The Vanishing at Castle Moreau, page 29
“It’s a long story,” Cleo answered. And it was. Longer than even she realized. It stretched way back to the beginning of Castle Moreau. To the phantom woman she’d glimpsed in the study that night. To her own story. To the story of Anne. To the story of women who had been hurt, could be hurt, could hurt. A cycle of abuse that never seemed to end.
She could understand why Virgie was in hysterics. Sometimes life was just too burdensome to maintain your sanity. Sometimes you needed a refuge but finding one could be elusive. Like trying to catch a cloud.
thirty-eight
She’s in here.” Nurse Jenkins led them all into a corridor that Cleo hadn’t yet ventured into. It was walled in stone, and they’d gone through the old castle’s kitchen to get there. A pair of rooms were on either side, both void of furniture and of any piles of Virgie’s collections.
“How did she get down here?” Deacon tried to understand what had happened while they were away.
“I don’t know.” Nurse Jenkins shook her head, leading the charge. “I’ve checked her vitals and they’re all normal. Blood pressure is high, of course, because she’s very agitated.”
“Did you call an ambulance?” Deacon asked.
“Yes.” Nurse Jenkins halted in front of a doorway that led into a small room. “She has stabilized, though, so while I think it best to have her taken to the hospital to be checked out more thoroughly, I don’t feel the urgency as I did when I first called you. In fact”—Nurse Jenkins looked between them, Deacon, Cleo, Meredith, Dave, and Stasia, her mouth set in a serious line—“I think this is more emotionally and mentally driven. She is very upset.”
“Yeah, me too,” Deacon mumbled as he pushed past the nurse into the room. Meredith, Dave, and Stasia hung back. Cleo could see the question on Dave’s and Stasia’s faces, and the looks they kept shooting toward Meredith. Cleo gave Meredith a weak smile, begging for patience from a woman who had waited decades to return to the grounds of Castle Moreau.
Virgie sat on a lone chair, her delicate body swaying back and forth. She was fixated on the wall, on the stone, her lips moving in a soundless plea.
“Grand-mère.” Deacon crouched beside her.
“Take me home,” Virgie whispered.
“You are home.” He rested a hand gently on his grandmother’s arm.
She shook her head, resignation oozing from her. “No. I’m tired. I can’t do it anymore. They’ve taken her away. And she’ll be next. It’s all over. Everything. It’s over.”
Deacon shot Cleo a look of desperation and confusion. Cleo wished she had more to offer.
Noise in the hallway alerted them to the arrival of the paramedics. Nurse Jenkins spoke softly and firmly to them, and within moments, Deacon had been urged to step aside as they began to administer medical services to Virgie.
“I’m not ill!” Virgie tried to dislodge herself from their caring grasps. “I want to go home!”
Nurse Jenkins stepped in. “Virgie, we’re going to help you. We’ll get you home, but first I want to have you see a doctor. To help you.”
“I don’t need help,” Virgie spat. Her wild gaze landed on Cleo. “You! You know. You found her. Don’t let them look anymore. He told me to keep my things. Don’t take them away.”
Nurse Jenkins motioned to a paramedic, but Cleo couldn’t fight the sudden compulsion to rush to Virgie and take her hand. When she did, Virgie’s fingers gripped hers so tightly it pinched her skin. “Charles told me not to move anything. Nothing. All these years I’ve collected. I’ve stored. For a reason. To keep her hidden.”
“The woman with the crooked hand?” Cleo bent over Virgie’s prostrate form. A paramedic was strapping her onto a gurney, another wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around her arm.
Virgie’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Yes, we’ve guarded her all these years. Ever since my grandmother wrote about her being true. The papers. The real story—I read them years ago. I saved them. They’re in the wardrobe in my bedroom, along with all the other things.”
Cleo looked up at Deacon and mouthed, “Do you know what she’s talking about?”
He shook his head.
The EMTs were explaining something to Nurse Jenkins. The nurse touched Cleo’s arm. “We need to get her on the ambulance. Her blood pressure is higher now, and I don’t feel comfortable prolonging this.”
