying out dividends of over 27 percent to the investors. Twenty-seven!”

  No one responds, and he goes on muttering to himself, exclaiming that he’ll have to watch those slick Lowell city men in the future.

  Mother catches my eye. “You look pale, Lydia. Did you sleep poorly?”

  “Do I?” I make a bright show
of smiling and taking an extra helping of bacon. It doesn’t help that the crisp meat reminds me of Moses and his burned face. I force myself to swallow a tiny piece and almost gag.

  “Catherine, your color is low too. There’s a fever going round the town, widow Morton has it too. I wonder if I shouldn’t call the doctor.”

  Catherine’s head snaps up and we both exclaim in unison, “No!”

  “Really, we’re fine,” I hurry to reassure Mother. “Just a touch of a sore throat from our walk yesterday. Catherine was saying she had one too, weren’t you, Cath?”

  Catherine raises her gaze slowly to mine, and I give her a weary smile. If nothing else we’re in this together now.

  But instead of understanding, or a silent look of thanks, her eyes meet mine with a malice so intense that my blood instantly goes cold.

  I silently mouth “What?” but Catherine turns her nose up and looks away.

  Mother sighs. “I hope it’s not catching. I’ve been feeling rather tired lately.”

  Father finds her hand from behind his paper and gives it a pat. “You really ought to rest, my dear. No more of this calling on sick widows, it isn’t good for your constitution. Why don’t you go have a nice lie-down?”

  Mother opens her mouth as if to say something, but closes it and nods. “Yes,” she says, pushing her chair back. “Perhaps that’s a good idea. Excuse me.”

  “I’ll bring you up a cup of tea soon,” I tell her, thinking of the mint I harvested and how that might be a nice addition to a hot drink. She gives me a thin smile before disappearing to her room.

  Catherine glares at me from across the table. “You and your tea.”

  “What?”

  She flickers a glance to Father who’s still absorbed in land deals and dividends, then scrapes her chair back and stands. Her arms are wobbly and she has to brace her weight against the table. “Don’t play stupid with me, Lydia,” she hisses.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Then, without a word of explanation, she bolts out of the room.

  26

  “CATHERINE?”

  I catch up to her in the front hall, where she’s leaning against the stairs, face cradled in her hands. When she hears me coming she jerks her head up, hastily wiping away a tear.

  I know I should leave well enough alone, but she looks so small, so pathetic with her uncombed hair and stained shift. She lost so much blood yesterday that I can’t help but be worried for her, and that’s to say nothing of what must be going through her head right now, the hollowness of her loss.

  She glares at me from red-rimmed eyes. “What do you want?”

  I ignore the razor-sharp hostility in her words. “I’m sorry about...about what happened yesterday. Really, I am.” I reach out and touch her on the shoulder. She violently shrugs off my hand.

  “You’re sorry,” she repeats tonelessly, studying the carpet. Then, lifting her eyes to mine, she takes a deep breath, raises her hand back and, with surprising strength, smacks me clean across my cheek.

  Gasping, I stand there, too stunned to do anything except rub my stinging face. “What was that for?”

  “You know exactly what it’s for,” she hisses.

  I wince, vaguely wondering if it will leave a mark, and if it does, if it will dissolve by Friday. “No, I don’t.”

  Glaring, she leans in so close that I can smell the lingering odor of blood, of sickness, of death that wreathes her. The front hall shrinks around us and grows quiet, the only sound the faint clinking of dishes as Ada clears the table in the dining room. Catherine’s words fall into the silence like steaming coals.

  “You murdered my child.”

  The accusation knocks me back, sucks the air right out of me. I reach for the sideboard behind me, steadying myself. “Catherine,” I whisper. “How can you say that?”

  “Admit it,” she says, jabbing her finger into my chest, backing me farther up against the sideboard. “I saw you out poking around your herbs. You thought you could slip me something in my tea and I wouldn’t know. You make me sick.”

  Blood rushes to my head. My face must be red as fire and it feels just as hot. I can’t get my words out around my suddenly thick tongue. “N-no! I would never.”

  Her eyes narrow to slits. I shrink under her penetrating gaze, hopelessly aware that my guilt must be written on my face plain as day. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t go through with it; I thought about it, I prayed for the same outcome, and coincidence or not, the baby is dead.

  I bite my lip, unable to meet her eye. “You never even drank the tea.” I feel rather than see the bitter, triumphant tilt of her chin.

