The Vanishing at Castle Moreau, page 24
But she returned, the woman with the crooked hand. Every night. On Christmas she came bearing no gifts but instead more stories that both frightened and fascinated me.
“Joyeux Noël,” she whispered, and then she was gone.
As the weeks passed, I would tolerate her comings and goings. I would tolerate her tales. I found no warmth in them, or in her, but in a strange way I was also not alone in the desolation of my childlike grief.
“Papa,” I would insist to his bowed head, for he refused to look at me, “the woman will not go away.”
“There is no woman,” he would growl into his hands. Then he would raise his head and look beyond me. “There is no woman,” he would repeat.
But there was. As I grew, and as winter turned into spring, one night I awoke to see the woman standing over my bed. Her face was hidden in the hood of her cloak. Her crooked hand was held over me like a stiff and deformed staff. I pressed my head into my pillow. If she struck me, I would scream, and yet the woman never struck me. She never touched me. One cannot touch a phantom.
“You will grow. You will believe I never came to you. Remember, a spirit watches, always. You are never alone. Even if you wish to be.”
I did not take comfort in her words. No one wishes to be haunted by a phantom. And if I was, as she liked to call me, her “story girl,” then she was my story demon. I would never see the story the same again. I would never know fear the same again.
And yet I was also grateful for the phantom woman. For while she spoke fearsome things, she always reminded me that somewhere, beauty existed. She would tell me that life brought terrors, and we must learn to live with them. It was why she told me such things, so that I would not be as frightened when the horror visited in real life. When grief and pain and torturous things wiped away the dreams and hopes of a child and replaced them with doubt and longing and the wish that rest could be had.
“How?” I finally asked the woman with the crooked hand. “If the world is full of terror, how can there be beauty at all?”
“La beauté existe là où commence l’amour,” she whispered in my ear. In the language of my mother. In the music that feared being snuffed from my soul.
In spite of my fear, I believed her.
Beauty exists where love begins.
thirty-one
Daisy
If Elsie was not with Festus and his nonexistent wife, she had to have gone somewhere. Perhaps to meet the same fate as Hester May. As the other women.
Daisy tiptoed her way through the darkness. The castle was terrifying at night, but the answers she sought could only be found in the writing room of Madame Ora Moreau-Tremblay. She was the mistress of this place, the villain behind its castle walls, luring and taking and never returning.
But Daisy needed to uncover what had happened to the missing women. If the people in Needle Creek were right, Madame had been the harbinger of evil since her younger years. While she was married? When a mother? How long had a woman here and a woman there been plucked from the branches of life and snuffed out?
To find Elsie meant Daisy had to understand Madame, the why and the how. She would not understand her from talking with Lincoln. While he seemed receptive with his dark kindness, he was vague and unwilling to provide any solid answers. He was the Rochester to Jane Eyre. Hiding his own secrets while caring deeply.
The castle was a hollow place at night with its vast rooms and endless corridors. What had inspired the original Moreau to build this place? Daisy wondered. There was no reason for a fortress here among the hills overlooking the Mississippi River. Was it pride? A show of wealth that had caused the French trapper to grow in status and lord it over his fellow settlers? Not even a century ago, though in Madame’s infancy, had this place been built stone by stone.
Daisy’s bare feet padded quietly as she made quick work of reaching the writing room. The double doors were closed, which she had expected, so she reached out with her free hand, the other gripping a lamp to provide her light. The door creaked open. Once inside, Daisy saw the silhouette of Madame’s writing desk, also noting the wooden box on a second desk that held her dead husband’s heart. She eyed the shelves of books that loomed as bulky shadows.
The window over the writing desk exposed the yard in the moonlight. Empty of life. A clock ticked the passing seconds. Daisy stood there, undecided. What was she looking for? Evidence pointing to where Elsie had vanished? A history of the previous missing women? Daisy almost laughed at the idea that Madame Tremblay would be so careless as to keep a diary or journal that could be found, one with names written in it. Surely, Madame would not create an inventory of the women who had somehow drifted away like the mist surrounding Castle Moreau.
