Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling (6 page)

“I'll keep dreaming.” Paul said this matter-of-factly, without turning away from the task at hand, stepping over underbrush, moss-covered boulders, and rotted logs with complete determination. I held James's hand and continued my minor lecture as we walked.

“Dreams are my favorite things in the world. Sometimes they even come true, but sometimes we must learn when to wake up.”

Paul ignored me and pointed excitedly at something up ahead. “There!”

The path ended at a small fallow creek, but began again on the other side to disappear around a dark, massive cage of roots at the base of an ancient oak tree. Whatever lay beyond the magnificent tree was obscured in a thick, roiling patch of fog. James wrenched himself free from my hand and leapt over the creek, bounding into the mist before I was able to stop him.

“James!”

I quickly hoisted my dress up to my waist and jumped over the brook, glancing back at Paul to wave him on. Together we chased his brother into the mist.

The air around us grew heavy with a dampness that remained even as the fog subsided, and we found ourselves in the middle of a vast orchard. While it had been daylight mere moments before, the moon now hung low in the sky, larger than I had ever seen. It was so vast and oppressive I felt that if I were to reach toward the sky I might be able to push the orb back where it belonged, high above on the black velvet mantle of the night.

“It's nighttime here.” Paul was behind me, hugging himself against the cool air.

“Perhaps I misjudged the time . . .” I said with uncertainty as I took his hand very tightly into my own and began to march between the rows of squat orchard trees. “We must find your brother.”

Paul was silent as he walked, his knuckles white as he peered between the trees at the shadows that stretched out to us when we passed, sensing us with hungry anticipation.

“Is this the place you dreamt of?”

Paul shivered against the chill in the air, observed the heavy moon in the sky, and shook his head slowly. “No. There was an orchard, but it was different.”

Normally, I would have been very interested in such a sudden change of landscape—and apparently, time—but I was anxious to find James. My heart began to pulse in my ears, throbbing so intensely that my body seemed to reverberate with each beat. I refused to panic. Instead, I felt a heightened awareness of the atmosphere around me, of the curling fog behind a distant tree, of the rustle of branches around us, the movement of the shadows in our direction as we passed, of the very alien nature of the place that Paul's map had led us to.

“James!” My voice did not echo through the air, nor could we hear the sounds of our footsteps on the hard, cold earth. Still, I continued to call out until I was hoarse. Paul dragged behind me, gasping every time he looked back to where we had come from, seeing nothing but a gloom as opaque and tangible as the fog that had heralded our arrival to this strange, dark land. It was building around and behind us, pushing us toward a destination neither of us wanted to think about.

“Charlotte . . .”

“We'll leave as soon as we find your brother.”

I stopped at what appeared to be the main thoroughfare and peered in both directions, trying to decide which way James might have gone. Behind me, Paul pressed himself against the nearest tree, as if to block the creeping darkness from his line of vision. Thin branches and twigs cracked and broke around his body, and his head grazed the bottom of a low-hanging piece of fruit with enough force to knock it free. It dropped down into his hands.

It was about the same size and shape as a grapefruit, but before he could get a good look at it, he glanced up at me, clearly frightened, sensing that something was wrong. The fruit quivered, and with a wet, tearing sound it began to unroll from the inside out, the air laced with the scent of peaches as the thing in his hands untwisted its arms and legs from the pulpy interior of its body and wrenched its head free from its shell. A baby's face blinked at us with pale blue eyes as Paul dropped it onto the ground with a look of utter terror, backing away, his gaze transfixed on the thing as it fell onto its back, protected by what was formerly the leathery skin of the fruit.

It smiled at him with thin, sharp teeth.

Paul let out a manic, consuming scream that frittered away the last remaining edges of his youthful courage and curiosity and exploded into his legs. He ran past me, past the trees, never looking directly at them, at the fruit, perhaps afraid that it might look back; his voice never breaking through the air as he shrieked, never echoing, but rather circling back in on him like a vulture, an eater of dead things, pecking away his every last hope, every rational thought, every instinct but the one that told him to run for as long as it took to escape.

