Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(99)

More’s the pity.





Emma L. Borden


MAY 7, 1894

They left me here. Abandoned without second thought, I should think.

Left behind at a full run, one of them after the other, chasing after that warped phantom of a girl who isn’t a girl anymore. It was plain as day that she wasn’t coming back; she would never be talked away from the edge of whatever precipice she’d found, even if she was talked away from the cooker, at the end.

I stood beside the stairs, still clinging to the rail for the strength to stand. This was not one of my good days, only a desperate day—where the last vestiges of endurance must be rallied and brought to arms. I could scarcely hold myself upright, and my lungs felt as if I’d been breathing fire.

In fact, I had only been breathing my own blood. I realized this when a cough surprised me, sneaking up before I could pull a handkerchief from the pocket of my dress. I hacked and spit, and my eyes watered; and when they cleared again I saw blood across the floor, against the painted white of the banister, and splattered on the nearby divan. It was more blood than usual. Too much. Enough to remind me that this was not a strong day but a weak one, but it didn’t matter how I felt or what I wanted.

Especially not today.

Not when the town was under celestial assault, if the light show and the thunder were any indication . . . but no matter how hard I peered through the windows, I saw no sign of rain. All the water was staying in the ocean tonight, so there was one small mercy granted. At least I could see outside, for the night was uncannily bright—albeit loud—and at least I could stand upright, whether my body truly wanted to, or not.

I considered my father’s gun. In the cabinet, a handful of yards away.

I ought to get it, I decided.

It would be better than nothing, against whatever was likely to come—and something was definitely coming. We’d felt it for days, and now I knew it in my soul: Zollicoffer was imminent. Even if I couldn’t do the math to predict his route . . . the whole sky was shouting his arrival.

Maybe it was the noise, or the lightning, or just the timing that made every move feel so urgent, so necessary.

They were all small moves, the only motions I could manage, but I did manage them: one hand off the rail, one hand on the rail; use my free hand to grasp the divan; release the rail altogether, lean on the divan; make sure both feet follow, not just the one; hand over hand, foot beside foot, walk the length of the divan and then use one hand to grasp the low table beside it; steady self on the table, which rocks a little from that one leg being not quite the right length; extend one foot to the middle of the floor, to the empty space between me and the liquor cabinet drawer where the gun rested these days; feel the edge of the rug’s hem with my toe, and stretch for it.

Not too fast, now.

Pause. Pull myself together.

Another coughing fit. I hung my head between my hands, and flung more blood, this time on the tilting table and onto the floor; only a little splash reached the divan.

This was a bad one. None of them were good, but this was very bad—one of the worst. I should’ve been in bed. I should have been sitting down at the very least.

I should rest on the floor and wait for my sister or the doctor to return. They would return, surely. Eventually.

But I was within perhaps ten feet of the cabinet, and the gun. I would feel less helpless with the gun, assuming I had the power to lift and wield it, when I barely had the power to lift and wield myself. And outside, a new sound urged me onward, reassuring me that this was a night when I could not afford to be helpless. It was not a keening, precisely . . . it was lower than that. I thought it must be louder than the thunder, though it seemed to come from farther away, from out in the ocean.

It was not the cry of any creature I’d ever heard, and anyway, what throat could produce such a bellow? Nothing smaller than Fall River itself. Nothing smaller than Boston, perhaps. It was as if a whole city screamed in pain or longing.





? ? ?


I listened, but listening told me nothing—except that something huge cried out somewhere far away, and I heard it, and I didn’t know what it meant. I looked out the window. It was a stupid gesture, for I rationally knew that I wouldn’t be able to see a great marauding monster rearing up out of the ocean—or anything of that sort, despite what damage had been done to rational knowledge these recent months. But I looked anyway, and I saw the sky still wild, the wind thrashing the trees. The light showing me the yard, the neighbors’ houses, the street outside which had only been paved last year.





? ? ?


The man.

I froze.

I’d say that our eyes locked, except that I couldn’t see his eyes. Everything about him was left in shadow, and I saw little to distinguish him. A hat, tall enough to be a little out of fashion. Shoulders that implied a good tailor with a fondness for sharp cuts. A cane in his left hand, or a stick of some sort. He didn’t lean on it. He held it, like it anchored him.

I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my dress. I left a smudge of vivid crimson there—the kind of red you see when blood comes straight from the lungs. I know it means that I’m dying. That’s what it’s always meant.

I looked to the front door. Seabury had the good sense to close it and lock it as he left, trailing behind my sister. Maybe he had only abandoned me without a first thought, and spared me a second one after all. But how long would the lock hold? A few minutes? A few seconds?