Death in Castle Dark, page 12
Before I left, I was drawn to the only window in the library, which had a view of the west lawn. I wondered if I’d see deer again or if anything at all would be visible in the dark. I pressed my face close to the glass, but nothing was visible aside from the distant undulations of treetops and some scudding gray clouds against a navy sky. All signs pointed to a peaceful night.
I moved to the doorway, switched off the light, and padded back to my room. My, but that library carpet was soft! I greeted the kittens (who had the grumpy look of tired babies), tossed the book on my bed, and plopped into my easy chair, where I sent good-night texts to my family. In another impulsive decision, I decided to treat myself to a bath in the shiny white bathtub I’d been admiring but had not yet used, opting for convenient showers. I went into the bathroom and rummaged around in the little closet beside the door. Ten minutes later I was soaking in delicious bubbles created from a bottle that read: Lavande de Haute-Provence. Lavender something-something. Connie had said that Derek fluctuated between ridiculously frugal and strangely indulgent.
“I bless you for this indulgence, Derek,” I said to the blue-tiled wall.
My eyes closed, and I must have slept. When the room appeared once again, two of the kittens were still playing with the carpet, and one lay fast asleep in the center of the rug. “Oh, my,” I said. “Is it bedtime, my sweethearts?”
I stepped out of the tub, dried off, and contemplated myself in the mirror. My face was solemn, but contented. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, then put on a nightgown and floated into the next room, feeling fragrant and utterly relaxed. I turned off all the lights except for the one next to my bed, then tucked myself under the covers and started reading the book I’d selected from the small library of a castle. I grinned at the very idea—it was like a detail from a little girl’s imagination.
The Brontës soon decided to join me in the bed, and they climbed up the side of the quilt, creating slight ripping sounds that made me wince. They all found their way to the top of the mattress and sat purring beside me. I showed them the book cover. “Look at this old Gothic classic! See that castle on the front? Apparently it is located in”—I consulted the book jacket—“the wild cliffs of Cornwall. Ooh, that sounds good, right, my Brontës? My gray goddesses?”
They squinted their eyes at me, purring and making dough on my blanket.
I studied the cover. “Why does the heroine always run from the castle? Doesn’t she ever stay and fight? Why not send the young lady to her job as governess armed with mace or pepper spray or something? Unless it’s some ghost or monster that’s chasing her, right?”
The Brontës didn’t answer, but they seemed ready to hear a story. They bundled together; Emily had already closed her eyes. “Did you know that I already love you?” I asked them.
Charlotte licked one of her tidy white paws; Annie smiled up at me with her comical white chops.
“Okay, this is called Mistress of Mellyn. Should I read it out loud to you?”
They seemed to be waiting for just that, so I began the story in a soft voice. It started out like any good Gothic tale—a girl who was poor and had to take a job as a governess. Clearly influenced by Jane Eyre, I thought. The more I read to the Brontës, the less I was conscious of the kittens and the more I was drawn into Holt’s story. How slowly, how insidiously the tension mounted! I had not even realized I was nervous until a branch outside my window clacked against the glass in a gust of wind, and I jumped an inch off the mattress.
The Brontës, now asleep, didn’t move a whisker. I settled back down to my novel, but eventually, lulled by the warm sleeping felines and the cozy room contrasted with the eerie sound of the wind, I grew tired, as well. “Until tomorrow,” I told the book. I set it on the nightstand and turned out the light.
* * *
* * *
I woke in darkness and realized I wanted to use the washroom. “Too much water before bed,” I whispered to the still sleeping cats. I gently moved them aside so that I could step down, find my slippers, and pad across the floor. Upon returning to the elevated platform, I glanced briefly through my window to see if the gale was still gusting. The tree on the other side of the casement was indeed still bowing and bending in the wind, occasionally tapping the glass as if to get my attention.
At first I thought the noise I heard was in fact the click click of branches, but eventually I realized that it was coming from behind me.
From the hallway.
I glanced at the clock on my bedside table, which had glow-in-the-dark hands that revealed it was two in the morning. Nervous but curious, I grabbed my phone and moved toward my locked door. I put my ear up against the cool wood. A sound of a door opening, then closing again. Connie’s door. What would make her want to go out in the middle of the night? Could something be wrong?
Another thought struck me. Could she be meeting someone? Did Connie have a lover in the castle?
Now I was the one being overly romantic. Still, I was curious enough to peer into the hall. Her door was closed, but sure enough, she was moving down the hallway in the direction of the costume room. “Connie!” I called softly. “What the heck are you doing up at this time?”
Her figure looked strange, sort of bunchy, as though she wore a winter coat. Laughing, I flicked on my phone light, ready to expose her in the glare. I stepped into the hall, closing my unlocked door softly so that the kittens wouldn’t escape. “Hey, goofball,” I said, shining the light down the hall.
The form was walking away, slowly, and I realized the head was strangely wide and elongated, as though the person was wearing a hood. I decided it wasn’t Connie, but perhaps Elspeth, with one of her odd headdresses. Maybe she and Connie had watched a late movie together.
