“I didn’t think ghosts could hold pens?”
“Well, I thought that no one could see me. I suppose that we’re both learning a lot tonight.”
I stared hard at his face. If he had not told me differently, and if Myrne had been able to see him, then I would have thought he was just an ordinary (albeit rather rude) man, who had come for some unknown reason into the house which I had taken for a dwelling.
“Why have I not seen you before?” I asked.
“I stay in the attic.”
“You never come down?”
“Not often.”
“Don’t you get bored?”
He turned on me, looking unbearably exasperated. “Don’t you tire of asking so many questions?”
“I really don’t think that I’ve asked very many,” I said honestly, “considering the situation.”
“My situation,” he said, “has not differed very much since earlier this evening. Yours may have; but I am not much interested in that. So please, dear girl – leave me in peace!”
And then he disappeared again.
***
I woke early the next morning with Ian Platt on my mind. Without even bothering to change, I went straight up to the attic, to see if he was still there. (Surely it had been only a dream.)
“Ian?” I said hesitantly, peeking into the attic.
“What is it now?”
He was sitting at his desk, scribbling away. I stared at him for a few seconds, but then descended the stairs, and returned them to their proper position.
“Only me,” I said, shaking my head. “Why do these things only happen to me?”
At breakfast, Myrne watched me strangely.
“What are you looking at?” I finally asked, throwing a piece of bread at him.
“What was all that business last night?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I think I was sleepwalking.”
“You were not.”
“I was too.”
“You were not!”
“How do you know?”
“Because you were awake!”
“Well, I must not have been, if I can’t remember.”
Just then, Ian Platt appeared beside my chair.
I screamed.
Myrne choked on his milk. “What are you screaming about?”
“Don’t you see?” I whispered, feeling short of breath.
“See what?”
I dropped my head into my hands.
“I told you,” said Platt. “Only you can see me.”
“I figured that out last night, thank you very much.”
Myrne was growing increasingly bewildered. “You figured what out last night?”
“This is just too much!” I cried.
I hurried from the kitchen before he could ask another question. Ian Platt followed me.
“I’m sorry that I bothered you,” I said to Platt. “I’ll just leave you alone from now on, all right?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. Perhaps I was a bit harsh last night. It would be nice, I think, having someone to talk to.”
“It’s not going to be me.”
“Who else would it be?”
“I don’t care. Just not me.”
I marched back to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
***
“I’m sorry about all that,” I said to Myrne the next day. “I wasn’t feeling very well.”
Myrne shook his head at me. “You’re an odd one, I’ll give you that.”
“And I certainly won’t give it back.”
I tried not to think about Ian Platt, after that. If he was indeed real, then he kept to himself – and I made no attempt to seek him out.
Chapter 37
Nights always seemed very quiet. I was usually on my own after nine o’clock or so. Most times I went outside, walking all around until I felt that I could sleep. Some nights, though, the fresh air was useless. When I returned to the house, I still could not sleep. I would try to close my eyes; and they would simply force themselves open again.
That man in his chair had come to call upon me again, all the way from Brazier Street. Every night, he sat himself down by the window, and whispered words to me which I never understood. I took to leaving the curtains open when I went to bed; for I desired the light, and was no longer afraid of the wrath of that man in his chair. The moonlight poured down upon the spot where his chair was situated; but he only laughed at this, as I shivered in my bed at the sight of his dark silhouette across the room.
But it was just like old times, on those nights when there was no moon. Even with the window uncovered, the room was held mostly in blackness; and that man came in his chair to sit as always, speaking so soft and low that I think I would have preferred him to scream. It was on these nights, when I could not see him, that I lit a match from the book which I kept beneath my pillow; and it was only on these nights, when the match had been struck and his face was bathed in orange light, that that man sprang from his chair just as he used to do, and hurtled towards the bed like a lightning bolt.
I grew quite used to sleeping hardly at all. In the middle of the night, I would take advantage of the quiet, empty washroom to take my bath.
There eventually came a night when I took an unusually long bath. By the time I was finished, the water was cold as a glacier and almost as hard, what with all the soap I had used.
For some reason, I had wanted to feel exceptionally clean. I felt as if I were preparing myself for some sort of meeting, or function; as if I would descend to the parlour and find a large group of people collected there, listening to Abbaline’s hot speech. This, of course, made absolutely no sense, as it was already midnight and the house was quite as quiet, and quite as dark, as an open tomb.
Without allotting much more thought to it, I escaped the cold water and set off for my sleeping quarters; where I would doubtless lie for hours upon a sleepless bed.
The room was spacious enough. It had pink walls (so quite naturally, Myrne had pushed it quickly onto me) and an enormous four-poster bed, complete with an ancient-looking lace canopy.
I felt almost like a princess at night.
I imagined the girl who had slept there before me; no doubt the girl whom I had imagined the first night I traversed the floors of that house, and thought to have been smothered.