Daisy rested the lamp on the writing desk, picking up a piece of paper inked with the cursive of Madame Tremblay.
She lofted the knife over him, soiled in her heart and with filth in her soul. Would that she might be rid of it! Rid of the righteous fury that fueled the strength to drive the blade into his chest. Once was not enough. It must pierce him again and again.
Daisy let the paper drop onto the others. Horrid, horrid story. That Madame could write such a story meant she must know fury herself, yes? All fiction held elements of truth in it. Elements of real life.
She spun from the writing desk and approached the much larger desk in the center of the room. On it was the box with the heart of Madame’s late husband. What else did this desk keep hidden? Daisy tugged open a drawer to find paper, ink pens, a slate, and a pencil. The next drawer held a stack of journals. Daisy lifted them out and thumbed through the pages of one, then another. After a long period of squinting in the lamplight as she perused the books, she determined they consisted of nothing more than the castle’s financials, records of missives mailed to others, and articles of report with no mention of anything questionable.
Daisy returned the journals to the drawer. She opened a third drawer. At the bottom lay a skeleton key with a red ribbon tied to its end. Beside the key was a small box. Daisy opened it. There were four glass vials inside, all of them empty. She recalled the one Madame had filled with the flesh from Elsie’s wound. Why? And where had she taken it?
She closed the box and reached for the key. Daisy knew in her soul it would open the door to the mysteries Madame Tremblay hid from the world, perhaps even from Lincoln. Closing her hand around it, Daisy slid the drawer shut. Yes, it would most likely be missed, but hopefully Madame would believe she’d misplaced it. If questioned about its whereabouts, Daisy would deny knowing it existed. She would deny everything. Every suspicion. Every fear that beneath the words Madame Tremblay penned on the page, beat the heart of a monster who made a practice of making women vanish from the halls of Castle Moreau.
With the key clutched in her hand, Daisy hurried back toward her room. She had no desire to linger in the writing room, no wish to search any longer by lamplight. The key felt warm, alive with the promise it held answers. For the first time, Daisy harbored hope that she would find Elsie. The motive for why Madame Tremblay would act so villainously still eluded Daisy, but by God’s grace she would uncover that as well.
The lamp flickered as she sped to her room. This time she would avoid Lincoln’s study. She knew he was there, perhaps even waiting for her. He seemed to know where she was at all times. She felt him in her soul, and a part of her sensed him calling to her. Why she was so appalled by Madame and yet so drawn to the man in the wheelchair gave her pause if she let it. A commonality seemed to stretch between her and Lincoln. Both imprisoned by life but in different ways. Castoffs by society for no other reason than her being orphaned and Lincoln having dysfunctional limbs. Both of their minds were sharp, and beyond that, their hearts, their very souls beat with the essence of life. With the ability to love. With the need for understanding, for human kindness, and for a glimpse into eternity, where God promised all would be perfection with no more cruel judgments from others, no more ostracizing and condemnation of His children.
But for now—for now—the indefinable call to Lincoln’s side must be ignored. Daisy finally reached the corridor of her room in the north wing. She rushed past the portraits, avoiding the stares of ancestral Moreaus. Those who had hailed from France and seemed to watch to see how their family name was being upheld.
Daisy came to an abrupt halt outside her bedroom.
She had closed her door and latched it—of this she was sure. She remembered tugging and pushing on it to ensure it was sealed when she snuck away earlier that night. Should Madame Tremblay or Festus wander by for some inexplicable reason, she didn’t want to have a smidgeon of suspicion she was not tucked in her bed.
Now the door stood ajar. At least six inches between it and the doorframe. A thin band of light stretched from within her room, flickering from the flame that shed it. Fear lodged in Daisy’s throat. She gripped the key tighter in her free hand, raising her lamp in the other. Reaching out, Daisy pushed on the door with her fingertips, slowly. It made no sound as it drifted open, revealing first the floor, then the tall window beyond, the footboard of her bed, and then . . .
