Haunted

by Lynn Carthage

  “Tell me.”

  My attention was diverted by the table next to her. On it, the silver straw reposed on a tray, with a glint of light hitting it and creating a sparkle of luminosity.

  It was a piece of artistry—the silversmith had made something beautiful out of something gruesome. The terminus of the straw was sharpened, like an old-fashioned pen nib, and a simple cylinder stretched out of the tip. But the portion closest to the drinker, to Madame Arnaud’s lips … that was designed with fetching swirls of rococo flourishes, curled in upon itself, then flaring out in an asymmetric flurry.

  I had seen it before, of course, but had suppressed that memory.

  She surveyed my face. “Who do you have for me?” she prompted.

  “A girl of seven,” I said. “I couldn’t find younger. She’s robust and quite plump.”

  I waited for her to ask me her name. Eleanor had chosen it. My experience from my creative writing class was put to use in creating this phantom victim, but Eleanor had insisted on naming her.

  “How did you procure her?”

  “I told her about the organ, of course.” Madame Arnaud would understand this reason, as she herself had used it. But no child today would care about playing an organ, nor necessarily know what one was.

  “She’s from the village?”

  “Yes. I walked her here.”

  “Well, bring her in!”

  I hesitated. “I had to leave her outside. I built a trap for her.”

  Madame Arnaud stared at me. For an unnerving second, I thought she saw through the plot.

  “How resourceful of you,” she said. “It is too blatant for my taste; I prefer promises of sweet things and favors so that they will come willingly, but I give you credit for ensuring her compliance.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re afraid if you open the trap, she will run?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “In the old days, any manner of servants would be available to fetch her.”

  “I think it best if you come with me,” I said.

  “Is it far?”

  “It’s very far,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She pulled up her skirts and showed me the fragile slippers seemingly made of tissue. “Bring me the brown ones,” she said imperiously, pointing toward her wardrobe.

  I was tempted to say, “I’m not your lady’s maid,” but I wanted her to accompany me. I went over to the large wooden wardrobe and opened it. Inside rows of shoes stood, toes pointed out. Only one pair was brown, leather with stripes of fur that appeared to be fox, and they were indeed sturdier.

  I brought them to her. She refused to take them, merely sat with her skirts pulled up. I knelt at her feet and exchanged the shoes for her. Her bare feet were horrible, thin, pallor-less. The veins, carrying too much blood, rose bloated and prominent from her skin.

  “Fine, then,” she said. “Do I need a wrap?”

  “No,” I said. “The winds have died down.”

  As we tried to leave the chamber, her door wouldn’t open. It’s the house, I thought. It knows somehow.

  I stepped aside. “Can you open this?” I asked her.

  She stood with one arm straight up, curved at the elbow, and made a motion with her fist. The door immediately opened, with such force that it banged into the wall. She glanced at me to see my reaction. I kept my face bland, although I was screaming inside.

  The walk to the pond was an hour, Eleanor had told us, but it seemed like minutes, as we drifted through copse after copse and forlorn meadow after abandoned field. I almost thought Madame Arnaud was gliding, as I glanced back at her once.

  Soon enough, I could see the pond ahead of us. “Ah, the site of some of my trickery,” she said.

  I whirled around to see a sly smile on her face. My heart began to pound. Did she know it was also the site of my trickery?

  “She’s there,” I blurted out, pointing.

  Sitting at the end of the dock, there was a cage I’d created out of branches and tree-fall. Inside it, the figure of a girl slumped. She was made of those thick curtains artfully arranged. I had worried Madame Arnaud would recognize the print, so I’d dyed them by soaking them in the murk and mud by the water’s edge.

  Madame Arnaud inhaled, and I was reminded of Steven’s face when he would stick his nose into a wineglass and inhale.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Nothing?”

  “I don’t smell her. All I can smell is this terrible brackish water. It’s disgusting.”

