This is the final part of a 4 part short. Enjoy!
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“E l’ultimo momento.”
This is your last hour.
The ballroom doors shuddered once more and the clasp gave way. The doors opened. A little girl stood before them. Dorothy. She was wearing a white dress now. Her legs were washed and clad in black stockings, though both dress and stockings were spotted in blood.
She carried the canvass bag with the doll. Randall looked for the scissors, but they weren’t in the bag. The exterior doors were open again. The glass was gone and something had bent the mullions inward.
“I tried to fight her.” she said, “But she took the scissors away.”
The girl’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed.
“Dorothy!” said Mrs. Gwynedd.
“Where are the others?” said Henshaw. “Where is Claire?”
As the nanny gathered her daughter into her arms, the master strode past both of them and towards one branch of the main staircase. Mrs. Gwynedd followed and after her the others went up, some by the other stairs.
Randall was alone in the ballroom.
He looked over at the fireplace. The blaze was gone and the phonograph had somehow ceased its burning. A charred husk remained. Everything was silent. The room was nearly dark. Randall wandered into the front hall. The only sound was someone breathing. No, gasping. The three steps leading down to the foyer made an open box that he couldn’t see the bottom of until he came close enough. The little boy paused when he saw a line of shivering knuckles. His skin dampened by a glaze of fear and his mouth stuck open, his breathes cycled with such shallow panting that he felt his vision slipping into a dizzy spiral.
Randall took another step. A face came into view. Mrs. Becker’s eyes were wide open and wet. They stared at the leaded glass pendulum lanterns that hung from the apex of the grand staircase. The skin around her neck and lower face were wrinkled and she was bleeding from a half dozen ragged incisions that looked like the result of hacking from a tool that wasn’t suitable for the job. Her wounds had left her alive, but tortured. On the top step lay the fetlock scissors, their long, dull blades and rounded tip stained in blood. The cook’s face turned to Randall. She swallowed and licked her dry lips. Then she mouth a single word.
“Away.”
Through the doors to the outside Randall saw an ornate hearse. Two white horses stood at its front and a huge man in a top hat sat on the bench with reigns in his lap. He smoked a pipe with a long stem. A black wooden angel stood at each corner of the carriage. Their broad wings arched over the windows. A coffin with brass pallbearer rails sat on a bed of velvet within. Two lanterns hung from the front of the carriage.
The man turned to the boy and his head and hat tipped to one side. He watched Randall for a moment and grinned. The expression spread across his face in a long, lazy movement. Randall noticed that the coffin lid was open. An empty casket waited for its occupant. Words were carved into the lid. Randall couldn’t read, but he could recognize some words. These words were familiar to him.
Edda Henshaw
The driver climbed down, rocking the carriage as he did so. He entered the house, stepping over the cook and climbing the three steps. His boots landed on the blood stain left by the footman’s nose, near the spot where the fetlock scissors lay. The big man kicked the tool, sending it skittering across the floor until it smashed into the base of one of the columns and bounced a few inches before coming to rest beneath one of the giant paintings. The painting was recognizable at the spit of land on which The Withens stood, though instead of the estate there were a few simple wood and brick buildings. Below it was a brass plaque with words that Randall could not read: “Mortmarie”.
Mrs. Becker rolled over and tried to climb up the steps on all fours. She reached out a hand.
“Please.” she said. “Take me.”
“You’re worth nothing to me.” said the big man. To Randall he said, “Someone gave her that silly song and put in her head the idea that she would sacrifice herself to save the children. Look where that’s gotten her so far.”
He lifted his gigantic boot and slammed it down on the cook’s fingers. She tumbled back down the stairs, wailing in pain. A warm trickle darkened the Randall’s pants. The man with the pipe strode past him and into the ballroom and Randall turned.
“My name is Grosvenor.” said the giant. “You may have heard of me.”
He opened his jacket and removed a small cloth bag with a drawstring.
“Randall.” he said. “Shall we play a game while we wait? Come.”