  “I knew it! For all your downcast lashes and moral high ground, you’re just as bad as the rest of us. Worse even, because you really believe you’re a good person. All the while you’re skulking around, plotting against me and my innocent baby.”

  “That’s not fair. I don’t—”

  “Oh, shut up, just shut up! I know what you are even if you don’t see it yourself. Did you know that I watched you that day with Tommy Bishop? I saw you from the window, the whole thing. You never laid a finger on that boy. Everyone else came running around after it was over and thought it was a street fight between two little brats, but I saw it all and you never touched him, not with your hands.”

  My skin prickles cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her voice is low, deceptively steady. “Maybe you didn’t put something in my tea, but there’s something wrong with you, something different inside of you. You used whatever...” she searches for a word “...power you used on Tommy Bishop, on me to kill my baby. Have you forgotten that I was there at the pond? That sound that came out of you, it wasn’t...human.”

  Snippets of memories, incomplete pictures from that long-ago day flash across my mind: matted fur and blood, the film of red behind my eyes as I found Tommy Bishop in the street, a pressure building and rising inside of me until my hands tingled and my body vibrated. The same sensations I felt when Emeline died and I wanted to strike out against Mr. Barrett and the pond churned with my rage. My stomach lurches and I push the memories away.

  Catherine is watching me. “You’re evil,” she says with something between awe and disgust. “You’re really evil and you don’t even realize it.”

  My last vestiges of guilt fade as her accusations break against me like waves, one after the other. I draw myself up taller, moving away from the sideboard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, firmer this time.

  Catherine stands her ground. “Yes, you do!” Her voice is rising, her words cracking with hysteria. “You wanted my baby dead. You thought it was an abomination and you’re glad that it died!”

  At one time I might have held back, but the words erupt out of me now, a swift torrent of bad feelings, barely suppressed grudges and untold truths held below the surface for too long.

  “Of course I’m glad that it died! That thing would have ruined our lives. I saw it, and it wasn’t even a baby, it was...grotesque! It was unnatural from the very moment of its conception. How can you possibly think it would have been born healthy and right?”

  Her face drains of color and she takes a shaky step back, as if she had never even for a moment considered this. But then her eyes narrow and she regains her balance. When she speaks it’s low and dangerous, like a snake in tall grass, ready to strike its prey. “You. Little. Bitch. My child was conceived in love. You think the world is black-and-white, that because Charles is my brother he couldn’t possibly love me in any other way. You could never possibly understand what he and I shared, and now you’ve taken away the only thing I had left of him.”

  “You’re disgusting. You—”

  She lets out a shrill, piercing, laugh. “Oh, grow up. You’re almost nineteen and you act like you’re still in the nursery. Playi
ng make-believe with Emeline was one thing, but she’s gone and you can’t seem to shake your fantasy world. Maybe someday you’ll learn that in the real world happiness doesn’t just fall into your lap, that you have to go out and take it for yourself, like me. But until then, by all means sit inside lost in your silly novels and pining away over the man you love and don’t have a clue how to get.”

  “Maybe because I’m too busy trying to clean up your messes to be able to even think of anything besides keeping this family together. Do you have any idea how much I’ve done for you? The things I’ve sacrificed to make sure that your careless, disgusting behavior didn’t ruin us completely?”

  “And did I ask you to do anything, Lydia? Did I?”

  “Of course not, you were too busy opening your legs at every chance you got and—”

  Catherine laughs again. “Do you know what your problem is? You think you’re some sort of martyr, that the world is broken and only you can fix it.”

  “Trust me, I wish someone else would take some responsibility. Like Charles. Where is he in all this? If you love each other so much, how come you aren’t with him? He must know you hate it here, must know that you were carrying his child. Mother might turn a blind eye, but don’t think I don’t see you posting letters to London all the time. So why hasn’t he sent for you? What’s keeping you here?”

  Catherine’s face freezes, and then she turns away, curling her fingers around the balusters of the stairs. “That’s none of your business,” she murmurs.

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “None of my business? How can you possibly say that after yesterday?”

  She spins back to face me, emerald eyes flashing. “Because he abandoned me, that’s why! Don’t you think I’d rather be anywhere than stuck in this godforsaken place with you?”

  She looks as if she instantly regrets divulging this. “Oh,” I say, taken aback. “I didn’t know.”

  “Oh, what do you care?” Catherine runs an impatient hand through her tangled hair. “I got a letter from him a couple of weeks ago. He’s met some English whore, a dancer, and he’s going to marry her. He told me before I had a chance to write about the baby.”