by Dacre Stoker
Nanna Ellen’s desk was vacant, the papers gone. Her wardrobe stood open, stripped of clothing. Matilda and I both turned to her bed—perfectly made, the sheets pulled tight. I walked over and lifted the mattress, expecting to find the bed frame filled with dirt as it had been, but instead the space was full of fresh hay, as it should be.
“It’s gone,” I muttered.
“What’s gone?” Ma replied from the doorway.
I glanced to Matilda, who was subtly shaking her head.
I returned the mattress back to the frame. “I meant she’s gone. I misspoke.”
“Did she say anything to either of you? Anything at all that would explain where she would go? Or why?”
“Nothing,” we both replied simultaneously.
Ma eyed us with that look every mother seems to have perfected, the one that says I know you’re lying. And if you don’t tell me the truth right this instant, I will pull it out of you.
“Did she leave a note?” Matilda asked.
“She did not,” Ma replied. “Of course, that would have been the proper thing to do. For that matter, she should have told me directly if she wished to leave our employ. To sneak off like this in the middle of the night without so much as the courtesy of a parting conversation is not like Ellen. We brought her into our home. For seven years, we provided her with food, shelter, and employment. I find it outrageous that she would pack up her things like this and depart. What am I to do without her? I cannot be expected to run this household and watch after five children on my own. Where am I to find a replacement? What could possibly have driven her to this?”
“Maybe we should go to the train station? She may still be there,” Matilda pointed out. “Or perhaps the docks?”
“When did you see her last?” Ma asked.
Matilda appeared to think about this for a moment, then said, “She went to bed after dinner. She said she was not feeling well and wanted to get some rest.”
“Should we check the hospital?” I offered.
Ma ignored my suggestion. “And you, Bram? When did you last see Nanna?”
“At dinner,” I said, hoping my eyes would not betray me.
Ma stared at me for a moment, and I thought for sure she saw through my lie. Then she let out a deep breath. “Matilda, I’m going to need you to watch Baby Richard. I’ll ask Thornley to go into town with me and try to find her. I doubt she’s gone very far, not if she’s ill and carrying all her possessions.”
“What shall I do, Ma?” I asked of her. My arm began to itch again, and I fought the urge to scratch.
“What am I to tell your father?” Ma pondered aloud, ignoring my query. “After seven years, she just up and leaves . . .”
I watched her turn and head back down the stairs, then I went to Nanna Ellen’s desk and began rifling through the drawers.
“What are you looking for?” Matilda asked.
“I don’t know, anything. How could she clear out all her worldly goods like this without anyone noticing?” I discovered nothing in the desk and crossed the room to the wardrobe. Leaning in, I began running my fingers along the inside surfaces. “She must have left something behind.”
“She left because of us, didn’t she?” Matilda asked.
I paused. “We weren’t meant to see her.”
“I’m going to miss her,” she said, and her lower lip quivered.
“Matilda, she’s some kind of monster!”
“She never hurt us.”
“You saw her walk into the bog and not come back out,” I countered.
“I thought I did, but that doesn’t make it true. Nor does it make her dangerous,” she replied. “The mist was so thick, and we were cold and tired; maybe we just imagined we saw her going into the bog. We don’t know for sure that was even her.”
“She was wearing Ma’s cloak.”
“So you said.”
In my mind, I again saw her dropping from the ceiling, her eyes flaming red. I pulled the sleeve of my nightshirt up and pointed at the two red marks. “What about these?”
Matilda’s face grew firm. “Do you know for a fact she was the one who did that to you?”
“Of course; I saw her. She—”
“You saw her drop from the ceiling and pounce on you like some wild beast. I know. That is what you said, right? Just for a second, let us accept that something like that really did happen. She flew through your room and landed atop you. Did you see her attack your wrist?”
“I—” I had not, and I stopped myself before I admitted as much to Matilda. “If not her, who then?”
“And if it was her, how exactly did she do it? Am I to believe she bit you? She bared her fangs and pierced your flesh like a wild dog?”
“Yes,” I said in a voice that did not sound convincing even to me. Finding nothing in the wardrobe, I sat down on the edge of the bed next to my sister.
“Bring her back, Bram. I want her back. I don’t want her to go. I love her.”
“We need to go to Artane Castle, to the tower.”
* * *
• • •
MA AND THORNLEY didn’t return until nearly suppertime. They had found no sign of Nanna Ellen in town, and none of our neighbors had seen her. She was simply gone.
We awaited nightfall, for all in the house to give in to slumber; then Matilda and I crept silently from our rooms, down the stairs, and to the front door of the house, as we had the night before. The wind was still, hauntingly so, as we stepped out of the house and I gently closed the door behind us. We crossed the fields at a run, doing our level best to keep to the shadows and avoid those places where we might be spotted.
