Mary Hades: Beginnings: Books One and Two, plus novellas

by Sarah Dalton

  June 2nd 1847

  I have spent most of my time in bed mourning for Bailey. My eyes are red raw and I have taken a beating from Mama twice because I will not go down to the lessons with Miss Stevens. Every time I close my eyes I see the two of them together. Watching. Smiling. It makes me sick.

  When I sleep I dream of Lottie killing Bailey with a kitchen knife. Sometimes the two of them do it together.

  One night, just before 8 o’clock, Bess came up to my room. She held my hand and we prayed together.

  I usually hate doing my bedtime prayers, but this time I wanted to. I wanted to ask God to return my sister, to send away the devil that has been left in her place. I wanted that beast back, the one who teased me and prodded me. I want Miss Stevens to go away, and I want Bailey to be alive. Bess says that God will not return Bailey, that it is not His way. I don’t care, I asked for him anyway. Papa always says that if I do not ask I will not receive.

  When Mama started banning Bess from bringing my meals to my room, I decided to go downstairs. There they all were, sitting around the table as though nothing had happened. Mama tutted at my nightgown. It was lunchtime and I should be properly dressed.

  “Let’s get you into some clothes,” Bess said.

  “No,” Mama replied. “She is down here now. She can stay, eat her lunch and then remain in the parlour with Lottie and Miss Stevens until later. I do not want her going back up there. She will never come back down.”

  Lottie watched me as I sat down next to her. She breathed heavily, as though she had a chest infection. Her eyes were glazed and she barely even looked at her food. I noticed Bess watching her very carefully. The yellow sheen of her skin put me off my food, even though I was starving. She looked so strange. I almost began to cry right there and then. I want my sister back.

  The room was cold, unusually cold for June. Mama’s hands shook as she stirred her tea. It seemed to me that we were all sitting there ignoring what was wrong. Ignoring Lottie and hoping that whatever had happened to her would simply go away. Part of me hoped that, too. I prayed silently that Lottie would snap out of whatever mood she was in, that Bailey would come back. I looked at Lottie, at her small snub nose and her ears that poked out of her curls. I wondered if she was capable of killing a puppy. A few months ago I would have said that Lottie was a beast who would do anything bad, but I would not have meant it. I would have known deep down that she would never do anything like that. Now, I don’t know. I don’t know who she is anymore. It is as though some other creature wears her as his clothes. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.

  Liza

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mum doesn’t notice me when I walk into the house. She stands in the corner of the living room and mumbles to the shadow in front of her. The sight of her catches my breath. Her eyes are wide and she hasn’t combed her hair. The tangles sprout from her scalp like escaped snakes. She doesn’t care anymore. My prim and proper mum with her M&S high-waisted jeans, and her sensible flat shoes, and her striped jumpers, has long gone. She’s letting it all hang out. Letting the wildness out.

  Her smile.

  I can’t… I have to look away. It’s not her anymore.

  I hurry up the stairs and into my room. My fingers itch to open the music box. Hearing that song releases a flood of calm into my body, disentangling my tightly wound nerves. I take a deep breath and hum along with the music. Soon a deeper sound joins me, smooth and rich. It doesn’t even resemble my own voice. I shake my head and try to concentrate. I snap the box shut and tuck it under my arm, then hurry down the stairs. There is somewhere I want to take the box. Somewhere I want to be. Lacey, now sat quietly on the sofa watching Mum, nods to me when I pass her in the hallway.

  The bottom of the garden is the place I want to be. The swing rocks back and forth in the breeze. It never stops and it never gathers speed, not even when the wind whips leaves into the air.

  If there was a ghost on that swing I would see it. But I have come to realise that it’s the house. The house is the ghost. We are its prisoners.

  I catch the swing and sit down. Somehow I’m closer to Liza here. I feel strongly that this is her swing. There’s a deep connection between Liza and this part of the garden. As I keep the swing steady with my feet on the ground, I open the music box and remove the diary before leaving the music playing at my feet.

