by Adam McOmber
I considered the fact that I might be taking ill like Mother. She’d brought a sickness home from the Heath and infected me. My perceptions were now addled, as happens with a high fever. But upon further experiment, I came to realize my ability was something quite different—not a dissolution of the rational mind, but a force that allowed me to see beyond the rational entirely. Mother’s dressing room was not actually a static space, as it appeared to the normal eye. The room was alive. The surfaces of objects were nothing more than a fragile veneer. My newfound ability allowed me to see past those surfaces into another reality—a universe of animate space concealed within the inanimate. I began to imagine I’d found a way to see the objects’ very souls, and I felt as though this was the correct way of seeing the world. Everything up until that point had been a misunderstanding.
As I was pondering my new ability in the dressing room I heard another sound—an elegant sort of sighing that seemed somehow more significant than the rest of the sensations. I decided to investigate and climbed off the vanity seat, walking around the room until the sighing was at its loudest. The sound came from some object inside Mother’s sturdy oak wardrobe. I touched the brass door handle and paused, momentarily overcome by the maids’ superstitions. I imagined that if I opened the wardrobe, I’d see Mother inside, glaring down at me, eyes white as marbles, dirt falling from her hair.
The other objects in the room were still murmuring around me, and they seemed to grow agitated when I hesitated at the wardrobe. They chittered and vibrated, as if urging me to open it. Finally, I steeled myself and threw open the door. Inside, I found Mother’s dresses and corsets, still all hanging in a row, and looking at them made my eyes burn and my throat feel tight. I wanted to gather the dresses and press them against my mouth and nose, to breathe her into me. But I forced myself to continue the search, as it was clear that the sighing sound was coming from behind the dresses. I pushed the clothing aside, and there at the back of the wardrobe was an object that stole my breath.
It was a large oval portrait in a gilded frame that had been hidden away, likely by Mother herself. The canvas was covered in dark, almost grotesque flowers that had been created using a technique of layered oils. Emerging from that rank flora was a black-eyed woman who seemed to be pulling herself up out of the flowers and into the light. It looked as though she was trying to disgorge herself from the painting, and I found it difficult to tell where her body began and the foliage ended. Thick vines were tangled in her hair, and the swollen blossoms of the boggy flowers were indistinguishable from the folds of her dark dress. She was a woman born of plant matter. Even her flesh had the iridescent look of a petal. The most striking aspect of the painting, the aspect that would make me return to it again and again, was the woman’s face—for it seemed to be my mother’s own. I say “seemed” because I already found it difficult to remember the specifics of Mother’s features. She was dissolving from my memory, faster by the day. But this woman, looking down at me from her bed of engorged flowers, gave me the feeling of Mother. She had the same countenance, and like my mother, there was something superior in her, something almost otherworldly, as if she surveyed me from some precipice.
I realized this was most certainly the Lady of Flowers Mother had been asking for. She’s there, blooming in the darkness, silent and waiting. Why the Lady wore my mother’s face, I did not know. Yet I was sure the painting had called out to me, willing me to find it, using my new talent as a kind of guide. I wondered what meaning this Lady might have, and though my curiosity was strong, I believed the answer would come if I remained patient.
In the meantime, I began to fancy myself a new breed of detective, piecing together a world that no one else could see. I made my way around Stoke Morrow, allowing the house to open itself to me. The fainting couch in the Clock Parlor made a noise like rushing water when I put my ear against its cushion. The marble table in the foyer emitted a dazzling shade of azure light from its surface. Every room was breathing and alive, and I was an explorer in this alien world.
Father had once told me that primitives believed everything to be ensouled. There were souls of nature that were quiet and gentle because they’d been created by a deity, and then there were the souls of man-made objects, which were tormented because their maker was imperfect. I believed that I’d become a primitive dressed in the guise of a nineteenth-century girl. I even allowed myself to think that one day I might learn to use my talent to control the world.
Father began growing his Byzantine collections in earnest when he returned from Bath, and the Lady of Flowers became a kind of psychic anchor for me in that sea of objects. His was a horror vacui— a fear of empty spaces. Animals carved from jade, medieval Italian serving plates, arabesque sculptures of songbirds appeared in the black halls along with a hundred other oddities. Even the gardens turned queer. Father continued to enhance the ruin—a Roman folly that to me looked no different from the statued graves of Highgate. It was as if he believed that filling the house and grounds with curiosities might edge the sickness from his heart. My newfound senses were jangled by the appearance of so many objects. I heard their mutterings, saw their colors, felt their tingling vibrations. When I needed respite from all of this, I went to the secret portrait, sometimes going as far as curling my body inside the wardrobe to be closer to the Lady. I listened to her high and whispered song, and she kept me strong in the chaos. I said nothing to Father, as I believed it was likely that he’d never seen the oval portrait. It was so well hidden in the wardrobe after all, and keeping it so made me feel connected to Mother, as if she and I both shared some secret life.
