Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(10)
Had I done this? Had I brought the uncanny intruder to Maplecroft with my reverie, my stupid fascination with the contents of that iron-capped box?
I suspected already that the bizarre sea glass and the strange fiends operated in some unholy conjunction, and I wished to know more about their connection, to better judge how closely they were aligned. But not then. Not at the expense of my sister’s life or sanity.
“Emma, wait here,” I said, and I let her lean on me as she slid to the floor, into a seated position. “I’ll take care of this. I’ll take care of everything.”
“The creature . . . it’s around back. I saw it, at the kitchen window. Its hands . . .”
“Shush, don’t talk now. Stay here.”
She seized my sleeve as I rose away from her. “Don’t leave me alone, with nothing to defend myself!” She did not ask, “What if you fail? What then will I do?” But the questions were implied, and though I did not intend to fail her, I understood her terror.
I squeezed her hand and saw that her knuckles were bruised, flushed, and welling blood. I dropped her battered fingers and hastened around the corner to the parlor, to our father’s old cabinet, which had once been stocked with his favorite spirits and crystal decanters. Now it was also stocked with a pair of pistols, likewise once his own.
I seized them both, knowing that both were loaded.
I ran back to the cellar door, shut it, and dropped the guns into Emma’s lap. They looked so heavy in her hands when she lifted them and checked to see that they were ready. She knew how to shoot because I’d taught her, and I had to trust that she’d defend herself ably should the worst occur.
But I warned her, “Don’t be an eager shot, dear—I’m not going outside yet. Stay quiet.”
She nodded with understanding. She knew the routine. Silence and darkness.
Taking my axe along for the tour, I went from room to room on our first floor and extinguished the gas lamps until nothing but the streetlamps cast illumination into our space. It was feeble light, fractured and prismatic, sent through the leaded-glass trestle and the street-facing windows, but it was enough for me to orient myself, and to feel as if I now had the space to listen.
I closed my eyes and opened them again, letting the darkness adjust my vision. I stood in the center of the large front room, strange lines and shadows marking me like a nightmare’s checkerboard. I could see the patterns on my dress, slashing dark lines and light grooves across my skirts and down my arms. The tattoos of brightness shifted when I shifted, raising the axe and feeling its heft settle across my shoulder as I waited, squinting at the night outside and wondering where the would-be intruder had gone off to.
Where was it?
Emma said the kitchen; she’d seen it at the window. It wouldn’t be there still. It would’ve tried to follow her, circling, tracking her through sound or scent or whatever it is these things use to perceive the world.
Mostly they seem to be blind, or to see very poorly. But they feel . . . they pat the walls, they lunge at the boards, they trip and scuttle and scramble up our stairs when they stumble across them. They press their weird, webbed hands against the windows and leave prints on the glass in the shape of starfish.
I held as motionless as possible, hearing only the creak of my breath against my clothing, the bones of my undergarments giving and resisting, the cinch of my tied belt stretching, the small stitches in small seams straining to contain me. And then I heard it, against the south wall. It must’ve been standing in the long, narrow rose garden, as if a thing like that cared a whit about catching thorns or treading on blossoms.
It wheezed and hissed, feeling its way along the exterior. The timbre of its flailing slaps changed when it reached the small side porch, and when it smacked the steps, and then the foundation stones as it relentlessly sought an entrance. It moved widdershins like the devil himself, and it made no sound apart from the exploratory jabs with its hands and the susurrous whistles of its breath coming and going.
Having pinpointed the brute thusly, I steeled myself and crept to the front door. Silently, or nearly so, I slipped outside and shut the door behind me with only the faintest of clicks. I took my key and fastened the lock as well, sealing Emma within to the best of my ability.
(I shuddered to consider it, but there was always the possibility of more than one interloper. Only once have I seen them work in pairs, but once is enough. It introduces the possibility of a second time, and for that, I invest in very good bolts.)
I stepped carefully through the covered porch area, keeping my steps as light as I could manage. My boots had low heels, but even low heels can tap and warn—so I tiptoed to the secondary door and unlatched it. It was a flimsy portal, intended more for show than for protection. I let myself out and shut it anyway, and it slipped into the frame with a muffled scuffing that felt terribly loud in the nighttime quietude.
I crept down the half dozen short steps to the ground, where the grass was more forgiving than the sanded slats of the porch. I moved through it swiftly, the rustle of the tiny green leaves whispering no more loudly than the sway of my underskirts around my legs as I trotted to the left, to the corner, where I paused and readied myself.
I heard the slithering, damp coughs of the creature very close by. Its exhalations gusted with the smattering strikes of its hands as it sought entry.
If I did not stop this thing, it would find a way inside.