Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(97)

They hadn’t killed me yet.

Were they going to kill me, or did they have something worse in mind? I knew there were worse things than dying, and whatever they’d done to Momma . . . I didn’t want them doing that to me. I wasn’t even sure what it was.

The word “unearthly” popped into my head again. But I don’t mean she was from heaven, that was for damn sure. Not an angel, not a saint. Nothing holy. Nothing sacred moves so smoothly, so silently, and without breathing or blinking. And when the candlelight hit her eyes just the right way, they looked black all around, not just in the center, where the color used to be.

She had changed, God, yes. But how? And into what?

“Leave me alone,” I told her, partly because I wanted time to wake up on my own, and maybe look around for a way to escape—and partly because I didn’t want her to touch me, and she looked like she was thinking about it.

“That’s not what you want.”

“Yes, it is. You’re not my mother anymore, and I don’t want you here.”

“Don’t say such things.” She didn’t say it like a command, or even a suggestion. It was just a preference on her part. I didn’t give a damn, and she didn’t expect me to—and that almost made the whole thing sadder, how she’d transformed into something else, and wasn’t even any stronger for it.

There’s more than one kind of strong, if you know what I’m talking about. There’s strong in mind, strong in body, and strong in spirit. She was never any one of those three, and no matter what became of her body, the other two lagged behind.

She was a monster, and I still wasn’t afraid of her. I was afraid of everything else, sure. But not this phantom, this weird haint that used to be a woman I knew and tried to love. “Get out of here. You’re not here to help, you’re just here to watch. Just like your whole damn life.”

I turned my back on her, deliberate-like, to show I wasn’t scared.

I looked down at the dress, folded at the foot of the bed. Even in the mostly dark, I recognized it from her hope chest: It was the one she’d got married in, a pretty yellow thing that Grandma had made for her. It’d probably fit. We were about the same size, but I wouldn’t put it on, not if my life depended on it. Same size or not, we weren’t the same otherwise.

Behind me, she said, “I wish you thought better of me.”

“I wish you’d give me a reason.”

She didn’t say anything back, and when I looked up, she was gone.

I jumped when I realized it, that she’d up and vanished like a puff of smoke—my first thought was that she’d left through the door, but I hadn’t heard it open or close. She couldn’t have reached the window any easier than I could, and if she’d tried I would have seen her. I ducked down and looked under the bed, shoving the dust ruffle aside and seeing nothing but darkness, but nothing to suggest that awful white face or weird gloved hands. I swept my own hand back and forth under there, not worrying about rats or dust. I found nothing.

She wasn’t in the chair. I know because I grabbed a candle and looked in that dark corner—and I checked the other dark corners, too. It didn’t take me long. The room wasn’t very big. The little light shuddered in my hand, the flame doing its damnedest to show me every cobweb under every piece of furniture without setting the place on fire.

But it was a fact. I was alone. Really alone this time.

I still wasn’t afraid of her, but I was surprised and a little impressed. Disappearing was the only interesting thing I’d ever seen her do. Now I wondered how she did it, and I wanted to think I could do it, too—just close my eyes and wish real hard, and evaporate to someplace else.

I knew better, though. I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk through walls like that unless I let the Chapelwood folks get hold of me, and I didn’t plan to let that happen.

I tried to keep from thinking about my vanishing momma, and wondering if she was still there—only now I couldn’t see her. I tried not to worry about being watched by unseen eyes, black like hers, through some peephole or crystal ball or whatever men like the Reverend Davis were inclined to use.

If they were watching, fine. Let ’em watch.

I put the candle back where I’d found it, on the dresser. My head had cleared out from pure surprise, and now I needed to free up my hands.

I climbed onto the bed, stood there, and kicked the dress onto the floor. I was wearing what they’d captured me in—just a brown cotton number I liked because it fit me nice but didn’t squeeze me anyplace. I still had my shoes. Nobody’d thought to take them off me, which was stupid on somebody’s part. The heels dug into the quilt and made it hard to stand, but I didn’t care. They gave me another inch or two of height anyway, and I needed every bit of it.

But even standing on the bed, on tippy-toes, I couldn’t reach the windowsill. It made me wonder how anybody’d gotten a candle up there in the first place, but there are taller people than me out there in the world, so it must’ve been one of them.

I put my hands on my hips and looked around. What had they left me, besides a dress I wouldn’t wear, and some old furniture I didn’t like?

Actually, the old dresser might be useful after all.

I hopped down off the bed and went to the dresser, thinking maybe I’d push it up under the window to get me closer to it, but I was wrong about that. The dresser was nailed to the floor, just like they do in hotels, or so I’ve heard before. The reverend hadn’t left me a hammer lying around, so I couldn’t pry the nails out and move things around—I know, because I checked all the drawers and looked under and around everything in the room. Nothing moved, no matter how hard I pushed it, shoved it, or kicked it.