While she was asleep.
In that very bed.
Her parents had been knifed to death, perhaps in the room which Abbaline had taken for herself; and her brother was asphyxiated just as she had been, perhaps in the room where Myrne slept. I never mentioned this to Myrne, for I suspected it would bring about certain obstacles to the peacefulness of his sleep.
I crossed the room to a deep chest that stood at the foot of the bed, and which contained my meagre collection of clothing. I had obtained a nightgown, a dress, one pair of slacks, one button-front shirt and one long-sleeved jersey.
I even had a hat, a black bowler Myrne had found for me. He had one just like it. Every time he wore his, he made me wear mine.
I slipped on my nightgown and got into bed, not bothering to pull the blanket up over my legs. It was a mild evening; I had even left the window open. The night-sounds drifted in and over me, drawing me into, and then around, sleep. I thought of closing the window, but knew that that was not the problem.
The problem was me.
The problem was specific, and ate away each solitary night at the fibres of my brain. I had not given it much thought before I was free from locks and iron bars – as I had thought that I would never make it back out, anyway – but now that I was where I was, experiencing some semblance of normalcy and living with the understanding that my death was no longer imminent, I was forced to consider it.
I had missed my monthly cycles for three months in a row (October being the first month, when I had paid it absolutely no mind). My stomach felt constantly sick, but I did my best to hide my bouts of vomiting from the others. Luckily, my belly had hardly start
ed to grow yet.
I was three months pregnant – and the weight of that knowledge was beginning to be more than I could bear. What if it belonged to Stan Asley? Just the thought of his face made me want to run to the toilet. What if the baby’s face looked like his? What if it came out of me with three chins and an awful sneer? If it did – oh, if it did, I would smother it with a pillow! I would smother it; just as that poor little predecessor of my princess’s chambers had been smothered.
I got out of bed and went to the door, hesitating with my hand upon the knob. Then I went back to the chest near my bed, pulled out a set of clothes, and dressed myself quickly.
Twenty seconds later, I was knocking on Myrne’s door, whispering his name. Dolly swished her tail against my leg, thinking perhaps that we were about to do something fun.
“Meniah, are you awake?”
“What?”
I pushed the door open. Myrne was lying on his bed, reading a book. I had never met a man who read so much.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No. I just can’t sleep.”
He waved his book at me. “Read something.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Do it anyway.”
“Doing things I don’t want to do doesn’t help me sleep.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Well, anyway,” I said – “do you want to go for a walk?”
“It’s dark outside.”
“So what?”
“Why do you want to go walking around in the dark and the cold?”
“Because I can’t sleep.”
“Try drinking some tea.”
“I don’t want any.”
He sighed. “What do you want?”
“To go for a walk.”
“But I want to read.”
“If you’re not going to sleep, why won’t you come with me?”
“I didn’t say that I’m not going to sleep. I’m just not sleeping yet.”
“Obviously not – you’re talking to me.”
“Well, if I was sleeping, I’d be very upset about that.”
“You make no sense whatever.”
He was laughing as I started to pull his door shut. But then I looked down at Dolly, who was staring at me expectantly, lolling tongue and all.
“Go on,” I said, opening the door wider. She ran to Myrne’s bed, and hopped up beside him.
“Let Dolly sleep with you, eh?”
“But she slobbers!”
“So do you.”
I did not return to my own room. I turned towards the staircase instead, and descended.
It seemed that Blackie was asleep in his own quarters, but Tom and Sam were sitting up in the parlour, playing at cards. I glided down the corridor, and past the open doorway so quietly, that neither of them looked up at me.
After that, I was out the front door and in the street, walking to I knew not where.
In the first months I ever spent on Shealittle Road, I had really not done much wandering about. It was only since I arrived with Myrne that I really started exploring, creeping into every nook and cranny of the place until I was as familiar with it as . . . as . . .
Let’s just say I knew it well.
My favourite place, I have to say, was the river. The way it flowed, so smooth and swift – if I stared at it long enough, and then closed my eyes, so that nothing but the steady rushing of the water filled my ears, I could almost imagine that I was home.
Though I must note that, however much I may have loved the river (which was quite as pretty as the one which flowed behind Lennox Lane), it never did quite manage to compensate for the loss of the glorious silver-tree. I had not thought of the silver-tree, you see, since the days of Marcker Street. I had not missed it, since the day that missing Thea took its place. During those long afternoons that I spent stretched on the riverbank beside Myrne, I thought very deeply about this, and finally came to what I thought was the explanation for it. I realised, then, that the magnificence of the silver-tree had always been a product of the one-and-greatest beauty of Theodora Alaster. Had it not been for her, that tree would never have seemed so grand.