Cleo nodded. A wild sense of protectiveness flooded her as she met Virgie’s eyes, so pleading, so desperate, and so confused. “Virgie,” she said, bending over the old woman, “we won’t get rid of anything. Not without you here.”
“But they took her!” Virgie whimpered.
“Yes, but they care. They’re scientists, historians—they’re professionals. They will take care of her remains.”
Tears trailed down Virgie’s wrinkled cheeks. “But what about the other one?”
Cleo drew back a bit, studying Virgie’s face. “What other one? Are there more remains here in the castle?”
Virgie’s chin quivered. The paramedics released the brake on the gurney and started to move it forward. Virgie grasped wildly for Cleo’s hand, and it was as if no one were in the room but them.
“Castle Moreau is filled with remains. The memories. All of it. All of them. The stories are true, you know? I must protect them.”
“The missing women?” Dave’s voice sliced through the moment.
Virgie startled, and then a long whimper erupted from her lips. Then the EMTs took over, pushing her through the doorway, Deacon fast on their heels, followed by Nurse Jenkins. Cleo’s glare slammed into Dave, and Stasia winced beside him, knowing that Dave’s anxiety over his missing cousin Anne might have shut down an opportunity. Meredith stood still and not speaking in the corner, biting the tip of her fingernail.
“Is she talking about Anne?” Dave insisted, oblivious to the irritation welling within Cleo. Irritation that his impatience, while understandable, had only added to the confusion and hadn’t relieved any of the intensity.
Overwhelmed by it all, Cleo pushed past them and hurried into the corridor. She needed to think. To breathe. It was all too close to home, to her heart, and yet it was so foreign and so removed at the same time. All Cleo could think about was the tears that had streamed down Virgie’s face, how they’d matched her own. The tears of women who acted as protectors over what they believed was theirs to guard, theirs to shelter. However misguided or wrong that might be, they did it out of love. And sometimes, protective love was heartbreaking.
Cleo thought of Virgie’s words—wardrobe, papers, truth—as she wound her way through the castle, not caring whether she was supposed to be there or not. Maybe the entire place was supposed to be evacuated until the forensics team was finished. Were they planning to search the castle for more human remains? With its reputation over the decades, it wouldn’t surprise her.
Still. Cleo had to go there. She had to go to Virgie’s room, to the wardrobe she claimed held the truth of the woman’s bones that had been found behind the castle wall. Truth of the women—whoever they were, whatever decade they were from. If it helped Dave and his obsessive search for Anne Joplin, so be it. If it gave Meredith the answers and closure she needed, that would be wonderful.
But for now, Cleo did this for herself and Virgie alone. For their broken pieces that were so raw, the world they lived in made little sense, and the worlds they’d created to build a protective fortress around them were crumbling.
She pushed open the door to Virgie’s bedroom. It was quiet. Clean. Crowded with all of Virgie’s things, but not filthy or even depressing to Cleo anymore. This room was Virgie’s haven. With her bed surrounded by stacks of boxes, piles of books, a lamp, a pillow, and a water bottle. Cleo couldn’t blame her for wanting to be boxed in by things to feel safe. The castle was vast, cold, but here? Here it felt manageable.
Cleo scanned the room and saw the wardrobe Virgie had mentioned. Climbing over some crates, she managed to get to it. The doors weren’t blocked by anything, which was a bit surprising. Cleo toyed with the latch to access the wardrobe.
Unlocked, it opened easily, and she observed its strange, disconcerting contents: a moth-eaten black silk dress that had to be from the turn of the last century. A box on the floor was filled with antique brooches, handkerchiefs, and more current items like a Ronald Reagan campaign button from the 1980s and a friendship bracelet with a basketball charm hanging from it. What was all this stuff? It wasn’t the sort of collection Virgie would hoard. There were no books or magazines or figurines. They were . . . Cleo’s chest felt heavy with the realization of it. They were belongings—others’ belongings. Little treasures that had been gathered as mementos. Mementos of the lives Castle Moreau had stolen.