  “Well, she’s yours.” I couldn’t believe I had said something so horrible. I turned to Miles in tacit apology. He gave me a kindly look. He and Eleanor were standing there guarding the faux girl in a cage, although there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t touch her.

  Together Madame Arnaud and I walked down the dock. I’d created a large hole in its flooring, then covered it up with lily pads to look like they had just drifted over from the water. It was a lowlying dock, and water touched its edges.

  I could scarcely breathe as Madame Arnaud walked closer to the cage. “Why did you trap her here?” she turned her head to ask. “Such a strange—”

  She fell through the hole, just as she was supposed to. There was a tremendous splash, and water plunged up to set the cage rocking. She was simply gone. I rushed to the hole and peered down. I couldn’t see her, but the water was dark. We waited.

  “Oh my sweet Savior!” said Eleanor. “That was too easy.”

  “I know,” said Miles. “Is she playing with us?” His face was paler than usual—now that I knew he was dead, his skin had taken on a grayish tint for me—and I saw him looking into the water nervously. I realized Miles had never seen Madame Arnaud before. Her presence as she stood on the dock in her bell-like skirts must have been formidable for someone who was new to the sight.

  “What do we do now?” asked Eleanor.

  “Wait. Count. No one can hold their breath for more than two or three minutes, especially if not trained.”

  I heard a sound that made my heart sink. A splash.

  I looked to the right of the dock, where her head appeared. Her coiffure was undone and her hair created a pool of ink around her face.

  “Help me,” she cried pitifully.

  She was struggling to stay afloat, but she had no idea what to do. She flailed, trying to maintain eye contact. She started to say something else, but sank down under the surface.

  “What if … what if she swims under the lily pads where we can’t see, and gets to the shore?” asked Eleanor. “We’d never know.”

  I realized she was right. The lily pads had seemed like a tool for us, but they could also be used to Madame Arnaud’s advantage.

  “I should go down there and make sure she drowns,” I said.

  “No, Phoebe!” said Miles adamantly.

  “It’s okay, I swim really well as long as I don’t faint. And I don’t think I can faint anymore.”

  “I’ve a better idea,” said Eleanor. “Take a stick and stir the lily pads. We can see her from up here.”

  “The water’s too dark,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I’m not letting you in there,” said Miles.

  “Letting me?”

  “Eleanor’s right. If she can get her feet under her, she can creep through here and we’d never see her.”

  “Phoebe, please don’t go into the water,” pleaded Eleanor.

  “Please,” said Miles.

  “She can’t hurt me,” I said. “She can’t even touch me.”

  “She’ll figure something out,” said Miles.

  “This is all too easy,” said Eleanor again, worried.

  “I want to make sure she dies,” I said. “Do you think if she gets out of here, she’ll even hesitate to kill Tabby?”

  I put my arms together above my head in a pose I hadn’t struck in a long time—not since everything had changed—and dived into the water.

  An interesting sensation. I cou
ld feel the cool of the pond’s temperature, but I didn’t need to hold my breath. I guess if I thought about it, it had been this way when swimming with Miles, but I just hadn’t noticed, wasn’t picking up the subtle nuances of life after death.

  The water was indeed dark, and I swam below looking for signs of the waterlogged skirts. Above my head lolled the lilies, blocking the light, forming a curved, circular mosaic. For a moment they induced a mild panic: Would it be hard to surface? Would the house’s evil knit them closely together so that I wouldn’t be able to get through?

  I didn’t need to surface to breathe, I reminded myself, and I could use intention to be anywhere, anytime. In fact, I hadn’t needed to dive into the water. I could’ve just been there.

  I turned my head to the side, and there she was. Her pale face like an underwater moon, her body in those flayed, voluminous skirts like black pirate’s sails unfurled from the rigging. She was after me.

  I floundered backward. She knew I had spelled her doom, and wanted to revenge herself as best she could before her air ran out.

  Although I couldn’t feel it, she pressed her face to mine. I couldn’t move. I had to listen to her litany.