“Who are you?” Daisy breathed.
The woman’s form on the other side of the bed was partially hidden in the shadows. A cloak covered her shoulders, the hood over her head concealing her face. The light from the lone candle she held illuminated her white skin, her long fingers, and a ring that was a thin band of gold. She had turned her head to the side, ensuring the hood kept her features in shadow. She did not answer.
Fear was a powerful motivator. It encouraged Daisy to flee even as it engaged her senses, urging her to explore. To ask. To seek. To uncover the truth.
“Who are you?” Daisy asked again, stepping into her room.
It was not Madame Tremblay. This she knew. The hand holding the candle was too young, the skin too smooth and void of age to belong to the authoress.
Again, the woman refused to answer. Or perhaps she could not. Had death stolen her voice?
Daisy took another step forward, straining to see the woman better. She was not a vapor or an illusion. Feet were covered by her gown, yet she appeared to stand firmly on the floor. She didn’t float like a spirit. She wasn’t transparent as one might imagine a ghost to be.
But her silence was horrifying.
“Please.” Daisy’s voice quavered as it met with the instinctual need to run from the unknown. Run from potential danger, to hide from the part of the world the normal eye could not see. The spirit world that so many believed existed. Daisy preferred to think only of God. Of His superior nature. He was safer than any spirit, or phantom, or—
“Stay silent.” The woman’s whisper had no tone, no voice really. It was just a breath in the night air, breaking the stillness of the room and seeping into the marrow of Daisy’s bones.
Daisy opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came. Horror strangled her. The woman had spoken.
A quick movement and the woman’s candle flickered out. She was shrouded in shadow as she glided across the floor in a swift motion.
Daisy felt the woman brush past her. Not a physical touch, but the sensation of the air between them being disturbed.
There was hesitation. The woman tilted her hooded face toward Daisy. Her whisper once again shredded Daisy’s soul. “Leave them alone.” And then the woman slipped from Daisy’s room.
Seconds ticked by with Daisy hearing only the intensity of her own breaths as she gathered her wits. Then, realizing the woman had spoken, she swept toward the doorway to chase after her. To follow her as she escaped from Daisy’s sight.
But she was already gone. Dissipated into the night.
The phantom woman had visited her. She had spoken.
Once again, the key Daisy had pilfered from Madame’s writing room felt hot in her grasp.
Stay silent.
Leave them alone.
They were more than instructions in the phantom woman’s voice. They were a plea. A sort of begging.
That had been her mantra her entire life. Through the numbing abuses administered by the Greenbergs to the tears with which she wet her pillowcase at night when wondering why she had been abandoned at birth. Why God had allowed her parents to be mere wishes in Daisy’s heart but have no faces, no bodies, no memories. It was not hard to recall the bruises Mr. Greenberg had left or to feel the bitterness once again as Mrs. Greenberg’s spiteful words drew blood from Daisy’s heart.
Always it was “tell no one” or “leave the abuser alone.” Protect them. The ones who did harm, who deserved to stand before God and receive His wrath for the atrocities they had visited on the innocent.
Stay silent? Leave them alone?
Resolution filled Daisy even as fear quickened her heartbeat. She could not. Not any longer. Not for Patty and Rose whom she’d left behind. Not for Hester May and the nameless women who had disappeared before Daisy ever came to Castle Moreau. Not for Elsie, whom Daisy prayed was somehow shielded by God’s angels and could still be rescued.
And not for herself. She had stayed silent for too long. It was time that she spoke out.
thirty-two
Where are you goin’?”
Daisy jumped at Festus’s growly voice over her shoulder. Sleep had been elusive and nonexistent, and her nerves were on high alert this morning.
“I . . .” She floundered under his bushy-browed glare.
