The Double Life of Incorporate Things (Magic Most Foul) (18 page)

And then, at the corner of my ear, came a whisper, a tiny kiss of sound upon the wind, a flicker of white at the edges of my vision. Mother. Mother’s whisper, that had haunted me so beautifully since I lost her so early in my life.

She was there to remind me why too. From her perspective, she didn’t want any more demons walking the earth than I did. She was protecting not only her daughter, but the whole fabric and web of life around me. While I might need something solid, so too did I need a shade.

There was so much of the spirit world to cherish and appreciate. It was not all a world to fear. It was a world that had helped me against the demons as much as the living had. Somehow my close contact with the spirit of my mother made death’s sting less terrifying. The demons counted on fear, fear of them, fear of chaos, fear of death. My mother vastly mitigated my risk, and the demons had vastly underestimated us.

In that moment I truly understood the lesson my soul being split from my body had taught me. There were two worlds at work every moment of our lives: the tactile and the spiritual. Each and every one of us lived a double life. Body and spirit. Solid and shade. And there was, of course, a constant battle over them. We needed to make friends in both worlds, because there were enemies in each.

And just because Mrs. Northe saw death, it didn’t mean it was mine. She specifically couldn’t pinpoint the future. And that was for the best. I needed to believe in the power of free will as much as I needed to believe in God. Being a puppet of a divine puppeteer never suited me; it would be with God’s help and my own will that we would conquer the problems laid before us. I didn’t overestimate myself. But I was damned sure of my calling.

I’d not risk anything before finding Jonathon. We were a good team, and we couldn’t dare be separated further. That’s when the demons had leverage. But the demons hadn’t accounted for my guardian angels that had passed on. I was reminded I was not alone. I had friends in both worlds.

The wind took a stronger turn, and I felt the need to retire, and I ducked down the narrow stairwell and down two levels toward our room. Lavinia had procured us distinctly middle-class comportments. She denounced first-class passengers as a nosy lot that would ask too many questions, but that steerage would simply be too miserable. Middle class was all I’d ever known so I simply tried to move as invisibly through this trip as I’d moved all my life as a mute female. I’d been cast out of “proper society” so long ago, frankly it afforded me far more freedoms than the scrutiny Lavinia had to seek actively to avoid.

It unsettled me that at dusk the dimly lit corridor leading unto our bunks resembled the constant corridors of my nightmares. As I opened the narrow door to our tiny room, Lavinia was laying on her stomach on the top bunk in a pool of sumptuous black fabrics, writing. She nodded to me as I entered and kept writing.

The realization about the familiar corridor must have affected me on a conscious and unconscious level for sure enough, that night a nightmare came in all its resplendent horror.

Why couldn’t I simply have a pleasant dream about nothing at all? That might be the greatest gift my mind could give, an entirely mundane dreamscape. What a lovely interlude. Maybe, some night, I would be granted that simple pleasure. Tonight was not that night...

It didn’t surprise me that I was in a corridor again. That a simple corridor could take on as many troubling dimensions as it did in my nightmares was perhaps a credit to my powers of invention and manifestation. But a sinking realization hit me during that dream. The corridors were leading up to something not metaphorical but real and what might be found there would mean life or death at some future date. The corridors would lead up, eventually, to one. Or, at least, to several corridors. But halls all in one place.

The Denbury Estate.

Jonathon had once described his home to me while we communed soul to soul when he was trapped in the painted image of his Greenwich estate’s study. The architecture before my dreaming eye followed his descriptions. I stood at the end of a very long, shadowed corridor with gaslight sconces down several sets of doors, all of which were open, some dim threshold manifesting in gray gaps of light amid the dark structure of the house itself. Dark wooden paneling and deep purple wallpaper, arches and carving all in gothic styling, an aesthetic akin to something the Brontës would write about. My life had followed a relative Gothic novel style thus far, why stop there? These were just the culmination, the inevitable final chapters, were they not?

