67

I should have been more careful, I shouldn’t have grown so attached. But I had gotten so wrapped up in the moments of laughter, companionship, and lust… It had all but wholly escaped my thoughts as to why the Manor had allowed them in in the first place.

Now Clay wanted—no needed, more from me. He wanted the letter. How would I even begin to explain? Why would they believe me?

The glass panes vibrated in a violent argument to my private thoughts.

I don’t remember much from the first night. I remember hearing Koen calling for me but I couldn’t move. I couldn't break free long enough to tell him to run. He had almost frozen to death because I had been overcome.

Now Clay was working himself to death in the library, the Manor brazenly throwing its belongings around like weapons. The Manor was rebelling worse against them than I had ever experienced myself. Koen had new bruises on his body. He had woken up with them, not even sure how he got them, and Wesley had a nasty cut across his face and he festered with hatred as he sulked and limped around the Manor.

I continued my attempts to convince them to leave; it was evident the Manor wasn’t safe. I suggested they could stay somewhere in town, away from the danger, while they looked for a way to free me. But neither Clay nor Koen would hear anything of it and Wesley wouldn’t leave them behind. So I was stuck, heartbroken and fearing for their lives, all while dodging the bullet Wesley was so eager to put between my eyes.

At least he hadn’t gone back to calling me a monster— at least not to my face .

A small mercy.

When I wandered into the kitchen Wesley was spitting out blood, curled over the sink, his shirt open, torso sweaty, and covered in gravel. How he wasn’t freezing was beyond me. I barely felt the cold and the frost falling over the Manor seemed vicious.

“Do not touch me.” He put a hand up and spit another clump of blood out.

His nose was split across the bridge and a bruise was forming under his eye.

It seemed we were back to spite and anger.

“I’m sorry.” I chewed on my lip.

“It’s not your fault.” Clay wandered behind us with a scowl, moving around Wesley to run his hand under the water.

The skin on his knuckles split across his hand. He was covered in the same dusty beige gravel, pieces stuck to his cheek, and his neck was raised in a red, irritated ring. It took seconds to put together what had happened. They had started to turn on each other.

“You did this to one another?” I said agast. Their eyes darted at each other and Clay scowled deeper, nodding his head as he dried the busted knuckles gently. “Is the house trying to kill you not enough?” I asked them .

The night before Clay had found me in the library staring at the small fire that had kept going. His approach had been cautious, as if he were trying not to spook me.

“You were whispering in your sleep,” he said. “I belong to the house.”

And so do you… Agatha’s voice rattled through me.

“I do, this is my home.” I wrapped my arms around myself and slowed my breathing.

I could sense his frustration with me but every thought, no matter how minuscule, if disloyal to the Manor was polluted. Since waking it had been harder to keep my own thoughts separated from the Manor’s influence. It wanted me to itself; whatever twisted game the Manor had been playing had grown out of its control.

“It’s a cage, Florence.” Clay’s voice was low and strained as he tried to hold back his frustration with me. His rage toward the Manor.

“The Manor provides.”

“I’ve heard you say that before,” Clay said. “I didn’t understand what you meant at first but I think I do now.”

I stiffened, unable to look at him, my gaze trained on the dancing flames.

“The Manor provides for you, the way—” He paused, stepping to the side into the corner of my vision. “—a loved one would. The way your husband should have. Before arriving here you knew very little of what compassion and loyalty looked like. All of what your father had given you had faded, overshadowed by the trauma and violence you endured in your marriage. You craved love and freedom and the Manor provided that to you, distracting you with flowers, books, and comforts as it constructed a gilded cage around you.”

“I am safe here, cared for,” I argued, as the feeling of betrayal and rot seeped through the floor into my veins.

“You are not blind to the cruelty or else you would not try so hard to get us to leave for our own safety; you are nothing more than a bird with clipped wings. This Manor is dangerous, it is not capable of truly caring–”

“You’re lying,” I snapped and the flames roared higher in response. The Manor bolstered my resolve and screamed in protest to his outrageous claim.

“Florence there are stories…” He said and I dug my fingernails into the skin on my arms to keep from lashing out. Anger rising in me like never before as he accused the Manor of malicious intent toward me… but…

No, only kindness.

A warm air rolled through the library, wrapping me up like a blanket.

“Whatever stories you’ve read, the Manor was protecting me.” I defended it as Clay waved a stack of notes at me.

“Just look at them, all these cases–” he pleaded, his voice cracking. “It’s more than protecting you, it has hurt children, women… Florence, have you even seen a bird in the last hundred and seventy years?” Clay asked.