“Elspeth,” I said, but even as her name left my lips I realized that it wasn’t Elspeth I was seeing: in a surreal epiphany I saw that the weird garment was a cassock. Someone wearing a monk’s robe was walking down the castle hallway.
A chill rose from my feet to my face. I backed away slightly. I would return to my room; this was not a mystery I cared to solve.
But in that instant the figure turned, and the cowled hood fell back just enough for me to see that there was no face at all, only bones. My mind did not register the nightmarish image at first; I simply stared at the white skull, which seemed to look at me with its sightless sockets. The bones glowed weirdly in the tiny beam of light.
“No,” I whispered, and then the thing reached out with its robed arms and lurched forward. It was moving toward me, first slowly, then more rapidly.
“No!” I cried.
I ran. Not to my room, which was too close to the horror, but past it, down the hall to the servants’ stairs at the end of the hallway. I wrenched open the door and flew down the steps. I lost my slippers along the way, but I barely noticed.
A monk, a skeleton, a face that was no face. I ran, too frightened to even scream. I passed the second-floor door without thinking. I was soaring down the steps, powered by adrenaline and fear; my feet barely touched the cold stone. At the first floor, I threw the door open and ran out, emerging just outside the chapel hallway.
Was this where he would be returning to say his ghostly prayers? Would he follow me even here to touch me with his bony hands, to kill me as he had killed Garrett in the same spot?
Footsteps sounded behind the door at my back. He was coming with that slow, dragging gait that made me picture the monster once again.
Then a scream did burst out of me, something separate from thought or the voice I knew as mine. A loud, horrified, wailing scream that propelled me forward and out the front door, barefoot and blind with terror. I almost tumbled right down the steps, but I made it to the front pathway and the soft grass beyond it. I could only think, Run, Run, Run, and I did so, my legs pumping, my mouth wide and wailing, and then somehow it was on me, its bony clutch on my arm, and my scream must have been deafening.
“No, let me go!” I cried.
Through the pounding in my ears, I heard a calm voice, a man’s voice. “Nora. Nora. It’s me. Tell me what’s wrong. What are you doing out here?”
I wiped the sweat from my eyes and squinted them at the figure in the dark. It was Detective Dashiell.
“Dash!” I cried, and I launched myself at him, clinging to him like a terrified monkey, my thoughts still far from rational.
“Nora. What happened? It’s cold out here, and you—you don’t even have shoes on.”
“It’s chasing me. Oh, God, it will be here soon! Get out your gun!”
“What is chasing you?” His arms wrapped around me protectively.
“A monk. It was wearing monk’s robes. Up in the hallway by my room. I thought it was Connie, but it was a monk, and then it turned and it had no face, just—bones. . . .”
My teeth started chattering, and my arms trembled.
“Let’s get you inside!”
“No!” My voice was hoarse now. “It will be there. It will get us.”
“Not ‘it,’ Nora. ‘He.’ Or ‘she.’ Someone is playing dress-up, trying to scare you. Let’s go find out who it is.”
“No.”
“Okay, you wait here on the steps, and I’ll—”
“No! Don’t you dare leave me.”
“Then come inside. No one is going to hurt us, I promise you.”
His tone comforted me, calmed me. The darkness around us lost some of its terror, and for the first time a rational thought made it through. “You think—someone was wearing a costume?”
He peered down at me. “Do you not have a whole room full of them up there?”
“It was terrifying,” I said.
“I believe you. Not even with all your talent could you be acting that kind of fear.”
“I am still afraid.”
“I’ll be right here. Let’s go back inside.”
I followed him up the stairs. My feet hurt; I wondered what I had run through in my headlong burst across the yard.
Limping, I followed him into the main hall, still dark and silent. “No one else heard me screaming?” I asked in a whisper.
He was scanning the darkness. “Derek gave me a room next to the chapel. I heard you loud and clear.”
“Did you see—?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.” We were nearing the dreaded chapel now.
“I won’t go in,” I said. Detective Dashiell produced a flashlight and shone it down the narrow chapel hallway. “Ah,” he said.
“What?”
“Give me one second.” He darted down the hallway before I could protest, but he was back in less than a minute. “Is this it, Nora?”
He held up a robe with a built-in skeletal face. I turned my head away.
“Someone disrobed and left it right there on the floor. They probably hopped into that secret passage and then made their escape through the ballroom.”
“I—I just can’t—I’m so—” My teeth were still chattering.
“Come here.” He led me to a tiny room next to the chapel, which contained only a bed and a table with a lamp on it. He flicked on the lamp. “You’re limping. Sit here.” He set the garment carefully on the table, taking care not to touch the mask.
I sat. My body was suddenly so deprived of energy, I felt I had been vacuumed out. I almost tipped over on the mattress.
“Let me see your feet.”
I stuck them out, too stunned by events to feel embarrassment or anything at all.