• • •
The more I experimented with my talent, the more intense the sensations became until I was moving down the long halls of Stoke Morrow in a field entirely awash in sound and color, listening to the murmurings of teacups and observing a bright halo above the newel post. It seemed there was an aura extending from me, and as long as the objects were in the field of my aura, I could experience their essences. At times, their babbling was so loud, I could barely hear the maids when they called for me. Stoke Morrow was no longer a house at all. It had become a body, mysterious and alive.
In the years that followed, I learned that I could momentarily infect others with my ability through touch. I overheard the maids, one afternoon, reporting this phenomenon to each other, in ridiculous and breathless whispers. When Miss Anne washed me, putting her hands on my skin, she said she heard a high moan coming from the silver tub. When Miss Herron-Cross undressed me before bed, she claimed the painted walls of my bedroom momentarily glowed a deep shade of red. “The very color of Hell,” she intoned. “I felt that if I turned around, I might see a devil leering at me.” The maids were briefly experiencing what I experienced, and instead of finding such heightened perception fascinating, they feared it.
They brought the local cleric to the house one day when father was away at his law offices. Miss Herron-Cross believed that my grief over the death of my mother had made me vulnerable to demons.
“You think our Jane is possessed?” Miss Anne asked.
“I’m quite certain of it,” Miss Herron-Cross said. “Even the child’s face seems to be changing. She grows stonier by the day. I don’t like her looking at me with those cold little eyes of hers.”
The cleric was an old man with loose and hanging skin. He raised a crucifix before my face for several minutes then asked who it was I saw on the cross. When I answered Jesus Christ, the cleric asked if I understood the terms of my salvation. I said I did, all the while listening to the terrible, creaking sound the wooden cross made, wondering if Christ himself had heard such sounds while hanging there.
Then the cleric laid his hands on me in an attempt to drive out the unholy presence. In the next moment, he drew back, as if burned, and a look of fear spread across his face.
“What was the meaning of that?” he asked, sharply.
I fixed my dark gaze on him and provided no answer.
/> “The room seemed full of life,” he said, his voice quavering. “There was color and pagan song. How did you conjure such illusion, child?”
The truth of the matter was that I didn’t know how I’d done it. The transference was still very much a mystery to me. And even if I did understand, I didn’t think I’d tell him. He was such a pompous man, and I liked the fact that I’d disturbed him. I folded my hands and watched.
The cleric looked to Miss Herron-Cross. “Did you say you have reason to believe the mother was a witch?”
Miss Herron-Cross put a silencing finger to her thin lips.
“Not a witch,” blurted Miss Anne. “She was—”
I turned to look at her, wondering what she might reveal. “Evelyn Silverlake was good to us,” Miss Anne said finally. “She was as good to us as she had the strength to be.”
The cleric began collecting his instruments of exorcism. “This girl is attempting an enchantment,” he said. “She wishes to ensnare all of us in some manner. If I were the two of you, I’d relinquish my position and flee.”
“You cannot help her, then?” Miss Anne asked.
“There are some things in the world that are beyond Christian aid. I suggest again that both of you take your leave of this house. Before this child puts some mark on you that cannot be erased.”
Only Miss Herron-Cross heeded his warning. When she gave notice of her departure to Father, she also told him he should promptly send me to a hospital or an asylum—Bethlehem Royal, perhaps.
“There’s nothing wrong with Jane,” Father said. “She’s lost her mother, and she keeps to herself. That’s all.”
“Her shyness is nothing more than a disguise,” countered Miss Herron-Cross. “She’s secretly willful, and on top of that, I believe she might be ill. And she makes everyone around her ill. Even Stoke Morrow is susceptible to her disease. I have heard and seen terrible things in this house when she is near.”
“Now it’s you who sound mad,” Father said. “I think it’s best if you just go.”
“You’ve experienced these things yourself,” Miss Herron-Cross said. “And you can’t deny that even Jane’s mother manifested certain unnatural qualities.”
“I won’t have you talking about my wife in that manner,” Father said. “Gather your things, and be on your way.”
I continued to wonder what Miss Herron-Cross meant about my mother’s unnatural qualities. What had she told the cleric that led him to believe Mother was a witch? And how much did Father understand about my skills? There were instances when he wore a haunted expression, and he eyed his collections suspiciously, as though he could hear their chatter. If I asked him what was wrong he would make some remark about digestive problems. One night, when he was particularly tired, he asked if I believed in ghosts.
“Ghosts?” I said.
“Shadows seen from the corner of the eye. Sounds heard only in some deep and secret chamber of the ear.”
When I didn’t respond, he gave me a sad smile. The years of troubled sleep after Mother’s death had taken their toll on him. His face was no longer the face I remembered from childhood. It looked as if some wax worker had made a mask and forgotten to fix its shape. “Never mind, Jane. I’m turning into such an old fool. Your mother certainly wouldn’t have approved of such talk.”
I acted as though I found his self-deprecation endearing, yet all the while I felt terribly guilty, wondering if I was driving my own father mad with my transference.