  Liza describes the way her sister and her governess sang to each other and I nearly drop the book. The humming. The song. Who is humming to me? I thought it was Liza, but now I wonder if it might be the governess. The thought makes my blood run cold. Liza is an innocent girl trapped in a terrible situation. The Miss Stevens from the diary seems to have darker intentions. The way she is described as acting around Lottie makes me wonder if she was also influenced by the evil in the house. I associated the music box with Liza, and therefore good. What if it’s also connected to Lottie and her possessor?

  There’s more scratching at the back of my mind. It’s like someone tapping at the window. A relentless knock at the door.

  I have to remain strong. “No,” I say. And then I read on, my muscles tightening with every word. Liza’s fear emanates from the page. I see more than she sees at first. I see the way her sister is being taken over, like my mother. I see the creepy way the governess aligns herself with possessed Lottie, reminiscent of the nanny in The Omen.

  I don’t want to read on, but I must. I dread the conclusion to the story. I long for Liza to survive, for there to somehow be a happy ending. All around me the trees sway in the wind, whispering up to the clouds.

  When Liza finds Bailey, I close my eyes and pull the diary to my chest. It doesn’t escape me that I’m sat right on the spot her beloved dog died. I know that, yet I can’t bring myself to move. I still need to be near her, to experience her pain, to see what she saw.

  Poor Liza. Poor Lottie. I can’t describe how it feels to read such emotional words and know that I can do nothing about their circumstances. Mum is in the house right now, going through almost exactly the same thing. The itch returns, worming its way into my mind. There’s an awareness within me, telling me to stop fighting it, to stop blocking out whatever it is that wants to come in. Should I stop it? I don’t know. I carry on reading.

  June 4th 1847

  Oh diary, I am so afraid. Afraid for my life even! How can I begin to tell you of the events from the last few days? I write this locked in my room with the chairs piled in front of the door. I am so frightened. So very…

  My last entry described the abnormal events of breakfast with Lottie acting as though she was someone else. Well, that night, an even more disturbing event occurred.

  I awoke in the middle of the night, my body sensing a change in the quiet atmosphere of my slumbers. There was a candle burning. I saw the light first. Then I saw Lottie holding the candle. It burned just beneath her chin, so close that a red mark was forming where the heat burned her.

  “Lottie, stop!” I cried out. I sat upright and blew out the flame to prevent it hurting her anymore. “Why did you do that?”

  Realising I had plunged the two of us into darkness, I shrank into my covers and pulled them up to my nose. It dawned on me then that I was in the dark with a girl I suspected of killing my dog. A girl who is no longer my sister.

  I could hear her breathing. It was low and raspy. I don’t think, aside from the last few weeks, I have ever heard Lottie breathing before. She has many annoying habits, but loud breathing is not one of them. The sound caused the little hairs on my arms to stand on end.

  “Do you know who I am?” she said.

  I was cold then. Cold to the bone. The voice sounded nothing like my sister, or even a girl, or even a person I have ever met in my life. Oh, diary, I am so stupid, because when one is frightened, one should scream as loud as they can, but I let the fear stop me. I froze. I shook my head in the darkness and whimpered so quietly I doubted that Lottie—or whatever was inside her—even heard me.

  �
�You will know,” it said.

  “I don’t want to, I don’t want to know!” I cried out, finding my voice. I raised it higher, high as I could. “I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to. Let Lottie back! Let Lottie back! My sister. My sister. Please!”

  And then Bess burst into my room carrying a lantern so that I could see Lottie’s face.

  I gasped, shocked and appalled at the changes within her. Her eyes bulged from her sockets, red ringed and bloodshot. Her lips were withdrawn away from her teeth to show how yellow they had become with neglect. Her skin was like sallow candle wax, covered in condensation. When she exhaled, a vapour poured out of her. She let out an animalistic growl and her appearance took on the qualities of a beast ready to pounce, with her shoulders hunched over her body, and her knees bent. I screamed then. I screamed the house down.

