Lost Among the Living(36)

A single letter in a sealed envelope lay in the middle of the desk. This was Dottie’s way of indicating that the letter was for me and had come in with her stack of correspondence. I knew immediately what it was. I received no mail except for the monthly updates from Mother’s hospital.

The letters were always written by one of the senior nurses, though rarely the same nurse from month to month. Perhaps they rotated writing letters to keep their distance from the families; perhaps it was simply part of the shift rotation to write letters once per week from a list. I opened the envelope there in the empty library and read the letter.

Mrs. Christopher has been quiet and very well behaved. There was an incident in which she became agitated and broke some breakfast dishes, but the doctors have adjusted her dosage and she has been quiet since. We have moved the patients’ outdoor time to the solar as the weather is chill and some days inclement, and she is much disappointed in this as she does like to sit outdoors. Her appetite is still thin, though the doctors do monitor her eating habits. She enjoys having her hair brushed of an evening, and when one of the nurses reads a novel to her, it seems to calm her, though she does not always comprehend the story.

There have been several instances of night terrors, in which she complains upon waking of having been walking outside in the cold, but the doctors have made note of it and a sleeping powder will be administered if her rest is much disturbed. It pains me to say that she does not ask for her family, for her mind is in much of a fog; but I am certain that deep within her she carries her love and memory of you.

So dutiful, so kind. It must be easy to write such things when it wasn’t your own mother sitting there, staring at you in puzzlement as if you were a stranger she has never seen. Such a simple thing to call her Mrs. Christopher, as if she’d ever had a husband.

And not a word about the scratches on Mother’s neck.

I pocketed the letter and carried the camera equipment through the quiet house to the kitchen, where I scavenged a bowl of soup. One of the maids, who was washing the dishes under the kitchen’s dim electric light, informed me that Mr. Forsyth was out, Mr. Martin was in his room, and Mrs. Forsyth had just retired early, claiming a headache. I wondered briefly if I should check on Dottie—when we’d traveled the Continent, her infrequent headaches had been my responsibility—but was assured by the maid that she’d already been given a pill and wanted only rest.

I finished my soup and continued upstairs to my room, dragging my feet with exhaustion. Martin was still sick, and the house was too quiet. But I knew that I would not sleep.

I stopped in my bedroom doorway.

I noticed the bed first: The cover had been pulled all the way down and trailed from the end of the bed like a bridal veil. On the table next to the bed, the shade of the lamp had been removed, and placed next to the bald light—which had been switched on—was a figurine I recognized from one of the glass cabinets in the morning room, depicting Salome cradling the head of John the Baptist in her lap, looking rather sorrowful; I could not think where Dottie had acquired it or why she had thought it worth money. The figure now sat under the glaring light of the lamp, John the Baptist’s unseeing eyes staring upward.

The wardrobe door stood partly open, and one of my cardigans had been pulled from it, half in and half out. The waist of the cardigan rested inside, and the neck and arms were drawn out the wardrobe door and onto the floor, the sleeves raised pitifully and eerily lifelike, as if someone inside the wardrobe drew the cardigan in against its will. The room’s only chair had been placed next to the wardrobe, and a pair of my shoes was set beneath it. A set of my stockings dangled empty from the seat to the shoes, one of my skirts lay on the seat, and one of my blouses hung unbuttoned from the chair’s back, the sleeves folded decorously on the lap of the skirt. The entire display, looking oddly like a woman sitting in a chair, was topped with the shade from my bedside lamp, balancing like a misshapen head.

My numb fingers dropped the camera case and the tripod to the floor. There was no thought in my mind that someone in the house had done this—not one of the family or one of the maids. I listened to my breath rasp loud in the still air and stared again at the wardrobe, the pitiful cardigan, its deliberate message, its unmistakable display.

Frances saw a door, David Wilde had said. The things she saw coming through that imaginary door were dead. She was showing me. She wanted me to see.

“Frances,” I whispered.

I looked again at the figure in the chair. It looked withered and dead, inhuman, the head misshapen and eyeless, and yet it was a woman. Posed in a chair with her hands in her lap. Was she standing sentry over the awful doorway? Or mimicking the pose in the portrait I’d just seen? You’ve seen me, the hideous figure seemed to say. I see you. We see each other.

I made a strangled sound. I should run. I should pack my bags, call for the motorcar, and leave this house, never to come back. Find some other way to make a living. I should not stay here, sleep in this bedroom, anymore.

And yet despite its monstrousness, the figure in the chair was pitiful. There was something about the lifeless way the empty sleeves were folded, the weakly dangling stockings. I had taken a step forward again, my hand out to knock the lampshade off the chair, when I remembered the camera.

This was what I had wanted—to be able to take pictures so someone outside my fevered mind could see. I crouched and fumbled with the latches of the camera case, and I had removed the camera before I remembered Mr. Crablow’s lecture about light. I’d need powerful artificial light to shoot indoors, he’d said. I did not have a flash.