Lost Among the Living(16)

“What type of spells?” I asked.

“Hallucinations,” he replied. “She saw things that weren’t there, spoke to people who weren’t present. I witnessed it myself any number of times, and I questioned Frances—when she was capable of it—as well as the doctors Dottie had called in to treat her. Some of the things Frances thought she saw were benign, and some of them were terrible. But by the time she was thirteen, the hallucinations were pervasive and incredibly real to her. She claimed there was a door that the visions came through. She could describe it to the finest detail if you asked.” He gave me a small smile that was entirely sad. “It took some questioning before she trusted me enough to explain, but I finally understood that the things she saw coming through that imaginary door were dead.”

I gaped at him. My tea had grown cold on the table next to me. I could not think of a thing to say.

“You can imagine,” Mr. Wilde continued, “what a torment everyday life must be for someone so afflicted. Frances believed she saw the dead, waking and sleeping. She often had screaming fits that were terrible to behold—her madness sometimes produced particularly gruesome visions. No doctor could help her, and eventually Dottie would not hear of her being examined yet again. So Frances lived at home instead, in privacy, plagued by her waking dreams.” He looked at me closely with his chilled gaze. “You have a look of pity in your eyes, Mrs. Manders, but not a look of great shock. According to my information, you are well acquainted with madness, are you not?”

I thought of the long, red scratches on Mother’s neck, and the words sprang to my lips, defensive. “It is not the same, Mr. Wilde. Not at all.”

“If you say so. In any case, the rumors you hear are nothing but poison. Frances was never locked up or chained. There was no dog. The vagrant dying in the woods on the same day as Frances was a cruel and gruesome coincidence, that is all. Though something did strike me the day she died.”

“What was that?” I managed.

“I had known Frances for years by then. For all her torment, she had never been suicidal. She had never attempted to take her own life until that day. In fact, because of her hallucinations, she was terrified of dying. The last place she ever wanted to go was through that terrible door, to be with the things on the other side.” He shrugged. “Don’t you find that strange?”

“Yes,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I suppose it is.”

Mr. Wilde flipped open Dottie’s letter at last and read the lines inside. He showed no reaction to whatever they said except for the faint tightening of his jaw. “If you will be so kind as to wait a moment, Mrs. Manders, I will write Mrs. Forsyth a reply.”

I sat in silence as he pulled out a creamy piece of paper and scratched on it with his pen, one brief line, two, three. There seemed to be no air in the room. I wondered if David Wilde had ever seen a strange girl in Wych Elm House sitting in a chair and staring at him. But no, he couldn’t have. The house had been empty since the Forsyths had left.

When he had finished, he sealed the letter and rose. I followed him to the door. “Mr. Wilde,” I said, “I have one question.”

“And what may that be?”

“Why do I feel like you have been assessing me for the past hour?”

He gave me his small smile again and placed the letter in my hand. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Manders,” he said. “My duty to the family comes first. Good day to you.”





CHAPTER SEVEN



I finished the rest of Dottie’s errands in numb silence. I visited the dressmaker’s and came away with two ready-made frocks in packages under my arm, as well as an order for two more to come in a week’s time. I had barely looked at them, letting the dressmaker select what was best. I also bought new stockings, one pair of new shoes, and a new hat. I had paid for all of it on Dottie’s credit; likely I’d have to work for her for years before we were even again.

Next to the dressmaker’s was a photographer’s studio. It was closed—the sign said the proprietor was in only on Mondays and Thursdays—but I paused and looked at the photographs in the window. One showed Anningley’s own High Street, on a misty early morning, looking toward the gentle rise of a hill, which was crowned with a pretty church of old stone, its spire coming out of the mist above the roofs of the village houses. I thought of that same church, rising out of the same mist, two hundred or even three hundred years ago, patiently waiting for Sunday attendance by villagers now long dead, weathering storms long forgotten, just as it would do when I was dead and so was everyone around me. And I thought for the first time in months of Alex’s camera in its case in my bedroom at Wych Elm House.

I turned and looked down High Street at the spire from the photograph. A church meant a graveyard. She is buried in the churchyard, if you want to see her.

Still, I dawdled on my way to Frances’s grave. I stopped at the pharmacist’s and the lending library, David Wilde’s words turning over in my head. Finally I had no more errands, no more excuses, and I opened the churchyard gate with my gloved hands, listening to it creak in the peaceful stillness of the sunny afternoon.

The church was a snug building of buttery stone. I saw no sign of a vicar or a groundskeeper, though the grounds were immaculate; there were only the starlings crying at one another in the trees over the hill.