In the Shadows

by Kiersten White

HUNG ON THE AIR. Until she had to gasp for breath, Cora

  did not know the sound was coming from her own

  mouth.

  The break in her scream signaled the end of the horrified

  trance the five companions were under. Thomas let out a string of

  oaths, while Minnie and Charles collapsed into each other. Arthur

  simply stared.

  “We’ve got to help her!” Cora stood, wanting to look away

  from the gently swinging body of the witch. The song was still

  going, bright syncopated rhythms jarring with the slow death

  dance.

  Cora looked down, breaking her fingernails against the bot-

  tom of the window frame. There was a door, somewhere, but the

  window was their portal to this horror, and she had to get through

  it — she had to get through — she had to help, had to stop this

  from having happened.

  It was her fault. The witch had warned Cora that death

  was at her heels, and now she had brought it here. She hadn’t

  wanted this.

  Had she?

  “She’s dead.” Arthur’s voice sounded as though it were coming

  from a very far distance. “If she were choking, she’d be twitching.

  Her neck is snapped.”

  “How do you know?” Thomas said, helping Cora with the

  window to no avail.

  Arthur took Cora’s hands and held them in his own, turning

  her away from the glass. He didn’t look at Thomas as he answered.

  “I’ve seen a hanged body before.”

  “We need —” Cora took a deep breath. She could still see the

  woman’s white slip behind her closed eyes. “We need to get

  Daniel. He lives closer than the police chief.”

  “She’s already dead. We weren’t supposed to be here. It won’t

  do any good for anyone.” Arthur’s voice was a murmur blending

  into the night sounds. The music had stopped, leaving nothing

  but the breeze whispering secrets to the trees; Cora couldn’t tell

  whether the quiet made things feel better or worse.

  “I won’t have her left like that.” Cora pulled her hands away

  from Arthur, shoving one into her skirt pocket and running the

  other through her hair. “No one comes here. It could be a week or

  more before someone discovers her. She doesn’t deserve that.” Her

  voice broke and she closed her eyes, trying to take comfort from

  the worn stone in her pocket. She didn’t want the witch dead. She

  didn’t. This wasn’t her fault.

  There was work to be done, and she would do it. Work was her

  salvation. “Minnie,” she said, “take Charles home.”

  Minnie and Charles still huddled on the ground, holding on

  to each other. Charles’s breathing was fast, his eyes unnaturally

  bright. Minnie looked up at Cora, anguish written on her features.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I just wanted . . . I just wanted to

  have another story with you.”

  “Go home, Minnie! Now!”

  Her sister’s shoulders folded in on themselves, no trace of wild

  energy left. For a moment Cora leaned forward, wanting to take

  Minnie into her arms, to whisper sweet stories in her ear, to share

  warm, safe secrets in a space all their own.

  But no. No stories. Minnie’s stories had done enough for one

  night, and a wave of resentment washed away Cora’s tender impulses.

  Thomas helped Charles up. “Go slowly,” he said. He frowned

  as he watched the two of them walk back down the hill, arms

  around each other as though both were on the verge of falling.

  “You should go with them,” Cora said. She brushed off the

  front of her skirts and set her jaw determinedly, betrayed only by

  the slightest trembling.

  Thomas took off his jacket and put it around her; his shirt

  was striped, accentuating the long, lean lines of his arms and

  slope of his shoulders. Earlier today Cora had thought him quite

  handsome. Now they all looked like ghostly photographs of

  themselves — washed out and indistinct.

  “I’m not leaving you to this business alone,” Thomas said. “We

  all decided to come. I’ll see it through.” They set off down the hill

  and onto the lane together. Arthur followed, a silent constant.

  “We were taking a walk for my brother’s health,” Thomas said

  as they neared a tiny cottage set off from the road, the trees around

  slowly reclaiming the yard for the forest. “You and Minnie and

  Arthur came along at our request so we wouldn’t get lost on unfa-

  miliar streets. We heard music playing loudly and wondered if

  something was wrong. Charles and Minnie turned around because

  he was tired, and the three of us went up the hill to check things

  out. When we got to the window we saw her, already hanging.”

  Cora looked down at her feet as they slid out from under her

  skirt and back again. The burden of this lie hung heavy on

  her shoulders already. “We should have stopped her,” she whis-

  pered, a tightness in her chest threatening to overwhelm her.

  “She would have done it whether or not we were there.”

  Thomas sounded angry, and Cora flinched until she realized he

  was talking to himself more than anyone else. “It would have hap-

  pened no matter what. We couldn’t have stopped it.” He paused,

  and looked suddenly so tired she wondered whether the weight on

  his shoulders wasn’t more than just tonight. He shrugged as

  though trying to wriggle out from beneath something. “We didn’t

  do anything wrong.”