The question caused me to pause, the anger swirling around in my mind like a cloud. It tangled with my thoughts and emotions, muddling everything until I couldn’t think straight. Thinking back… “I—” my mouth fell open. “I can’t remember birdsong—” I shook my head and stepped away from Clay and the fireplace deeper into the library.

“That’s because the Manor kept out everything . It wasn’t protecting you, it was isolating you.”

No.

The iron framing of the windows began to peel and curl in a chorus of horrible screeching that made me cover my ears with my hands.

“Florence!” Clay whipped his head toward the window, surging forward and pushing me back as an iron rod flew through the air toward me, lodging into the bookshelf mere inches from my head where I had been standing. I stared at it for a moment, my breath shallow and my heart racing far too fast.

I couldn’t find a straight thought in my mind. Clay cupped my jaw in his hands and forced me to look at him, my back against a shelf and him pressed tightly to me. Worry painted across all his features.

“If you want to hear the birds sing again, if you want to be free of this cage, I need your help,” he whispered with his hands in my hair as he checked over my face for injury.

The Manor continued to beat against the walls of my mind but I couldn’t stop thinking about the birdsong. Fixated on the idea that Clay had planted.

“I will try.”

He stared at me and I knew he was worried that my mind was starting to crack. He wasn’t wrong in his concern but I felt like a tea cup balancing on the edge of the counter; mere moments from shattering.

“It’s just a disagreement, Florence,” Clay huffed, but he wasn’t acting like himself. On any other day, he would have stayed, talked about it, or even kissed me in passing, but he couldn’t stand to be near Wesley and he vacated the kitchen as quickly as he had entered.

“What did you do?” I had it in my right mind to shove Wesley with both hands.

Anger surged through me and I did my best to control it but I knew the house could feel the shift in my mood. The cupboards rattled off their hinges like they were picked up by the breeze. But no window was open; it was just my rage coursing through the house like a wave.

“There she is,” he clipped, his eyes shifting to the commotion surrounding us. “That vengeful little spirit.”

I sighed, closing my eyes and trying to calm down. “I’m not a spirit. I’m not dead. I’m as alive as you are and exhausted from the extensive lengths I have gone through trying to prove to you that I am!”

“I don’t believe a damn word that comes out of your mouth, and you might have both of them convinced, whether it's because of that pretty little mouth or that tight little—”

I scoffed as I reached my tipping point with his accusations, the sound of my discontent filling the empty kitchen.

“You have no idea,” I snapped at him, leveling out to look him in the eyes. “For the first time in more than a hundred years, I feel like a person again, and yet,” I stopped, knowing that if I cried now he would use it against me. I swallowed down those tears and braced myself against my emotions. “If I could get them to leave, get you to leave. I would. I’ve begged all of you tirelessly to leave the property. I have all but gotten on my knees and pleaded with them. All to keep them safe but they don’t listen. You don’t listen.”

His hands rolled into fists at his sides.

“Are you that blind with rage that you can't see what is happening around you, or are you ignorant to them for another reason?” I couldn’t help myself. “They are trying their hardest to help me and you are blocking their progress at every turn! ”

Wesley said nothing. He just stared at me like I was screaming at the top of my lungs and he couldn’t hear a single word that left my lips.

“They tiptoe around you like you’re some sort of authority, but all you are is a bully.”

He swallowed the words. He never broke eye contact with me as he listened but he was listening.

“And you are a monster,” he spat and stepped forward into my space. “Everything was fine before we came here.”

“I did not want you here!” I interjected.

“My family was safe, fed, and clothed. We did our jobs and we saved people! Both of them are too tangled up in this game of cat and mouse you're playing, but I see it. I’m not the cat or the mouse,” he quipped.

I rolled my eyes. “So eager to be the stoic, resentful outsider. It’s a pitiful existence.”

“So is yours,” he added, like it was meant to hurt my feelings.

“I’m well aware that my life has gone nowhere, Wesley. Even before I was trapped in this cruel echo chamber it wasn’t anything spectacular. But I no longer have any interest in verbally sparring with you because that’s all you want: a fight. You’ve been skulking around the Manor, begging for one. It’s exhausting. So please, tell me how you think of yourself above this game I’m also trapped in. What is your solution? Because if it’s to kill me, then what are you waiting for?” I seethed.

I could see how affected he was by my words. His teeth ground together at the back of his jaw and his fingers twitched as he reached for the gun I knew was shoved in the waistband of his jeans.