Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(60)

I was not at my sharpest. But what could I do?

I grabbed my axe.





RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?



Owen Seabury, M.D.


APRIL 25, 1894

I now know something of the torment which has afflicted Lizbeth Borden Andrew or whatever she calls herself these days. I kept meaning to ask which name she prefers among friends—but now that I think about it, she told me to call her Lizbeth, but didn’t offer one surname or the other.

I’m not beginning this entry well. It was a terrible night, and I’m not yet recovered. Perhaps I never will be, but I must compose myself and thereby compose this entry. I must organize my thoughts and lay them all out, while I still remember everything so freshly that it hurts.

My ribs ache. They are lined with bruises that look uncannily like the impressions of human fingers, but that’s not what made them. And these bruises, they are flecked with something sharp and itchy, some residue left behind. It feels almost like spun glass, but what small sample I was able to retrieve dissolved between my tweezers, and was gone.

Whatever these creatures are, they leave no useful trace of themselves behind. Only questions and horror, and bruises shaped like fingers.

I say “these creatures” because the thing I saw this past night was not the only one of its kind. Lizbeth told me so, and she showed me how she’s been managing them.

But I stumble ahead of myself.

Let me try again.





? ? ?


I received a knock on the door, and opened it to find Jacob Wilson, young neighbor to the sisters at Maplecroft. He’d been sent to bring me around. Something about Emma; he wasn’t too clear on the specifics. So I made my way there with all haste, and upon being granted entrance, I learned that the difficulty was related to Nancy O’Neil, their houseguest. She’d fallen catatonic, having somehow gotten inside a locked cellar and contaminated herself with Lizbeth’s experiments.

But I’ll come back around to how that situation came to be.

Nancy, called “Nance” by her friends, was placed upon a settee—lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling with the same blank, unblinking stare that I’m coming to find familiar, damn it all to hell.

No, I don’t think hell is far enough away. If there’s some farther, more distant shore where these things might be banished, then I pray for that instead.

In the course of my examination, Nance began to chant “Out . . . out . . . out . . .” as I’d noted with previous patient Miss Fox. Same rhythm to it, same pace, same message. And this time, something answered her.

It tried to come in.





? ? ?


Lizbeth ran outside, despite the fact that she must’ve been in great pain from a broken nose and a badly bruised body, courtesy of a slide down the stairs. Besides that, she was not up to her full strength and clarity, due to some draught Nance had slipped her before bed. (It turned out to be Mrs. Winslow’s, so it could’ve been worse. Anything too much stronger than that, and she might not have awakened in time.)

But the younger Borden rallied, and I was impressed with her determination—though I had no intention of following her command, which amounted to, “Stay inside with Emma.”

Something wanted inside Maplecroft. Lizbeth wanted to go handle it alone, but that was madness, and she needed my help. I followed her outside.

I kept her in my sights, though the night was very dark, and there was a fog hanging so heavy that the gas lamps were almost no help at all. What little light there was bounced back and forth between the mist in patches, so the whole world was hidden, and yet it moved.

She rushed ahead of me, a womanly shape wearing little more than a nightdress; I think she’d paused to throw a housecoat over herself, before I arrived. Her form billowed as the fabric spilled behind her, and every so often I caught a glimpse of light sparking off metal. Her axe. I’m not sure I’d noticed her picking it up.

(Where did she keep it? Was it the same one . . . ?)

She wielded it easily, lightly. She carried it swinging like a baseball bat, only with more poetry to it. It was a frightening thing to watch, this small shadow of billowing gray fabric and sprawling, wild hair splaying out behind her, the axe held at the ready with both hands, poised and prepared.

I could scarcely take my eyes off her, but then again, I could scarcely see anything except the motion of her running around the side of that magnificent house . . . and as I brought up the rear I felt like a noisy, stumbling brute in her wake. She moved so quietly, you see—so practiced. She so beautifully disturbed the darkness, all flapping shape in gray and white. Like an owl. With that kind of grace and silence.

But she did not outpace me. I could not let her, for without her, what would guide me? The moon offered no assistance, and I knew that behind the house, the cream and yellow fog that shifted and swirled would lose even the lamps that colored it.

I did not call her name. She must’ve known I was on her heels, for she must’ve heard me; and by then I wondered if her stealth wasn’t imperiled by my noisily added presence, but it was too late then. I’d left the other two women in the house, neither one of them able to defend herself worth a damn—and there was always the chance that Nance might rise up and prove a danger to anyone in her vicinity.

I tried to eject the thought from my mind.