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Margaret is adamant I’m suffering from a haunt, a creature I lured with my interest in the cultish things my husband and I are studying. She frowned firmly at our research and told me malignant entities best remain unknown. The more we think of them, the more attractive we become. I argued that it was my recent obsession with evil spirits that had encouraged Callum to study them. I had to defend him in some way. Margaret doesn’t like him well, though her husband is his good friend.
When I asked her to advise me on what to do, she said she’d arrange a seance for me. If we could name the spirit haunting me, we could arm ourselves better to fight it. Callum wasn’t due home for several days, and I agreed, though he would be furious if he knew.
The night came, and I was a nervous wreck. We held the seance in the greenhouse, where I’d last seen the woman in white, and it was all I’d ever expected. Margaret brought several of her friends, and we arranged ourselves in a circle around the round glass tea table. There were candles and dried herbs, tarot cards and cymbals. The night was thick around us, and it felt as though we’d been submerged in a glass coffin into the depths of the ocean. Margaret called on the spirit tormenting me to come forth and name itself. The other women were nervous, their fingers trembling in mine. Without warning Margaret thrashed, yanking her hands free from the circle and flinging her head back. Her eyes were rolled up so that only the whites were visible, and one of her friends screeched. Margaret called Callum’s name in such an unholy voice, again and again as though he were there in person, fucking her in the wicker chair. I became shaky, light-headed with shock, and I knew what was coming without any power to stop it. I fainted.
When I came to, there was smoke, yelling. Margaret knelt next to me, prayers on her lips and tears on her cheeks. Her crying frightened me, and to make it all worse, Callum came home and found us in this state. I’ve never seen him so angry. He carried me from the flaming greenhouse, roaring for help, and Rodney soon arrived with several men in tow to put out the fire, but the damage was done.
Margaret was adamant that an unseen entity had started the blaze, flinging the candle at me and igniting the tablecloth. She insisted I leave Willowfield and my husband behind. In the moment that followed, Callum didn’t resemble the man I loved, but a demon, roaring obscenities, damning Margaret to the fiery pits. He approached her as though he would snap her in two, and Margaret was so frightened that she fled into the gardens, in the opposite direction of the house. Rodney followed to keep her from plunging to her death in the dark ravine nearby.
Callum carried me into the house, insisting that I’d passed out, and on my way to the ground, had pulled the linen cloth with me, knocking the candle askew and igniting the dried herbs scattered there. When the fire was put out, Callum took me to bed. He didn’t lecture or scold me, only held me close and cried into my hair. I couldn’t tell him about the woman, the woman with my own face crouching in the corner of our room just outside the firelight, crying.
I’ll never tell.
He wouldn’t believe me.
Horror stricken, I slammed the journal shut and threw it across the room, my breath coming in shuddering gasps. Like a child, I climbed deep under my blankets and pulled them to my chin, hoping for sleep and being greatly deprived of it. I slipped in and out fitfully, finally drifting off when the clock struck two. After mere seconds of peace, I awoke to a keening that sent fingers of ice crawling up my back. The fire was out, the room bitter cold, and my breath was visible in the moonlight streaming in, brighter than ever. One of the windows was open to the night air, the curtain whipping in the vicious wind that rushed in to freeze everything. There was another wail, and as the curtain billowed, I finally saw the woman. She was the same apparition I’d chased through the halls, the one Mrs. Hughes must have seen. She was so loud, moaning into her hands with such agony that surely someone besides me heard her. She tilted her head toward the black sky, her back to me, hands grasping the hair at her temples. I knew her pain so acutely, having cried this way in the wake of my parents’ deaths. Tears came to my eyes, and I stood slowly as though she were not an apparition but a true person I might startle if I moved too suddenly.
Her cries quieted, becoming sobs that sent tremors through her shoulders, and she grabbed the window’s ledge and climbed onto it. Disturbed, I rushed forward, my arms reaching, but I arrived too late, and her body disappeared in the darkness. I tripped on my own feet, careening into the windowsill and nearly flipping out myself. I clung on for dear life, toes lifting from the floor, and looked down into a great abyss that should not have existed, the ground too far away for a window only two stories high. I screamed, my voice echoing in the cavern of the night.
Strong hands grabbed my waist and pulled me inside, holding me upright even as my knees buckled. With some roughness I was flipped around to face my rescuer.
Professor Hughes.
His eyes were wild, his breath coming heavy. He’d been running.
“Millie! What were you doing? You could have fallen!” he was yelling, pushing me further into hysterics.
“A woman! A woman was here. She was crying, didn’t you hear her? You had to have heard her! She’s jumped!” I violently pointed out the window, desperate for him to look, to find and help her. Gentle, warm palms cupped my cheeks, turning my face from the window.
“There is no one here but you,” he soothed, fingers pressing damp hair from my forehead. “I heard your crying all the way on the other side of the house. When I arrived you were standing at the window. You climbed onto the windowsill, Millie.”
“No, no, I didn’t. I…”
But as the fog of it all began to clear, the realization of what had happened slowly dawned on me, and the haze of my waking nightmare began to fall completely away. My eyes focused, and I looked at the professor again with clarity. He noticed the shift.
“There you are,” he said, relieved.
The occurrences of only a few moments ago were already going fuzzy as all dreams do, and the reality of what had almost happened caused me to tremble.
“God, you frightened me.” The professor rested his forehead against mine for a breath of a moment, then pulled away to wipe the half-frozen tears from my face with his thumbs. “I wasn’t sure I’d make it to you in time.”
“That would have been upsetting,” I replied, stupefied by his unexpected affection.
I hadn’t meant to make a joke. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, but addled with lingering alarm, we both began to laugh breathily, dispelling some of the anxiety of the moment.
“Why didn’t you tell me you suffered from sleepwalking? I’d have made Willowfield safer for you. This explains your wandering the halls at night. You should have said something.”
My temporary giddiness was gone, replaced by the temper that comes only with a terrible fright or an extraordinary embarrassment, both happening to me simultaneously.
Mad Millie.
“I haven’t sleepwalked in years! And it wasn’t your business! You don’t deserve to know every last thing about me. I’m your assistant, not your…”
I didn’t say the wordlover, though it sat in my mouth, bittersweet.
“Don’t you think I care if someone in my household lives or dies?” he asked, his question harsh with hurt. “Do you believe it wouldn’t affect me to find you were harmed when I could have protected you?”
“I’m not a damsel in distress, Professor. I don’t need to be protected.” What I needed was no more reason to feel helpless.