“You’re up to no good. I can see it in your eyes.”
Daisy didn’t answer. She knew she wasn’t good at disguising her feelings. The key in her apron pocket burned.
“There are things to be done around here,” Festus grouched. “Dustin’. Spiderwebs to be taken down. Floors in need of polishin’.”
It was the first time Festus had given her any instructions.
Daisy nodded. This wasn’t a battle she needed to wage. When the man retreated, she would continue her search, door to door, to see which lock the key opened. If she needed to carry a rag with her under the guise of cleaning, she would.
Festus eyed her. “Well?”
She returned his stare.
“You’re up to no good,” he said again, then turned on his heel and headed in the direction of the kitchen.
Daisy waited, listening for his footsteps to recede. Once he was gone, she moved to a flight of stairs leading to the third floor, which wound its way to the north wing where Madame’s bedroom suite was located, the room where Elsie had been sequestered.
She was quick in getting there, pausing long enough outside Madame’s door to ensure the woman had not somehow skirted Daisy and returned to her bedroom. The last Daisy had seen of Madame was when the woman had entered her writing room and closed the doors behind her. It was Madame Tremblay’s habit not to exit until early afternoon when she would retrieve her meal from the kitchen and then return to the writing room.
Daisy moved to the next door—Elsie’s room. It was unlocked, so no key was necessary. She tried the key in the door nevertheless to see if it was a fit. It wasn’t. Inside the room, there was a distinct aura of emptiness. It was as if Elsie had never been here. There wasn’t much in the room besides the bed, a chair, a small desk by the window, and a wardrobe. Daisy approached the desk and tugged out its center drawer. It was barren of anything important. She closed it. Turning to the bed, Daisy drew back the spread. The sheets were clean. She hadn’t changed them. Who had? With no house staff, it was remarkable how this particular wing had such clean and polished rooms.
After pulling the bedspread back in place and tucking it neatly beneath the pillows, Daisy dropped to her knees and crouched to look under the bed. The floor was clean as well, polished to a shine. Daisy sat back on her heels. The walls and furniture were free of dust. A mirror across the room with its gilded frame had no spots, no tarnishes. Daisy could see the top of her red curls in the mirror from where she sat on the floor.
Her eyes caught sight of the wardrobe, and Daisy pushed herself off the floor. It was a large wardrobe that rose over her head with beautiful scrollwork. The doors were tall, closed with a latch, and yes, there was a keyhole. Daisy tried to open the doors and stilled. They were locked.
It couldn’t be this easy. This simple. Castle Moreau had many rooms to search yet. If Madame had placed Elsie in a room where the skeleton key was assigned to its wardrobe, then there must be a reason. A reason not only for this wardrobe to be here and to be locked but also for Elsie to have been moved to this specific room. Daisy did not believe in coincidence.
A scuffling sound paused her hand midway, key poised, ready to insert and try the lock. Daisy looked around her. There was no one. She remembered Elsie’s worrying about staying in the servants’ quarters. She had complained about the scratching on the wall. Daisy held her breath, as if the very sound of it might interrupt the repeat of the noise.
Again she heard it.
The woman from last night came to her mind. Spirits didn’t materialize in the daylight, so she needn’t be afraid of the ghostly apparition. And yet there it was again. The scratching. It wasn’t unlike what she’d heard outside her bedroom door the other night when she ran to Lincoln’s study. The sound of a woman’s nails clawing at the floor, the wall, any surface as if being dragged away.
“Do you need help?” Daisy spoke into the empty room. Perhaps it was ridiculous to believe someone would answer. But she had been told to stay silent. Told to leave them—whoever they were—alone. This she could no longer do.
No one answered.
The scraping sound ceased.
“Hello?” Daisy called.
The room remained silent. Finally, she allowed her hand to travel the rest of the distance to the lock in the wardrobe door. The key inserted. She turned it. The lock clicked, and the wardrobe doors gave way.
