by Libba Bray
The boys followed them to the corner, which was as far as their mothers would allow them to go, they said.
“If Miss O’Neill and I are not out in thirty minutes, bring the law,” Mabel instructed.
“We don’t get the law for nobody. They’re as bad as the house.”
“How about if we’re not out in thirty minutes, you throw that baseball at the window as hard as you can, then run for your mothers. Can you do that?”
“It’s our only baseball.”
“Fifty cents,” Evie said.
“For fifty cents? Miss, I’ll throw like Babe Ruth.”
“Spiffy!” Evie placed a quarter in each of their hands. “Now, we’re trusting you to be on the square as a couple of regular fellas and keep watch. You are knights entrusted with a quest.”
“Huh?”
“Just keep your peepers on that dive, and don’t you dare breeze,” Evie said. She made them spit and swear on it, and then, arm in arm, she and Mabel walked toward the looming ruin of Knowles’ End.
The house had surely been a beauty in its day, with its grand turrets, the terrace, two small chimneys and one very fat one, and the arched windows. But now those windows were boarded over and the only two remaining shutters each hung by a nail, threatening to fall. The double oak doors had grayed with age. Metal scars marked the spot where a large knocker had been, but it was gone now—probably sold or stolen. The door was locked.
“There has to be a way in. Look around the side,” Evie said. She tripped over something in the yard and saw that it was a child’s doll. Its porcelain face was cracked and mold had settled along the scarlike seams.
At the back was a servants’ entrance. Evie removed a hairpin and worked it into the simple lock, springing it. The door creaked open and they found themselves inside a butler’s pantry with tall cabinets. It smelled of rot and dust. Weak bars of sunlight showed through the shutters’ slats.
Evie drew a flashlight from her pocketbook and the beam showed cracked tin ceilings and dust motes.
“What the devil are you looking for in here, Evie?”
She wasn’t sure, exactly. She needed something that would give her a read. “See if you can find an old pendant with a pentacle on the front.”
“Pentacle, as in Pentacle Killer?” Mabel said warily.
“It’s just a pendant,” Evie lied. “Steady, old girl. Oh, my…”
Evie swept into what surely must have been a ballroom in its day. Some of the furniture had been draped in sheets, making it seem more like a graveyard than a home. Beside a large hearth was a velvet settee gone to mold, its stuffing piling onto the floor. Filthy yellow wallpaper hung from the walls in strips. In spots, it had worn away entirely, exposing the rotting beams underneath. Whatever had been of value had been removed from the home long ago. There were no books or silver or knickknacks, nothing to help Evie. Even the light fixtures were gone. A cobweb-strewn grand piano with a handful of keys missing anchored one corner. Evie plinked one and it rang shrilly in the dead space. A small black spider crawled out from between two keys and Evie yanked her hand away. On the far wall hung a cracked mirror. It reflected the room in a fractured tableau. For a moment, Evie thought she saw movement in one of the shards and jumped.
“What is it?” Mabel asked, and Evie realized it had only been her friend coming closer.
“Nothing.” Evie took in the whole of the room. “Funny,” she said.
“What is?”
“From the outside, I noticed a fat chimney, but this fireplace is very small.”
“We don’t have time to critique the architecture, Evie. Any minute, those boys are going to run for their mothers. If they haven’t already run to the pharmacy for cream sodas. You had no business giving them the money before.”
“Keep looking,” Evie instructed.
“For what?” Mabel called.
I don’t know. “I’m going upstairs.”
Mabel raced to her side. “Evangeline Mary O’Neill! You’re not leaving me for a moment! I’m sticking with you, just like George and Ira Gershwin.”
“Oh, rhapsody. Then I’ll never be blue,” Evie quipped, though it felt odd to joke in such a tomb.
“Will you keep moving, please?”
A grand central staircase led to a second floor. Its elegantly carved newels were rotted through in spots. The stairs creaked and groaned with each step, and Evie hoped the staircase would bear their weight. She swept the flashlight across austere oil portraits silvery with spiderwebs. At the top was a long hallway branching off left and right with doors all the way down. Evie kept her eyes open for something to take, something that might give her a solid read, something personal.
