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As quickly as I could manage, careful not to lose my balance, I pulled the robe over my shaking shoulders and stumbled into the bedroom, falling again onto my hands and knees as the world kicked and spun. The crying was piercing, the force of every grief a body could feel filling my head. The woman in white stood at the foot of my bed, wailing into her hands, her body curled in on itself. I was asleep. Unconscious. Perhaps my body was still on the bathroom floor where I’d slipped, and my soul was wandering. It must be. Ghosts weren’t real. My stomach rebelled and bile rose in my throat. I lurched to my feet, my eyes never wavering from the figure barely a yard from me.
“What do youwant?” I demanded, hoarse, overwhelmed by the moment and at a loss for what else to do.
The creature crouched at the sound of my anger, waiting to attack or to be attacked herself. She wavered, rocking on her hands before finally bolting from the room on all fours as she had done the night I chased her to Callum’s room. I knew she expected me to follow, leading me somewhere I shouldn’t be, like the room of my employer or to an open ledge, but I couldn’t stay here. If I did, I could never be at peace with Callum or Willowfield.
Clutching my robe around me, I ran after the ghost of Mrs. Hughes.
Chapter 19
The spirit appeared to be leading me again to Callum’s room, and though I fumbled, I kept up, already knowing the way. I floated in a fog of pain and desperation, following, drunk with the need to solve this horrible mystery. If this was truly the ghost of Mrs. Hughes, I wanted so badly to know what drove her to haunt this house. Perhaps she hated me for being where she should have been, loving the man who had once been hers. The new danger of this option faltered my resolve, but my speculation would leave me nowhere but cowering and ducking at shadows forever. Whatever this wraith wanted, I needed to know.
I worried vaguely about tripping on torn-up rugs or stepping on carpentry nails that were left behind, but my feet managed to find the safest places, and I kept Mrs. Hughes in sight as she arrived at Callum’s door. Instead of slipping inside, she took a sharp turn into the belly of the house where I’d once gotten lost and into the near complete dark of the inner corridors where no windows offered the forgiveness of moonlight. Any thoughts I’d once had that this thing might be human were dashed when I beheld the preternatural glow that kept her from fading into the gloom around us.
She came to a halt, righting herself from the hellish crouch she’d lumbered in, hands rising to her face in her eternal pose of sorrow, but her howling didn’t resume. Instead, she stood silently, waiting like a stone angel grieving over the cold graves of the lost. Cautiously, I bridged the space between us, reaching out.
“Mrs. Hughes?” I whispered, my fingers brushing the loose curls of her hair, which floated lightly as though she were still submerged in the water of the ravine. My touch didn’t pass through as I suspected but tangled in the locks. I couldfeelher.
The contact sent her into a spasm, and she jerked away from me, fleeing ahead and turning at last into a door. I pursued, but at a torpid pace now, still stunned by the contact. The doorway she’d entered was not a doorway at all, but a stairwell, the one that had enticed me with the gravity of its secrets for so long. I looked up into the narrow passage, pale light shining down from the landing where the door stood open. My desire to go up was inflexible, alien, and I thought it might not be mine at all.
I took the stairs up, a hand to the wall to steady myself, ready to turn and flee if needed, prepared at every second for a horrible face to appear at the top and chase me down. Such a thing never happened, and I finally reached the landing without incident.
The room I entered was small but bright with moonbeams from two high windows set into the curve of the wall to my right, draped in yellow fabrics with white lace violets. It was a sitting room, more meager than the one downstairs without the frills and frippery formal spaces required. Dust sheets hung draped over some things, but others were uncovered, all the most practical pieces: a chair and table, a yellow settee, and a small writing desk with stationery and a pen laid neatly atop it. There were two doors leading out of this room cattycorner to each other. My breath came in shaky pulls, my head throbbing and my stomach still troubled with fear, but I’d already come this far. I picked my way through the space to the door nearest me, but it was locked tight. I pressed my ear against it, hearing nothing.
Then the low sound of crying resumed, and I turned to find the remaining door slightly ajar. Creeping to it, I pushed inward, the hinges gently singing, and stepped into a room full of storage. I might have thought it an attic space, but the ceilings were too high, too ornate, the windows dressed in soft white muslin. I trod cautiously, understanding there were many places for something or someone to hide. For a white-hot moment, my logic took center stage, and I realized that no one was likely to find me up here if something were to happen. I’d decided to bolt when I spotted the frilled bassinet tucked near a window, half obscured by other items crowding around it. I approached and looked inside.