Looking from side to side, I noticed there were numbers painted haphazardly on each door. In a specific sequence, winding down from higher numbers to lower. The pattern; the one Crenfall had been repeating in the asylum. That was odd; houses didn’t generally number their rooms. So perhaps I was to consider that a metaphoric clue, not literal.

I’d honed the skill of logical deductions while dreaming illogical things. By now I’d had a bit of practice. Perhaps my mind knew that my life would depend upon it and my every faculty was expanded as a result; perhaps when my soul had split from my body, the part of my mind associated with these realms had taken on greater strength, capability, and a certain dominion over what was presented.

But before I could ruminate further on the nature or logic of the numbers, the hair rising on the back of my neck reminded me that I was in a nightmare and that something dreadful was about to be seen, done, heard, felt, or any combination of the lot. It was the most terrible of inevitable things, to have become so familiar with that dropping, sickening dread swinging like the pendulum in Poe’s ungodly pit.

I took stock of the corridor once more. It was empty, and yet, I felt I was not alone. The hallway stretched for a length that seemed absurdly long even for a grand estate, as if all proportions were off. At the end opposite me, an uncomfortably far distance indeed, I was faced by an oval portrait of a person whose details were too faint to make out. Anemic sconces on either side cast a subtle haze over the portrait’s façade. I tried to walk toward it, as it might be yet another clue, and it was the item pulling focus, the only thing truly lit with any brightness in this dim setting.

But, per that terrible convention of dreams, my least favorite of all the unfortunate tricks of the troubled mind, I could not move. Not forward, not backward. Not that I could go anywhere. A wall was to my back, the corridor’s end. Cool, carved wood paneling crested at the nape of my neck in arched patterns set within the fine mahogany. Leaving me to face the empty corridor with open doors and an unknown portrait. If I found my footing, at least I could go into the other rooms. But what might be
in
the other rooms was a question I doubted I wanted answered. The corridor answered for me.

With a slam all the doors at once shut of their own accord, and I started, backing against the end of the corridor behind me.

And then, one by one, in a frightening, invisible procession forward, the gas-lit sconces went out. First the lights illuminating the oval portrait went out. Doused. Instantly. Utter blackness lay in direct opposition of my place at the other end. And then from the end of the corridor forward, one by one, each set on either side of the narrow walls were snuffed out as if by a great wind. But there was no wind. And no one there to turn the key. Just an encroaching and all-encompassing darkness, creeping toward me. One set of sconces at a time. Like footsteps, but there were no footfalls. I tried to step back, to turn and run, but still damnably rooted. I tried to call out for someone, anyone, Jonathon’s name upon my lips, but no…

And then the darkness was upon me. My eyes were wide, the blackness thorough. There was a terrible,
terrible
pause in which I was helpless and sensory deprived.

Then an icy, unseen hand closed around my throat.

“This time
you’re
coming for
me,
are you?” came that horrid, familiar whisper of the demon in the pitch dark. Warm breath contrasted its icy strangle as it threw its own words back in my face.

Oh, God. It would be waiting. A congealed but yet incorporeal evil could never truly be killed, could it? It would just keep lying in wait… In New York, or England…it would always know me. Could it ever be bested?

I renounce thee
… My mind screamed, words that had helped to keep the beast at bay more than once.

The inhumanly cold vise tightened, and I choked a gasp into the encompassing darkness.

I awoke with a start, nearly hitting my head on Lavinia’s bunk above. Breathing heavy, I choked but managed not to have screamed, which was for the best. I doubted making a scene or a fuss involving others on the boat would have helped my seasick nerves.

I took a moment to wonder what I could have learned from that dream, other than the obvious demonic pall. Clearly, if I was to travel to the Denbury estate, I should do so with a torch in hand. And a weapon. And avoid corridors. Noted. Also, try never to be alone. To be alone in a nightmare was a most despairing condition. Even worse, to be alone with potential dark magic swarming the air.