“This way,” Evie said, walking right. She rattled the knobs of several doors, but they were all locked shut. At the back of the house, they came to yet another staircase. This one was narrow and enclosed and led to an attic room whose dormer window had been boarded over. Small slices of sunlight bled through the cracks, but it wasn’t enough to cut the gloom. Evie waved her flashlight around the room. Its beam landed on a four-poster bed draped in curtains. A bureau with a tri-fold mirror. A wardrobe. Carefully, Mabel opened the wardrobe’s creaking doors. It was empty inside except for a few hats. The bureau held a tarnished hand mirror and brush.
Suddenly Mabel let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“What is it? What is it?” Evie said, heart pounding. Mabel was still squealing as she pointed to the bed, where Evie’s flashlight beam caught the scuttling form of a rat as it scurried away, and Evie and Mabel nearly climbed up each other, screaming all the while.
“That is the last straw, Evie!” Mabel choked out. “Can we please go?”
“Very well,” Evie said. She couldn’t help feeling that she had failed. As she turned to leave, her foot caught and she stumbled into Mabel.
“Evie! Do you want to scare me to death?”
“Sorry, old girl.” Evie turned the light beam on the floor. Part of a floorboard had rotted away, and underneath it, she could just make out something hidden. “Hold this steady,” she said, handing Mabel the flashlight. With a grunt, she pried away the board.
“Tell me you aren’t putting your hand in there,” Mabel said.
“All right. I won’t tell you.” Evie bit down on her scream and inched her fingers under the rotted board into the dark space below, feeling very carefully for the object. When it was in her grasp, she yanked it free with a shout and shuddered all over. “Holy smokes! I never want to do that again.”
Mabel crowded next to Evie. “What is it?”
Evie rubbed the layers of dust from the hosiery box and lifted the lid. Inside was a small leather book. While Mabel held the flashlight steady, Evie opened the book to a random page. At the top it was marked with a date: March 22, 1870. “ ‘Tonight, Papa lies upon the dining table in his shroud, ready for burial. I am the last remaining Knowles. Oh, I am lost!’ ” Evie read aloud. “Ida Knowles’ diary,” she said in astonishment.
“Is that what you’d hoped for?”
“Better!”
“Swell. Let’s beat it. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
They tore down the stairs as fast as they could without injuring themselves and Mabel headed toward the kitchen, where they’d come in. But Evie’s attention was drawn to a door slowly creaking open at the far end of the corridor behind her. She hadn’t noticed it before. What if it held some important clue?
“Evie! Let’s go!” Mabel hissed, but Evie was already at the door.
Evie stepped inside and found herself in a small room. There was another door, oddly, in the center of the wall. She turned the knob on that door, and a trap in the floor gave way, sending her barreling down a laundry chute. Screaming, she pawed the smooth sides for something to grab, something to slow her descent. As she was shot out the other end, her coat caught on a sharp edge, suspending her. Carefully, she eased out of the coat, holding fast to it as she lowered herself. The coat ripped at the col
lar, dropping her the rest of the way. She landed on a dirt floor with an uncomfortable thump that rattled her bones. Nothing was broken, but her flashlight was gone, and her new gold brocade coat was now in tatters; a square of bright cloth stuck to the mouth of the laundry chute.
Evie struggled to her feet. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, the room beginning to take dim shape. An old furnace. A potting table covered in tools. Linens hanging from a line, gone stiff and dusty with neglect. One moved ever so slightly, and Evie could hear her blood pounding in her ears. There was no one there. But it had moved; she was certain of it. She put up a hand and felt the slightest of breezes. But from where? There were no windows in this dark tomb.
“Evie! Are you all right?” Mabel’s panicked voice echoed dully down the laundry chute. “Evie!”
“Mabel, honey, you should see—there’s the most darb speakeasy down here, and John Barrymore is fixing me a champagne cocktail,” Evie joked to calm her nerves.
“Don’t you dare tease me!”