The small crib had been made up neatly with lace-trimmed white cotton. I touched the mobile hanging above, its twinkling stars spinning around a stationary crescent moon, sequined and shining. Pulling the cloth off the nearest bulk revealed an oak rocking horse, its nut-brown mane brushed and braided. Baby things. But Callum had no children.
The first forbidden words I’d read rang in my ears like a high, shrill bell.
I can’t give him the family he so desperately wants.
This had been a nursery. My eyes filled with tears, a phantom ache opening in my womb, rocking me with a seizure of muscles that sent me careening into a nearby changing table, where a set of cloth diapers was folded and ready to use, yellowing with age. The contractions intensified, blurring my vision, then at last let up, leaving me breathless and damp with sweat. Was this what Mrs. Hughes had wanted me to see? Her expectations for a bright future that never came?
A new sound distracted me from my horrible thoughts. Against the wall on the opposite end of the small room stood a wardrobe, white wood to match the nursery’s other elements. It wasn’t large, only big enough for all the necessary items one would need for an infant. Big enough for a person to hide in. My urge to recoil was defeated only by the sight of a hand pulling the door closed from the inside. I didn’t need to hurry, and couldn’t have besides, the pain in my head and stomach too fierce. If there was someone there, they couldn’t go anywhere. I arrived at the doors, grappling with the memories that begged me to leave this thing be. But I would overcome this, Iwould. I flung open the door and quickly shoved my hands into the things hanging inside, nursing robes, woven blankets, and fresh cradle linens. I touched the back of the wardrobe, the sides, finding nothing human shaped. I was about to start crying when a heavy blow struck me in the center of my back, knocking the wind out of me and pitching me forward. I grabbed on to a robe, but it fell from its hanger and I fell with it. Another great shove lifted my hips higher than my head, my face crashing into the inside corner as my body was folded into the small space. The door slammed shut against me, crushing my foot, which still hung slightly out, against the trim. I screamed in pain and flopped over, trying to roll onto my back, freeing my foot but allowing the latch to find purchase and click closed.
Wild with panic and pain, I screeched, trying to throw my weight onto the inside doors, but I tangled in the fabrics of never-used linens. I slammed my hands again and again against the unyielding wood, the healing wound in my palm opening up, sending shock waves down my arm. I begged for help, and in my feverish flailing, I called out for Ms. Reeves, long dead, my childhood enveloping me. I was going to suffocate in here. This was my grave.
My mother’s voice echoed in my ears.
Die in there for all I care, you little bitch! Don’t ever touch my things again! Mad Millie, we should send you away to a sanatorium and they’ll lock you in a little room just like this. No one loves you. No one’s ever loved you!
With a final wail of effort, I flung my shoulder into the door and placed my feet against the back wall, pushing with all my might until, at last, there was a crack of wood and the latch gave way with a shower of splinters, leaving me to tumble onto the floor, my head cracking against the boards. I rolled over onto my stomach and retched nothing but frothy yellow bile. Weakly, I reached up to find something to help me stand. My hands grasped only the thick canvas of another dust cover, pulling it from its place. As it fell, I looked up to find the face of the ghost mere inches from mine.
I screamed until the dark closed in, and I ceased to see and feel anything more.
Chapter 20
I awoke in Callum’s bed, my head pounding and a fever pulsing in my temples. My mouth felt like the inside of a cotton mill. I turned my stiff neck, searching for something to ground me, to dispel the wretched disorientation. I recalled voices and the weightlessness of being carried, but the rest was dark. There was a gentle touch at my forehead, pushing back a wet strand of hair, and I expected to find Callum, but instead, there was Felicity, her eyes rimmed with red. When she saw that I’d registered her presence, she quieted me.
“You’re not safe,” she whispered.
“Why?” I rasped, my throat raw from screaming and stomach acid.
“He wants too much.” She pressed a kiss to my head, her tears dropping onto my cheeks as though they were mine.
The door opened and she moved away from me, busying herself with gathering an armful of bedclothes waiting to be collected from the chair nearby. Callum had entered, followed closely by Ms. Dillard, and he stopped Felicity as she tried to hurry out, leaning in to speak at a volume I couldn’t hear. The maid glanced at me, then departed.
Ms. Dillard took to the bedside, hands on my forehead. She urged me to sit up and helped me drink a glass of water before easing me back onto the pillows. My hair was damp and smelled of black pepper soap, and I assumed I’d been bathed, though I had no memory of it. She excused herself to prepare something my stomach might tolerate and left me alone with Callum, whose face was drawn with worry.
