Maplecroft (27 page)

And
now, the rest.

The bit I’ve written around, and struggled to keep from writing.

It happened long after Seabury left. After supper, after bedtime. After Emma had been tucked in and Nance was sleeping, or doing a fair impersonation of sleeping; I don’t know.

As for me, I was sleeping on the chaise in Nance’s room. I wanted to be near her if she needed me. I wanted to know if
anything changed, even if it changed for the worse. If anything changed, if anything happened . . . or let me be honest with myself, just this once: If she were to die, at least I would know.

(I grow more fatalistic by the day.)

Somehow,
I fell asleep. I say “somehow” because it’s never come easy to me, I don’t think; I’ve always slept lightly, especially since Emma has required a caretaker. It’s as if I stay just barely unconscious, suspended just beneath the surface, so I can listen for any calls, cries, or bells that might summon me; and if I let myself fall too deeply, I might not be able to come when I’m needed.

And the matter of the creatures, of the madness, of the Problem (as Seabury put it) has only made things worse. And so has Nance’s treachery, for it fulfilled the worst of these nightmare fears.

But somehow, I slept.

It was pure exhaustion, I suppose. I could only brace myself against it for so long, and the recent weeks had taken a toll too great for me to withstand. So there, on the chaise, I closed my eyes. At least this time it wasn’t Nance’s treachery, but treachery from my own body that put me under so soundly. Unless there are worse forces at work than Mrs. Winslow and her numbing tinctures.

Regardless, I did not hear Nance rise.

I do not know how she undid the ties that held her to the bed. I did not see her escape. I did not watch her tiptoe across the floor. I do not know if she saw me, or if she paused to look down upon me, or offer some kiss of affection—but I know how likely that last part is, so I’ll put it from my mind. It only makes me feel worse.

I do not know how I slept through it, and I’m surprised that Emma did.

But Nance arose; I’m not sure when.

She extricated herself; I’m not sure how.

She found her way to the washroom, a large, modern one here on the second floor. It has always been one of my favorite things about this house—with its wide dimensions, elevated iron tub on lion’s feet, and all the lovely pipes feeding back and forth, in and out of the wall. I have always loved that room.

I awoke to the sound of dripping water, so soft but so near, I thought it must’ve begun to rain. And in my half-sleep state, I wondered at the nighttime shower raining down outside, pattering against the windowsills. Rainstorms are such soothing things. So pleasant for sleeping through.

But the drip, drip, drip, was not the last of April’s showers, and something in the back of my mind insisted that I must collect myself and investigate.

I did so unwillingly. I was so tired, and so heavily asleep. Reluctantly, with awful slowness, my mind dragged itself up to alertness, or something like it. The effort to lift my head was herculean, and unkind.

Drip, drip, drip.

Coming from the washroom down the hall. There was no other water source so close by. Had I left a tap loose?

I rubbed my eyes. I forced them to focus.

And on the floor beside the bed, I saw the ties I’d used to keep Nance secure. Tangled but unknotted, lying in a loose heap.

My heart stopped.

It started again, banging like a hammer, and I threw myself from the settee—flying forth from my blanket and discarding it
into some corner, somewhere. I ran to the bed, where the imprint of her body remained. There was no sign of how she’d undone the ties, but I did not have time to wonder about it—not when the water was there in the bathroom, drip, drip,
dripping
, and I knew where she must have gone.

Any minute I expected to hear the clang of Emma’s bell, but I didn’t, and for a tiny, horrible moment I wondered if she was even alive anymore. She might have died in the night, expiring from her persistent illness; or no, I’m lying again—because it crossed my mind that Nance might’ve gone on a spree like the rest of the maddened victims, or like so many of them have.

But surely not. Surely she would’ve started with
me
. (I deserve that much, don’t I?)

I dashed to the corridor. Washroom to my left. Emma’s room to my right. One ringing with the delicate patter of water on water. One silent as a tomb.

I went to the left.

In the washroom, the light was not on but I could see enough to know what I was up against. The tub was filled to overflowing, and a thin trickle of water spilled slowly, dripping over the lip, splashing down to the white hexagonal tiles, into a puddle that covered half the floor. My feet were soaked before I noticed. The water was spreading, pooling, creeping out into the hallway and the floors might be ruined but I hardly noticed, and did not care.

