Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling

by Michael Boccacino

  “We must get to my room,” I said to Henry.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Trust me.” I took his hand and we escaped down the hallway, but not before the door gave way and the creature slid out of the study, contracting to fit through the doorframe, a nightmare born into Everton, silhouetted by the blazing of the fire that had started to lick at the ceiling. The monstrosity filled the corridor, became a pulsating wall of tendon and viscera, churning and twisting toward us with a shapeless appendage that reached for my ankle but failed, moving on instead to Mrs. Norman, who was not as fast, and finding purchase around her leg. The housekeeper fell to the ground but grabbed hold of a cabinet against the wall, pulling it over and knocking a marble bust of some dead and forgotten member of the Darrow family to the floor, where it cracked into two sharp pieces. She seized a piece even as the creature slithered over her, hungry and unstoppable, and brought it sharply into the body of the thing.

  The beast quivered, perhaps more in shock than in pain, for it did not release her from the struggle. Instead it parted Mrs. Norman’s flesh as easily as it might have dipped into a pool of water. She briefly cried out in pain, but then the thing entered her mouth through the back of her head, severing the top of her skull and sending it to the floor.

  Henry and I did not wait to see what would happen next. We took off through the house, warning away every servant we saw, telling them to run for their lives even as we went ever deeper, the creature still behind us and the fire ripping through the innards of the mansion, nearly stopping us at the stairwell as a wall curled away in a sheet of flames. But with the deadly alternative behind us, we pushed on, mostly unharmed save for a singed strand of my hair, the scent of which cut me more deeply than Roland ever could.

  Jonathan.

  History would not repeat itself. I refused to allow it, to allow anyone else to die. Everton might burn, but we would not be inside when it did.

  We found my room at the end of the hallway and barricaded ourselves inside, the fire already smoking around us as I searched desperately for the books from Darkling. I had packed them away after Mr. Darrow sacked me, and I hadn’t found the time to unpack since he’d changed his mind. I frantically dug through my valise, came up empty-handed, and then went through my steamer trunk, finally locating the volumes beneath a heavy thesaurus. They were tied shut with ribbon as a precaution against any further unwanted visits from the strange eyeless children, and try as I might, I could not get the small knot undone.

  “I can’t get it open.” I handed the books to Henry, and as I went back to my trunk in search of a pair of scissors, the door to my room cracked completely in half and was thrown inward against him. The thing that had been Roland stood in the doorway. It hissed at us again, but before it could enter the room a length of blue chain looped around one of the ceiling beams exposed by the fire and was stretched taut. The ceiling collapsed in a hail of sparks and heavy timbers, piercing through the creature and pinning it to the floor, where it withered and blistered in the flames. The dirty little boy with the keyhole eyes appeared beside Henry and helped him to his feet.

  “What is that?” Henry gestured to the strange little child.

  “A friend, it would seem.” I picked up the largest wooden splinter that I could find and turned to the creature trapped beneath the debris.

  “You killed them both—Roland and Nanny Prum,” I said to it. Something bubbled to the surface of the creature’s viscous skin and broke open, revealing a small mouth with needle-sharp teeth.

  “And Mrs. Norman,” it said with sick pleasure. “But there never was a Roland. Only me.”

  “But why?”

  “To set the game into motion.” It squirmed in an effort to escape, but failed and resigned itself to its inevitable fate. “Nanny Prum had to die to place the children under your complete care. And you delivered them, just as he knew you would.”

  Henry turned to me for a moment as if to say something, but hesitated and began again with his attempt to untie the knot of ribbon around the books.

  I went on with my interrogation. “Why did Whatley take the children?”

  “Whatley?” The creature seemed confused by the question, but then its mouth, even without the benefit of any other facial expression, spread wide into a condescending smile. “How little you understand what you are meddling with. It was Samson who kidnapped the children. Whatley has only ever tried to protect them.” The monster began to laugh at us, sounding somewhere between its human and inhuman vocal register.

  I felt the swatch of wood in my hands and stabbed it into the beast’s throat until I felt the wet crush of its flesh between the makeshift spear and the floor. The laughter went on uninterrupted.

  Smoke was pouring into the room, and the heat was unbearable. I could scarcely catch my breath. I took the stack of books from Henry, procured the shears from the bottom of my trunk, and cut the ribbon that held them all closed.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  Henry looked at the creature still cackling to itself on the floor. “We have no choice, do we?”

  I had nearly opened the book when I realized that all of my belongings would burn in the fire even if I did not. I went to my nightstand and quickly collected my old wedding ring, my mother’s lock of hair, and my father’s pipe, which I kept in my memory box. They were the last relics of my family, the only pieces of my past. I would not leave them behind.

  The boy with the keyhole eyes had fastened his chain around Roland’s neck like a leash, and he held out his hand to me. I took it and went back to Henry, now choking, and together the three of us opened the front cover to Mysteries of The Ending.

