CHAPTER TEN

“Help me! Help me, Mary!”

“Where are you, Annie?”

“Help me!”

I sob and run to my sister's room. She's not there. The room is thrashed. Annie's model horses are shattered on the ground, and her fifth-grade school picture is on the floor, the frame broken, the print torn. My stomach turns when I see the holes burned into the eye sockets.

“Mary!”

“Annie! Tell me where you are!”

I wish I could scream for help from my parents, but they won't help me. Father helps before, but he's lost his heart now. He's given up on us, on Mother, and on Annie and me. As for Mother? She's almost certainly the reason for Annie's screams.

I recall the flat look in Mother’s eyes when she coaxes Annie to burn her hands on the stove. I remember the sneer she wears when she holds Annie’s head underwater. I remember the way her lips pull back from her teeth when she attacks us with the letter opener.

That was the last time Father saved us. I don’t know why, but I am sure now that he would let her kill us if it happened again.

“Mary! Please help me!”

“Where are you?”

Tears stream down my face as I rush to the bathroom. The bathroom is empty, but my stomach turns when I see a bloody handprint on the mirror.

Oh God. “Annie!”

A shriek fills my ears, and I return one of my own as I sprint downstairs. The living room is also thrashed. Father’s grandfather clock is fallen and exploded, springs and gears everywhere scattered among the glass.

The kitchen is empty, too, and when I touch the stove in an absurd urge to satisfy my morbid curiosity, I find it cold. Damn it, where is she?

“Mary! Help me! Help me!”

I run outside and rush around my house, but I see no sign of her anywhere. I hear her voice on the wind calling for help, but I can’t tell which direction it’s coming from. It flows around me, swirling with the rain that pours down, soaking my face and drenching my clothing.

“Mary! Help me, Mary! She’s going to kill me! Help me! MARY, HELP ME!”

“Where are you!” I shout, the effort tearing my throat.

I sink to my knees and sob, chest heaving as I gasp and retch with fright.

***

I sit bolt upright, and once more, I feel a curse bubbling up. This time, I don’t stifle it.

“Fuck! God damn it! Bloody shit!”

I bury my head in my hands and weep softly. The vulgarity of that outburst only shows me how terrified I am. I am not a vulgar person, and I only rarely curse. It’s only when my emotions are on the edge of collapse that I’ll use such epithets.

I wish Sean were here. If he were, he could hold me and tell me that everything’s okay. He could remind me that Annie survived our household and for at least some time managed to escape the terror of living in our family. She was loved for a while and found happiness for a while. If nothing else, she found freedom.

“It’s only a dream,” I whisper. “It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream, it’s only a dream, it’s only a—"

“Help!”

Once more, the cry is faint, barely audible. Once more, it’s unmistakable. I sob, this time with frustration, and roll out of bed. What’s happening now? Who else is Lord Edmund butchering?

It's a testament to my frayed mental state that, once again, I feel no fear when I leave the room. Lord Edmund could appear in front of me with a bloody knife and a psychopath's grin, and I am sure the first words out of my mouth would be chastisement for interrupting my sleep.

I hear the cry again, and this time, I don’t assume I know where it’s coming from. I stand quietly and try to follow the sound.

When I hear it a third time, there’s no mistaking that it comes from below me. I head downstairs, and then, because I don’t hear a fourth cry yet, I check the basement, just in case. Still empty.

The cry comes again, and it’s above me this time. So it’s on the first floor.

I return to the first floor and quickly move through the foyer, the parlor, the kitchen and the dining rooms. There’s no one there. Where is she?

Where are you, Annie?

I shiver, and the cry sounds again. “Help me!”

It’s coming from above me. I stand still for a moment, confused. Could it be coming from one of the maids’ rooms? Is someone else having a nightmare?

I climb the stairs, and the cry comes from above me still when I reach my own floor.

I look up and it occurs to me for the first time that there are more floors in this castle. Theresa only shows me the first two, but there is a third floor above me and then the battlement on top with an extra floor in each turret.

