by Kelley York
Damn that box.
When Benji had told me about the howling the other day, it had sounded so peculiar and I couldn’t grasp why a ghost, of all things, would be projecting such a sound. But then I heard it for myself at the train station, and now it feels ingrained into my ears.
Perhaps this time, I was dreaming about it. That’s all.
“Good morning, sunshine,” I greet.
A sleepy smile tugs at his mouth. He pushes himself up to sitting. “What time is it?”
“About time for food, according to my stomach.” I pause, listening. “By the sound of it, some of those locals we heard about have started arriving. We could mingle a bit, throw back a few drinks along with our meal?”
Benji cracks a smile. “You’re just looking for an excuse to drink without your sisters lecturing you.”
I sniff indignantly. “That’s not it at all! But if we’re going to be stuck here anyway and with no need to rise early tomorrow, I should think we deserve to enjoy ourselves tonight.”
“Of course, of course. Let’s at least make ourselves presentable then.”
After a wash, shave, and a change of clothes, I’m feeling markedly more human. Growing up on a farm as I did, being dirty has never bothered me much, though perhaps Whisperwood did instil some sense of “civilisation” into me. Just as it taught me to watch how I speak, to sound proper—something I still stumble over from time to time, especially when I’ve been home a while—or how to dance and which are the correct utensils for each course of a meal. I learned all these things not because I cared to personally, but because I knew the financial burden it placed on my parents to send me to Whisperwood and I didn’t want them to think their struggle had been for nothing.
Benji, on the other hand, grew up with tutors and schools that taught him these things from a young age. Whisperwood had two sorts of boys: those who were from poor families who pinched and saved to send their sons to a boarding school in hopes they would someday climb the social ladder, and those from well-to-do families who had got into so much trouble that no other school would take them. The two sides were always at odds. The rich boys looking down on the poor boys, the poor boys thinking the rich boys were stuck-up pricks.
But Benji… He never looked down on Frances and me for how we spoke or ate or anything else. He was patient when I struggled with my studies. He was kind to everyone he spoke to, never thinking he was better than anyone. He was gentle and patient and easily pushed around by others—and Frances and I both felt an overwhelming need to protect him, to ensure nothing and no one tarnished that shine of his.
I did not want the world to get a hold of Benjamin and ruin him.
“Do I look all right?” he asks, smoothing a hand down the front of his waistcoat. As always, he manages to look put-together despite our travel weariness. I’ve not even brought along a proper waistcoat as I left behind anything that didn’t seem necessary, so the pair of us look very mismatched indeed. It makes me smile. “Dashing.”
We tuck the box far beneath one of the beds and lock the room behind us, with Benji pocketing the key. It seems less suspicious than carting the damned thing around with us.
When we descend the stairs, the pub is already quite full of bodies. Men and women, a few children scurrying about, talking and laughing with a familiarity that makes me feel quite a bit on the outs. I suspect most everyone here knows one another, and I wonder how they feel about travellers passing through. An inn this may be, but clearly the bulk of their business is this, right here.
For that matter, all the tables appear to be occupied, but we locate a few lone seats at the counter to take up. Dinner consists of roasted beef and veal, bread, cheese, cabbage and fish. Benji offers me his meat and fish in exchange for my cheese and cabbage, and I look over at his plate with some sympathy because it really does not look at all appetising.
The meat is overcooked and the trout on the burnt side of crispy, but it’s the best damned thing we’ve had aside from Parker House’s upscale menu. Benji’s must be edible enough because he eats every bite. What a relief, given how little he’s had the last few days. He does, however, swiftly wash the boiled cabbage down with beer.
The beer isn’t altogether horrible. By the time we’ve got through our meals and a few cups, we’re full, content, and more than happy to converse with our neighbours.
The gent next to me is named Robert, and within ten minutes of knowing the man, I’ve heard all about his wife, four children, and his ailing mother-in-law for whom he’s just waiting to kick the bucket.
“So you—where’d you say you’re goin’?” he asks, as though just remembering I am not, in fact, a friend he’s known for years.
“California,” I say. “San Francisco, to be exact.”
“California, eh. I went out there once—back in the forties. They said gold was all over them hills, though I never found a bit of it. But it helped me meet my Marnie, so I s’pose it wasn’t all bad. Though it also brought her mother along…”
He peers down into his now-empty cup, squints, and slams it down on the counter while waving down the barkeep for another. Then he becomes distracted by a friend who comes along to chat, leaving me to my own devices again.
Benji has long since moved off elsewhere in the room. Normally, in a group setting, the pair of us would stick close together because Benjamin relied on me to carry a conversation, wherein he could interject his opinions quietly without being the centre of attention. It’s peculiar to look to my side and find him not there now. I spot him sitting at a table near a window, chatting with two doe-eyed women who seem utterly fascinated by whatever he’s saying.
That’s Benji for you. He’s disarming and soft-spoken, and I’ve yet to see him speak to a woman that didn’t find him absolutely darling. Once upon a time, I found that endearing and amusing.
Now, when I see one of the girls rest a hand on his arm, an ugly, jealous little snake slithers its way round my heart and squeezes.