  Bess took one look at Lottie and grasped the crucifix at her throat. She held it towards Lottie and whispered words I did not understand, in the same language used by priests at church.

  “Leave this girl, demon,” Bess said.

  Lottie laughed and laughed. She shook her head and laughed. I watched her clench her fists so hard that her fingernails drew blood. I watched it trickle to the floor. Drip drip drip. She opened her hands and dragged her palms down her cheeks so that the blood smeared all over her face.

  Mama walked into the room as Lottie licked the blood from her palms. She fainted. Lottie then walked out of the room, hissing at Bess on the way, stepping calmly over Mama.

  Once we had revived Mama, we all went downstairs. Bess held my hand the entire way, holding me close as we passed Lottie’s room on the way down. I saw the sweat on her forehead and the way her lips were tight and bloodless. The arm she used to hold my hand was stiff and rigid, tense and ready. She often shook her head, muttering about the house, about how it was possessed, how it harboured spirits here. How it was evil. Evil. In the walls, the floors, everywhere, evil.

  Around the dining table we sat. No one said a word for at least two minutes. We didn’t make eye contact.

  “You need to get a priest,” Bess said eventually. “That isn’t your daughter in there.”

  “I will call for a doctor in the morning,” Mama said. “She is ill. She—”

  “She’s possessed by the devil!” Bess shouted. “And you’re too stupid to see it.”

  “When my husband comes home, he will fix—”

  “Nothing. He will fix nothing,” Bess said. She hung her head sadly as though there was no talking to Mama. I agreed this time. There wasn’t.

  I slept in Bess’s room that night. Mama didn’t say a word. She didn’t go to bed at all. She dressed and sat in the parlour holding a cold cup of tea. When I woke up the next morning she was in exactly the same place, as though Medusa had petrified her into a statue.

  Bess and I were making breakfast when there was a knock at the door. Bess lifted her skirt and strode through the room into the hallway. I followed her, not wanting to stay alone when Lottie, or the demon inside her, was still somewhere in the house.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  I noticed that she had put the chain across the door. We usually leave it unlatched so that Miss Stevens can come and go as she pleases.

  “It’s Miss Stevens,” came the reply through the door, as bright and breezy as always.

  Bess stepped away. “You’re not welcome here anymore, Miss. You get going now.”

  “What are you talking about, Bess? I’m here to teach the children.”

  “And what is it you’ve been teaching ’em, eh? What’ve you been teaching Lottie? She’s not herself, that’s for sure, and I think you’ve had a hand in it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Miss Stevens’s voice changed. I heard it, the very subtle difference. She went from bright, breezy and happy to smooth and persuasive. “I’m here to help the girls, Bess, you know that.”

  “You can’t fool an old woman like me, lass.” Bess waggled her finger at the door, the other hand pressed to her hip. I couldn’t see her face, but I heard the tension in her voice. “I don’t know what kind of spirit you dragged into this house—”

  Miss Stevens laughed from the other side of the door. “Me, drag a spirit into this house? Are you mad? Are you insane, Bess? Do you believe for one moment that I have brought any kind of darkness into this house?”

  “No, the darkness was already here.”

  The third voice was so close to my ear I felt the freezing cold breath on my neck. The shock made me scream louder than I ever have before. I rushed away from the speaker, falling onto my behind in haste. Lottie stood over me with a distracted smile on her face. She waved her hand as though I was of little importance.

  “Let her in,” Lottie said as she turned towards the door.

  Bess unlatched the chain with shaking fingers and backed away from the door.

  Lottie opened the door herself, the breath coming out of her body in a deep growl. Miss Stevens entered, sweeping in through the door as though nothing had happened. I gaped up at her from the hall floor. Her entire demeanour had changed. The mask was dropped. She was free to be herself now. Her head was held high, she sneered down at me like I was worthless, and her eyes were shadowed, cold, and distant. Lottie put her hand into Miss Stevens’s and they walked past us.