A book lay on the wardrobe’s floor. One of Madame Ora Moreau’s classics, with a sheaf of old papers stuck between its pages. Cleo pulled them out carefully, the paper feeling fragile in her hand. She skimmed the words. Her heart slammed against her chest as she read the old words. Words that must have been penned by Ora Moreau herself. A story of abuse, of escape, of refuge.
Perplexed, Cleo looked around her, searching for something, anything that might bring clarity to the history of Castle Moreau. She jumped when the bedroom door closed firmly. Cleo couldn’t see the door because of the stacks of boxes in the way. She clenched the story of the phantom woman in her hand.
“Deacon?”
No answer. Just a shuffling sound. Conflicting emotions roiled within her. She wanted to run, but at the same time she wondered if she hid herself in the wardrobe, maybe she would get some answers. Answers that might force a horrible truth into the light.
“Who’s there?” Cleo heard the quaver in her voice. She took a tentative step forward, then froze.
More movement around the boxes. A cloak, a hooded figure, and then she was standing there. The phantom woman. The vision of the woman Cleo had seen that night in the study. Only in the daylight, she was real. She was alive. And she was very much a vision of Anne Joplin.
thirty-nine
Daisy
1871
Daisy pressed herself against the wall, into the cold stone as the hooded woman approached her. That she was real was quite evident. The woman blinked, and breathed, and eyed Daisy with a look that curled into Daisy’s soul, terrifying her into a paralyzed state.
“You should not have come.” Her voice grated with a controlled anger that chilled Daisy. The narrow room left only feet between them. Daisy could sense warmth emanating from the woman’s body. Ghosts were not warm. This woman was as real as she was.
“I—” Daisy tried to speak but didn’t know what to say.
“You were never supposed to be here. Never supposed to look in places you weren’t meant to find.”
“Please, I . . .” Again, Daisy tried to speak.
The hooded woman lurched forward, her fingers curling around Daisy’s throat, pushing her into the wall. “Go. Away.”
Daisy nodded, clawing at the woman’s hand, choking as her fingers dug into her skin.
“Go away from here and never come back.” The woman’s breath washed over Daisy’s face. Tears sprang to Daisy’s eyes for lack of breath. She struggled, trying to free herself from the grip that threatened to take the very life from her body.
She was going to die? Here? Within the walls of Castle Moreau? This was how it was then. A stranger. A woman. Strangling until they were no more. That was how the women had vanished.
Daisy kicked, connecting with the woman’s shin. It didn’t seem to faze her. There was fear in her eyes accompanying the anger. Daisy realized then that the woman was afraid of her. This was not a murderous intent to kill based on a sick desire to take life from another. It was self-preservation. It was an attempt to stay alive herself, the hooded woman, and keep her existence a secret and ensure that no one threatened her ever again.
“I’m sorry,” the woman whispered, pressing her lips against Daisy’s ear. “I don’t believe you will leave on your own.” Her fingers tightened on Daisy’s throat. Daisy whimpered as she dug her nails into the woman’s flesh, then realized it did little to stop the woman.
Daisy’s vision clouded.
She was going to die.
Here in Castle Moreau.
And then she, too, would vanish.
Cleo
No. It couldn’t be Anne Joplin. The resemblance to the picture in the old newspaper clipping was uncanny, but this woman was older. Her eyes were clear and lucid, but her hair was curlier. Shorter. She wore the cloak like a blanket, trying to stay warm. There was no expression on her face to tell Cleo if she was a friend or a foe.
“It’s all over.” The woman sounded defeated. Accepting. Perhaps a bit relieved.
Cleo held Ora Moreau’s pages to her chest as if somehow they would provide protection. “Anne?” It was impossible. But in her stunned mind, Cleo did the math and remembered Anne Joplin would no longer look like a nineteen-year-old. She would be Meredith’s age. In her fifties. But if this were Anne, then Anne was not dead. Not at all.
“Is that who you think I am?”
Cleo returned her stare, stepping back a step just in case the woman decided to launch forward and assault her. She didn’t feel like the woman would, but nothing in Castle Moreau was ever as it seemed.
“I don’t know who you are—not for sure,” Cleo said.