I stood half paralyzed in the doorway, until I shook myself lucid enough to fumble for the gaslight switch. When the hiss came and the light sparked it was too much—entirely too much—and I winced against the sudden brightness, but I could not look away.

I knew what was in the tub, so full of water, with a placid
surface unbroken by anything except the coiling tendrils of Nance’s hair. Moving languidly. Stirred only by the persistent stream that still trickled from the tap.

I wondered what it meant, that the tap was mostly off. Either she’d been there an hour or more to fill it, at that rate, or she’d thought to turn it off when she was finished filling the tub. I told myself that must be it—it must have been a deliberate act, and she was still alive, still herself inside that muttering shell of skin.

Honestly, I had no idea. I still don’t know. Perhaps I never will.

But there she was. Wholly submerged, unmoving.

I moved, but I did it slowly, sluggishly. The whole moment was dreamlike in its stickiness, like I could walk toward the tub forever and ever and never reach it. Except that I
did
reach it, and I looked down, and I saw her wearing the oversized nightdress of mine that positively swam on me, as my stepmother would have put it—and I hated the phrase, because yes, it swam and billowed, and it was almost translucent. I could see every nook and curve of her skin through the light white cotton, pouring around her body, floating there, suspended just beneath the surface. Eyes wide-open, staring up toward me, but not at me. Mouth slightly parted. Wholly submerged. Unmoving. Ophelia drowned, needing only the flowers in her hair to make it uncanny.

There were no flowers. Only the body, almost as pale as the nightdress, almost as translucent. Serene, I wanted to say.

My throat was full of fear, full of my heart—which had leaped there and stuck like the inconstant bastard it truly was.

I didn’t know what to do.

I should pull her out. That’s what I thought. I should lay her on the floor, roll her over and over, push the water from her lungs, and command her to breathe,
breathe
, goddammit. I
should send immediately for Seabury, and order him to revive her if I could not, because there was no chance she was dead—it simply was not an option, for this motionless, cold, empty thing to be my Nance, who had come to an end in this manner.

I was shaking so hard that I could scarcely control myself, teeth audibly chattering though it was not so very cold. It was only the water that slipped between my toes. It was only the sight of Nance, calm at last, cocooned and finished.

I reached out with one quivering hand and touched the water’s edge, where one long lock of her hair had crept over the side of the tub, drawn there by some unseen, unfelt eddy, dangling damply.

I touched it.

Her eyes jerked toward me, and I screamed.

I
screamed first with shock and then with hope, and the sound of it broke whatever spell I’d wound around myself, around her, the washroom, Maplecroft, Fall River.

I shoved my hands into the water and seized her, tried to haul her out in one fell swoop, but she was too heavy for that—even bone-dry, and even when she didn’t fight me, I didn’t know if I could lift her up over the side, but I tried—I flung my entire being into the effort. Bringing her up into the air, like a baptism.

She wanted the reverse. She fought me.

Her hands moved swift as minnows, shoving me back and shoving herself deeper. The whole tub rocked, heavy as it was. The whole room was soaked, and I was soaked, too. Nance writhed, demanding wordlessly to be left where she was, but I was not leaving her there. She was not drowning right in front of me.

No.
She was not drowning.

Even in the violence and water that moved us both I could see it, how she wasn’t choking or bubbling, and she didn’t gasp or gurgle under the water. She simply did not breathe, and it didn’t bother her in the slightest as far as I could see.

Well, it bothered the hell out of
me
.

Emma’s
bell was ringing, ringing, ringing, off in the background someplace, like the water had been dripping in the back of my awareness not five minutes previously. She was alive, then. I’d like to say that relief washed over me, but here while I’m being honest, the only thing that washed over me was the tepid bathwater that Nance splashed out in vast, violent arcs as she rallied her resistance.

But Emma was alive, yes. And that was good, a good thing to know, there in the back of my awareness. I would not worry about her. I had more pressing problems. Frantic, coiling, flailing problems, for Nance was running out of water and there was less and less for her to cling to, barely a foot’s worth to hold her, and she was determined to remain there.

Her foot shot out for the handle and to my great surprise, she grazed it—and water burbled out from the tap.