It occurs to me for the first time just how large this castle is. Not only have I only seen the first two floors, I've also only seen the south wing of the castle. There are three more wings and countless rooms to explore. How is it that I've never looked through them before? In all of my previous jobs, I've made it a point to explore every nook and cranny in the house in which I'm employed. Why do I neglect to do that for this one home only?

I climb the third floor and enter to find it twice as tall as the previous two. Chandeliers hang from the vaulted ceiling, and they flicker when I flip the light switch. The floor is clean, but the furnishings and tapestries appear old, almost ancient. I wonder if they are the original décor of the castle.

There are more suits of armor like the ones below, but while the armor on the second floor is polished and smooth, the armor here is rough and pitted with rust. The statues seem to glare at me as I walk past, listening for the cry.

I hear it again, ahead of me. I walk past portraits of former lords Blackwood. The resemblance is eerie. They could almost be portraits of Lord Edmund in different outfits.

It’s the eyes that frighten me the most. They are all that piercing ice blue, and they all sit above the dark frown Lord Edmund wears at all times. Sometimes, the portraits are in profile and sometimes they stare directly at the viewer. Like the suits of armor, they seem to glare at me as I hurry past.

There are no doors on this side of the castle. I find that odd. Was this floor simply meant as a shrine for the former lords? I suppose that’s not so odd after all. Most feudal castles had something similar, but usually that is a crypt in the basement, not the top floor of the castle.

I round the corner and see a door at the very end of the long hallway that spans the east wing. I am reminded uncomfortably of my dream a few nights ago when I encounter the single door in the false-green field of grass.

I know what I found behind that door. I know what I will find behind this door.

“Help me!”

The cry is louder now. I summon my courage and rush forward. There is no specter behind that door but a living, breathing, terrified woman who needs help. I will do what I can.

I reach the door and throw it open without further hesitation. I don’t give myself time to be frightened. Let what danger may come have its chance with me. I will fight to save whoever it is that needs rescue.

There’s no one in the room. The room itself is a vast library. The furniture here is modern and matches the furniture downstairs. The shelves span two walls and reach to the top of the vaulted ceiling, and they are filled with hundreds of volumes of books, perhaps thousands, ranging in age from Medieval illuminated manuscripts to modern paperbacks. There’s even a cabinet filled with scrolls protected behind glass.

There is no sign that anything has been disturbed, no sign of a struggle at all. The only sign that something is amiss is a window that is thrown open to the night. A storm rages outside, and it’s the first time I realize that there is a storm. Either the castle walls are too thick to permit the noise, or I am too focused on the cries of this latest victim to notice.

I hear the cry again and walk to the window. The night is black. Rain whips my face and drenches my clothing. Could it be that my dreams truly are prophetic?

Lighting strikes, shattering the sky with a crack of thunder that sounds disturbingly like the shriek of a woman. The brief moment of illumination is enough to show me that there is no one below, no one in sight for hundreds of yards past this window. No blood, no trampled Earth, no body.

I sigh and pull the window shut. When I latch it, the sound is almost completely muted. It seems the castle is well insulated.

I sit on one of the chairs near the window. It is already soaked from the open window, so I don’t mind that I’m staining the leather.

I look around and take more thorough stock of my surroundings. This room is clearly in regular use. It is clean, but not only clean. Other than the two chairs soaked by the rain, the furniture is oiled, and the carpet pristine. The shelves are impeccably organized, at least at a glance, and unless the first lord Blackwood had access to the 2010 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica, it’s a safe bet that the current Lord Blackwood uses this room regularly.

I hear no more cries. It seems the sound truly was only the wind this time.

Finally, I sigh and trudge back to my room. Rather than glare at me, the armor and portraits on the walls seem to mock me. Look at the paranoid governess. Chased the wind all the way to an open window.

Well, at least I closed the window so the rain didn’t threaten his Lordship’s library. That would have been a terrible loss. Some of those books are hundreds of years old.

I hear the cry a final time as I return to my bed.

Help me!

Even knowing it’s not real, tears come to my eyes. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Annie.”