The woman turned to the wardrobe and stretched her arm out, pointing at the items. “All those mementos. It’s appalling, isn’t it? The blood, the fear . . .” The sentence hung in the air unfinished.
“W-whose are they?” Cleo stuttered. Maybe if she kept the woman talking, she could find a way to escape. To get help. Deacon was probably gone with Virgie in the ambulance. But law enforcement was still in the castle itself! Not to mention Dave and Stasia and Meredith. Just one chance, to run, to get away, to—
“Did you know many women have gone missing from Castle Moreau since the day it was built?” the woman asked, her voice holding a hint of resignation.
Cleo nodded. She saw movement behind the woman. Murphy, her cat. The long-haired feline was bristled as it came up behind the stranger. Sniffing, his whiskers twitching at the unfamiliar being in the room.
“And now? It is all over. Finally. You ended it when you found her bones.”
“I’m . . . sorry?” Cleo didn’t know if the woman wanted her to be sorry or not. Murphy was crouching, his backside higher than his head, the tip of his tail twitching.
The woman stared at her then. Not responding. Not answering. Her eyes took on a distant look, one that could be either growing fury or growing sadness.
Cleo didn’t have time to consider for long. Murphy, in all his feline suspicion, pounced, wrapping his paws around the woman’s ankle and setting his teeth in her skin. She shrieked, more from surprise than pain, but it gave Cleo the opportunity she needed.
Shoving past the woman, she yelled for help as she plunged into the hallway. It was time for the rumors of Castle Moreau to end.
Daisy
She could hear the woman breathing, but she couldn’t see her anymore. Daisy felt her legs giving way as the air was cut from her throat by the deadly woman. She began to sink, her back scraping against the wall. Here is where she would meet God. Face-to-face. Oh, there were worse endings, but she’d thought she could escape life first and live a new one. Death was not something she was ready for. Not yet. Not beneath the clawlike grip of a phantom woman who was no more a phantom than Daisy was.
“Stop!” A commanding voice filled the room as the door slammed open.
Instantly, the hooded woman’s hand released. Daisy sucked in air, filling her lungs again. Awareness flooded her, even while she dropped onto a trunk, too weak to remain on her feet.
“What are you doing?” The newcomer’s voice filled the room and addressed the woman. “Are you mad? Will you become what you hate?”
“I’m sorry.” The hooded woman’s tone took on a note of submission, of regret. It trembled.
Daisy’s eyes came into focus, and she gazed in shock at Madame, who stood beside the woman with a censuring glare.
“Madame?” Daisy coughed, her throat sore. She raised her hand to the base of her neck, massaging the skin that would be bruised.
Madame Tremblay looked between them and then her gaze settled on the woman. “Explain yourself.”
“I merely wanted to protect the castle—”
“Protect?” Madame was shrill and furious. “Protect the very place that saved you by murdering, the very act you yourself tried to escape?”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry . . . I don’t why, I-I was just afraid. That it would all come to ruin. That you, that Festus, that I would be found. If they find me, they’ll kill me.” Tears cascaded down the hooded woman’s face now, the signs of wickedness and confidence erased by helpless fear.
Madame assessed her, then eyed Daisy, who watched with both fascination and terror. “Now you know,” she stated baldly.
Daisy didn’t know, but she remained silent.
Madame continued, “Hester May has been hiding here at Castle Moreau. She makes our meals in Festus’s kitchen in his quarters behind the stables. She has not wanted to leave Castle Moreau, not like the others.”
“The others?” Daisy managed.
Madame pursed her lips. “If you read my pages—which I can tell you did—you know when I was a child my mother helped a woman with a deformity escape her abusers.”
Daisy nodded.
Madame narrowed her eyes, obviously displeased it had all come to this moment. “It is something I continue. There are women who need me. Who need Castle Moreau to escape to—as a refuge when no one else will come to their aid.”
Realization filled Daisy with a different kind of horror. She had envisioned everything backward, and her accusations were unfounded, as the truth was based in goodness, not evil. She lifted her gaze to her would-be strangler. “You’re Hester May?”
Elsie would be so relieved!
Daisy spun her attention back to Madame. “Where is Elsie?”