I trailed behind him, struggling to follow his voice, which was quickly muffled by the rows of trees, but as he was running in a straight line I was able to catch up to him when he stopped, panting and heaving at the edge of the orchard before a great house as grand as anything either of us had ever seen before.

The doors of the house stood open, and silhouetted against the light that streamed over the threshold as vibrantly as the darkness churned in the orchard was a woman, tall and regal, even at a distance. James was at her side, clinging to her waist as she descended the steps leading up to the house with slow deliberation, almost gliding to the ground, a beautiful phantom with a small, worried smile as she approached Paul and gently touched his face. He collapsed against her and sobbed so loudly into her shoulder that I was unable to dispute the name that he immediately and distinctly gave her:

“Mother!”

CHAPTER 5

Bargains with the Dead

F
or a moment, I could only stand at the foot of the great house in an attempt to catch my breath, my mind reeling, searching for some way to escape with the children. Lily Darrow was dead. There had been witnesses and a funeral and a painting commissioned to hang over the desk in her husband's study, a portrait of a raven-haired creature with glittering eyes like cracked jade and a playful expression of mock superiority, which he stared at for hours on end when he didn't think the servants were watching. And yet . . . the likeness was so startling that I had to shake myself of the very notion that the woman before us could possibly be the late Mrs. Darrow.

They had
mourned
her. What kind of wife and mother would allow her family to feel the things that her death had inflicted upon them if she were not well and truly dead? It was unfathomable. This was some act of trickery, a cruel impostor toying with the emotions of children. I would not stand for it.

Paul sobbed into the woman's shoulder, crying and apologizing—“I'm sorry I wasn't there, I'm so sorry”—as she stroked his head and cooed away his sorrows. I stepped forward, stopping as I happened upon the crinkled hand-drawn map of the forest left behind on the ground of the orchard, a thing crafted from the scraps of dreams. How could anyone have influenced the boy to lead us into the woods? Was such a thing even possible? There were so many questions, all of them overshadowed by the one thought I could not ignore:

“No one ever comes back,” I said.

James pulled his face away from the skirts of the mystery woman, and looked her over carefully before returning my pleading gaze with a confused expression. In his eyes I could see that there was no doubt the woman he clung to was his mother.

Paul didn't bother to remove his head from the other woman's shoulder. He had awoken from his nightmare and it had all been some terrible misunderstanding. Everything he hoped for had come true.

“But she has. She's alive again.”

The woman ran her fingers through Paul's hair and raised his chin so she could look into his eyes. “No, my love, I am not.”

His face fell, and he slowly backed away from her, dragging his brother with him. I quickly grabbed them both by the shoulders a little more roughly than I meant to and held them tightly before they could run off.

The great house before us was more appealing than the dark, oppressive gloom of the orchard, with the shadows that twitched and snaked about the ground, but I would not hesitate to escape the way we had come. I considered the woman who purported to be Mrs. Darrow. To anyone who might ask, I would deny that I had any belief in ghosts, but then what of the man in black? A mysterious shade prone to the company of corpses was just as unlikely as the resurrection of a young mother taken before her time. Was she a liar, a ghost, or something else altogether?

My heart continued on its perilous drop deep into the nether reaches of my chest, and I realized with no small amount of revulsion that I might soon begin to panic in the way I had witnessed other women do, as I was perhaps expected to do. But I refused to faint or swoon; the fearful emptiness I felt inside instead began to swell, blood raging in my ears, until it changed into something solid and substantial. Nothing would happen to the children—I would not allow it. It was a very odd sensation, unlike anything I had ever experienced. We were in danger, true danger, and it thrilled me to know that I was equal to the challenge presented.

Perhaps the woman saw this fearlessness in my gaze, which I imagine had become rather hard and fiery, for it was then that she sighed, her comfortable, dignified composure falling away. She folded her hands before her like the woman from the portrait in Mr. Darrow's study and began to look a bit desperate.

“Please, I've come back to you.” She took a step forward, and the boys huddled against me. The woman stopped again and smiled faintly. “I suppose I should have expected as much. I've been gone from you both for so long.”

“And Father.” Paul had let go of me, but did not move toward the other woman. He spoke with a slight edge in his voice.

