by Dacre Stoker
“Amen,” I said with the others, my voice cracking and a little higher than I would have hoped.
Pa gave her a nod and returned to his newspaper.
I didn’t reach for my bread again until I saw Ma buttering hers. “Any word on Patrick O’Cuiv?” she asked.
Pa shook the paper and flipped it back to the first page. “Oh yes, apparently the plot has thickened substantially. Listen—”
MASS KILLING IN MALAHIDE
FATHER SUSPECTED OF SANTRY ESTATE MURDER
Patrick O’Cuiv was found near death by police authorities at his residence in Malahide; suspicious circumstances are suspected, as he was found not alone in his home but in the company of his wife and two of his three children, all dead in their beds. When informed of the state of his family, he turned hysterical and had to be restrained in his grief. Facts have surfaced that Mr. O’Cuiv was the employee involved in the fistfight with the deceased land manager Cornelius Healy of Santry Estate.
Ma shook her head. “That is terrible. So not only did he kill his family but his employer as well?”
Pa shrugged. “To me, the death of his employer appears to be nothing more than an accident. A man at the end of his rope in a desperate situation. The situation came to blows, and Healy paid the price. He won’t be missed; the man was an ostentatious snoot who liked nothing more than the sound of his own voice and the clinking of coin in his pocket. He could have spared some grain, but instead he beats a man attempting to feed his family. He met with God’s wrath, nothing more. But this business with O’Cuiv’s own family, that I find tragic.” Pa paused for a second, retrieved the pipe from his breast pocket, and began to pack the bowl with tobacco from the little brown bag he always kept on his person. “Even without hope in sight, I cannot imagine a father willing to take the lives of his own wife and children when faced with the inability to provide.”
Richard began to fuss, and Ma reached over and stroked his hand. “Perhaps he was already at a low then and couldn’t bear to face a worse place after killing his employer. After all, if an employed man is unable to feed his family, what is an unemployed man guilty of murder to do?” Richard let out a burp. Ma frowned. “Any mention of their daughter? The one who escaped?”
“Nothing today.”
“I wonder who took her in. I don’t think the O’Cuivs had family in the area. I believe Siboan O’Cuiv said her family resided in Dublin, but I could be mistaken.”
“I imagine she is being well looked after.”
“Maybe she can stay with us,” Matilda suggested. “I wouldn’t mind a sister.”
Pa peeked across the table over his pipe but said nothing.
Ma patted her hand. “I have often told your father that very thing! We ladies are far outnumbered in this household. If the Good Lord doesn’t see fit to bless this family with another daughter, maybe we should consider recruiting one.”
“Do you think she saw what happened?” I asked.
Pa let a small ring of smoke drift from his lips, then said: “She most likely saw it all; why else would she run? Such a thing leaves a mark on a child, one that can never be wiped or washed away. She’ll awaken twenty years from now with those images in her mind. To witness your own father take the lives of your mother and siblings, that is an unimaginable atrocity from which there is no escape. I can only hope she one day finds a happiness strong enough to balance out the evil that man committed.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched Nanna Ellen take her seat before her own bowl of soup. Her hand shook slightly as she lowered her spoon into the broth and raised it to her mouth. Although her lips parted, the soup never passed them. Instead, I watched as she lowered the spoon back into the bowl. A moment later, she repeated the gesture, the soup never entering her mouth. Matilda was watching her, too, and when she looked across the table at us, we both turned away—I fumbled with my own spoon and nearly dropped it to the floor.
Nanna Ellen slid her bowl forward. “I believe this illness truly has gotten the better of me; please excuse me.” With that, she rose from the table and ascended the stairs without so much as a glance back.
* * *
• • •
LATER—“What is she doing?” Matilda whispered as I crept back into my room, carefully closing the door behind me.
“I couldn’t hear anything,” I said softly.
Matilda sat on my bed, sketchbook in hand, carefully re-creating the maps from Nanna Ellen’s room. How she recalled them in such detail, I’ll never understand.
“Maybe she’s sleeping,” Matilda said without looking up.
After dinner, Matilda and I had returned to my attic room, the eyes of the others on our backs as we ascended the stairs. Although they were my family, I was an outsider amongst them. In truth, I don’t believe they ever thought I would survive my first year, much less my first seven. They thought I was to die—perhaps not today or tomorrow, but sometime soon, and that prevented them from getting too close. Even Ma, who spent much of her time with me, did so at a distance—an unspoken chasm between us always. I rarely saw Pa, and Thornley avoided me entirely. And so a sense of relief hung in the air as I excused myself to head back upstairs, but beneath that relief lingered dread: the good days, we all seemed to silently sense, are always followed by the bad.
“She’s not sleeping.” I pictured her sitting on the edge of the bed, the mattress pushed aside and her fingers sifting through the dirt beneath, the warm dampness of it inching up her arm, a welcoming thing. “Have you ever seen her eat?” I asked.
“She eats dinner with us every night.”
“No, I mean have you ever really seen her eat?”
Matilda thought about this for a second. “I . . . I don’t know. I suppose not, but I’ve never paid much attention. Are you implying that she doesn’t?”
