Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling

by Michael Boccacino

  The evening ended the way it began, with everyone engaged in polite conversation until Duncan entered carrying a tray of cordials. Mr. Whatley made another toast to good health, and slowly the other guests began to take their leave of the affair.

  Mr. and Mrs. Puddle, who each shook my hand before their departure, were transfixed by the fact that my fingers could only bend in one direction and would not release me until Lily intervened and saw them out the door, leaving me to be approached by the bearded creature with the flat face.

  “Mrs. Markham. We have yet to be formally introduced. I am called Cornelius.” He bowed before me, which was for the best as I did not relish the thought of shaking one of his trunk-like limbs. “I hope we did not offend you with all the talk of politics.” As he spoke, I could see appendages moving themselves to form words behind the curtain of his beard. The effect was deeply off-putting, but I kept my gaze focused on his dark onyx eyes.

  “On the contrary, I found it most intriguing, though I confess I still do not understand the reason for the disagreement.”

  “As with most arguments, it is an old one hardly worth discussing.” He ushered me to a far corner of the room where we could sit beside one another on a chaise longue beneath the window. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, but I could not help overhearing your exchange with our host earlier this evening.”

  I stiffened. “That was a private conversation.”

  “Which is why I beg for your forgiveness. But you and I are of a similar mind. A game should only be played when both sides are evenly matched. Our host would do well to remember that.”

  “Then we are in agreement.”

  “I observed you listening intently to our dinner conversation. What did you make of our host?”

  “His words appease one faction of The Ending, while his appearance pacifies another.”

  “Precisely. And yet, Mr. Whatley has a reputation for decisiveness. It is perplexing that he should be uncertain of where his loyalties lie, and a situation I am eager to end.”

  I peered at him carefully, absorbing his words and searching his black eyes for some hint of his character. “That is a most vexing problem, but why should you bring it to my attention?”

  “There have never before been living humans in The Ending. For some, that alone could be viewed as an act of treason, but others are not so sure. I only wish to find some token of Mr. Whatley’s allegiance to Ashby’s cause, so that we might put away our suspicions.”

  “And what cause might that be?”

  “To preserve our traditions, and, if I may be frank, some sense of stability. Speck and his compatriots are dabbling in things that could upset the balance of your world in addition to our own. You are here more than I; there are many rooms in the House of Darkling, and I am unable to explore them all. You can see my dilemma. It is for his own good, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Why should I wish to do anything for the good of Mr. Whatley?”

  “Because I can offer a token of protection against whatever game he has you playing.” Mr. Cornelius reached into his beard and extracted a small iron key. He handed it to me before any of the other guests noticed. “Provide me with evidence of Whatley’s allegiance, and I will protect you from him.” He gestured to the key. “One turn in any lock will send for me.”

  I took the key and slid it into the folds of my dress. “How can I trust you?”

  “I’m afraid, my dear, that you do not have much of a choice.”

  Mr. Cornelius and the Baxters left without saying good-bye to anyone, but none of the other guests seemed very offended. Mrs. Aldrich went to collect her son, who was seated next to Paul in a far corner of the room. They were deep in conversation and very cross when they had to part. More strange than anything during the evening was the abrupt disappearance of Paul’s perpetual gloom. He began to smile and continued to do so even after Dabney left the house.

  Miss Yarborough and Mr. Snit were the last to depart. The gentleman was so intoxicated by the end of the evening that he turned a nasty shade of green and had to be gathered into a milk jar to be carried out by his proud, haughty companion.

  Lily and I said good night to the Whatleys and took the children to their room. As before, Lily took Laurel Parker Wolfe’s book of fairy tales from the compartment beside the bed. The children wrapped themselves against her as she began to read.

  The Seamless Children

  Once upon a time, there was a village in the forest. The people were happy and prosperous for a long while until a sickness spread throughout the land and took the lives of many small children. The villagers were distraught, for the local doctor could not cure them, and with the coming of winter they would certainly not survive. It was quickly decided that the only thing to do would be to seek the help of the mysterious old wizard who lived in a cave deep in the wood.

  The wizard, who was lonely and did not receive many visitors, was glad to help the villagers, but he cautioned them on the dangers of what they asked him to do. “The young ones will not survive the winter as they are. Bring them to me if you will, but I warn you that the task you present me with is a difficult one. I may not be able to undo it.”

  The villagers thanked the wizard for his warning but were so desperate to save their children that they bundled them in heavy fur blankets and carried them to the cave in the wood without a second thought. The wizard spread a large cloth sheet over the ground and asked that the children be laid in a circle on top of it. When this was done, he moved his hands through the air in an intricate pattern of unseen glyphs, all the while reciting some secret spell under his breath. The children grew smaller, down to the size of babes, and the wizard gathered the ends of the cloth sheet, shaping it into a sack. He twisted the ends together until they were closed, and kept turning them against the bulk of the shrunken children until their little faces pressed roughly against the fabric. The wizard continued the motion until the fabric came apart in many places, but the children were no longer inside. Instead, the pieces of cloth had been split and sewn together to form a family of rag dolls, one in the place of each child.