Matilda uttered not a word as we went, which I found troubling. Under most circumstances, it was difficult to prevent her from chattering, particularly when nervous. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye and found her brow furrowed, her gaze riveted straight ahead. I could not expect her to believe what I had told her about Nanna Ellen; even after what we had already seen, it was too fanciful. Yet I wanted her to. I didn’t want to be alone in this pursuit. She witnessed Nanna Ellen walking into the bog, just as I had. She witnessed Nanna Ellen disappearing beneath the surface of the bog, and remaining submerged far longer than any normal person could, just as I had. Matilda hadn’t seen the hand emerge from the water and snatch the dragonfly from the air, but that didn’t make it any less true.
* * *
• • •
WHEN I GLANCED BACK UP, we were approaching the coltsfoot and scutch grass, made worse by the brambles and vines that surrounded the castle on all four sides. Matilda’s gaze was still fixed ahead. When she finally did speak, she whispered, “Can you still feel her?”
“So you believe that, but not what happened in my room?”
“I—” she stuttered. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure, I don’t know.”
“I have never lied to you, Matilda. Why would I make up such a thing?”
Matilda let out a sigh. “She was—is—our friend. I’ve known her my entire life; you have known her your entire life as well. She has never harmed us. She has done nothing but care for us as if we were her own children.” She paused for a second, her mind searching for the right words. “The way you described her, you made her out to be a monster. A thing of nightmares, dropping down upon you in such a horrid manner, and to what end? She tells you to sleep? Look at you. You have not left that bed in months. I don’t recall a time when you ever left the house without assistance, and yet within one day’s time you go from the brink of death to a fitness that rivals my own. Is she responsible for this? If yes, why would she wish you harm?”
“I don’t know that she meant to harm me.”
“And your arms,” Matilda went on. “For the wounds left behind by the leeches to disappear so, it isn’t possible. Yet it happened. I presume they are gone from yo
ur legs as well?”
I nodded.
“How?”
“I wish I knew.”
The itch was there, though, always there. I found myself scratching at my arm even now.
“And that incessant itch?” Matilda stomped ahead. “I don’t understand what to make of any of this.”
I dropped my arm to my side and chased after her, pushing through the thick weeds.
Matilda stopped and stared up at the castle looming ahead against the night sky. “You didn’t answer my original question.”
“What question?”
“Can you feel her?”
I fell still and peered up at the forbidding castle. The weathered stones dripped with ivy and moss. As I focused my eyes, I spotted tiny ants crawling over the surface, skittering this way and that, unnaturally active considering the frosty air, with a purpose known only to them. There were spiders, too, hundreds of them, spinning their wicked webs amongst the leaves of ivy in hopes of snaring flies. I witnessed all of this, and knew Matilda had not. She stood at my side, shivering in the chill air, staring up at the castle’s vacant windows.
I closed my eyes and thought about Nanna Ellen. I didn’t feel the cord binding us as I had on the previous night, let alone the tug that came with it. I felt abandoned at this thought. She had abandoned my family, this was true, but I had somehow believed she had not abandoned me. She was not there, though, and I felt nothing.
I shook my head.
“Well, come on, then,” Matilda said, following the perimeter of the square tower around to the front and its large arched entryway.
The opening was nearly twelve feet in height and eight feet in width and reeked of damp earth and mildew. I spied a mouse in the far corner; it stood on its hind legs and stared back at us defiantly, trespassers upon the creature’s domain. I watched it scurry away and disappear into a fissure in the stone. At one point, a large door had stood in this very place, but it had long since rotted away. A few decomposing scraps of wood still littered the ground, feeding the termites. The remains of a large metal lock, kicked aside ages ago, rusted away against the left wall.
To the left of the tower entrance stood the only other portion of the castle to survive intact: a single-story square building nearly eighty feet in length and thirty feet in depth with walls that had once stood at least fifteen feet tall but were now nothing more than a crumbling ruin. The roof of this sorry structure was long gone, and trees and weeds now grew in what had once been the great hall. Thornley used to spend a great deal of time here when he was younger, playing. He would come here alone after completing his chores and remain for hours on end. He called this place the Castle of the King. Matilda would tease him by calling him the King of Crumble Castle, before he had chased her away.
Matilda and I stood there, two tiny figures lost against the giant gaping mouth of this place. Then we took each other’s hands and stepped into the blackness, leaving the forest behind.
NOW
Nearly an hour passes before Bram musters the courage to bring flame to the wick of the lantern and cast light once again about the room. When he finally does, he does so with bated breath as the oil lamp comes to life, at last forcing the shadows into retreat.
Bram waits for the shadow creature to return, but it does not. Nor does anything stir behind the door. Instead, the chamber falls into utter silence, so much so that Bram finds himself opening the shutters in hopes of admitting a hint of the natural world. As he does so, he leans out the window, breathing in the bracing night air. He finds the moon has edged farther along its path; nearly half of the night now behind him.
Returning to the chair at the center of the room, he sits and pulls from his coat pocket a small flask. He shouldn’t drink, he knows, particularly on a night like this, but as the adrenaline leaves his body he suddenly feels uncomfortable and needs to warm up. Bram twists off the cap and brings the flask to his lips; he savors every drop of the plum brandy as it warms his gullet and settles in his stomach. Then he twists the cap back on and drops the flask into his pocket before taking up his rifle, which he holds at the ready, the barrel angled towards the door.