“No!” I shrieked at her, reached one arm over and wrenched it off.

Her hands pushed against my face, not clawing exactly but not showing any tender gentleness, either. I blocked them, left and right. I used my hands to stop hers, and to hold her wrists when I could catch them—but it was like grasping buttered eels, and I was getting tired.

At first I thought that she was getting stronger, drawing
some resilience from our struggles, as if it fed her to fight me; then in a moment’s instinct . . . some weird little snap of connection, I had an idea: I reached for the drain plug and pulled it.

She shrieked, there under what water remained. I could barely hear it, just a wet warble that could’ve come from the middle of the ocean. I halfway thought that her cry would become an earsplitting wail when the water was gone, like that liquid buffer was all that stood between me and her wrath.

She twisted in the tub, feeling for the drain, trying to cover it with her feet, her hands, her shoulders; but I pulled her back, away, and when the water spilled down it wound itself in a circle, and then it was gone, and she wasn’t shrieking anymore.

She was gasping, but not for air. She was gasping for water—I could see it in her eyes, where there was terror if not recognition. Bathwater gushed in coughed-up waves over her chin, down her cheeks, into her hair, and her body convulsed as I ripped it from the tub.

(Not a baptism but a birth, and a terrible birth at that.)

She fell on top of me, knocking the wind from my lungs, but only briefly. I locked my arms around her and rolled until I was atop her, able to pin her in place and holler her name, over and over, demanding that she look at me and remember me, and understand that I loved her and was calling for her. I had to call louder than whatever else was calling her; I had to make myself heard over this maelstrom in the washroom, in her head, in my house.

I do not know if she heard me or not.

When she weakened enough to allow it, I let go of her arms and shoved at her chest, determined to force the last of the water free. She would breathe again. I would
make
her breathe again.

She cried and cried and cried, and the sobs became drier and drier.

I considered that I might’ve made a mistake. She was weakening, failing right there on the floor beneath my well-intentioned ministrations, though she’d been vigorous in the water. But no—in the water, that was not Nance. That was something else, whatever had overtaken her. And I meant to banish it. Cast it out, like Christ with the Legion, if I might dare to be so bold. And why shouldn’t I? Fortune favors the bold. Maybe Christ does, too.

Her head rolled to the side, and she panted like a nervous dog—that swift, shallow breathing through the mouth that’s one part plea and one part self-comfort. And still she breathed, even after I’d stopped pressing on her chest and belly. Even after I tried to take her face in my hands, but she closed her eyes and I let her go. Back and forth her head lolled. Back and forth, until I stopped it with a firm hand on her chin. I grabbed her with surprise and urgency, and I held her face immobile.

I’d seen something.

I wanted to see it again.

“What was that . . . ?” I asked quietly, holding her chin aside, stretching her neck. There: a small slit of skin, fluttering. As light as if it’d been cut with a razor, a tiny fillet of flesh that wrinkled when I touched it. I felt the two more horizontal flaps before I saw them. That made three altogether, with the start of a fourth, not quite as long. Not quite as defined.

All of them sucked shut against her throat, lying so flat that if I hadn’t known they were present, I would’ve never noticed them. I tried to touch them again, but felt almost nothing. The faint texture of paper cuts, or maybe the delicate, almost not-even-there-ness of a small fish’s fins.

Her lungs were working again, heaving and hauling air in and out of her chest. It was a ragged, damp sound and I hated it, even though I’d been fighting for it all this time. She was
breathing, and she still was not herself—no more so than when she’d been below the surface, taking oxygen through what must have been gills.

I write the word again: gills.

Nance had grown gills, or been granted them, or acquired them as part of her affliction—I don’t know. But she
had
them, and I am not such a great liar that I could pretend otherwise.

Whatever had happened, however she was being changed, she wasn’t changed all the way
yet
. I’d pulled her out in time, even if doing so had still failed her in some awful way I did not understand. Her body still functioned, if reluctantly, the way it ought to—and not through some unnatural mechanism that ought to be left to the fish in the sea.

“Nance—” I begged her, and it sounded like I was crying, too, but I wasn’t. My eyes were the only thing dry in the entire room, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’d finally happened: I was all cried out.

Nance didn’t respond, except with that awful wheeze that had become the sound of her breath.