At the mention of Mr. Darrow, the woman quickly looked back at the house and then returned her gaze to Paul. “Please don't be angry with me. I never wanted to leave you, which is why I've come back. I would have returned to Everton, but there were rules I had to agree to.”

“Come home with us.” James stepped away from me to join his brother's side.

The woman shook her head. “This is my home now, and you're welcome here anytime you'd like.” She motioned to the massive house.

The boys looked at one another, and then to me, but I remained unconvinced.

“Do forgive me for being skeptical,” I said, trying to contain the smoking flesh and boiling blood surging beneath the confines of my skin. “But how can we be sure that you are really Mrs. Darrow, and not some impostor intent on doing us harm?”

“I can see that my husband chose well.” She paused at this, making an implication that was not lost on me. “If that were my intention, why would I be reasoning with you to believe my story? Wouldn't I have done something by now to prove your point?”

“I do not pretend to understand the whims of the dead.”

“A wise decision. So you believe me then?”

I shot her a steely glare and changed the subject. “This place is hardly fit for children.”

“How can you be sure? You have not yet been inside. The House of Darkling can be whatever you choose to make of it.” She had begun to regain her confidence, much to my dismay, and her lips formed into a tight smile at her own cleverness. I would have none of it. I turned with the children pressed against me and began to trot briskly back into the orchard. The woman called after us, desperate once more, which was the only way I would deal with her. Desperate people are more likely to make mistakes.

“Please! You must give me the chance to prove myself! Ask me anything. Something that only Lily Darrow would know.”

I stopped at the edge of the orchard and turned around slowly, searching my mind for every scrap of information I had ever learned about my employer's late wife.

Paul spoke up before I could. “What was the name of the lullaby you used to sing to us?”

The woman smiled and closed her eyes for a moment, as if listening for the music on the soft wind that began to blow through the orchard trees, the fruit on their branches swaying in the breeze. “ ‘Every Night at Everton.' We made it up together, and it was different every night depending on what had happened during the day.”

This was enough proof for both of the children. They returned to their mother's side and hugged her tightly, immediately sorry that they had ever doubted her intentions. I, on the other hand, was dubious even as the thrill of danger dissipated into caution. When a person died, they did not come back to their children, but if this had somehow been reversed for Mrs. Darrow—and I was not convinced that it had, nor that this was not some elaborate ruse to take advantage of the children of a wealthy widower—then why had none of my loved ones been able to do the same? It was for this reason and this reason alone that I followed them into the great house with unease, remembering those that I had lost and hoping against hope that if what the woman said were true, then perhaps the place contained more than one departed soul.

T
he parlor was small and intimate, the walls lined with square wooden panels and elaborate tapestries depicting the room itself filled with a strange pantheon of creatures, perhaps from some obscure mythology or religion with which I was unfamiliar. As I stared at the fabric, examining the intricate patterns and threading, I realized with some bewilderment that the shapes were changing, reknitting themselves from left to right in an impossible act of defiance of the rules of scientific propriety, recasting the occupants of the room until I recognized myself and the children as carefully constructed embroideries. I reached out to pull aside the tapestry, but I stopped myself before I could uncover the mechanism enabling its manipulation. Against my better judgment I preferred to believe, if only for a little while longer, that the house and the alleged Mrs. Darrow were part of something extraordinary.

A squat, muted chandelier hung low from the ceiling, casting the room in dim amber light. I sat on the edge of a thick leather armchair, determined not to sink back so far as to be rendered incapacitated should the strange situation spiral any further out of my control, even as I promised myself that it would not. To my bewilderment the cushions expanded as if the chair were fighting against me so that I might be more comfortable. Was it possible for furniture to become offended? I firmly kicked the leg behind my right foot, and the chair regained its former shape.