Randall did not want to ask what they were waiting for. He simply followed instructions. Grosvenor eased himself into a seated position on the floor. He brushed away glass shards from the mirror and the bell box. Then he loosened the drawstring and dumped a pile of dominoes onto the spot he’d cleared. The boy looked behind him to see if Mrs. Becker was still there. She had fallen back to the foyer floor, out of sight at the bottom of the three steps. Her quiet sobbing, however, was evidence that she was still there and still alive.
As Randall crossed the threshold into the ballroom, his shoe toe clicking on the wood and his heel resting on the marble, a scream from the upper floor echoed through the house. It was an adult woman, though he could figure no more than that. The shriek had come from somewhere upstairs and it sounded to him a lot like the phonograph. It was scratchy, weak, and distant, as though someone had recorded it ages ago.
Then Mr. Henshaw’s voice yelled, “No!”
A hissing followed. The same woman as before screamed again, but the sound was drawn out with changing notes. The hoarse tones were not a song of fear, but of pain. At last it relented. Several thumps rumbled upstairs, as though a thread had been pulled from a doll and the limbs all fell to separate pieces before hitting the floor and tumbling their different ways.
“She must take them apart.” said Grosvenor. “Sit.”
Randall sat on the other side of the domino pile. The stink and irritation of his soiled clothes were almost unbearable, but he fought the urge to fidget and scratch, unsure of what punishment might fall on him. His opponent plucked out seven blocks and gave them to him. He did the same for himself and then selected one to put between them: a six and six pair.
“I don’t want to play.” said Randall.
“I do.”
“I have to?”
“Do you know who’s upstairs?”
“Lydia.”
“No. My mistress has chosen a different body.” He pointed behind Randall, who didn’t need to look to know that Grosvenor was referring to the casket. “Your people insult her, call her The Drifter. To me she is La Marquise and I have served her for centuries as she passed from body to body. She is, however, ignorant of a deep secret. If she should ever know it, baby Claire will suffer. Do you want that?”
“No, sir.”
“So let’s not tell her the secret.” He placed his finger against his lips. “Play the game, Randall.”
They boy set down his pieces and Grosvenor did likewise. After several exchanges, the big man reached for the overturned bell box and set it upright. he opened a panel at its bottom, revealing a secret compartment. Inside of that he found an item that had become infamous in that household, despite the efforts of others to act as though its existence was a mere fantasy. Grosvenor placed the hourglass on the floor.
“I can see you know what this is.”
“Uh huh.”
“This belonged to Edda Henshaw.”
“I saw her use it.”
“Your master says his wife had to use this so she could have a baby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The secret is…” said Grosvenor. “Edda Henshaw could have babies. Before she met her husband, she had become pregnant with a bastard child, but it died within a day of its birth. The doctors discovered she could not bear children strong enough to live. She of course became pregnant again once she was married to Henshaw, but her lady’s maid, Cristina Gwynedd, introduced her to pennyroyal tea. Edda took to the habit of drinking it every morning and miscarried, all the while growing weaker from the poison.”
Randall remembered her in the conservatory drinking from the teacup with the blue flowers.
“I suppose that tea is why you are here.” said Grosvenor. “She wanted a child badly, but she had to have known that her husband wasn’t going to be satisfied with you as an heir. He kept trying. Edda’s only choice was to refuse him. That’s when he turned to Mrs. Becker for solace. Surely, even a boy of your age knows what sex is, don’t you?”
He greeted this question with a bit lip.
“Of course.” The big man waved a hand. “When the cook became pregnant, so did Edda. I can’t know how that happened. I can only guess that Henshaw discovered the truth. He is after all nothing but a common crook in a tuxedo. Knowing that his wife could not give birth, he figured it sufficient to let her belly grow. And when the baby died , which it did, there would be another to take its place…”
Randall’s mouth parted. He closed his eyes. He understood.
“You see it.” said Grosvenor. “Claire is Mrs. Becker’s baby, but she thinks her baby is dead. It must have been difficult for Edda to know she was carrying a child that would not live, but that couldn’t have compared to the horror of letting her loyal cook live with such sorrow while raising the girl right beneath her nose.” He turned the jar around on the floor. “What is in here?”