  “Then why are we lying?” Cora wiped at her face. The world

  that she had worked so hard to make ordered and peaceful in the

  airless, aching absence of her father had shifted into one of

  Minnie’s stories, and she didn’t know how to put everything back

  into place. She knew — had always known — that house was

  nothing but death.

  At least it isn’t Minnie, Cora thought with a ferocity that star-

  tled her. The witch can take the burden of death this time.

  She raised her fist and knocked on Daniel’s door, the rough

  grains providing a stinging reproach against her knuckles. She

  waited a few moments and then knocked again.

  A thump and a muffled curse came from inside, followed by a

  gravelly caution to wait. The seams of the door came to life with

  the glow of a lantern before it opened and Daniel stood, in a night-

  shirt with trousers pulled on beneath. His light hair was mussed,

  the remains of pomade causing the back to stick up in a way she

  would have smiled at another time.

  “Cora?” he asked, squinting out at them. “Is your mother

  hurt? What’s wrong?”

  “No, not my mother. I’m sorry. I —” The words lodged in her

  throat. Daniel had only recently been promoted to deputy. Not

  four summers ago they had sat together with the other local chil-

  dren on the banks of the creek, watching their feet turn violent red

  and tingly from the chill of the water, laughing at Minnie’s face

  deliberately smeared with wild berries to look like blood. That

  vision of light-drenched youth broke against the night around her,

  scattering away into pieces she’d nev
er find again.

  Growing up, she found, was a heartbreaking endeavor.

  “Come inside, you look about to faint. Is that Arthur? And

  who’s this?”

  “Thomas Wolcott, sir. We’ve got some bad news.”

  Cora leaned against the door frame, barely hearing the story as

  Thomas laid it out. She felt heavy and thick with guilt. If she had

  stayed at home, if she had stayed in bed, it wouldn’t have hap-

  pened. She felt in her bones that seeing it had made it happen, that

  she had pulled death right to the witch’s door.

  “Oh, Mary.” Daniel said the woman’s name like a prayer, and

  Cora felt it pierce her heart and drop down to the ground.

  Mary.

  Daniel pulled on a coat, buttoning it slowly over his night-

  shirt. “Come on, then,” he said, wearier than the hour alone could

  account for. When had he grown so old? Was the same weight of

  living traced into Cora’s own face now?

  “Sir, do you want us to go with you?” Thomas asked.

  “It’s too late and too far to go for the chief. I’ll need help get-

  ting her body down. Not right to leave her until morning.”

  “I’ll take Cora home,” Arthur said, and Cora saw the way the

  other two men startled, looking to the corner of the bottom step

  where Arthur was. Cora never forgot he was near, but everyone

  else seemed to. Except Minnie, who always dragged him out of the

  shadows.

  “No, I want to come. She needs —” She squeezed her eyes

  shut against the vision of the witch — Mary — swaying at the

  end of her life. “She needs something over her slip before any more

  people see her. I should do that.”

  The walk back to the hill took far less time than it ought to have.

  Before Cora could steel herself for the task ahead, they were bathed

  in the falsely warm light of the window. Arthur let out a sharp hiss of

  a breath. Cora snapped her eyes up and looked through the window.

  There was no one there.

  “Where is she?” Thomas cried, pressing his hands to the glass.

  There was no body, no rope. The ladder stood against the wall,

  apparently innocent of its role as accomplice.

  Daniel’s voice had a wary edge to it now. “You said she hanged

  herself in this room?”

  “She did! We saw it! She was right there!” Thomas jabbed his

  finger against the glass. “Someone must have moved the body.”

  Without another word, Daniel strode past them. Cora didn’t

  know whether to follow or stay put; either way, her feet wouldn’t

  move. She and Thomas and Arthur had taken twenty minutes at

  most to return. Mary wasn’t just gone — the entire scene had been

  cleared, rewritten.

  “The doors are all locked,” Daniel said when he returned. “I

  knocked and there was no answer. You’re certain you saw what you

  thought you saw?”

  “We did! We all did.” Thomas remained at his post by the

  window, staring in as though if he looked away things might re-

  arrange themselves again. “Someone must have come.”

  “There’s no one in there. Cora, I —” Daniel shook his head,

  looking away. “We all expect this kind of thing from Minnie, but

  not from you. Leave Mary alone.”

  She shook her head in tiny, fluttering movements. “No, no, I

  would never . . . I’m sorry, we thought . . . we saw . . .” She bowed

  her head, defeated by the mysteries of the night. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go home,” Daniel growled, shrugging his coat closer. “And

  keep better company, Cora, or I’ll have words with your mother.”

  He strode down the hill and away from them.

  “I know what I saw,” Thomas said, finally tearing his eyes

  away from the window to fix them on Cora and Arthur with an

  angry intensity. “You saw it, too. We all saw it.”