  She whispered incantations against my cheek, spiteful charms, monstrous fairy tales uttered into my skin. Her lips were moving, casting spells, damning me. She rained imprecations down on my head, unheard words given to the water, horrible spite and ancient vows long forgotten, old fireside-shadowed hatred.

  I tried to swim away, but she came with me. She raised one white finger into the air, signaling me to wait, then she rose to the surface to catch a breath, flailing. She wasn’t good at floating, but she was managing.

  What do I do now?

  I had led her to what I thought would be her death. She was in water over her head, and yet she wasn’t drowning.

  As she descended to me again, her skirts elegantly and slowly turned inside out, like a jellyfish I’d seen long ago in the Monterey aquarium. I couldn’t be here. I had to get out. I looked for the supports of the dock, but didn’t see them. Instead, I surged toward the deeper part of the woodland pool. Maybe she would follow me.

  I swam the breaststroke, but clumsily. What did technique matter? I just wanted to get away from her and whatever spells she was casting.

  All of a sudden, looming in the water ahead of me was a massive shape I first took for a gigantic fish. Then I saw it for what it was: the remains of a tree that had been cut down. Its profuse branchwork was like a heart underwater, veins and arteries sprawled across my vision. I swam down to see the cuts of the ax, now furred with algae, that had separated it from the stump, erratic and varied, as if many men had banded together, in panic, to fell the tree.

  The stump was still there, separate, so large I could lie down on it should I wish.

  They had cut it down and then flooded the site. This wasn’t a naturally occurring pond. They had made it happen, by digging ditches to irrigate, by bringing water by the cartload. They had buried the tree with water.

  As Madame Arnaud appeared in the gloom, I swam closer to the tree and its sense of protection. She followed me. She’s a fool for doing that, I thought. She should steer clear.

  Madame Arnaud touched a branch and her hair somehow reached around to snag itself on it. I watched her try to swim up. It was time for her to take a breath, but the tree held her hair.

  She tugged with both hands at her own long, wanton hair—but her sleeve got caught by a twig. She fought to get it back.

  Oh yes, this was a powerful tree.

  Despite everything, her face made me want to weep. She needed a breath desperately. I had not been aware of the need for breath when I drowned: I had fainted, been in a state of hazy gladness as the stars took over my mind, constellations pinning me with each strident spark. It was hard to see on her face what might have been on mine. I nearly reached out to help untangle her from the tree’s trap.

  Her skirts drifted again with water pushing up from underneath, fanning them out. I saw without surprise how they snagged on another branch. She was caught, stretched out from limb to limb. The tree was a web, and she was a fly.

  A glow arose and I swam closer. There was a symbol on the tree’s trunk, now shining. What is that?

  Another lit up. They were strange, but simple signs.

  Runes.

  This was the pagan yew Eleanor had talked of. They had cut it down for fear of its power.

  Madame Arnaud looked at me with despair. Help me, she mouthed. A rune lit up right above her head. Some word from an ancient peoples, something I’d never understand.

  I can’t, I mouthed back.

  Her face closed down in a black scowl, and I knew she couldn’t make it a second longer. I rose to the surface, breaking free of the claustrophobia to arrive in a world with a real sky staggering with stars. It had turned night while we were underwater, and Eleanor was sitting on the edge of the dock crying, while Miles was standing on shore, his back to me, hands on his hips, looking in despair even if I couldn’t see his face.

  “Miss! You’re alive!” Eleanor scrambled to her feet, while Miles raced to the dock.

  “Oh my God, no,” I said, pulling myself up out of the water. It felt amazing to do it. I was not the one drowning this time. “Not alive. Not ever again. But here.”

  She hugged me, and I wondered briefly if she would feel the wet and the cold or if her apron would be dry when we disengaged. But I forgot to check, because Miles was there putting his hand on either side of my jaw and snarling at me.

  “Why the bloody hell were you down there so long?”

  “We were having a tea party,” I said. “Rude to leave early.”

  He didn’t want to laugh. Oh, he was so mad. But he did. He let loose a reluctant, loud laugh.