I looked far and wide in the woods round Shealittle Road, searching for a tree that resembled it – but never with any success. Even had I found one, I doubt that it would have looked to me anything like the one that I remembered. There had been something magical about that tree; and, as you may know, there is nothing at all commonplace about magical trees.
In the absence of something quite so special, I of course settled for the river. It was about a twenty minutes’ walk Westward, give or take a few for either sloth or speed. I thought of going there, now that I had escaped the house; but I had something else on my mind, pressing so hard against my skull that it was beginning to result in a headache.
I was walking straight down the road – straight towards house number 250. I had avoided it for months; I had gone to all lengths to ensure that its inhabitant did not know I existed in that corner of the world. So why, I do so rightly wonder, was I heading directly for it?
I’m not sure what I was thinking. I was only walking.
The house loomed up before me like a familiar beast; righteously forsaken but now recollected. I went slowly up the walk, swallowing back the bile that rose at the house’s proximity. I kept my eyes down, and walked as if I had it in mind to make use of the top of my head as a battering ram; to run at full-force through that impediment to my ill-begotten journey (otherwise known as the front door). Fortunately for the well-being of my head, however, I decided to try the knob, before resorting to that more drastic method of entrance. I was quite surprised to find that the door was not locked. I remembered, very clearly, that Niamh always locked the front door before she went to bed. I decided that this bit of luck was an omen of a correct decision; and that the universe was working hand-in-hand with me, in an effort to speed along the process of my revenge. Of what would that revenge consist? I did not know; and I repeated this lack of knowledge several times to the voices which whispered into my ears, inquiring of me my course of action. Oh, I know not! said I, pressing my hands over my ears. Leave me be, and make yourselves a silent audience!
I did not stop to think of the complications which would undoubtedly ensue. I simply opened the door, and stepped inside.
Entering the house was something of a physical shock. The fact that everything was exactly the same as it had been, struck me almost as something unbelievable and strange; though, of course, I had to remember that I had borne witness to the scene only half a year ago; and had to remind myself, that it is quite normal for things to remain static for such an amount of time. Yet, it was almost as if I had only just gotten out of bed in that little spare room, and come into the kitchen for a drink; it was almost, almost as if I had never been betrayed at all.
I thought of calling her name; of waking her from a dead sleep to the astonishment my voice would surely bring.
I thought of rushing straight up to her room, and breaking her neck.
I was not entirely sure what I would do, but I did close the front door behind me, before I began to make my way through the house. You must not leave it open, whispered my audience; for there must be no witnesses to what will take place here tonight! Only us, you know, for we are here to assist you; and will fall silent, so that you may think more clearly; but know that you may call upon us, as your ever-ready advisors!
After a moment or two, the cat came and tried to curl round my leg. I pushed it away, and fixed it with a pair of unfeeling eyes; whereupon it hissed at me, and darted into the parlour.
I did not stop until I reached the room which I had called mine. The door stood open. I peered inside, saw that the bed was neatly made, and that the window had been fixed. It was as though I had never left. (Either that, or that I had never been there at all.)
When I reached the staircase that led up to Niamh’s bedroom, I hesitated. There was still time to turn back. She would never eve
n know I had come; never even know that I had stood for a moment at the bottom of her staircase, contemplating her murder.
I ignored my growing apprehension, mounted the staircase and climbed slowly upward. It seemed that my legs grew heavier, and the air grew thicker, with every step. I was not even sure anymore, that I could make it all the way to the top.
I hoped against all hope, that I would not make it to the top.
It seemed, though, that I grew just a smidgen more confident, the nearer I came to the landing. I skipped the last step, nearly jumping up into the hallway. I looked down to where Niamh’s bedroom door stood – and saw a faint light creeping out across the floorboards.
“Niamh.”
My voice was not loud; I refrained from screaming. I simply spoke her name.
Seconds later, I heard her feet sounding upon the bare floor. As she came out into the hall, the sight of her face forced a strange array of emotions to surge through my stomach. It was a nauseating feeling, but not a painful one; for she had never even come close, especially now, to penetrating my heart.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. She looked as if she had just caught sight of a ghastly spectre, come to take her life away. In a sense, she was not wrong; though at the sight of her, I began to understand that to kill her outright would be much more difficult than I had suspected. Not physically, of course; but in the way that stays your hands, when you wish to shake the spirit loose from something which still lives, standing, however undeservingly, upon the same earth in which your own feet are planted. Nevertheless, had she been any paler, she might have already been dead.
“I don’t claim to be an expert,” said I, “but I am fairly certain that He has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, Kate, please –”
I held up a hand, and she fell silent. I had not planned any poignant words; and in that moment, I found that I could not think of a thing to say. After what seemed too long a span of silence, I had to just let her go on.
“Please let me explain,” she said softly, starting towards me.
“Stay where you are.”
She stopped. “All right, I’m sorry. Just listen to me, won’t you?”
“Do you see me running away?”
An Irish Heart Page 36