“I don’t know.”
“If Mrs. Henshaw wasn’t barren, then what pain do you think she needed to dispose of?”
“Please, sir. I don’t know.”
“You do!” he bellowed. “It is her shame! She needed to escape what she’d done.”
Randall cowered. He bunched his body to make the smallest shape he could.
“And that is what Henshaw wanted her take back. Her shame. As for Cristina Gwynedd, she had her own secret and she knew this day would come. She was afraid she would have to give her life to save the children. But I’ve been watching her, as I have for years, and I know she and the gardener had formed their own plan. They disposed of those books so the cook could find them. They composed that song to focus her mind. Mrs. Becker believes she will die to protect the children and then meet her baby in heaven. But her baby isn’t dead. Not yet.”
Randall shook his head.
Grosvenor traced a star in the air, saying,
“People weave this web from one person to the next and they become caught in it and it is their lives. The more they struggle against it, the more entangled they become. That is when she arrives.”
“The Drifter.”
“La Marquise!” He frowned. “La Marquise only wanted Edda to get to Claire. She wanted a Henshaw body to live in, but after Edda’s death she was afraid Claire would have too much of her mother, that she would be too fragile. That is what has saved the baby. If La Marquise knew the truth, that would be the end of Claire. But we don’t have to tell her that.”
A part of Randall wondered what was so important about a Henshaw body, but he didn’t ask.
“You’ll help Claire?” said Randall.
“If you win.” he pointed at the dominoes. “What do you say?”
The boy said nothing.
Grosvenor leaned in with the pipe clenched in his teeth. He was close enough for Randall to see the tobacco smoldering inside. The big man spoke from the corner of his mouth.
“Child. Say something or they all die.”
“Yes sir.” he mumbled.
“What? Speak up.”
Another anguished scream filled Randall’s ears.
Another body falling to pieces.
“Yes.” he said.
“I played my turn. Make a move.”
The boy selected a piece and set it down. Then he fished a new one from the bone pile to replenish his stock. They exchanged several more moves like this. Grosvenor smiled that lazy grin again and chuckled to himself as though he approved of Randall’s gameplay.
“You think I am a bad man.” he said. “But I was the same as you. Orphaned. Abandoned. And yet I have always survived. I sense you are the same. I watch people, little one. I listen to them. I understand them. I have a story to tell you.”
“Sir? Will my friends die?”
“Listen. A long time ago there was a town where many, many people were dying from a plague. Corpses lay in the street because no one dared go near them for fear that they would fall sick. Along came a man who called himself Jonas and claimed to be a prophet. He worked night after night to dig holes and bury the town’s dearly departed. Jonas completed the ordeal with perfect health, which proved to the people we was indeed some kind of messenger from god. Then he told them what they must do to free themselves of the plague. Do you know what that was?”
“No sir.”
Grosvenor grew silent and let several more turns pass before speaking again.
“They must bury a living thing.” he said. “And so they buried a rooster.”
“Alive?”
“Yes. But nothing came of it. Next, they tried a goat.”
The noises from upstairs came to an end. There was footfall on the stairs.
“The goat was no use.” said Grosvenor. “At last someone mentioned an orphaned boy who wandered the streets. Wasn’t it strange that that he never got sick? To make matters worse for this child’s fate, his only possession was a bag full of dominoes. Another person mentioned they had seen him playing in the woods at night with the devil. Perhaps this was the very reason for the plague itself.”
“Did they bury the boy?” said Randall.
“Of course.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
The footsteps that had been coming down the stairs landed on the hallway floor.
“Is that her?” said Randall.
“Yes.”
Grosvenor placed on last domino. Randall realized he had lost.
“Don’t worry.” said Grosvenor. “That wasn’t the game.”
“What was the game?”
“As I told you, I see. I understand. While I am the servant of La Marquise, I wish to be free. To do that, I require a replacement. That person must be a very special boy. I believe I have found him.”
