The White Forest (6 page)

Only Miss Herron-Cross heeded his warning. When she gave notice of her departure to Father, she also told him he should promptly send me to a hospital or an asylum—Bethlehem Royal, perhaps.

“There’s nothing wrong with Jane,” Father said. “She’s lost her mother, and she keeps to herself. That’s all.”

“Her shyness is nothing more than a disguise,” countered Miss Herron-Cross. “She’s secretly willful, and on top of that, I believe she might be ill. And she makes everyone around her ill. Even Stoke
Morrow is susceptible to her disease. I have heard and seen terrible things in this house when she is near.”

“Now it’s you who sound mad,” Father said. “I think it’s best if you just go.”

“You’ve experienced these things yourself,” Miss Herron-Cross said. “And you can’t deny that even Jane’s mother manifested certain unnatural qualities.”

“I won’t have you talking about my wife in that manner,” Father said. “Gather your things, and be on your way.”

I continued to wonder what Miss Herron-Cross meant about my mother’s unnatural qualities. What had she told the cleric that led him to believe Mother was a witch? And how much did Father understand about my skills? There were instances when he wore a haunted expression, and he eyed his collections suspiciously, as though he could hear their chatter. If I asked him what was wrong he would make some remark about digestive problems. One night, when he was particularly tired, he asked if I believed in ghosts.

“Ghosts?” I said.

“Shadows seen from the corner of the eye. Sounds heard only in some deep and secret chamber of the ear.”

When I didn’t respond, he gave me a sad smile. The years of troubled sleep after Mother’s death had taken their toll on him. His face was no longer the face I remembered from childhood. It looked as if some wax worker had made a mask and forgotten to fix its shape. “Never mind, Jane. I’m turning into such an old fool. Your mother certainly wouldn’t have approved of such talk.”

I acted as though I found his self-deprecation endearing, yet all the while I felt terribly guilty, wondering if I was driving my own father mad with my transference.

After the departure of Miss Herron-Cross, Miss Anne became my primary caretaker. She was bound to Stoke Morrow, it seemed, as she was less experienced and had fewer options for employment. It was clear she feared me. I was soon labeled by her a variety of evil on par with, if not higher than, Satan. There were days when she made
me say prayers nearly every hour, but instead of asking anything of God, I would get on my knees and listen to the sounds the house made. I imagined that I was the god of the objects, and they were making prayers to me in their alien tongues.

I decided that rather than complaining to Father about Miss Anne’s treatment of me, I would become her personal devil. That’s what she wanted, after all. So I began tormenting her—touching her hands and arms at odd times and letting her experience the house as I experienced it. She feared me and therefore did not retaliate. I was so cruel to her. She couldn’t have committed nearly as many sins as I punished her for.

I realized if I could frighten Miss Anne in this way, I could control her. I was building my strength and no longer needed to feel cowed by anyone. But this feeling of superiority was also the start of my undoing. By the time I met Maddy and Nathan, I thought I understood myself and my talent. I thought I could control it enough to make a friendship with them. But experience proved me quite wrong.

A
fter the disappearance of Nathan Ashe, the objects began to exhibit a heightened agitation reminiscent of the episode when I discovered the oval portrait in Mother’s wardrobe. Yet this agitation seemed to come on an even grander scale. Colors pulsed in garish hues—bizarre shades of silvery pink and hot, phosphorescent purple. Sounds grew loud enough to startle me from sleep. At first, I thought the amplified sensations might be due to my own distress. Perhaps the crude images of Nathan set upon by beasts in the
Illustrated Penny
had upset me more than I realized, and I was projecting my own troubled thoughts onto the objects. Certainly the drawings in the
Penny
were nothing more than the product of some opium-addled artist, but I found I couldn’t write them off entirely. I’d learned from Nathan himself not to dismiss
anything
as too fantastical.

As the disturbances increased in frequency and variety, it became clear that my own nerves were not the cause. Some unseen force, concealed within Stoke Morrow, had irritated the objects. Writing desks, oil lamps, cigar boxes, and all the rest started acting out in my presence, soon producing near blinding flashes of light and terrible explosions of sound. Father asked me on more than one occasion if I was quite all right. “You look so pale, Jane,” he said. “And your
eyes—it’s as though you’re staring at something in the far distance. Something that troubles you.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “A headache.”

“Your mother used to get such headaches,” Father said. “Oftentimes lying down in a dark room would help.”

“I’ll be fine, Father.”

The more I attempted to ignore the new sensations, the more insistent the objects became. I began isolating myself, spending time in the garden away from the aggressive house. Elements of nature—anything that was not man-made—soothed my senses and could sometimes even quiet them completely. I stopped talking to Father and then even to my dearest Maddy. I wanted nothing more than to meditate in the garden and to dampen my senses enough so as not to feel as if I was losing my grip on reality entirely. I sat among the yellow daffodils that were just beginning to burst their fragile sheaths and wondered what Nathan himself would have made of this new agitation of the objects. After he experienced the transference for the first time, he believed he could come to some understanding of it. He made a careful research project out of me. Though together we’d only fallen deeper into mystery, and then he was gone, leaving me with more questions than answers.

•   •   •

I lay down on the stone bench in the garden, gazing at Stoke Morrow. The old manor was fortified like a castle. Its high stony walls were encased in vines, and its fingerlike chimneys were black and reaching. From my perspective, it was difficult to see the roof, as the tiles were obscured by a scrim of crenellated parapets decorated with skyward-gazing stone sparrows whose mouths remained perpetually open. Rain mixed with London ash had blackened the birds and the whole of the house. Stoke Morrow might have once possessed an architecture of hope—perhaps its builders meant for it to look as though it was attempting an ascent into Heaven. But in later years, as the foundation settled and cracked, the skyward-reaching house
reversed its trajectory and began sinking into the mossy earth that surrounded it.