I turn back to the counter to flag down another drink. Maybe I’ve had a few too many already. Perhaps the alcohol is the cause of such an unpleasant feeling.
Or perhaps it’s that I’ve almost lost Benjamin once and now I haven’t a bloody clue where the two of us stand. I had thought I knew that whatever was between us was unspoken, unconsummated even, but that we just knew and we were all right with that. I could have gone all my life as we were back in Whisperwood, but then his decision to take up a job and possibly marry some girl he hadn’t even met turned the world on its head.
He came back to me, I remind myself. It’s still just Preston and Benjamin and I’ve no reason to be jealous.
And yet after I’ve got another drink in my hand, I find myself weaving through the tavern to Benji’s table. I swing a nearby chair around to casually situate myself between Benjamin and the girl whose hand has not left his arm. The flicker of a frown passes over her face. My physical interjection requires her to budge over.
“There you are!” Cheerful, easy. I place the mug in front of Benji since his looks about empty. “Thought I’d lost you for a moment there.”
He casts me a small smile, almost curiously. “Sorry. I was just telling these two young ladies some stories of Whisperwood.”
The girl on Benji’s other side—bronze-skinned and dark haired and lovely—leans forward. “Haunted, he said. That true?”
I nod gravely. “Very true. Couldn’t walk down a hallway without seeing ghosts.”
“No need to exaggerate,” Benji muses. “Really, it was only in our third year that it started to get unbearable. We had a friend—”
“A friend who is now a ghost hunter, I feel I should add.”
“Ghost hunter?” the girl to my right gasps, seeming to have forgiven my earlier intrusion. “How’s that work? How d’you hunt ghosts? Not like it’s a rabbit or something.”
I grin. I learned the answer to that well enough from James and Esher and Aunt Eleanor, and what I don’t know, I can cert
ainly make up.
For the better part of an hour, we sit there with the two women—and eventually a brother to one of them who joins us—while spinning stories of ghosts and our haunted school. I include James and Esher and Frances, even useless Edwin Davies, though I’m still sour over him ditching us the night we needed him the most, so perhaps I use him as a comedic plot device. I highly doubt any of this would be quite as entertaining were the lot of us sober, but it’s fun, it passes the time, and it feels good to relax with Benjamin at my side.
That is, until he murmurs something that sounds like I’m getting some air and leaves the table. When he hasn’t returned after a few minutes, it occurs to me he went outside on his own and it’s dark and unfamiliar and…
I excuse myself from our little gathering, thanking them for keeping us company and head out the front doors. The cold is biting and I left my jacket in the room, so my immediate thought is that Benji is going to be freezing out here too.
The street is a bit muddy from rain and melting snow. On either side of the hotel is a general store and a tailor-plus-shoemaker’s shop. Directly across from me, a row of small cottages, a bakery, and a sheriff’s station. All the windows are dark and the buildings are silent this time of evening. And trees. I see plenty of trees, crowded in among the buildings, stretching out into woods that go on forever.
What I do not see is Benji.
I head down the inn’s few steps and venture down the road to the right. It isn’t a particularly long stretch before the street gives way to dense forest with only a narrow dirt road disappearing into the trees, worn down by years of feet and horse hooves. But still no Benji. I start back the other way. As I come to pass the inn, I spare a look left, into an alleyway, and catch sight of Benji leaning against the wall and gazing up at the sky. Relief unknots the anxiety in my chest.
“All right?” I call as I head his way.
Benji straightens up a little too quickly, a bit unsteady on his feet after so many drinks, and he gives me a small smile that seems…off, somehow. Tired. Perhaps being drunk doesn’t sit well with him. I’ve never seen him have more than a drink with dinner before.
“Yes, sorry. I just needed a breather.” He slouches back again. I lean against the opposite wall, hands folded behind me.
“I’d have come with you, you know.”
“You were enjoying yourself.”
“I thought you were too.”
“As I said, I just…needed some air.” He looks down at his feet, scuffing his heel against the dirty alley ground. “You should go back in. Talk. Drink. Have fun.”
Something is off, I think. And it isn’t the alcohol. “What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head, flashes me a smile. “You worry too much. I’m perfectly fine.”
I frown. “No, you’re not. Something is bothering you.”
“I’m fine, Preston.”
The words aren’t angry, not exactly. But they’re sharp at the edges, blunted only by the way Benjamin seems to wince in immediate regret that he allowed them to slip past his lips at all.
We stand in silence, Benji staring up at the sky, me staring at my feet, feeling suitably chastised and wondering at this tension in the air. I feel I’ve done something wrong or that something has happened to upset Benji and I’m somehow the cause of it.
At the risk of annoying him further, I venture carefully, “I’d like to try to fix whatever is bothering you, but I can’t if you don’t talk to me.”
And I don’t only mean here and now and this. I mean…everything. Every day. Benji never asks me for a damned thing—and I wish that he would. I think of the bruises on his arm or how after Frances’ disappearance, Benji fussed over everyone else but never seemed to give himself time to mourn. The only time he’s ever come to me was when his mother died and even then, his grief had been far more reserved than I’d anticipated it would be. He still always had a smile when I caught his eye, even if he looked miserable when he did not realise that I was watching.