After the departure of Miss Herron-Cross, Miss Anne became my primary caretaker. She was bound to Stoke Morrow, it seemed, as she was less experienced and had fewer options for employment. It was clear she feared me. I was soon labeled by her a variety of evil on par with, if not higher than, Satan. There were days when she made me say prayers nearly every hour, but instead of asking anything of God, I would get on my knees and listen to the sounds the house made. I imagined that I was the god of the objects, and they were making prayers to me in their alien tongues.
I decided that rather than complaining to Father about Miss Anne’s treatment of me, I would become her personal devil. That’s what she wanted, after all. So I began tormenting her—touching her hands and arms at odd times and letting her experience the house as I experienced it. She feared me and therefore did not retaliate. I was so cruel to her. She couldn’t have committed nearly as many sins as I punished her for.
I realized if I could frighten Miss Anne in this way, I could control her. I was building my strength and no longer needed to feel cowed by anyone. But this feeling of superiority was also the start of my undoing. By the time I met Maddy and Nathan, I thought I understood myself and my talent. I thought I could control it enough to make a friendship with them. But experience proved me quite wrong.
CHAPTER 4
After the disappearance of Nathan Ashe, the objects began to exhibit a heightened agitation reminiscent of the episode when I discovered the oval portrait in Mother’s wardrobe. Yet this agitation seemed to come on an even grander scale. Colors pulsed in garish hues—bizarre shades of silvery pink and hot, phosphorescent purple. Sounds grew loud enough to startle me from sleep. At first, I thought the amplified sensations might be due to my own distress. Perhaps the crude images of Nathan set upon by beasts in the Illustrated Penny had upset me more than I realized, and I was projecting my own troubled thoughts onto the objects. Certainly the drawings in the Penny were nothing more than the product of some opium-addled artist, but I found I couldn’t write them off entirely. I’d learned from Nathan himself not to dismiss anything as too fantastical.
As the disturbances increased in frequency and variety, it became clear that my own nerves were not the cause. Some unseen force, concealed within Stoke Morrow, had irritated the objects. Writing desks, oil lamps, cigar boxes, and all the rest started acting out in my presence, soon producing near blinding flashes of light and terrible explosions of sound. Father asked me on more than one occasion if I was quite all right. “You look so pale, Jane,” he said. “And your eyes—it’s as though you’re staring at something in the far distance. Something that troubles you.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “A headache.”
“Your mother used to get such headaches,” Father said. “Oftentimes lying down in a dark room would help.”
“I’ll be fine, Father.”
The more I attempted to ignore the new sensations, the more insistent the objects became. I began isolating myself, spending time in the garden away from the aggressive house. Elements of nature—anything that was not man-made—soothed my senses and could sometimes even quiet them completely. I stopped talking to Father and then even to my dearest Maddy. I wanted nothing more than to meditate in the garden and to dampen my senses enough so as not to feel as if I was losing my grip on reality entirely. I sat among the yellow daffodils that were just beginning to burst their fragile sheaths and wondered what Nathan himself would have made of this new agitation of the objects. After he experienced the transference for the first time, he believed he could come to some understanding of it. He made a careful research project out of me. Though together we’d only fallen deeper into mystery, and then he was gone, leaving me with more questions than answers.
• • •
I lay down on the stone bench in the garden, gazing at Stoke Morrow. The old manor was fortified like a castle. Its high stony walls were encased in vines, and its fingerlike chimneys were black and reaching. From my perspective, it was difficult to see the roof, as the tiles were obscured by a scrim of crenellated parapets decorated with skyward-gazing stone sparrows whose mouths remained perpetually open. Rain mixed with London ash had blackened the birds and the whole of the house. Stoke Morrow might have once possessed an architecture of hope—perhaps its builders meant for it to look as though it was attempting an ascent into Heaven. But in later years, as the foundation settled and cracked, the skyward-reaching house reversed its trajectory and began sinking into the mossy earth that surrounded it.
> I fell asleep there on the bench, and thankfully I did not dream. When I opened my eyes again, the afternoon sun had grown hotter and my senses were more than irritated—they throbbed, responding to a low rumbling that had developed in the distance. Perhaps it was that very rumbling that had drawn me from my sleep. The sound was coming from Stoke Morrow itself; the stone walls of my home were literally trembling. Then, as I watched, blue flamelike auras rose from the pediments of my own bedroom window. The flames curled and extended until they encased the entire vibrating manor in an eldritch glow. My childhood home was sealed in the cocoon of some cold enchantment, and to my chagrin, I realized I was once again its enchantress.
I knew I could not let these escalations go on any longer, as I feared I might start transferring them to Father. I made my way into the foyer, determined to learn the cause of the amplifications, and it was there, near the grand staircase, that I did something I’d never attempted before. I spoke directly to the objects. “What do you want me to see?” I asked, in as bold a tone as I could muster. “What exactly has disturbed you?”
I don’t know what I expected would happen. Certainly I didn’t believe the objects would start speaking to me, but before any kind of response could come, I heard a familiar voice from the kitchen, a sort of avian warble. “Did you ask for something just now, Jane?” Miss Anne said. She appeared in the shadow of the doorway, twining a rag nervously between her fingers.