I fell asleep there on the bench, and thankfully I did not dream. When I opened my eyes again, the afternoon sun had grown hotter and my senses were more than irritated—they throbbed, responding to a low rumbling that had developed in the distance. Perhaps it was that very rumbling that had drawn me from my sleep. The sound was coming from Stoke Morrow itself; the stone walls of my home were literally trembling. Then, as I watched, blue flamelike auras rose from the pediments of my own bedroom window. The flames curled and extended until they encased the entire vibrating manor in an eldritch glow. My childhood home was sealed in the cocoon of some cold enchantment, and to my chagrin, I realized I was once again its enchantress.

I knew I could not let these escalations go on any longer, as I feared I might start transferring them to Father. I made my way into the foyer, determined to learn the cause of the amplifications, and it was there, near the grand staircase, that I did something I’d never attempted before. I
spoke
directly to the objects. “What do you want me to see?” I asked, in as bold a tone as I could muster. “What exactly has disturbed you?”

I don’t know what I expected would happen. Certainly I didn’t believe the objects would start speaking to me, but before any kind of response could come, I heard a familiar voice from the kitchen, a sort of avian warble. “Did you ask for something just now, Jane?” Miss Anne said. She appeared in the shadow of the doorway, twining a rag nervously between her fingers.

“I didn’t,” I replied.

She must have noticed the odd expression on my face, for she paused a moment. Perhaps she wondered if I was about to sprout horns and finally assume my rightful place in the underworld.

“Leave me, Anne,” I said. “I’m occupied.”

She moved off, muttering something about how I didn’t look like I was
occupied
by anything of merit.

The tremulations of the house did not abate upon Miss Anne’s
departure but rather continued to intensify. Blue flames slithered up and down the foyer walls. I was still aware of some unseen force causing the disturbance. It was as if I could sense the stone that had been dropped into the pond to create a ripple.

I focused my senses, giving myself over to the objects entirely and allowing the sensations to act as my guide. It was then that I heard a kind of ringing in the distance, like an alarm bell, and I ascended the grand staircase, following. The alarm was coming from my own bedroom—from the cedar hope chest at the end of my bed. Father had the chest built for me when I was a newborn, assuming, I suppose, that my life would have a different trajectory than it did.

I kept few items in the chest. Once when Maddy looked inside, she said it appeared as though I didn’t have any hope at all. This was meant as a bit of humor, of course, but I felt the sting of tears when she said it. For a long time, I hadn’t had much hope, though when she and Nathan came into my life, I believed that could change.

The ringing was clearly coming from somewhere near the bottom of the chest. I pushed aside a box of silver cutlery and a childhood doll, and finally my fingers came into contact with an envelope.

I knew what object was inside the envelope well enough, though I hadn’t thought of it for a long time. It was a loose button that had fallen off Nathan’s jacket one evening when he’d been visiting Maddy and me. I told him I would mend the jacket for him if he liked. Maddy, not unkindly, reminded me I didn’t know how to sew. “You’re not exactly domestic, Jane,” she said. “In fact, I’d expect to see you spreading cobwebs and dust to suit your Gothic sensibilities rather than tidying.” I merely glared at her. It was true; I had very few qualities that might be desirable in a wife. But I promised Nathan I would learn, and soon I’d mend his jacket. He was amused by my conviction, and I kept the button on my dresser for a long time, picking it up often to examine it. The little button had fallen off the breast of his suit, from a place near his heart. I imagined I could conjure Nathan’s entire warm and sturdy body just by touching this totem. I envisioned him putting his hands on my flesh, feeling the transference and remaining unafraid. He would be bold enough to kiss my
neck and then my mouth. I could almost feel his lips and his smooth cheek. He’d speak to me as no one ever had, telling me how much he loved me and that I wasn’t so strange. He’d say he took pleasure in my difference; in fact, he desired me because of it.

Eventually I relinquished such fantasies, putting the button in the hope chest and forgetting about it, along with my will to sew. But the ringing alarm drew me back to the button again. I opened the envelope and found the little piece of Nathan was just as I remembered, dark and made of tarnished brass. The button had never been particularly problematic to my senses before, but it was indeed the object that was making the god-awful sound—the fly in the ointment at Stoke Morrow.

I turned the envelope over and let the button drop into the palm of my hand. As soon as it touched my skin, I experienced the flash of an image that was quite distinct and unlike anything I’d ever perceived from an object before. What I saw appeared to be a stage set populated by painted trees, and above the trees was a black sky decorated with odd bits of glass that were meant to look like stars. The entire false forest was contained within some type of stone chamber, reminiscent of a catacomb. It was so dark there that I could barely see, and the acrid smell of paint that had been used to create the illusion of trees filled my lungs. I had a sense that what I was seeing was an actual place, somewhere in London. Then I heard the distant sound of a trumpet, the sort of horn that signaled the opening of a hunt.

Fear churned in my stomach—not my own but a fear that I was experiencing empathically. The emotion belonged to something in the forest. I watched as a lean, four-legged shadow darted among the thick trunks. The beast was in grave danger and was stumbling from time to time, as if wounded. I wanted to call out to it but found I could not, so I silently watched the dark form move haphazardly along. It was an elegant creature, nothing that deserved such torment. I willed the beast to come to me, and just as it seemed to take notice of my presence, my hand went limp and the button fell to the floor. The image of the stage set faded and was gone.