He hurts and he faces things alone and when I find out after the fact that he’s endured something horrible all by himself, it breaks my heart.
Benji sighs. “You can’t always fix everything, Preston.”
Such a response indicates there is, in fact, something that needs fixing. I lift my chin, prepared to push the subject, likely because my alcohol-addled brain doesn’t seem to realise it’s wiser to shut up.
However Benji’s attention seems to have shifted, his gaze no longer wandering the sky, but instead pinpointed at a spot far above my head.
“Benji? What is it?”
“A woman,” he says, slowly. “In the window.”
Frowning, I turn around and look up.
Indeed, there is the shadowy form of a woman above us. Aside from the outline of her figure and the slight tip of her head that suggests she is specifically watching us, I cannot make out many details.
“Yes, that is a woman, I think.” I look to Benjamin, brow cocked. “What about her?”
Benjamin meets my eyes. “Preston, that’s our window.”
◆◆◆
There is no graceful way for two half-drunk men to make a mad dash up a flight of stairs. I’m amazed we don’t trip over one another and end up with a broken limb. I reach the door to our room first, though in my hurry I forget we’ve locked it and I slam into it rather painfully. Benji scurries over, fumbling for the key in his pocket while I rub my sore nose.
He flings open the door and we stand there, staring into the darkness. It was locked and no human being could have scaled a flat outside wall to get in through the window.
“The box,” Benji whispers.
I move past him, casting furtive glances to every shadowy corner, and drop to my knees to reach beneath the bed and drag out the box. I heave a sigh of relief.
A hand touches my shoulder. I look up to see Benji beside me, staring across the room with an unwavering, wide-eyed gaze.
“Do you see her?” he whispers.
I rise to my feet, box gripped tightly. I expect to see nothing, as so often happens.
Except I do see the woman in our room, standing near the door as it creaks closed. She looks every bit as dead as any of the ghosts at Whisperwood, long, dark hair a tangled mess, and everything about her looks wrong, the proportions of her face slightly warped, her fingers too long, the whites of her eyes pitch dark.
The same screaming woman from the Parker House Hotel. She truly did follow us all this way.
No, she followed the box—or whatever is inside of it.
Heart racing, I take a step forward. “What do you want from us?”
She opens her mouth, a yawning chasm of inky blackness. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls, followed by another, and another. The words that escape her lips are garbled and hoarse, uttered in a language I do not know and do not recognise at all.
“We can’t understand you,” I press, keeping my voice steady, level. James said that was important—not to display fear. “We’d like to help you, but you have to speak with us.”
“Is it this?” Benji asks, stepping up beside me. He takes the box from my hands and lifts it. “Is this what you’re after?”
The woman’s mouth snaps shut. Her face turns, studying the chest in Benji’s hands. In the blink of an eye, she stands before him and he shivers as she places her hands over his and leans in to speak.
“The wolves are coming.”
She vanishes.
She does not fade, does not walk away, she’s just…gone. Benji sucks in a sharp breath, shudders, and drops the box onto his bed. He turns away, rubbing his hands and arms as though trying to shake a chill.
I cross over to shut the door fully, noting the cold spot in the room right where the woman stood seconds ago. My pulse appears to be slowing itself. It isn’t fear that I feel when I see the ghosts—not truly. At least not for myself. Even years ago when I stood at Nicholas Mordaunt’s gravesite, exhuming his bones, staring into his eyes bef
ore James and Esher managed to lure him off into the school, any fear I had felt was centred around the fact that Benji was there, and that he might get hurt.
Father always did say I lacked much of a survival instinct.
“‘The wolves are coming,’” I repeat quietly. “What does that mean?”
He sits on the edge of my bed, tucking his hands beneath his thighs, shoulders hunched. “I don’t know. It could be gibberish for all we know.”
“The howling we’ve been hearing must mean something. But if the wolves aren’t real—how could they be, trailing us across an entire continent—what are they? Some metaphorical thing? Some ghostly echo?”
When Benjamin has no answer to my questions, I pick up the box, staring at the dials on the front. Initially, I began this journey thinking that it didn’t matter to me one bit what its contents were, but now, all things considered…
I take a seat, hunch over the chest, and begin turning dials.
“What are you doing?” Benji asks.
“What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m going to get this bloody thing open and find out what’s in it.”
◆◆◆
When I sleep, it’s slumped back against the rickety headboard with my chin dipped to my chest, so that when my eyes open, I have the most ungodly crick in my neck. The box sits in my lap, still locked.
I groan and press the heels of my hands against my eyes. Although my head is not aching much, my eyes are dry and my tongue feels two sizes too large for my mouth. I could kill for a glass of water.
Beside me, Benji is still asleep. He tried to stay up while I spun the dials in succession, working out every single possible combination that could be created. Eventually his eyelids began to droop and the exhaustion coupled with the alcohol dragged him into sleep. Now and again, he shifted and whimpered, taken by dreams, and I would reach out to touch his shoulder or stroke his hair until he settled again.