  CHAPTER 18

  Charlotte Underground

  At the entrance to the castle the book grew hot in my hands and turned to ash without igniting, the connection to Everton dying in the flames of the house. There was nothing to do but move forward. Henry watched as the ashes scattered to the wind. “Our home . . .”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Houses can be rebuilt, better than they ever were before.” He nodded glumly, and the grimy little boy showed us inside the crumbling stone fortress, dragging with him the bloodied, muttering remains of the creature who had been Roland the groundskeeper. The lady of the castle, still resplendent in her decaying elegance, greeted us from halfway up the collapsed staircase. The boy handed her the length of chain, and she patted him on the head as she brought her face close to the creature bound in shackles.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

  “Yes, my lady.” The thing could not meet her hard, steely gaze.

  “And you agree to willingly serve me?”

  “Yes, my lady,” it said with a whimper.

  “Then it is done.” She handed his chains to her other children, and they took Roland away, deeper into the unseen parts of the castle. The little boy with the dirty fingernails stayed behind with his mistress. The woman beckoned for us to follow her into the room at the top of the stairs. Henry put his arm around me, shaking, though it was unclear which of us he meant to comfort.

  The chamber was made of glass and windows, like a solarium, if such a place could exist in The Ending. The oppressive moon hung low in the sky, and we were so high up in the castle that the horizon was lost in a dark sea of stars. The woman seated herself in a high-backed silver throne and observed us without expression.

  “You wish for safe passage into The Ending,” she said.

  This seemed to rouse Henry from his dejection. “My children are being held against their will.”

  “Of this I am aware. Hostages. Their continued presence in our world has set us on the brink of war. Would it not be careless of me to escalate the situation with two more humans?”

  “On the contrary,” I replied, “their rescue would only serve to mollify the tensions.”

  The woman was silent for a m
oment. She stroked the chains that circled her wrists. “You assume that you could get to Darkling untouched. Not even I could promise such a thing.”

  “That is a risk we are willing to take.”

  “There is also the matter of payment.” She smiled, her teeth glittering like the metal of her fetters.

  I stepped forward. “You trade in answers to unasked questions. Yet you haven’t asked us what we will do once we get to Darkling. If you agree to send us on our way, I’ll tell you.”

  The lady of the castle leaned back in her silver throne and motioned me forward with a slender index finger. I whispered my plan to her. At first she said nothing, and then a clicking sound escaped her throat, growing louder until it echoed off the glass walls of the solarium. She threw her head back and laughed: a dry, broken, thousand-year shriek of mirth that sent the dirty, eyeless boy scampering off into the dark corridors of the castle. I backed away from her, perplexed.

  “You think I’m foolish?” I asked when she was done.

  “I will allow you to pass. Is that not enough?” She lifted herself from her throne and took us onto an adjoining terrace that looked over a forest of black, jagged trees, a dirt path winding between them. A solitary crow stood on the ledge. The lady of the castle whispered softly to it, words that we could not hear, and the bird flew off into the night sky. The woman herself led us down stone steps etched into the side of a cliff, into the mouth of the wood.

  “Follow the trail to the temple on the other side of the forest. Tell the cleric that the Blue Lady has sent you. You will travel along Mr. Samson’s own rebel underground. Ironic, is it not?”

  “Why would Samson’s people help us?”

  “He has kidnapped two children, a crime even in our land. His actions do not help the cause.” The echo of the wind sounded around us without the benefit of a breeze, and the limbs of the trees creaked overhead. The only other sound was the clinking of the chains that trailed behind the Blue Lady, up the stairs, and around the throats of her grimy, blind children.

  “Thank you for your help,” I said.

  “Do not thank me yet.” She started to cackle again as she walked back up along the cliff, to the terrace of her castle. Henry stared anxiously into the woods and stepped in front of me before I could start along the path.

  “What did you tell her?” he asked, looking into my eyes.

  “The answer she wanted to hear.” I moved around him and would say nothing more on the subject.

  The trees were tall and lean, and as we went on the forest dwindled, plant life shifting in color from dark green to ash gray. The bark appeared to be chipped and dusty, ready to crumble at the slightest touch. Many trees had been pushed over and broken, the remaining stumps jutting sharply into the air. Then the forest stopped completely, and I stared out at a vast gray wasteland.

  It was a dreary, oppressive place, an infinite desert pocked with craters, without stones on the ground or stars in the sky. There was only ash and the glow of the moon, rendered sallow and pale on the desolate landscape. We walked for what felt like miles until we stood on a ledge above an even greater expanse of gray nothingness. There was a building in the distance below.

  We navigated down the slope of the rock with relative ease, and when we arrived at the bottom I finally heard it: a collective, raspy breathing coming from everywhere and nowhere. I felt surrounded, but then the little temple was still a mile off and there was no one around for as far as I could see. The path wove through the craters and the sound continued, rising and falling, a thousand different mouthfuls of air, as we walked to the lone building in the distance. I finally found the source of the sound just before we entered the temple.

