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A walk around to the back of the house answered the question.Vivian’s lattice. She kept talking about how, in her daydreams, her suitors would climb it to get to her window for visits. Guess I’ll try my hand out at being the prince climbing in the window.
Fairytales made it sound far easier than the reality. Vine-covered lattices looked sturdy and convenient, but as Hanna climbed, the wobbles and creaks proved the truth was far different. Breaking into the window while clinging to the trellis posed an even greater obstacle. As she struggled with the glass panes, she saw Martin collapsed in a corner.
The latch that held the two swinging window panes closed broke and flew inward as Hanna threw her shoulder against it. She tumbled into the now-open window and scrambled across the floor to him. “Martin? Martin, wake up.”
He didn’t stir. His pulse, however, beat against her fingertips, and when she leaned her face close, she felt his breath on her cheek.Still alive. Thank heavens.
A groan from the bed startled her. She shoved herself to her feet. Vivian lay on the bed, weak and frail, face slick with her own saliva and pale beneath the sheen. Her hands felt like ice as Hanna clasped them. “Vivian?”
“Hanna.” The sound was more moan than word. “Gregory.”
“Vivian. It’s all right. I’m going to call for an ambulance.” Hanna chafed the bony hands in hers.
Vivian rolled her head from side to side. “Gregory. Save Gregory.”
“I haven’t seen him, Vivian. Where is he? Where’s Gregory?” Hanna asked, panic growing in her gut.
But Vivian was gone again, consciousness faded once more. Hanna grabbed the phone receiver off the house phone nearest the elderly woman’s bed and stabbed in 999. The voice on the other end had barely spoken before Hanna said, “There’s an emergency at Greenhill Hall. An elderly woman in distress, and a man attacked. Vivian Russell and Martin Hughes. Send an ambulance. And police.”
She set the receiver on the tabletop, instead of on the phone again, and glanced back at the two fallen people.Save Gregory. From whom? Where? I shouldn’t leave either of you.
Save Gregory. Hanna darted out of the bedroom and stormed down the stairs at top speed to throw the front door open as an escape route and invitation to police both.If something happens, they’ll come in to find Vivian and Martin. Now. Where is Gregory? And where the hell is Darlene?
A chill touch brushed against her hand. By now, she knew that touch well. Tonight, it felt like sharp pins of ice stabbing the nerves of her palm.He’s terrified.“Stuart? Where’s Gregory?”
Another touch, harder, colder, more painful in its urgency.
“Stuart, you need to show yourself. Concentrate. Appear for me. I can’t understand what you want,” Hanna pleaded.
The third touch was arctic, electric, almost too much to bear. Hanna gasped.He can’t. He’s too scared to manifest. But if Athena was right, I don’t need him to.
Death seldom left once it had visited. Hanna had felt it creep into her skin, into her soul as she lay beneath the surface of the bath, air dissipating in her lungs and body screaming to breathe.Was that the bathtub Marion killed Patricia in? Did I see what that poor child did, the woman above the water, her hands too strong to shake off as I drowned in a shallow grave? I remember the moment I knew I would die, the certainty that I would never escape, that my life would end right there, and I could see the glimmers of the other side…
She inhaled. Her perception wavered. As the air left her lungs, her sight changed, expanded, and she could see beyond the living realm she had always known.
A small boy stood in front of her, translucent yet as real as Hanna herself. Frightened, yes. Wild about the eyes, near to tears as every child she had known when they wanted to be brave but didn’t know how. He looked just as she had pictured him, son of a policeman and a factory worker, running from the bombs to another, colder grave.
“Stuart,” Hanna said. “It’s all right. I see you now.”
Relief glimmered in his eyes, light on ghostly tears of gratitude. Then he beckoned with frantic motions for her to follow. She watched his lips move, read the words there.“You have to come. Please. She’s killing him.”
“Take me to them.”
Stuart turned and ran towards the kitchen, with only one look back over his shoulder to see if she followed.
Hanna set her jaw. “Of course. They’re in the basement. Just where I wanted to go.” Then she ran after the small ghost for a showdown that was decades overdue.
* * *
The ghostin the corner had disappeared. Gregory didn’t know when the boy had fled the basement, or if he had ever existed at all. Though the warm, dreadful trickles of liquid from his arm and leg had slowed, his alertness still faded with the steady darkening of twilight.
His head had grown too heavy to hold up. Not when he could rest his chin on his chest and ease the burden. With his face so low, he no longer had to smell the dust and copper of the basement. The scent of baby soap, of unchanged diaper and salty tears filled his senses instead.
What was your name? Little brother, what was your name?Blood loss and shock allowed him easier passage into the memories he had hidden away for so long. Nights when the little one cried and no one but Gregory stirred from bed to check on him. Learning to take the crib rail down so he could ever-so-gently pick the baby up to give him a bottle or hold him in the rickety rocking chair that sat in the corner of the nursery. Murmured words of comfort,it’s okay, Joseph. It’s okay. I’ll take care of you. It’s okay. You can go back to sleep.
“Joseph,” he said out loud. His voice startled him, but he said it again. “Joseph.”
Marion looked up from where she rubbed a cloth over one of the empty bottles. “Yes, dear boy. That is the baby’s name. Your mother remembers choosing it. It was her grandfather’s name. I shall write it on a label, once I have found a proper pen, and put it on this bottle so you never forget it again.”