Before sitting down, Mrs. Darrow gently touched three of the wooden panels along the wall, each of them clicking open to reveal the different components of a full afternoon tea spread. She removed cups and a steaming pot from the first, a pedestal of finger sandwiches and scones from the second, and a chocolate tea cake from the last. I fought to ignore a pang of sympathy as I realized that the cake was the same as Mr. Darrow had provided during our midnight tea. She left it on a plate to the side of the table, as conspicuously untouched as her husband's had been. I imagined the two of them sitting alone in two different houses, Mr. Darrow at Everton and Mrs. Darrow at the place called Darkling, staring at the empty chairs that surrounded them, silence shrieking, with tea cakes perched on lone plates like ceremonial offerings to memories not quite dead.

I eyed the boys carefully as they sat beside the woman who claimed to be their mother, sprawled on a plush divan before the large stone fireplace at the front of the room. The flames contorted into various shapes, casting shadows of flickering animals and their masters along the back wall. The children marveled at the trick for a long while, slowly drifting off to sleep as the alleged Mrs. Darrow watched me back, her eyes gleaming in the firelight, as dangerous and silver-green as a cat's.

“Your tea will cool,” she said. Both boys were nearly asleep in her lap; even Paul, who was too old for that sort of thing.

I looked at the saucer and brought the cup to my lips, careful to seal them to the rim so as not to allow any of the liquid into my mouth. I was already at a disadvantage if the woman meant us any harm, a fact I firmly kept at the forefront of my mind, and sitting in the parlor of a woman who claimed to be dead, in a strange land with shadows that crawled and pieces of fruit that walked, the least I could do was avoid a potentially poisoned cup of tea.

I brought the cup away from my mouth and placed it back onto the saucer sitting primly in my lap. The other woman turned away from me and gazed into the fire.

“Is my husband well?” The tone of her voice was emotionless and elusive. It reminded me of Paul's.

I considered the question before I answered. A vague, bland answer might lead to an informal inquisition, but a detailed one might hint at a relationship that was more involved than was true.

“I've been with the Darrow family for nine months, and in that time I've come to know Mr. Darrow as two very different people. The first man smiles when someone says something clever and eats as voraciously as the groundskeeper. But then there are times when he sees something either in the house or in the boys that makes him grow very distant. He is my employer, and so I don't pretend to know him as one might know a friend, but whenever he is overcome by such an episode, I've begun to suspect that he's thinking of what he has lost, and there is a sadness in his distance that leads me to believe that he may forever remain two people: one struggling to enjoy life, and the other trapped in sorrow.”

The woman did not look away from the fireplace. Her chest rose and fell in an uncomfortable quiet broken only by the ambient sounds of the room—the embers in the fire crackling; the grandfather clock chiming; something shuffling across the floor in one of the upper chambers of the great house. I brought the cup to my lips again, pretended to drink, and set it back onto the saucer.

“You are very thorough, Mrs. Markham.”

I placed the saucer on the table between us and stood to circle the room. I spotted a bookcase filled with obscure texts whose titles seemed to be in a language I had never seen before. I fingered the spines lovingly and turned back to Mrs. Darrow. “The one detail I find myself most curious about at present is the fact that I'm having a conversation with the alleged late wife of my current employer.”

The woman smiled, and the stoic decorum that had framed her every action since we entered the house partially melted away. She lifted herself gingerly out from beneath the children and stood before the fireplace.

“You are right to be suspicious of me.”

“The children believe you. Who am I to disagree with them? But by all accounts Mrs. Darrow died.”

“So I did.”

“I have lost many people from my life—my mother to cholera, my father to a heart attack, and my husband to a fire—and when they died, they did not come back.” The end of the last word sharpened in the air for a pregnant moment until I began again. “While I do not doubt the power of a mother's love for her children, I will not believe that the love of my family was somehow inferior to yours.” I said this evenly, without hope of masking the jealous curiosity that had replaced my confidence, but I was determined nevertheless to have a cordial, honest discussion. “In order for this conversation to continue, I feel that I must ask—why you?”

The woman did not appear to be surprised at the directness of my question; in fact she seemed relieved. The alleged Mrs. Darrow spoke facing the fireplace, a silhouette before the flames.

“When I first took ill, I told anyone who would listen that I would conquer my sickness, that I would not accept anything less than a full recovery; that God was testing me. I followed the doctor's instructions: I continued with my social engagements, I ate healthily, exercised regularly, and yet each day I grew more weary.