The last rose he had placed at the threshold of the door is now nothing more than a tangle of rotted black on the stained stone. If he didn’t know the dried-out husk had once been a rose, he would not have been able to discern as much. He considers replacing it but changes his mind; a quick inventory revealing he has only four roses left. The holy water is nearly gone, and he has spent the last of the communion wafers making the paste he used in an attempt to seal the door. It has done little good; the evil inside has caused the mixture to dry and turn to dust. Even now, as he stares at the door, a chunk of wafer falls from the top left corner and cracks on the floor in a bit of dust. Another chunk falls after that, and soon another. It will not take long for the rest of the wafer paste to come down; then there will be nothing holding that door closed but the large metal lock across its midsection and the rose at its foot.
* * *
• • •
BRAM’S EYES grow heavy, and he shakes his head.
Sleep calls to him, a siren’s song.
I won’t hurt you, Bram. It was wrong of me to say I would.
The voice comes to him again from somewhere deep within his own head. Not the thick and heavy voice from earlier, but a soft and child-like voice, female, the voice of an angel.
Bram ignores her, unwilling to acknowledge anything at all.
It is cold in here, Bram. And lonely. I have never been in such a dismal place. If you open the door and let me out, there is so much I can share with you. Knowledge of things so incredible you will not believe they are true until I show them to you; then, you will never deny them again.
Bram sits up straight in the chair and raises the barrel of the gun; it had begun angling downward. Holding up such a weighty weapon is growing difficult for his fatigued hands.
You wish me to show you these things, do you not, Bram? Give you the answers to the questions you have asked your entire life? You know you do. Why else would you write of such things? These events from your childhood—they are significant, to be sure—your adventures with your sweet sister. How is Matilda? I miss her so.
The voice changes then, morphing to a slightly deeper voice, a familiar voice, Matilda’s voice.
You wouldn’t treat me this way, would you? Lock me away in a room and hope for death to steal me away in the middle of the night? Ma would be so displeased with you, treating a lady in such an ill manner. Imagine what Pa would do if he found out! Oh, he would take you over his knee and switch your bottom like you were still a child. He would send you crying to your room, your little attic, the source of so many adventures in later years, but also a place of so much sickness at the start. I’m so glad you’re writing about those times, all those memories. I remember all as if it were yesterday, and I find the need to point out that you omitted a lot. I know you are rushed, but a good storyteller never leaves gaps, and I think it would be in your best interest to go back and think about what you left out. Better yet, I could help you! Open the door, and I will pore over every page with you and help you recall it all. Remember the hand in the bog? Would you not like to know who that was? You assumed it was Ellen, but are you sure? I could tell you. Wait—I could show you! I could take you there by holding your hand, and together we can walk up to the shore of that bog and peer into the murky depths with fresh eyes. We could revisit the castle, too. Imagine what it would be like to return there and tell your childhood self what you know now! Can you picture such a thing? We could kneel down at the water’s edge and take hold of that hand and pull her close, pull her out of the water. Then we could let her sink her teeth into the fleshy part of our forearms and drink. Is that not what you crave? It would make the itching stop. I guarantee it.
Bram reaches into the basket, picks up another rose, and hurls
the flower at the door. He watches it hit the wood, then slide down as if hovering in the air, riding the dust, floating to the stone.
A laugh erupts from behind the door, a laugh so loud the rifle slips from his hands and clatters to the floor. Bram scrambles to snatch it back up and aim the barrel towards the laugh.
You’re getting careless, Bram. You forgot to bless your flower; must be the fatigue setting in.
Bram watches in horror as the petals of the rose fall away, one by one, leaving nothing but a thorny stem. The entire mess grows black before his eyes and crumbles away. Behind the door, the laugh comes again, then a loud bang on the door. More of the paste around the edges falls to the ground with the blow, and Bram feels his heart sink as he drops back into the chair.
The laugh fades away, and again the room fills with silence followed by the voice in his head, his sister’s.
I used to love picking flowers in the commons outside our home in Clontarf; do you remember? We had a park right outside our door, and the harbor beyond that, Artane behind us. Ma used to take me for walks along the shoreline. We would picnic and watch the ships drift in from the sea. Those were special times. Of course, you were already ill, even back then. You were nothing but a thin wisp of a boy, so frail you looked as if a tumble from your bed might be the death of you.
I remember Nanna Ellen tucking you in each night and telling you a story. Sometimes she would let me sit in, but even if she didn’t I could hear her from my room and I would listen to every word. Does that bother you, Bram? Does it bother you I eavesdropped on your private moments?
Bram says nothing.
Her stories were so enthralling; I couldn’t resist. If you ask me, they were wasted on you. Half the time, you were in such a fevered state you didn’t know where you were, let alone able to offer the attention they deserved. And even on those rare nights when you did listen, you would drift off to sleep long before the story was complete. I would be willing to wager you never once heard the end of one of her stories. I did, though. I learned how they all end. Every last one of them. That night when she pounced on you from the ceiling? I know how that story ended. Would you like me to tell you?