“She pretended to eat tonight.”
“She didn’t feel well. You, of all people, know what it is like to try to eat when you are ill. Perhaps she feigned it to spare Ma’s feelings. She probably doesn’t want her to believe she didn’t like the soup.”
My arm itched, and I scratched at the tender flesh.
“Let me see that,” Matilda said, setting down her sketchbook and reaching for my shirtsleeve.
I pulled away. I wasn’t sure why, only that I didn’t want her to see. I felt as if nobody should see. That if someone did, only more questions would be raised. Questions I could not answer.
Matilda stared at me. “Bram!”
“It’s disgusting, Matilda. I don’t want you to.”
“I’ve seen your leech bites before. Come here.”
Again, I pulled away, backing up until I found myself at the wall.
“What has gotten into you?”
I shrunk back against the frigid wood, prepared to push her away, wanting to squeeze through the plaster and siding to the icy air, then—
“She’s outside,” I said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“Nanna’s outside.”
Matilda went to my door and edged it open only enough to peek into the hallway. “How could she be outside? She hasn’t left her room. We would have heard her.”
“I don’t know, but somehow she’s outside.”
“How do you know?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. I was not sure how I knew, only that I did.
I crossed the room to my little window and stared out into the darkness.
A crescent moon dangling in the sky offered the thinnest of illuminations, bathing the world in nothing but faint outlines, silhouettes, and shadows. The tower of Artane Castle was barely visible in the distance, lost behind rolling hills and farmland dotted with the small homes of our neighbors. Beyond that were the hazel and birch trees of the forest, their inky branches scratching at the night sky in anticipation of a pending
shower. I stared out upon all this with awe, not because I had never seen it before but because I shouldn’t be able to see it now, not with so little light. Yet I did. I could see all of it.
“There!” I pointed north towards the tower of Artane Castle, just beyond the barn.
Matilda joined me at the window and peered out. “I don’t see anything.”
“She just passed the pasture. She’s coming up on the Roddingtons’ home. Looks like she is wearing a black cloak with the hood pulled up over her head.”
“If she’s wearing a hood, how can you be sure that is even her?” Matilda leaned out the window now, her eyes squinting.
“That’s her. I know it is.”
“I still don’t see anything.”
I tugged at her arm, pulling her towards the hallway. “Come on; we must hurry.”
“Where are we going?”
“I want to follow her.”
Matilda planted her feet firmly on the floor. “Do you realize what Ma and Pa would do to me if they found out I let you out of this house?”
“Then we shouldn’t tell them,” I replied. “Come on.”
NOW
Bram shuffles back from the door. The silver cross in his hand grows hot, burning his flesh, the edges becoming sharp as blades. He drops it. His palm bubbling with blisters, the creases filling with rich blood seeping from a dozen cuts.
When a single drop of blood drips to the stone floor, the room goes silent.
Bram hears his breath as he draws air into his lungs, watches it expelled: a thin white mist. Then the creature crashes into the door with indescribable ferocity. Bram watches the door bend towards him; he watches as the bolts securing the heavy iron hinges spring and rattle against the frame.
A howl, deep and guttural, bellows out so loud Bram has to cover his ears. His injured hand closes tight as blood splashes out onto his hair and cheek. This seems to excite the monster even more and it takes another leap at the door, heavier than the last.
Bram plucks a rose from the basket behind him and slides it across the floor to the foot of the door. It lands beside the dried-out husk of its predecessor, and although vibrant and scented only a moment earlier, instantly begins to fade. Before his eyes, the petals twist in on one another and curl, the edges turning first brown, then black, as they wilt and shrivel up.
Bram tosses another rose, then a third, this final flower not fading at all.
The howl comes again, this time subdued and muted. Bram braces himself for another bang on the door, but it doesn’t come. Instead, there is the scratching of a great paw being dragged across the door, from its very top, at nearly nine feet, all the way to the bottom.
The wolf’s cry is quickly answered by the cry of another wolf, this one at some distance, somewhere far off in the woods. Then another wolf also howls in reply.
Bram climbs to his feet and crosses the room to the window.
The moon fights the storm clouds for space in the night sky, peeking out briefly before getting lost behind them yet again. Even in the dim light, he can make out the outline of the distant forest. The branches are woven together so thickly it is a wonder anything might pass through them, whether in flight or afoot—but he senses life within those trees, the many eyes glowering at him, as he looks down upon them.
When the moon reappears, Bram holds his hand up to the light. The wound is gone now, the flesh mended, leaving behind no trace of the injury but for the dried blood that paints his palm.
Outside the window, a stone gargoyle stands sentry. Thick talons holding firm, wrapped around the intricately carved limestone. Round black eyes seem to leer out over the fields, forest, and cliffs at the distant ocean. He could picture the gargoyle sweeping down from the wall and alighting on the back of its prey, digging its talons into the wretch’s bone and muscle so quickly there would be no time to cry out; there would only be death.