  When Bess helped me stand, her arm shook, and her hand was clammy. She watched them walk through the house. “There will always be those drawn to evil. They are handmaidens to the devil, ready to serve the dark ones. You and I are the light. I never thought I’d say this to a child, lass, but it’s up to us now. We have to stop them.”

  “Stop them doing what?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Winning.”

  I brushed down my nightdress. “How are we going to do that?”

  “By surviving. By not letting them take our souls, that’s how.”

  I listened as Lottie and Miss Stevens walked up the stairs. Bess was already heading to the kitchen.

  “You’re going to need a good breakfast in you today. We’ll do that first and then decide on how to approach the problem. I’m not sure your Ma is going to be much help to us. The task lands on us, unless your father comes home soon.”

  “He’s not due back for two days,” I said, my voice weak and full of fear.

  “Then it’s down to us. It doesn’t matter; the women always clear up the mess anyway.” Bess placed the copper kettle on the stove and waited for it to whistle.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I lift my head from the book, moving against the stiffness in my neck. Reading the diary has caused every muscle in my body to clench up. My stomach is in knots. My calf muscles tighten as they work to keep me steady on the swing.

  Drawn to the window of Ravenswood, the first thing I see is Mum standing between the curtains. A dark shape stands next to her, close enough that the shadow intertwines with her body. Mingled together. Whispering to each other. Mum’s eyes are dark, framed by bruised skin. Her cheekbones are taut and her skin is yellow. She stands there and watches, waiting for me.

  I read on:

  Mama paced the parlour, her hands never still and her lips moving.

  “She’s praying,” Bess said. “Perhaps we should, too. Now, don’t give me that face. Are you telling me you still don’t believe after everything that has happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled.

  I jerked my head up to the sounds above us. Miss Stevens and Lottie were in Lottie’s bedroom. They sang, loudly, the same song. The song from my music box. It did not fill me with comfort anymore. I realised that they were mocking me, as though they wanted to destroy everything that was ever mine.

  The kettle whistled and I jumped out of my skin. Bess poured the boiling water in the teapot and waited for the tea to brew.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “For now, we wait,” she replied. “Until they decide to strike. Eat.” She pointed down to my plate of bacon, eg
gs, and bread rolls.

  I picked up the bread roll and lifted my knife to butter it. But as I lifted the knife, I felt warm liquid dripping from the handle. With a gasp I dropped it onto the table cloth and backed away. My hand was coated in blood.

  “Have you hurt yourself?” Bess asked.

  I shook my head.

  “The devil is playing tricks on us. Take no notice, Liza. Stay strong.”

  “We should leave,” I said. “They are too much for us.”

  Bess frowned. Her gaze trailed up to the ceiling. “If we leave, your sister will die.”

  Those words were an ice cold stab to my heart. She was right. The Thing inside her will use her up and spit her out. I stared down at the blood on my hand, transfixed by it. All I saw was Lottie with the knife in my dream. Lottie, my big sister, the girl who took care of me, the girl who teased me mercilessly as we were growing up. I wanted her back more than anything.

  Bess bent down so that we were level. “If you want to go, you can. There’s no shame in it, Liza. Run into Ashforth. They will take care of you there.”

  As I shook my head, Mama’s footsteps echoed through the house. She dashed from the parlour and hurried to our front door. Still mumbling under her breath, she worked the door handle, yanking it so hard she leaned back and her arms strained. The door refused to budge. From upstairs came the sound of giggling.

  “I can’t get out,” Mama cried. “I can’t get out, I can’t get out! Oh, God, let me out of this wretched place. Let me leave, please.” She dropped to her knees and sobbed. “Oh, God, mighty God, I will do anything, anything to survive.”

  In three strides Bess was in front of Mama and clouted her hard around the face. Mama screamed through her sobs.

  “I’ll have you fired! You mark my words, when my husband returns—”