The Death of Jane Lawrence(106)

Crying, Jane let go of her mother’s shoulders to touch her cheeks, her fingers light over the warm, real flesh. She brushed her thumbs along her mother’s hairline, and sought out every element of herself in her mother’s face.

She found the smallest buckle along the line of her jaw.

At first, her eyes slid off it, her mind unwilling to accept the fracture in the illusion. But beneath that buckle was dark granite. Its weight anchored her when everything else threatened to fade away, and she dug her fingertips beneath it. It was tempting, so tempting, the idea of giving herself over to the melancholic, aching dream of her mother the way she had planned to so many days ago, but she forced herself to fight instead, tearing at the false flesh, unveiling more and more of the truth beneath.

She had forgone sleep for this. She had subsisted only on bits of hare, tangled sea grass, raw eggs. She had made herself half mad, following a set of rituals designed to open her mind to the workings of the world, and she saw them now.

The flesh sloughed off like a drumhead cut from its frame.

The statue rose above her, looking down with the same dispassion as her mother’s eyes had held. It had always been that. Always, always.

why will you not feed us? the creature said, its words unlike anything she had ever heard. They were more than sounds. They snaked over her chilled flesh, her tired bones. feed us, and we will carry you out of here.

The same hunger that Mrs. Cunningham had voiced. These things grew desperate when denied, she realized, and that knowledge gave her strength.

“And what would feed you?” she asked, stepping back and regarding it with her chin lifted.

your shame.

She remembered Augustine in the kitchen, bewitched, staring at her and seeing blood in her eyes, sickness under her skin. Shame was overwhelming in its paradoxical comfort. When Jane saw her mother, she felt the desperate need to fix things. When Augustine saw his patients, he saw the chance to heal what he had failed to repair.

Simple. It was so simple. These were not the ghosts of the dead, but hungry things that wore their forms, extracted from memory, bound to cause the maximum amount of pain because they drew only the details that hurt from their victim’s minds.

Jane bared her teeth. “I will not be ashamed,” she said.

you will die down here without our help. It was barely a threat. It sounded like truth, and Jane had to claw her way past it, like spiderwebs tangling between her teeth and nails.

“I will fight,” Jane spat.

There was no circle she could force the creature into. Could she draw a ring before her, and drag it there? The thought seemed ludicrous, seeing the heavy base of the statue before her. But she could still draw one around herself.

When she crouched, her legs gave out beneath her. She fell, exhausted, to her knees. She forced herself to reach, to scribble, to think of eels and walls.

you are so much greater than he, the statue murmured, words sliding across the folds of her brain. so much more resilient. he had so much shame. so much regret. but yours is harder given and sweeter for it.

She reached behind herself with shaking hands and completed the circle.

you tried to live a small life, jane shoringfield lawrence. you tried to have no regrets. you tried to control everything. and now you are here, filled with guilt. how many have died because of your actions? because you married a man who did not want to marry, because you made him care enough to lie to you, because you forced him to confront those lies?

The creature spoke the truth, and the truth was so heavy that it bore her down to the ground. She curled around the pulsing mass within her belly.

what have you lost, it asked, gliding an inch closer, in pursuing the impossible? you have frightened many. forced your care upon them. made them fear you. you have ruined lives, more than you have killed.

“No,” Jane whispered. “I will not regret that. I will not regret any of it, not until I am through. Not until I have saved him.” She glared up at the thing.

It stopped.

It regarded her. Its crescent head did not move. Its carved robes did not shift.

then think back to before. think of when the bombs fell. remember the fear. the guilt, when others around you died but you lived. there is meat enough in that for me. think of it, and i will let you live.

It was close: the hiss of gas, the heat of the flames, cowering in a basement and breathing through the filter of her mother’s skirts. Emerging each morning into the blasted-out streets of Camhurst. All the memories became real around her. She felt again the terror, the deprivation, so many days with so many dead.

Before her, the statue’s lower half became fabric, familiar, the very wool her mother had pulled across Jane’s nose and mouth to save her from the gas.

Beneath her, the stone hallway shook, as if with the impact of shelling.

She stared at it. It wasn’t hard-packed soil. It wasn’t dirty stone. It was white, and chill, and so very different from the buildings in Camhurst. Camhurst was far away, and Larrenton far inland. This was where she had been safe. The war had never reached here.

She must fix the truth in her mind. If she knew she was in the cellar of Camhurst, she would be there again.

And she wanted to be at Lindridge Hall.

She lifted her head, seeing the statue before her in granite only, and built her walls so high that the dim hallway was lit, as if it were all only lines upon a page. Her abdomen exploded with pain. She grasped the outline of the statue, and she tugged, and pulled, and knotted, until there was nothing left but a dense, dark scribble. Beyond her, something smooth and hard dropped from the air, clattering upon the stone. Jane sobbed with relief, then with pain, and dragged herself through the flexing caul of the circle, back into the real world.