“Everything’s copacetic, Pie Face. Looking for the steps. Be up in a minute.”
Mabel continued talking. It was what she did when she was nervous, but Evie was grateful for it as she stumbled around in the gloomy basement, her hand up and following the tiny breath of air.
“… can’t believe you talked me into this…”
The breath of air led to a wall. That was impossible; air couldn’t seep through a wall.
“… will never, ever follow you into the breach again, Evil O’Neill…”
It was so dark. Evie felt along the wall for a seam. In the stillness, she thought she heard whispers, a low, steady tone. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and shot up to her neck. Yes, whispers. Like the scratchings of wings. The drone of insects. The low growl of dogs. A thousand tongues whispering at once.
“Steady, old girl, steady,” she said aloud to herself. It was what James had said when he helped her learn to navigate the icy pond on skates, his hands holding hers.
Now her hands shook, along with her breath. She heard a crunch as her foot came down on something hard. She bent to find the object and came up with the pieces of a rhinestone clasp. A shoe buckle. Just like the one missing from Ruta Badowski’s shoe. Her mind reeled, and she felt dizzy. She dropped the buckle like an unclean thing. The whispers came again. It felt as if something were moving in the dark. The old furnace flared to life and Evie fell back from the suddenness of it; just as quickly, it died down again.
From above, she heard a loud thump, followed by Mabel’s quick scream.
“Mabel! Mabel!” Evie cried.
“Those brats have thrown the baseball, after an eternity!” Mabel yelled down through the chute. “We’d better beat it before their mothers come and have us arrested for trespassing.”
Evie stumbled across the basement searching for a way out and practically cried with joy when she found the staircase at last. She bolted quickly up the rickety basement stairs and banged on the door until Mabel came to let her out. Arm in arm, they barreled through the front door and into the reassuring sunshine, not bothering with the latch, and not stopping until they reached the subway platform and could see the train rattling down the tracks of the city’s long metal spine.
Evie knew Will would have a fit when she told him of the day’s exploits at Knowles’ End, but she hoped he’d be swayed when she showed him Ida’s diary, which she had managed to wrest away from Mabel with the promise that they would read it together after she’d shared it with Uncle Will. Now she settled herself at a table on the second floor of the museum library, beside a green banker’s lamp, and read the few entries at the end.
September 7, 1874. Tonight was an evening of wonders! In the darkened parlor, my dear Mary communed with the spirits of my departed mother and father. We joined hands, and Mary and Mr. Hobbes spoke in strange tongues. There came a rapping sound and the candle flame flickered above its wax shroud and went out. We were pitched into darkness.
“Do not be afraid, dear pet,” Mary said in a trance, and I knew at once it was my dear papa speaking to me through her. Oh, to hear his words to me from such a mysterious distance, the veil lifted for the most precious of moments, was a balm beyond any I have known!
“How do my lilacs fare?” Mother asked, as she had in life. Her darling lilacs! I could scarcely speak for the longing in my breast.
“Beautiful as ever,” I replied, and though it was unseemly, I could not stop the flow of my tears.
Too brief was their sojourn on this plane, and I hope to try again as soon as possible.
October 3. Mr. Hobbes is a most peculiar man. He wears the oddest pendant, a round medallion upon which are imprinted a constellation of curious symbols. Mary says that it is a holy relic of a secret order. Sometimes I see him sitting in the cool of the library, studying an ancient text, which he claims the Good Lord directed him to find hidden in the knothole of a twinned oak. The book is a mystical text filled with keys to the next world, which cannot be shared with the uninitiated, he said with apology, and locked the book in the curio cabinet and pocketed the key. I found it rather brash that he would appropriate my curio cabinet so. But Mary tells me that Mr. Hobbes is a spiritual man unbothered by earthly concerns and proprieties, though he is kind enough to oversee, at his own expense, repairs to the house, which is a great comfort to me as I wish Knowles’ End to be returned to its former glory.
October 28. Such a clamor! Mr. Hobbes’s hammers disturb us night and day. I have moved to the old attic room to avoid the dust and unholy noise.
