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I greeted him. He gave me a cursory glance, said a cheery hello, then began to browse, likely wanting to waste time while he waited for the weather to change. After a few moments, he asked me if we had any fairy tales. He wanted it as a gift for one of his longtime clients. He was the doctor for an established family who’d been reduced to their only son, a recent widower, and the doctor hoped the gift would help bring some brightness to him.
I regretfully had to disappoint him, because the single type of book lining the shelves at Helm’s Bookshoppe was academic: history and science, mathematics and astronomy, books from decades to centuries old, and even a small copy on evolution written by Mr. Darwin. Few people knew that one was there.
His disposition was so pleasant that I hadn’t the heart to leave it at that. Somewhat guiltily, I referred him to a competitor on the far side of town that I frequented myself for fairy stories. The rain had not let up, and we’d chatted to pass the time. He’d been curious about my interest in fairy tales, and we whiled away nearly half an hour talking about the folktales his Irish mother had told him as a boy, many that I’d heard before and some I hadn’t. By the time the rain turned to a mere drizzle, we were almost good friends, and he took his leave with a smile and a tip of his hat. That would have been the end, but the very next day the doctor returned to the shop to offer an employment proposition I couldn’t refuse, mainly because the pay was extravagant.
The car bumped over an unfriendly stone, jarring me out of my memories. I recognized the way we were going.
Soon, the immensity of Our Lady of Grace Hospital would be in view. Before the World War, it had been a well-appointed university always at complete enrollment, but with the draft, its once-hallowed halls emptied and became a countryside extension of a hospital specifically established to treat patients with physical and psychological injuries from battle.
Now, it treated patients of all backgrounds, including civilians. I myself had woken in one of its humorless, white-washed wings only two years ago.
I turned my face away from the upcoming view of it, staring purposefully at the bleak landscape instead, determined to think of nothing else but what might lie in store for me and my new future at Willowfield.
Chapter 2
The length of the car ride proved challenging, especially as we left the straight, sure roads of the city and entered the country lanes that meandered in long curves through the naked hills. Hours passed and a headache marched in time behind my weary eyes. I’d had enough of surveying the passing views, which didn’t differ from one mile to the next this time of year. My attempt to read the book I’d brought was a failure and likely the cause of both my headache and my unsettled insides.
Despite the driver’s earlier gregariousness, he wasn’t much for conversation, and it remained quiet. I was tired and had run out of things to speculate about Willowfield, so I gave in to a small amount of self-pity. I hadn’t wanted to leave the shop. In fact, it had been my plan to stay with Mr. Helm until his last day on Earth. But the old gentleman’s eldest son had begun to convince him to retire and settle down with his children in Ipswich. All I might have expected was a severance fee of one month’s salary and then I would be sent on my way to nowhere and nothing. Though I’d been nearly two years in the city, I had no friends, few acquaintances, and no reason to reject a sum of money that would allow me to return to New York, where I had lived my entire life before the deaths of my parents.
The thought of them sent a sharp chill through me, and I decisively considered other things. I pictured the doctor’s trustworthy face, his excitement for having found a willing employee for his struggling friend, and my foolishness for having said yes so quickly without considering all the potential pitfalls of the arrangement. I’d been desperate. I still was.
The road became less rocky, and the car hummed along smoothly, the warmth of the modern heater core all new cars had keeping me comfortable despite the snow flurries swirling outside. A blizzard was not uncommon this time of year, though spring was just a breath away.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“Well, if we keep ahead of this snow, another three hours, miss. But if things get choppy, we’ll need to stop for the night.”
That was the last thing I wanted to do. I gave an annoyed glance back to the snow-filled sky, cursing its lack of sympathy for my nerves. A swift movement among the bare trees lining the roadway drew my eye. Something darted along through the spindly winter trunks in the same direction as the car. It must have been a deer, and I was excited to glimpse one after living in the city for so long. I searched for it again. There. Another flash, something gossamer white, moving fast and sure in the underbrush. It was keeping up with our speed, and I was having a difficult time deciphering its shape. With the shadows and dense changing of the landscape, the creature looked so odd. I could have mistaken it for human.
