Page 13 of John Eyre

As if, in life, Helen had ever come anywhere near his bedroom.

A stolen kiss she’d initiated behind the village schoolhouse had been the full extent of their physical relationship. It had immediately provoked in him a storm of regret and self-recrimination.

And not only that.

It had embarrassed him.

The truth was, he’d never thought of Helen in that way. Not as a potential conquest or a prospective lover. She’d been his friend. It was no small thing, but it hadn’t been a romance. It couldn’t have been. For all that he’d admired her beauty, the sight of her had never once made his heart beat faster.

“I’m sorry. I can’t,” John had said, pulling away from her.

He’d expected Helen to be equally embarrassed. Instead, she’d clung to him almost desperately. “Please don’t,” she’d said. “I need you so much. It’s no use pretending.”

“We mustn’t.” He’d set her apart from him with grim determination. “You’re a married lady.”

It hadn’t mattered that her marriage was an unhappy one. That she was starved for love and affection. He’d wanted to abide by the rules. To do what was right.

“Don’t forsake me John,” Helen had begged. “I couldn’t bear it.”

And she hadn’t borne it.

John’s fingers tightened on the phial of laudanum. At length, he measured out a second teaspoonful and swallowed it down. Tonight, he needed a reprieve from her ghost, and if a double dose of laudanum was the only way to get one, then so be it.

He put away his case of medicine and climbed into his box bed. Settling under the coverlet, he reached to slide shut the heavy wooden panel.

And he hesitated.

The remnants of a fire still crackled in the grate. He was loath to lose the warmth of it.

Leaving the panel open, he lay down on the mattress, his feather pillow shaping itself to his throbbing head. His eyes fell closed. And he waited. Waited for his medicine to do its work.

A queer drug, laudanum. It ate away at the edges of his consciousness, pulling him down into a hazily pleasant stupor, leaving him suspended between sleep and waking. It was in that state that John heard the strangest thing. A soft, sibilant sound. Like two snakes conversing.

But it wasn’t hissing, though it sounded eerily similar. It was whispering. Two murmuring voices passing secrets in the dark. A mere thread of twin breaths, too faint to make out the words.

Gooseflesh rose on John’s arms. Steeling his nerves, he poked his head out of the side of his box bed. Where on earth was the hissing coming from? Was it outside his door? He didn’t think so. There was no tread on the floorboards. No shadow cast from someone passing in front of the keyhole.

A piece of wood splintered and cracked in the fireplace, drawing John’s gaze. Was it the fire that hissed? He watched it for a long moment, as the laudanum infiltrated his bloodstream.

But no.

The remnants of wood sparked, but they didn’t hiss. And they certainly didn’t whisper.

Settling back into his bed, he reminded himself that old houses made all sorts of odd sounds. Creaks, and shrieks, and groans.

And then there were the muffled voices of those houses’ inmates. The sound of their footsteps, and of their intermittent laughter.

Indeed, how many times in these past months had he heard the strange laugh of Mr. Poole? That same mirthless chuckle that had turned John’s blood cold when first he’d encountered it on the third floor? Since then, he’d sometimes seen Mr. Poole in the early morning hours, down in the kitchens with a basin or tray in his hands, or out by the stables working away at something on his forge. On each occasion, John had been singularly unimpressed by the man. He was no specter—no ghoul.

The source of the whispering was likely just as unimpressive. The house settling, or the wind whistling down the chimney. Either that, or like so much late at night, it was only in John’s head. A product of drugs, and of conscience, made worse by his own imagination.

Helen was hundreds of miles away, moldering in her grave. She was out of pain now. At rest. There was no reason for her to haunt him so. What harm had he ever done her except to be kind? To know her and to be her friend.

To leave her behind.

His eyes moistened. He squeezed them shut, willing himself to sleep. In the past, he’d have taken another dose of laudanum, but not tonight. He’d had enough of the stuff already. It was time to be quit of the drug. To save it for only the worst of his headache pain. He was done with relying on it. Done with using it to blot out his grief and anger.

In time, his breath became regular, his chest rising and falling as he sank into sleep. The whispering resumed right before he drifted off. John’s final thought was one of sudden understanding.