  The villagers, who were not sure what to make of this change, had very little time to dwell on it, for as soon as the wizard finished he fell to his knees and died. The strain of the spell had been too great, and even as the doll children rose to their little cloth feet and stretched their little cloth arms, their parents backed out of the cave, unable to deal with what had been done to them and choosing instead to imagine that they had died along with the wizard.

  It was a long, lonely winter for the dolls who had once been children. They buried the wizard as best they could, some of them ruining the threading of their delicate hands as they dug into the cold, hard earth. Most of them chose to live in the wizard’s cave, but others tried to return home to the families that had abandoned them. These reunions never ended well, for even at their best, the parents still looked upon the dolls as little ghosts in cloth skin. The lucky ones were able to return to the cave, but more often than not they were burned and buried or torn apart in hopes of releasing whatever remnant of the child remained hidden within the body of the rag doll.

  The single winter they had been made to survive came and went. Years passed, and the doll children slowly began to fall apart; threading unraveled, cloth skin split, and the stuffing that kept them whole fell out in clumps. It was decided among them that they could not go on for much longer. Some of them had heard during their unhappy trips to the village that there was a fairy in a nearby forest, and if the stories were true, she would be able to undo what the wizard had done.

  Together the dolls traveled across the land, avoiding hawks and wolves by sleeping in hollowed-out logs, crossing large brooks so that their bodies became waterlogged, until finally they came to a small house made of colored glass at the edge of the forest. The company of dolls collapsed before the door, summoning just eno
ugh strength to rap their cloth fists against the smooth entrance. The fairy found them in a sad state of disrepair and gathered them into her arms, setting them before a comfortable fireplace to rest and dry. When they were well enough to speak, she sat with them on the ground to listen to their plea.

  “Good fairy,” they said, “we who were once children wish to go back to what we were.”

  The fairy petted their soft cloth heads and nodded in understanding.

  “Are you sure that is what you truly wish?” she asked them. “Instead, I could fix up your holes and strengthen your threading. You could go on forever, if you wish. The life of a child is hard and sometimes short.”

  But the doll children had come for one reason only and could not be dissuaded from their wish. The fairy placed them all into a large cauldron and cooked them for seven days and seven nights in boiling water until their cloth became skin and their stuffing turned to flesh, until their little bodies swelled and grew to their original sizes. They slept for the entire day when she was done. She found clothing for them, and a wagon with a horse, so that when they awoke they were ready to return to their families.

  It was a bittersweet reunion. The families were very guilty about what they had done to their young ones, but the children who had once been dolls could not be bothered with anger or grief, for when the good fairy had returned them to their original forms, she had also brought back the incurable sickness that had driven their parents to seek the old wizard’s help. They were put to bed, and surrounded by the families that had left them alone for so many years, they died as they should have done years before.

  Lily closed the book and set it down in her lap. During the story James had squirmed away from her and moved to his own bed. Paul stayed by her side, his eyes closed and his arm around his mother.

  “I don’t think I like bedtime stories anymore,” said James.

  “I must admit that this one is a bit sad, but it has a very good moral.”

  “Accept your fate or suffer the consequences?” Paul yawned and stretched, releasing her from his embrace and settling into his own bed.

  “No, not at all.” Lily gaped for a moment, put off by his comment. “Enjoy the time you have with the ones you love. No matter what the situation.”

  James pulled his covers up to his chin as his mother tucked him in. “Do you think they were happy to die?” he asked her.

  “Not to die, but to be with their families again, yes.” She kissed him on the forehead and turned to do the same for Paul, but he was already under the blankets with his head on his pillow and his eyes closed.

  “How could they be?” said the older boy. “They were abandoned for years and years. You can’t forget something like that.”

  “But they did. When you only have so much time together, you must move on.” Lily knelt beside him and kissed him on the cheek.

  He squinted when she did so and turned away from her. “I’m tired.”

  Lily looked as if she’d been struck across the face. She left the room before I could and leaned against the wall outside. I closed the door and joined her in the hallway.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. That story . . . I was trying to prepare them. You were right that these visits cannot go on for much longer. We have to move on. I have to let them go. Good night, Charlotte.” She kissed me on the forehead the same as she had done to the boys and walked alone down the dark hallway to wherever it was that she went during our slumber. I did not have time to dwell on this.

  I entered my room and found the curio set in the wall, opening the panel that held the tiny candle men. They were playing a game of keep-away with the smallest of their group, tossing his wax head back and forth between them when I cleared my throat in disapproval.

  “Could you please take me to the dark room? You know the one I mean.” They ended their game and hopped down to the floor, and together we paraded through the House of Darkling to the bas-relief sculpture of marble faces twisted in suffering. I pressed my finger into the eye socket of one of the characters, just as Duncan had done, and the wall behind the sculpture clicked open.

  It was empty save for the frightening metal chair with its restraints and the wheeled table that stood beside it. I passed through the gauzy veiled partitions to the center of the chamber as the candle people waited for me outside, refusing to enter.