I thought of someone else alone in her own mind, and I pulled out my trusty notebook, neatly tore out a few pages, and began writing a letter to a girl recovering from demons’ thrall far, far away. A girl who wasn’t nearly as accustomed to loneliness as I had been. Despite all her faults, the Master’s Society had taken too much to additionally take away the one peer, the one possible friend she might still have, and the only one that could actually understand her plight. That was me, and I needed to rise to that designation. For I bet the demon haunted her too.

“Margaret Hathorn,” I murmured to the page before me. “I owe you a letter.”

Dear Maggie,

I would have liked to have written you sooner. But I fell ill. I was, in fact, targeted again, sought out by the demon’s tendrils, and laid low by the Master’s Society’s most recent experimental horrors.

Regrettably, the journey I am on currently will mean it will take even longer for this letter to arrive at your doorstep in Chicago. I embark upon a journey in hopes of resolution, as you have done. I hope you will keep me in your prayers, along with anyone in this dire situation who tries desperately to turn evils around into justices.

From your perspective, considering the expansive and bold contents of your letter, there are things I would like to encourage of you and things I would like to discourage. Not because I think I know any better than you. I chafe at people acting like they “know better” than me. What I write, I write simply because I am trying to take my own advice.

But first, allow me to thank you.

Not for what you did in almost getting us both killed.

But in being willing to reach out, to write a letter, to try and salvage something of what might someday be a truly beautiful friendship. For that, I commend you. It is a brave thing to reach out to another person. I spent most of my life being quite solitary due to my lack of speech, so I understand what breaking isolation means when you’ve been forced by circumstances to withdraw from average society. Society, for you, meant so much more to you than it ever did to me, so I’m sure your separation from it is all the more troublesome.

But, there are always consequences for actions, and this ostracizing is the unfortunate consequence of your letting the demon in. I believe you are weathering it well, but I would not be a friend to you if I did not share my perspective on these most unique and peculiar and dangerous circumstances.

I encourage you to appreciate Chicago for what it is. My trip out west made me only appreciate New York all the more, so I hope you can truly take in the contrasts as perspective. Absence making the heart grow fonder for home will allow you to reclaim your own self more fully upon your return. You are displaced there for a reason. In my case, I did not weather the effects of dark magic well because I was too quickly wrapped up in it once more, snapped back to New York before the evil had worn off. You need this time, distance, and space for cleansing yourself of the spiritual grime and stain of the demon’s making.

I encourage you to listen to the counsel given you there. It is a precious gift. Karen is your guide, as is the lingering presence of lost Amelia. Treasure them as I treasure my deceased mother who yet guides me. Internalize their words and sensibilities down to your core. People like them will save your life. Mrs. Northe gave you the gift and protection of her friends; please see this as her taking care of you. Do not believe for a minute that she doesn’t care. She always has, though she hasn’t always expressed and acted upon it as thoroughly as she should, in my humble opinion. I do believe she grieves for what more she should have done with and for you. Allow her the opportunity to rectify it here, by sending you somewhere safe, with her dearest companions.

I beg you this: do not entertain the Master’s Society’s aims in the least.

Do not try to see the perspective of the darkest nature and lend it credence.

Yes, you must understand the enemy in order to fight it. But thinking it has any right to do what it has done or that its agenda is somehow worth considering only gives it more space to breathe. Like a fire that needs air to expand, do not blow upon the embers of the Society. It is already ablaze in several major cities, and the firefighters may be outnumbered. (Well, at the least the police in all cities are entirely unequipped for these conditions.) We’ll see how it all plays out. There are many conflagrations that require stamping out.

But, I am dead sure that the answers the Master’s Society seeks are to unnatural questions that should not have ever been asked. One cannot invert and pervert the ways of God’s kingdom so. I do not believe that the processes of science are meant to undermine God, but the Master’s Society members are not scientists. They are backward upstarts, seeking to pervert progress unto chaos.

Most of all, do not feed anger and misery. Do not let it grow within you. That’s another way for devils to enter. Don’t give them the threshold. Don’t show them the door.

The phrase of scripture “I renounce thee” will serve you well. If you were not a person of faith before, I encourage you to become one now, in whatever liturgies or practices that empower you, provided they are about love and not hate, graciousness and not omnipotent power, free will rather than enslavement. Otherwise, it is no faith at all but a prison, one in which your mind and soul will rot.