“There are thorns in your skin. God, Nora, you just ran right through brambles and never felt a thing?”
“I was so scared. If you had seen that thing walking in the dark hall—I thought it was Connie. Then I thought it was Elspeth—it only became clear slowly, like in a horror movie or a nightmare.”
“It must have been terrifying. But how did they know you would be in the hall?”
I shrugged. “They didn’t. I just happened to be up and going to the bathroom. Then I looked out at the branches blowing in the wind, and I heard a sound, as if maybe Connie was leaving her room. So I thought I’d tease her. They couldn’t have known I was even awake.”
He thought about this while he ministered to my feet. “There. I think I got them all. Does anything hurt when I press here?”
“No, it’s fine now. Thank you.”
“Take some deep breaths.”
I did so several times. Some calm returned to me. “I’m sorry I made a scene,” I said.
He looked up at me, frowning slightly. “Do not apologize for the fact that someone terrorized you.”
“Okay.”
“Nora. I know you don’t want to think back to that moment, but was there anything about this figure that might have distinguished it? Something that can help me link it to someone in this castle?”
I pointed at the costume on the table. “Maybe there are fingerprints on that.”
“We’ll be checking that first thing.”
“Other than that, I really couldn’t tell. It was just so shapeless, so amorphous.”
“Okay. You don’t have to think about it again. You’re okay, Nora. Everything’s all right.”
For the first time, I focused. I saw his worried face and his slightly mussed brown hair. He was wearing just a T-shirt and a pair of cotton pants. His pajamas. In a rush of embarrassment, I realized that I was wearing a nightgown and sitting on the bed in which he had presumably recently been sleeping.
“Are you going to search rooms?” I asked.
He shook his head, still kneeling and holding my left foot in his hand. “Whoever it was will look innocent now. They’ll have a story ready, I’m sure. But this person has taken action tonight, exposed him- or herself; they want something. I just have to figure out what.” He brooded, his face intelligent and handsome.
A burst of my vanity returned in the form of embarrassment. “I must smell like sweat.”
He blinked at me, surprised. “You smell like a flower. I thought it was the garden when we were outside, but—it’s you.”
“I took a bath just before . . .”
“Nora?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Luke?”
I stared at him. “Luke? What—he’s my brother. He had surgery today. I was so worried. . . .” It seemed like a thousand years ago, talking to Luke on the phone.
John Dashiell looked relieved. He patted the sole of my foot and said, “What a stressful day for you. Let’s get you back to bed. Sleep will do wonders.”
“I don’t want to go up there. And I won’t be able to sleep.”
He stood up and reached for my hand. “Of course you will. Come on, we’ll go up in the elevator to spare all the pounding on your feet.”
We began to walk toward the south entrance, where the elevator was tucked next to the meditation room. “I had slippers at some point.”
“We’ll find them tomorrow.”
I was still holding his hand when we boarded the elevator. Once in a while, I found myself squeezing it, still nervous and needing comfort.
By the time the doors opened onto the third floor I had regained some courage, and I was willing to walk to my room with John Dashiell’s tall form beside me. “Will you think I’m a coward if I tell you I’m still afraid?” I asked.
“I will not. I’ll think you’re a regular person.”
I managed a little smile. “I am a regular person. I’m going to have that put on a bumper sticker or something.” I was babbling, trying to extend the moment so that he wouldn’t let go of my hand and walk away, leaving me in the yawning darkness of the hallway.
“Open up your door,” he said. “Let’s get you safely inside.”
I turned the knob with a trembling hand. We walked into the room, and he shut the door. Impulsive and nervous, I said, “What if you stayed in here? You could lie on my bed and I could sleep in my armchair there.”
“I have no intention of leaving you alone. When your friends wake up, they can come and watch over you.”
These words brought such relief that I almost began to cry. “Thank you.”
He walked to my bed, smiled down at the kittens, and said, “You climb back in. I have some texts to send, so I’ll go over there by your TV. I won’t make a sound.”
I did as he said, feeling the warmth and comfort of my covers with sudden exhaustion and a new calm. I realized that I felt safe, and I sent him a look of gratitude that he did not see as he walked away.
He settled into the chair. “Good night, Nora. Put everything out of your mind. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“Good night,” I said. The only sounds in the room were the wind, the soft snoring of one of the kittens, and the gentle clicking of keys as Detective Dashiell texted some unknown person. I listened until all the noises seemed to blend together, and then I heard nothing at all.
10
The Legacy of Otranto
I woke to the sound of murmuring voices in the hall. I looked toward the chair, where my companion had been sitting, but he was not there. I sat up and rubbed my eyes; I didn’t feel afraid anymore, just slightly uncomfortable, and I wondered who was talking outside my room.
A light knock sounded on the door, which was not entirely closed. It opened a bit more, and Connie’s face appeared in the aperture. “Nora? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
“Detective Dashiell was telling us what happened. He said we should keep you company. You might want to get dressed, because he’s planning to ask questions.”
“Is he out there?”