  Cora stared at the room with a dull, creeping dread, the

  scar on her scalp tight beneath her hair. If death hadn’t claimed

  Mary, that meant it was still lurking, looking for someone else

  to take.

  “We were wrong,” she whispered. “We need to leave.”

  September, 1918

  seven

  A

  RTHUR WAS WELL AWARE OF WHAT HAPPENED WHEN

  SOMEONE DROPPED TO THE END OF A ROPE AND DID NOT

  TWITCH. There was no slow suffocating death, no chok-

  ing out of life. No chance to save her.

  He hadn’t been meant to be home when it had happened, but

  back then he’d rarely been where he was supposed to be. If his

  mother had known he was there, she wouldn’t have done it. She

  would have done it eventually, but not then, not when he would

  see and try and fail to save her. She’d loved him very much, and he

  knew it.

  But it hadn’t stopped her from leaving him.

  Arthur knew that the woman who’d hanged herself inside this

  house tonight was not his mother. He knew she had nothing to do

  with him, but she was important to Cora in some strange way, and

  so she was important to him, too. He needed to understand what

  had happened so he could take the memory of the snap at the end

  of a rope and place it into a box and bury that box with all the

  other boxes buried in the dark corners of his mind.

  He watched, silent and unmoving, as Thomas paced angrily.

  “We were not wrong! We did not all imagine the same thing! I

  don’t know if it was a trick, or . . .” Thomas paused, mouth nar-

  rowing to a dark slash across his face. “If you planned this, if you

  all got together and thought you’d scare us, I swear I’ll —”

  “Shut up,” Arthur said, his voice low. “We all saw it.” He

  reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his lock pick, then

  walked toward the front of the house.

  “Where are you going?” Cora asked.

  “Inside.”

  By the time Cora and Thomas caught up to him, Arthur

  was already crouched in front of the door, working the lock.

  Though they could not see it, he was angry, too, his swift, sure

  fingers shaking as they worked the lock. He could taste his

  rage; it was hard and metallic and no amount of swallowing rid

  him of it.

  When the lock slid out of place with the familiar soft snicking

  sound, he had no choice but to go into the house.

  “We can’t go in there!” Thomas said from behind him, but

  Arthur walked directly forward, not even sidling along the edge of

  the wall or looking for other ways to leave the room. He glanced

  back only once to see he was followed by Thomas, whose presence

  felt like the itchy tightness of salt water drying on skin. Cora did

  not follow. That was better.

  They were not likely to be alone in the house, and if it were a

  good person who had taken Mary’s body down, he would have

  answered the door when Daniel had knocked. This did not worry

  Arthur. He trusted wicked people far more than good people,

  because wicked people acted in their own best interest, whereas

  good people’s actions often made no sense at all.

  The room, lit to wanton brightness by candles and lamps scat-

  tered about on various tables and even
the floor, was cluttered with

  mismatched furniture. Arthur traced his fingers along a writing

  desk; there was no note, nothing freshly written. A packet of let-

  ters, unopened, addressed to a Mary Smith. Something about the

  writing tickled the back of his mind, and he tucked them into his

  vest, along with a sharp letter opener.

  “What are we doing in here?” Thomas asked, standing in the

  middle of the room, eyes darting about as though hanging were

  contagious.

  Arthur walked past a low green sofa to where the simple wood

  ladder leaned against the wall. He looked to the exposed beam

  rafters of the ceiling, but there was no trace of the rope. The pho-

  nograph sat on a table near the chair, the round black record still

  in place.

  There was a dim hallway leading toward the back of the house

  and the stairs, but Arthur felt Cora’s presence outside like a mag-

  net. He’d already had to lose track of Minnie for the night, and he

  refused to be farther from both of them than absolutely necessary.

  He didn’t know Mary, but he did not trust odd happenings. Not

  in this town.

  Other than the hallway, there was a door in the wall immedi-

  ately opposite of where they had watched through the window. He

  crossed to it and the door slid open easily; the room on the other

  side was dark.

  “Here,” Thomas whispered behind him, holding a candle.

  Arthur nodded, surprised the other boy was paying enough atten-

  tion to be helpful. The candle’s flame threw everything into a

  riddle of deep shadows and orange echoes. The room appeared to

  be made entirely of books. All the walls, floor to ceiling, were

  lined with spines and shelves. Other than a sofa, the room was

  devoid of anything else. Arthur wanted to look at the books, but

  there were too many.

  His father had always been surrounded by books, too. They

  painted a picture of a man obsessed with strange alternate histo-

  ries, conspiracies, dark secrets. Paranoia that got him laughed out

  of his professorship. Mary’s books would doubtless tell stories

  about who she was as well.

  “Nothing,” Arthur said, starting to turn, when someone in the