The moon grows brighter still, and Bram looks up, watching as the clouds part in a peculiar fashion. Rather than just drifting past, they split at the center, with some moving to the left and others to the right as if the moon blew them apart. The light of the moon falls on the gargoyle and casts an immense shadow of its beastly shape on the wall inside the room. As Bram watches, the shadow’s head seems to turn, and its wings seem to stretch: the beast waking from a long slumber. The toes of the shadow’s feet twitch and spread as the creature grows larger still and appears to step from its stone perch. Bram turns to look at the actual gargoyle outside his window, where it sits, unmoving and lifeless, as it has for centuries. The moon remains fixed, yet the shadow appears to be walking across the room, looming larger with each step. Bram stares as first one clawed hand and then the other tracks across the wall, crawling across stone, mirrors, crosses, inspecting the surroundings.
Bram reaches out and snatches one of the crosses from the wall, holding it between himself and the shadow. “Behold the Cross of the Lord! Begone, you!” he shouts. “God the Father commands you! The Son commands you! The sacred Sign of the Cross commands you! Leave this place, you unholy beast!”
This does nothing.
The shadow pauses at a large ornate mirror in the corner, then continues across the room, brushing every surface and object. When the wraith reaches the roses, it hesitates and shrinks back, carefully avoiding the blooms, before moving on to the chair and Bram’s Snider–Enfield rifle lying on the ground beside it. Bram watches in awe as the shadow’s molten blackness rounds the corner and continues along the wall—an impossibility, Bram knows, for the light of the moon can do nothing more than shine through the open window. Yet the creature stands there, a shadow amongst shadows, continuing to explore the chamber. Then he recalls the oil lamp and realizes the creature has somehow abandoned the concealing shadows of the moonlight and taken up its investigation by the light of the flickering oil lamp without so much as a pause between the two, a dance amidst the gloom. As it reaches the final corner, having come full circle, the shadow leaves the wall and oozes over the floor, expanding, until it comes upon the large oak door, where it then stops and falls still.
This isn’t right, Bram.
The voice startles him, for Bram thought he was alone, and with renewed vigor he scans every inch of the room, the cross held up high as he rotates slowly in place, his own reflection staring back at him from the many mirrors adorning the walls.
“Show yourself!” Bram commands.
At his feet, the shadow stirs, rising from the floor to the door, growing until it nearly touches the ceiling.
“This is sorcery, nothing more. I will not stand for it!”
The shadow spreads its massive arms until they embrace the walls on either side, then grow longer still as they stretch around bends, encircling the room.
If you let me go, you won’t have to die.
It is then Bram realizes the words came to him not from the large shadow before him or the creature trapped behind the door, nor from anywhere within the chamber; instead, the words echo within his mind as if his own thoughts had found voice.
The voice is neither male nor female but something in between, a strange mixture of high and low tones, sounding more like many voices than one in particular.
The hands of the shadow return to the door and trace its edges, translucent black-clawed fingers slithering over the frame and thick metal locks with the fluidity of molasses. When they reach the roses at the bottom, though, they carefully go around, rather than passing over them; either afraid or unable to touch them, like the roses in the basket.
Bram crosses the room, snatches another rose from the basket, and thrusts it out at the black specter. The shadow melts to a point of light as Bram finds the wood of the door with the rose clenched in his fist. When he pulls back, the point of light disappears, swallowed by the shadow.
“I am not afraid of you!” Bram says in a voice that doesn’t sound as str
ong as he hoped it would.
With that comes a laugh, a laugh of ungodly volume, a laugh composed of the screams of a thousand tortured children, and he steps back, nearly tripping over the chair.
I will gut you from groin to gullet and dance in your ruins as the blood bubbles from your lips if you do not open this door!
The shadow’s hands again begin to spread over the walls, wrapping around the entire room, encircling him. The pointed nails of its talons lead the way as the shadow spreads over the room, creeping over every surface, mirrors and crosses alike, until it fills nearly every inch of space.
Bram runs to the window and slams the shutter. Then he goes to the oil lamp and blows out the flame, plunging the room into total blackness, a room so dark no shadow could live.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
October 1854—Matilda and I left my room and descended the stairs with as much stealth as we could muster, pausing only at Nanna Ellen’s room to open the door and ensure she was, in fact, gone. We found her window to be open wide and the room empty, save for Baby Richard sleeping soundly in his crib. I lowered my candle and pointed to the floor—the various tracks and prints we left earlier were gone but the dirt remained, spread smoothly over the surface once again. Her bed was made. Matilda nodded silently and crossed the hallway to the stairs, motioning for me to follow. I gently closed Nanna Ellen’s door and caught up.
The hour was late, nearly eleven, and Ma and Pa had retired to their bedroom. If Thornley and Thomas had not yet found sleep, they made no sound to reveal that fact; their room was silent, and no light pooled from under the door. Our house was utterly quiet, and every sound we made seemed amplified—from the creak of the boards underfoot to the click of the front door’s lock disengaging the front door. I was sure someone would hear us and come to investigate, but they did not, and within moments the two of us stood outside.
“If that was her,” Matilda said, “she has gained a few minutes on us. Where do you think she would be heading?”