Uneasy, I turned to the driver to comment on the bizarre shape racing through the woods, when a woman ran into the road directly ahead of us, dressed in white, her translucent hair whipping in the wind, obscuring her features. She raised an arm to shield herself from the impact, clutching a bouquet of pale flowers in her fist. We hit her with a bone-jarring thud, her body disappearing beneath the hood.
I jolted awake with a squeak. We were still moving, and there were no snow flurries, no storm clouds in the sky, no woman in white. Everything was quiet.
The driver glanced at me apologetically.
“Sorry, miss. The roads this far from the main aren’t maintained well, wasn’t able to avoid that divot. You hit them just right and they’ll shake your teeth out of your head. Did you enjoy your nap? You’ve been sleeping like the dead for the last two hours.”
I released an uneasy breath, aggravated at this man for having put such macabre nonsense in my head at the onset of the trip. His tactless ghost stories were already giving me nightmares.
“Yes,” I replied vaguely. The terrain had changed, the dense forests sloping into hills, dormant orchards, and low stone fences. “Where are we?”
“Coming up on Willowfield, miss,” he replied. “You can see it just ahead.”
The trees had opened up to a swath of rolling hills, cleared of their brush and forests to make room for the estate’s orchards, open lawns, and the famous sprawling gardens. Even from a distance I could appreciate their magnitude. Oaks, willows, and cypress had been placed meticulously to draw the eye to what might have been a sight from a fairy tale in spring but was now fractured, bare, and frightfully sad. A glass greenhouse rose wistful from the west, its glass ceiling reflecting the gloom of the evening, and standing guard at the center of it all, a Châteauesque manor, forbidding against the cold gray sky. It was awe-inspiring, monstrous, and my gasp was part delight and dismay. An army of spires and turrets topped the hipped roofs, stabbing toward the heavens, and a peppering of stone chimneys further crowded the roofline, though only a single one puffed with warm smoke. Curved dormers attempted to soften the severity of the sharp-lined gables and brown masonry but made only to give the estate an air of exhausted life, turning the many windows into hooded eyes, dark and unwelcoming.
The driver whistled low.
“Extravagance was the name of the game when they built this place. Used to be mighty fine once. Practically magical,” he said. “They opened the gardens to the public every spring and hosted some excellent dinners, invited the whole town. The missus and I used to bring the ankle biters in the summer for their Independence Day festival. Look at it now. Big place like that with only a handful of people in it. Isn’t right. Hughes would be better off selling the place to the university.”
“They offered?”
“Oh sure, several times. Don’t know why he won’t let it go, what with all the bad memories. If it were me, I would’ve left first thing. Too much grief. Too many ghosts.”
“Not again with the ghosts, Mr. Dempsey.”
“Not literal ghosts, miss. Though, as I mentioned, I wouldn’t bet against there being a few of those roaming the halls. Strange things bloom where grief lives.”
We pulled into the gravel drive, the house looming huge overhead, glaring down at me like an old dowager, suspicious of new things. It was not a welcoming house with its dark windows and suffocating vines creeping up the walls and over the front entrance as though it were trying to seal up whatever was inside. The fountain at the center of the driveway was an enormous affair of carved stone, featuring a woman with arms raised in welcome, an apple resting in the fingers of one hand as though an offering to guests. Stone birds, the likes of which didn’t exist anywhere outside of dreams, preened and perched on her shoulders, and hid beneath her unpinned hair forever caught in a phantom wind. Around her legs resting on a set of rising waves were pitchers that should have been pouring water from their spouts. But there was no water. Instead, the fountain was dry save for the basin, which held several inches of stagnant, algae-ridden sludge, a paradise for mosquitos come summer.