November 22. Mr. Hobbes would not allow me into my own cellar. When I took umbrage at this, he told me as kindly as possible that there had been a terrible misfortune in the cellar and the old furnace must be replaced, along with most everything else. He smiled as he said this, and I noted that his smile is never quite mirrored in his eyes, which are the coldest shade of blue.
January 15. I am not well and am confined to bed. Mary says I am overwrought by grief at speaking with my dear mother and father so often and by the assessor’s continued letters for payment of taxes. I haven’t the money. “Sell Knowles’ End to me, my dear, and I shall pay the taxes and you will live on as before, with none the wiser that you are not the sole owner of the house. Your good standing need never be in question,” Mary said to me. I cannot bear the anguish of selling Knowles’ End, but how much worse to lose it to the auction block. I shall think on it. Mary offered me sweet wine and insisted I drink it all to soothe my nerves.
January 20. My sleep is disturbed by the most terrible dreams.
April 21. I found him in the dark of the parlor, naked. “Look on me and be amazed,” he growled. And his eyes burned in the dark like twin fires. I remember nothing after but that I woke in my bed well after noon with a headache and Mary insisting that I did not need a physician, only to rest and let her care for me.
May. I know not what day it is, for the days run together as currents in a stream. They hold odd séances below. I can hear them, but I am too weak to go downstairs, and too afraid.
August. It is terribly hot. A foul stench permeates the house, turning my stomach. The boarder has gone, I know not where.
September 1. The beast skulks the halls of the house, frightening all within. The servants, the few remaining, fear him. He tells the most fantastical tales. Once, he claimed to be the last surviving member of a lost, chosen tribe, when I know he was poor as a church mouse, common as dirt, raised in an orphanage in Brooklyn. Every time it is a new tale, until it is impossible to know what is truth and what folly.
September 20. I will have no more of that woman’s sweet wine.
September 28. The lack of wine has made me terribly ill. For a week, I have lain upon the bed, writhing and vomiting, attended by our last remaining servant, Emily, the dear girl. She has confessed that she is as frightened as I. It seems she chanced upon a locked room left unlocked and nearly plummeted to her death through a trapdoor and a chute that she surmises
can only lead to the cellar.
October 3. I was awakened in the night by screams, but I could not tell where dreams left off and waking began.
October 8. Emily has not come for six days.
October 10. With effort, I roused myself from bed and went downstairs. The shutters were sealed and the house had the feel of a tomb. “Where is Emily?” I inquired of Mr. Hobbes, cool as you please though beneath my dressing gown my knees shook. “She has gone rather suddenly to be with her sister, who was in childbirth,” the beast answered. “Strange that she did not mention it to me or collect her wages,” I said. “She did not wish to trouble you with such petty concerns,” he answered. “Then why has she gone without her purse?” I asked, for I had gone to her room first and found it there, untouched. Mrs. White materialized then at his side, drawn by the tone of my voice, no doubt. “We shall see that it is returned to her, the poor dear. So worried was she about her sister.”
What woman leaves behind her purse?
October 13. Once again, I was stopped from entering the cellar by Mr. Hobbes. “It isn’t safe,” he said, and something in his tone, the cold blue of his gaze, had me scurrying back to my room.
October 15. I hear whispers in the very walls. Oh, some terrible calamity is surely at hand!
October 17. Mrs. White has gone to the country to perform her services as medium. The charlatan! I am alone in the house with him.
October 19. Today, when I saw Mr. Hobbes’s carriage pulling from the garage and into the street, I hurried downstairs and, with a hairpin, worked at the lock of the curio cabinet until I heard it give. Then I read his terrible book. Profane! Obscene! Filled with degradation and filth! It was all I could do not to pitch it into the stove. Oh, I am in danger! I have written to my dear cousin once more and told him as much. Why oh why did I consent to selling the house to that terrible woman? Trickery and deceit! Lies and more lies! I shall take it back. I am Ida Knowles, and this is my house, built by my father. But first, I mean to discover what is happening in the cellar. I must see it for myself.