  I knelt down and opened a compartment beneath the table, revealing a dozen rows of the smoky-colored phials, each of them featuring a white label with a concise description written in a refined, elegant hand. There were phials labeled STRANGLED, INFIRMED, IMPALED, DROWNED, BURNED, SHOT, EATEN, FROZEN, and so on and so forth, each classified by some form of misfortune. I placed one marked DISMEMBERED into my pocket and paused at BURNED. I pulled out the stopper and sniffed at the contents. It smelled of charcoal. Not exactly appetizing, but to deliver Cornelius something useful, I had to know what I had found. I dipped a finger into the black fluid so that a small trace of it was left clinging to my skin, and placed it into my mouth, ingesting it as I had seen Mr. Samson do.

  Suddenly I was not myself. The air was burning around me, enveloped by wreaths of flame and smoke. I was carrying something important bundled in cloth, running from room to room, my skin blistering and cracking, hair crisping against a blackened scalp. When I burst through the door into the cool night air, it pressed against the searing of my flesh, only intensifying the pain until I collapsed to the ground.

  The parcel I clutched unraveled to reveal the scorched face of a woman with blond hair and a short, pointed nose, a face I beheld in the mirror whenever attempting to conjure the image of my late mother, a habit that always lent me strength, though at that moment the sight of it stripped away every shred of energy and composure I had left. I screamed, and as I screamed, the world slipped away into the blackness of oblivion, where I remained for what felt like an eternity, frozen in terror at the sight of my own body sprawled on the floor as I realized that the person running through the burning house had been Jonathan, and that, for a moment, I had felt what he had as he died.

  Someone grabbed my shoulder. I spun around, nearly dropping the phial, only to find Duncan standing behind me, a finger pressed to the wry smile on his lips.

  “Now you know.”

  For a moment I thought the mute had spoken, but then Mr. Samson appeared behind him, his eyes bloodshot, the lines in his face more visible than even at dinner.

  “Death. All of them.” I motioned to the smoke-colored phials with an exhausted wave of my hand.

  “Many different kinds of death.” Mr. Samson sat his large body on the metal chair and allowed Duncan to strap him in. “We dress as humans for many reasons, but for most of us, we simply wish for peace. Endless peace. This is as close as we are likely to ever get. Ashby, Cornelius, and the others . . . they fear us. Death has never been allowed into The Ending. If that were to change, then death for some would mean death for all.” He pointed to one of the phials, and Duncan began to make his preparations.

  “The death I saw. It was my husband’s.” I could scarcely get the words out.

  “Is that so? A most peculiar coincidence. But then again, few things are coincidental with Mr. Whatley. He does enjoy his games. Despite what you think, or what he might wish you to think, he is a great man. He gives us peace, if only for a few moments.”

  I gestured to the phials, hands shaking. “Where does he find them?”

  “He collects them. Observes them as they are happening, or so I’m told. Though I wouldn’t put it past him to cause a few deaths in order to expand his collection.”

  My stomach lurched, and I had to concentrate very intently in order to stop myself from being sick. The man in black from my past had never been the specter of Death. It was Whatley who had plagued my life since I was a girl. But was he simply an observer of my misfortune, or had he taken my family
from me to set in motion the series of events that would slowly steer me toward Everton, to Darkling, and into the diabolical game I now played with him? I had learned something important, for while I still did not fully comprehend the scope of his intentions, I now at least knew how to solve the puzzle of our game. The strongest connection between Darkling and Blackfield was not Susannah or Nanny Prum or even Lily Darrow. It was me.

  “He must be stopped,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Markham. You have your own death. Leave us with ours.”

  Duncan held a darkened sugar cube before Mr. Samson’s lips, and the gentleman bit down on it with a satisfied crunch. As his body began to convulse, I backed out of the room and retreated to what comfort could be provided by a strange bed in the strange house of the man in black.

  CHAPTER 14

  Lock and Key

  The children and I ate breakfast alone, and when we were finished Duncan escorted us back through the orchard. We arrived at Everton, and I took the children up to the schoolroom to continue their lessons. It would be difficult to say which of us was more subdued. The boys answered questions without complaint and barely looked up when Ellen entered to inform me that Mr. Darrow required my presence in his study.

  I meandered through the halls of Everton, and though I failed to find any trace of the boy with the keyhole eyes, I was unable to shake the feeling that I was being watched. The sensation only intensified when I entered Mr. Darrow’s study. The master of Everton stood from his desk when I found him.

  “Mrs. Markham.”

  “Mr. Darrow. I didn’t see you at breakfast.” I took my seat across from him, and something cool brushed against my leg. I looked down in time to catch sight of a length of chain disappearing around the side of the desk. I felt the color drain from my face, but Mr. Darrow appeared oblivious and remained where he was, leaning forward on the palms of his hands, apprehensive and clearly anxious. I resisted the urge to cry out or leap after the shackles, focusing myself entirely on his gaze.