by Kelly Creagh
The most obvious disfigurement of all, however, was the crack that zigzagged from the crown of the structure down to its very base, effectively splitting the house into two. One side, the right side, stood straight, bricks and windows in solid order. But the left side tilted downward, the second-story window askew, like a sorrowful eye.
Isobel stopped between a pair of trees that occupied the very place where the front sidewalk should have been. She looked up, seeking Varen’s bedroom window through the tangle of limbs, and saw a tall shadow slide by. It passed quickly, but she would know its shape anywhere.
“Varen,” she whispered, and hurried onto the sloping porch. But as soon as she touched the doorknob, an unexpected sound caused her to pull back.
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Music. Piano music. It came muffled through the door, the lullaby drifting out in lingering tones.
Isobel set her hand on the doorknob again. As she did so, she felt the metal twitch beneath her fingertips. She heard a sliding back, followed by the clunk of the heavy metal deadbolt. Then the door drifted slowly and silently open, moving inward on its own.
A screen of pure darkness greeted her.
Like the house itself, the blackness that pulsated within seemed somehow alive, made of the same substance she had seen churning on the ceiling of Poe’s hospital room. It was the same murk that had stolen out of thin air to wrap its way around Varen during the Grim Facade, pulling him into its depths.
Isobel listened as the piano music continued to flow forth from beyond the sheet of darkness.
She hesitated, wondering if following the music through the black miasma was exactly what Lilith wanted her to do. Lifting a hand to the hamsa at her throat, Isobel wrapped her fist around the amulet.
Even if this was a trap, she thought, what other choice did she have?
She stepped into the house.
As she moved through the doorway, she felt the blanket of shadows engulf her. Black smoke tendrils slithered over her. Like tentacles, they wrapped their way around her arms and waist. She felt them pull her inward.
The darkness smudged her surroundings into nothing as the piano music became garbled in her ears. Though it grew louder for an instant, closer, the notes themselves began to tremble and shudder. They warbled and echoed, almost as though she’d been plunged far underwater.
Then, as suddenly as they had taken hold, the shadows released her.
Like a thick fog, they receded from her, leaving her standing in the foyer of Varen’s house, a few clinging wisps slithering over her now-bare shoulders and arms.
Glancing down, she found herself wearing a dress of pure ebony, her gritted and ash-caked clothes, along with Varen’s jacket, having vanished. A pair of black slippers took the place of her boots.
Wham! The earsplitting crack of the door slamming shut behind her made Isobel swing around. She watched the lock’s brass thumb latch twist itself to one side, the deadbolt sliding into place once more.
Isobel backed away from the door, layers of stiff fabric rustling around her legs.
Like the pale pink dress she had worn to the Grim Facade, this dress had a strapless bodice and a set of full skirts that ended at her knees. But without the frills and lace fringe of the former, this one seemed to be its dark opposite.
She did not have to strain to remember where she had seen it before. It had been worn by the corpse lying on the lid of the sarcophagus in her vision of the blue crypt.
Her corpse.
Isobel’s hand sprang to her cheek, the silken satin ends of her ribbon, still tied to her wrist, brushing against her arm. She touched the scratch Pinfeathers had left, realizing that it, too, had appeared on the body.
A sudden clang of piano keys made her jump.
“No, no,” came a woman’s soft voice from somewhere behind her. “Not a C there. How about a D instead?”
The music began again, and Isobel turned to face the reversed interior of Varen’s house.
White sheets covered all the furniture. Black draperies hung from the windows.
Above, weak violet light flickered from a flame-lit chandelier with no chain. It hovered over her head, suspended by an invisible force, the crystal prisms and pendalogues jagged and broken.
To her right, the stairs that led up through the rest of the house looked loose and dilapidated. Glancing to her left, she saw that the sliding doors to the parlor were closed. Through the long slit that separated the wooden panels, however, she could just make out the edge of the piano as well as someone sitting at its bench.
The floor creaked beneath her as she drew nearer to the doors.
She heard the melody stutter, stop, and start again.
This time, a woman’s soft humming accompanied the haunting tune.
Isobel crept closer and closer, pausing only when she saw a flash of light from the corner of her eye. Her attention snapped to the painting on the wall. It hung above the sheeted hallway table that held the model of a schooner, now bedecked with black sails.
For a moment, the painting within the gilded frame appeared to be nothing more than a canvas of pure black. Another flash, however, revealed otherwise. A bolt of lightning contained within the square frame flickered to illuminate an old-fashioned ship as it tossed about on choppy nighttime waters. The fierce waves in the painting rolled and swelled, the whole tumultuous scene fluttering in and out of sight as the lightning continued to flare in the background. It lit the tar-colored underbellies of the clouds as well as the ship itself, which seemed as small as a toy amid the storm-tossed seas.
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Isobel caught the name GRAMPUS across the ship’s stern during one long barrage of lightning strikes.
Then the humming from within the parlor changed to singing, and her attention returned once more to the pair of sliding pocket doors.
Quickly she slipped to stand just in front of the drawn panels, peeking through the slim space in between.
She saw a pair of elegant hands wandering over the white keys as the music rose and fell, every note melding with the woman’s wispy voice to create a liquid sound.