  “Miles, there’s a good force here, too. I think the house is malevolent. But something brought us together, something kept sending you to your car and me to the pool. It wanted us to figure things out and fix things. There’s something good. Eleanor,” I said, turning to her, “I think it’s the pagan tree down there. Chopped down. It has glowing runes on its trunk.”

  “And where’s Madame Arnaud?” she said.

  “She’s snagged in the tree,” I said. “She’s gone.”

  “Are you sure? We didn’t think she could swim, and she gave that a good go, didn’t she?” said Miles.

  “There’s no way she could hold her breath that long,” I said.

  We all three turned and surveyed the surface of the pond. Miles and Eleanor were expecting her head to break the water, but I knew the tree was holding her fast. “See?” I said. “Even if we started counting now, it’s already been way too long. She couldn’t survive.”

  I walked off the dock and emerged out onto the grass. Cool night air blew through my wet hair. Stars still held a modicum of light while the moon was queen of the sky, clutching at the crown half slipped from her head.

  I wheeled around in a large and slow circle. I was exhausted to my core, but elated. I had fought water and won this time.

  More important, I had vanquished the woman no one else could.

  I had done it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Silversmith Joseph Harcutt is grieved by his wife, Mary, and

  two children, Elizabeth and Joseph, Jr. A third child, Grace,

  predeceased Mr. Harcutt by one week. Known throughout the

  county for his beautiful handiwork, Mr. Harcutt’s greatest

  accomplishment was fashioning a silver service for Lord Hardy

  of Sheffield. Years ago he completed a small commission for

  Madame Arnaud, who had recently taken particular interest

  in the unfortunate Grace. He chose to deliver himself into

  the hands of our forgiving and compassionate Lord this 8th

  day of December.

  —Grenshire Argus obituary, December 9, 1730

  Wind seemed to swirl up and around the massive walls of the manor, as if we
were trapped in a snow globe. My hair flew around my face, and I held it back with one hand. The air smelled of autumn, of cold air thieving leaves from their branches, of acorns settling down for a long period of secrecy inside the intimate kitchens of the squirrel.

  The manor knew. And it wasn’t happy.

  “Too bad,” I muttered.

  With intention, I moved myself into the nursery, where I figured my family would be, wrapping up the evening, getting Tabby ready for bed. Miles and Eleanor followed; I felt the familiar tug from my chest and let them find me. We all of us, living and dead, gazed fondly at this sweet frowsy girl, currently being bundled into her ladybug pajamas.

  I had never seen a more comforting sight.

  Mom set her down on the floor while she went to get something.

  I slathered Tabby in kisses. They weren’t real, of course, just my face near her face.

  But she reacted.

  She turned away as if an overly eager dog had jumped on her. I looked over at Miles, who raised his eyebrows.

  There was no reason now to get Tabby to tell Mom and Steven to leave the house, but I couldn’t resist the chance to reach her. “It’s Phoebe,” I said in her ear. “Your sister, Phoebe. Remember me?”

  “Phee sister,” she said.

  I whooped in excitement and turned to see if Mom had heard. She had. She came and sat on the floor next to us. She smiled sadly and, blinking with sudden tears, pulled Tabby into a hug. “I’m thinking of Phoebe, too,” she said.

  I looked over Mom’s shoulder, and seeing Tabby’s face I wanted to weep. She was as grief stricken as Mom, her face screwed into a rictus of sorrow. I’d thought she was too young to understand that I was gone … but she did.

  I understood that for the rest of their lives, any moment of happiness, any surprised laugh, would always be followed with the reminder of me, the other member of the family, wrenched away in an instant. They’d always be etched with anguish, bold lines drawn forever on their souls.

  Tabby and Mom hugged each other in a moment so wrought with agony that I wanted to shoot myself. I should’ve tried harder to explain to Mom about my fainting. I’d been defiant, sort of “screw you” about it, sort of “serves you right if I die”—but then I’d really died.