  It was coming from one of the pits, from a sad-eyed creature clawing at the sides of the cavity with a dozen bloodied appendages worn away from unsuccessful attempts at escape. I heard the gasping sound again, and the cavity in the earth closed in on the emaciated thing that still clung to the wall. Its eyes widened as it saw me, and remained open even as the pit closed around it.

  Henry pulled me away, and we approached the entrance to the temple. It was not a Christian building. The image of a serpent devouring itself was etched above the door. I knocked, and a small hunchbacked man answered.

  “Are you the cleric?” I asked.

  The man nodded.

  “The Blue Lady sent us,” said Henry.

  The cleric observed us with watery eyes and moved away from the door. A narrow stairwell curled deep into the earth. We followed him down to the bottom, into an amphitheater with a glowing pool of water at the center instead of a stage. There were many tunnels leading off the room into other parts of the earth, more dark places with shadowy things that I had had quite enough of.

  Our host stopped at the edge of the pool. “If you seek sanctuary, you must bathe in the pool.”

  “Must we?” I said under my breath. I considered myself a very open-minded person, but I was growing quite tired of the endless customs and traditions of the people of The Ending. Still, as there wasn’t anyplace else for us to go, we had little choice but to comply. I unbuttoned my blue pin-striped dress as Henry took off the pieces of his suit. Truth be told, our clothes were becoming increasingly tattered, and it felt good to step out of them and even better to enter the gleaming pool of water.

  We turned to one another after we were submerged, our nudity hidden by the opacity of the water. We kept our distance to maintain what little propriety remained to us, and we peered at each other across the pool.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. I had never seen Henry look so haggard.

  “You were very brave.”

  “I’m afraid bravery had very little to do with it. I’m rather fond of my life and quite willing to run in order to preserve it. If I had been brave I would have done something to save Mrs. Norman.”

  Once I said this, I realized it sounded like an attack on his masculinity and courage, which I didn’t mean for it to be. I could not get the image of Mrs. Norman out of my head. She was the courageous one, with her final, rebellious act of violence. She had been a deeply unpleasant woman but did not deserve the fate she had been handed, which we had inadvertently dealt her. It had not been her fight or her mistake. It was mine, and I had failed her. I said as much out loud, but Henry shook his head.

  “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I could have. I should have. But”—I scooped a handful of clean water over my face to soothe my singed skin and lips—“there will be plenty of time for self-loathing after we’ve found the children.”

  When the hunchbacked cleric was satisfied with our informal baptism in the pool, he handed us robes and took us down a corridor lit by phosphorescent motes of dust that floated through the air, occasionally catching at my hair and skin, and causing me to glow the way that people do when light shines through their fingertips, pink and translucent. Henry brushed away one that had stuck to my forehead. The touch of his skin energized me despite my exhaustion.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No trouble at all.” Light cracked through his fatigue, perhaps the beginning of a smile before it faded again into weariness.

  We were brought to a low, small room with no furniture save for a recess in the center that had been filled with furs and blankets. The luminous specks of dust had settled into the fibers of the sheets, and as we stepped into the alcove we quickly became covered in the stuff, our skin brought to life, our flesh an incandescent hearth at the center of the room. Our host left us, and we attempted to sleep, but I could not leave my hands alone, hypnotized by the trails of light they left behind. Henry was equally fascinated, and together we made as many shapes as we could think of, writing our names in the air, brushing ourselves off so that the flecks of dust became floating stars above our berth, until we settled in beside one another.

  “Charlotte?”

  “Yes,
Henry?”

  “What would you say to Jonathan, if you saw him again after all these years?”

  I closed my eyes and summoned my husband’s face, even as I could feel the warmth of Henry’s body beside me. It surprised me to find that my feelings for both men were not mutually exclusive.

  “I would tell him I loved him, that I will always love him. No matter what the future might hold.”

  Henry inhaled deeply, lost in thought for a long while. And then: “When Lily became ill, I stayed by her side day and night, wasting away as she did. I thought that if I could be there for her in every way possible, she might draw some small shred of strength from me. But she didn’t. There was nothing to be done but watch her slip away. She died in my arms. I felt it happen, the breath leaving her body one last time. I kissed her then. Part of me hoped that I could draw her back from the Other Side, while she was still warm.”

  I took his hand into mine.

  “I don’t know if I can face her,” he said.

  “You can. You will.”

  “But what do I say?”

  I did not know how to respond. We remained in the dark, our fingers entwined, and soon I drifted off into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

  In the morning, the hunchbacked cleric collected us and provided a change of clothing from the singed rags we had been wearing upon our arrival. We bathed quickly one last time in the pool, washing the glowing motes of dust from our skin and hair, before we dressed in what appeared to be servants’ uniforms and were escorted back up the stairwell to the entrance of the underground temple.

  Outside, I could still hear the gasping sounds from the pits in the ground. I turned to the cleric. “Those pits around the temple . . .”