“Sleep now a little while
Till within our dreams we wake
Unfolding our Forever
If only for Never’s sake. ”
Inside the ornate and orderly room, an eerily familiar scene unfolded before her. The old-fashioned decorations and the stately piano, the woman’s elegant violet evening gown, the glittering comb in her hair—it all matched what had played on the TV that night she’d found Pinfeathers in her living room. And the comb. It was identical to the one she’d found in the box beneath the stairs at Nobit’s Nook.
“And take me to your ever after
Let’s hide behind our eyes
Together pour through that door
Where autumn never dies. ”
Isobel pressed her palms to the wooden doors. She leaned in, bringing her eye even closer to the slit.
“And I’ll sift my sands to your side
Before we slip away
Before we’re little more than silt
Beneath the rocking waves—”
All at once, the music stopped. The woman at the piano snapped her head toward Isobel, her emerald eyes lit from within by fear and surprise.
Isobel’s breath caught in her throat.
The woman scooted to the edge of the piano seat. She placed a hand on the keyboard cover and tensed, as though preparing to throw it down.
When their eyes met through the crack, however, the woman’s trepidation fell away in an instant, replaced with a soft smile of relief and even gladness. Her face was one Isobel had seen before in a faded and bent photograph.
“Hello there,” Varen’s mother said, speaking to Isobel through the gap. “It’s okay. You can come in. I shouldn’t play so late. Did I wake you? Do you want to hear the rest of our
song? It’s almost finished. Here. Let me sing you the last verse. ”
Isobel frowned, realizing she’d heard this voice speak these same words once before. Along with the song, they’d played in this exact order over the gramophone in the dreamworld version of the bookshop.
When the woman swiveled toward the piano again, Isobel began to understand that whatever she was witnessing, it wasn’t happening in real time. Like the vision of Poe in the hospital, she was seeing a moment from the past being replayed.
Just like . . . just like a memory.
Madeline’s lips parted as she lifted her hands to the keys. Once more, music swelled, filling the room.
“And side by side we’ll fight the tide
That sweeps in to take us down,
And hand in hand we’ll both withstand
Even as we drown. ”
The final notes, deep and resonant, reverberated through the door, sending a barely perceptible vibration through Isobel’s hands. For several long seconds, Madeline remained still, staring at the keys as though they had done something she hadn’t expected them to.
“I don’t know,” she said, half mumbling to herself. “Do you think that last part’s too sad? Here, let me play you the whole thing, and you tell me what you think. ”
The song began again.
Hooking her fingers in the brass grooves set into the doors, Isobel tried to pull them apart. They refused to budge, however, so she spread her feet, angling for a better grip, and then tugged again.
All at once, the wooden panels flew open with a bang. The piano music halted.
Madeline was gone.
The room now stood empty and wrecked, the furniture toppled and strewn about. The tattered curtains, pulled free from their decorative tassel ropes, hung limp over the tall black-paned windows. The overturned piano bench lay on its side, reams of loose sheet music spilling from under its hinged lid.
Black notes, all hand drawn, dotted the thin lines of musical staves, their corresponding lyrics written beneath in a looping and elegant hand.
Behind the piano, scattered and broken picture frames lined the built-in shelves, though none of the frames, save for one, actually held any images or photos. Like the windows, the frames had all been blacked out, except for the picture that sat in the very middle of the center shelf in an oval frame. It was a portrait of Madeline, a larger copy of the photo Isobel had found at Nobit’s Nook.
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Except the more she looked at this picture, the more it seemed to change.
Going to the shelves, Isobel took the frame between both hands. She held the life-size oval portrait out in front of her, studying the contours of the woman’s face as they shifted and morphed, as though the portrait’s subject couldn’t seem to decide how she wanted to look.
Then the image began to dissolve, eaten through by another. In its place, Isobel’s own face appeared, complete with the angry red slit that now marked her right cheek.
Isobel took in a sharp breath as details of the room’s dilapidated interior—the doorway, the hall, and the chandelier—began to fill in around her reflection until it became evident that in place of a picture frame, she now held a mirror.
“Memories,” came a melodious voice from behind her. “They are the cobwebs of the mind. ”
Isobel whirled, dropping the mirror, which shattered with a deafening crash as it hit the floor, shards flying out to scatter across the wood.
The owner of the voice stood just outside the parlor entry, her lithe and luminous veil-swathed figure framed by the wide doorway. Isobel had not seen her there in the mirror.
“You can try and sweep them away,” Lilith went on, her dark lips moving behind the translucent screen of gauzy fabric. “But it seems as if some trace always remains. ”
Isobel watched her without budging, a numbness spreading its way through her, causing her skin to prickle and her entire body to hum with a terror that had not quite clicked within her brain yet.
“You—you don’t have a reflection,” she murmured.
“Though it would appear as if you have two,” Lilith replied, smiling a small, close-lipped smile. “At least in his mind. ”
Isobel swallowed. Knowing Lilith meant Varen, she forced out her next words. “Where is he?”