I look forward to all the ways in which we can become better friends and confidants. And, when we’re back in New York, let’s us go shopping, shall we?

Your friend,

Natalie

I stared at the nearly sermon-like response I’d crafted, thinking it might sound a little too grandiose or a little too much of a lecture, but the young woman needed help. And true friends gave sermons if they felt that something needed to be said, for the sake of the friend in need. I’d appreciate this if the situations were reversed. The strange calm I had when I was delegating and instructing others was one I wished I had when I turned inward. But that’s the trouble with advice, it’s easy to give and hard to take.

I wasn’t about to reveal my location or any of the latest clues in that letter, as I didn’t feel either were appropriate or useful. And if for some reason this letter were to find its way astray, or heaven forbid, the Society was still after Maggie and had a way of getting to her, I didn’t want anything incriminating or too revealing to cause me (or Jonathon) trouble.

Something I had written unlocked something for me. The natural versus the unnatural. The sequence. Mrs. Northe said the Master’s Society had a penchant for inverting that which had a divine pattern. I would need to consider the orders of the things I would see. In that, I would know where to look for the
disorder
, the sinister path veering off from that which was right and true. And therein I might find the chink in the armor of dark magic. Deducing its dissembling pattern and righting it again, subverting the subversion back toward something loving. The simple good in the world they sought to upend.

I knew that this battle, this odd adventure, might upend me. Upend my life. Result in the death that Mrs. Northe feared. I wasn’t, despite this impetuous flight, ignoring the base possibilities. But I simply couldn’t give them traction to derail my forward momentum. I couldn’t stop to think enough to talk myself out of what had to be done:

Find Jonathon. Fight. Enlist the best help along the way we possibly could.

Much like how I knew I had to aid Jonathon from the moment his painting changed before my eyes and gave me clues to help him, I
had
to do this. Make this journey. See this through. Meet the Society face-to-face. I think I’d always known, somewhere deep within me, it would lead to this, from the first moment I heard the demon wax rhapsodic about the Society’s aims there late that night in the Metropolitan.

The world was made by single people doing brave things. Or it was unmade by single people refusing to do what fate decreed.

Another uneventful few days passed where Lavinia and I spoke of life, dreams, and spent nearly a day hashing out our favorite novels. Austen and the Brontë factored in as our lady heroes, though a wealth of Gothic novels crowned Lavinia’s favorite muses above all else. Whereas I gravitated more specifically, solely, to Edgar Allan Poe. Because there was a truth to his words, stories, poetry that resonated with me more than the sweeping romantic gestures of others. Lavinia, like Nathaniel, enjoyed the theatrics. But I understood Poe’s pining, his loss, and also, his horror. That hit, unfortunately, so close to home.

And of course we spoke of our loves and of hopeful futures. We attempted to be consummate ladies on a delightful, carefree journey, taking tea in the finer tea rooms specifically to distract ourselves with pretty place settings. It seemed an unspoken agreement to entirely ignore the dread that sat in my stomach, and I’m sure hers too.

England now was closer than it was farther, and I allowed myself a bit of excitement about docking. I’d be seeing Jonathon, surely. Somehow, I’d find him; I knew names and locations, and perhaps, once we were there, he could take a moment to show me his world, his city, a place I’d always yearned to visit.

A part of me was sure he’d be slightly angry for my making the journey. The rest of me was sure he was absolutely expecting it.

But still, I had to let him know, and as he’d given no itinerary, no specific instructions, I was left to my own devices in terms of communicating with him. So, I used our unique and unparalleled connection: our meeting of the minds and entwining of the souls.

Thusly, I forced myself to dream of Jonathon, and thankfully, enough of me knew my life was on the line to agree to a subconscious demand.

Shockingly enough, no corridor in this dream! I almost didn’t even know I was dreaming. I was presented with an entirely literal dreamscape, at least at first, a desperate telegraph from a desperate woman.