“Occupied. ”
“If you won’t tell me,” Isobel said, taking a step toward the doorway, a step toward the demon, “then I’ll find him myself. ”
“I would welcome you to look all you like,” Lilith said, and strode forward as well, passing through the doorway and into the parlor.
Distracted by the odd clicking noise Lilith’s feet made when they came in contact with the hardwood floor, Isobel glanced down. Bird’s feet, she realized with horror as she laid eyes on the enormous scaly black talons that peeked out from beneath the hem of the demon’s gossamer robes.
“But the fact is,” Lilith went on, “you would never find what you seek. I’m afraid it no longer exists. Just as will soon be the case with you. ”
Isobel looked up again to see that the closer Lilith came, the more gaunt and inhuman she began to appear through the transparent barrier of her veil. With every step toward her, the white flesh of Lilith’s cheeks sank farther inward to reveal the contours of her skull, her lips shriveling back to expose rows of tiny needle-thin teeth. Her nose dissolved into a hole while her eyes, hollowing, became sunken pits lit by two distant pinpricks of light.
Isobel staggered back, her leg catching on the overturned piano bench. She fell, sprawling onto her side, and landed among the broken shards of mirror, which winked at her, reflecting light from the foyer’s floating chandelier. But the glow trapped within those shards was not violet, but a warm amber.
And in the closest shard, one that lay nearest to her hand, there was something else, too. A face.
Isobel met the familiar woman’s startled gaze and the lady paused for an instant, her straight blond hair draped forward around her features as if, somewhere on the reality side of the mirror, she was bending or stooping to pick something up. Just when Isobel recognized the woman as Varen’s stepmother, a large black talon slammed over the shard, crushing it.
Isobel looked up to see the hideous thing that was Lilith looming over her.
Lifting a hand to the veils that covered her face, her skin no longer milky smooth but chalk white and tightly stretched, the creature pulled free the gauze with clawed fingers. Her ebony hair tumbled around her now racklike shoulders. Scraggly and thin, it began to fall out in stringy clumps.
Isobel pushed herself backward, scrambling over the glass-sprinkled floorboards. When her spine met with the base of the bookshelves, she grasped at her throat for the hamsa.
Lilith laughed, a sound that was altogether girlish.
“You think your silly talisman will save you?” the demon asked, her eyes flicking to Isobel’s necklace. She raised her hand again, this time reaching for Isobel’s clenched fist, her fingers moving to hover just over the hand that held the amulet.
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Isobel made no move, even though her heart thundered in her chest. For a moment, she feared that the thing standing before her, this gruesome creature, more ghoul now than woman, would snatch the necklace free with her skeletal finger, toss it aside, and rip into her with her awful teeth.
Instead Lilith’s hand began to quiver, her outstretched fingers stopping just short of Isobel. Then, like paper caught by a wayward flame, they began to wither and flake. A flicker of pain crossed her now-monstrous features as her hand began to crumple, her fingers curling back on themselves before dissolving into ash.
Those twin points of light widened as they continued to bore into Isobel. Vines of blackness climbed up Lilith’s neck and jawbone, her cheeks and forehead, appearing like black reeds on her pasty complexion.
“It won’t,” the demon said, her
voice no longer sensuous or girlish, but deep-throated and low, like that of a beast that had somehow learned to speak. “I don’t have to touch you to destroy you. I have . . . other means for that. ”
As she dragged back her clawed bird’s feet, the train of Lilith’s white garments whispered against the floor. Isobel stared as the demon made her way through the parlor doorway, where someone else now stood—a man.
Lilith went around him, her hand, rejuvenated and once more white and flawless, passing across his chest. Smiling, her dark beauty having returned, Lilith glanced over her shoulder at Isobel.
“She would make a nice addition to my ever-growing collection of the lost, don’t you think, Gordon?” she said to the man. “Kill her. And then, before she comes to, before she awakens and realizes what has become of her, I want you to place her in my old quarters. I think you know where I mean. ”
With that, Lilith disappeared around the corner, leaving Isobel with a man she had seen earlier that night. It was the very same man whose face she’d unmasked in the Baltimore cemetery where Poe lay buried.
Isobel pushed herself to her feet, bits of mirror glass that had stuck to her legs and dress tumbling to the floor around her.
Quickly he drew forth one of the two swords he wore on his belt.
The wink of silver flashed cold as he aimed the blade straight at her.
33
Mad Trist
In addition to being without the white scarf, Reynolds no longer had his cloak or hat. In place of his usual solid black clothing, he wore dark brown ash-smudged trousers, leather boots, and a ragged gray waistcoat buttoned over a loose long-sleeved shirt. Garments from another time.
His dark, slicked-back hair gleamed in the subdued light of the foyer chandelier. Its violet glow cast hard shadows across his already stern and unsmiling face. His eyes, black and dead, remained fixed on her.
“So,” Isobel said, her gaze darting from him to the blade he held pointed at her chest, “Gordon, huh? I guess that’s as good a name as any for a snake and a coward. ”
“Snakes are cunning creatures,” said Reynolds. Or Gordon—whoever he was. “And not so much cowards as they are conspirators. ”
She watched him as he swept the blade through the air in a clean and threatening stroke that made her flinch and caused the thin strip of metal to sing.