I didn’t have to study the baby in her arms to know it, too, was terribly dead.
“Leave us!” she screamed, flickering in and out of the past, and her voice was awful and rasping. A death rattle, grating across a throat so severed I could see the wink of bones and sinews, muscle striations and cords that were never meant to be glimpsed.
With a cry, I turned and fled from the nursery, leaving behind the splattered, moldering cribs and the horribly dead-yet-not things within them. The babies’ little noises of indignation turned into full cries, then shrieks, growing to match their mother’s outrage. Their screams reverberated in my head and I was suddenly horribly aware it had not been peacocks waking me every night.
My screams joined theirs as I raced away, flying down the darkened passageway until I crashed through the hidden door and slammed it shut behind me.
I was wide awake when the sun peeked up from the horizon, casting its golden rays over Chauntilalie and bathing the world with the promise of a beautiful day. I could feel its warmth over my skin as I stared sightlessly out the window, lost in my own mind. The sky turned peach and shimmery as I picked my nails bloody, trying to make sense of everything I’d seen.
A man who was not Alexander walked the halls of the manor, wearing his face.
But he might have been a hallucination.
Constance was dead, murdered by Dauphine.
Maybe.
And those babies…
Gerard’s babies…
A nightingale strutted along the terrace railing, singing out the last notes of a warbling melody, but I couldn’t hear it. Not truly.
After fleeing from that cursed nursery, I’d trudged back to my room, sat down, and waited.
Waited for this moment, when the birds were chirping and the sky was brightening.
Alex would be up soon.
Alex would know what to do.
I just had to figure out how to tell him.
“You can do this,” I whispered, my voice low and unconvincing. “You just need to tell him…everything.”
I nodded and visualized myself standing up, leaving the room, and going to find Alex.
I pictured walking through the halls, one foot in front of the other, coaching myself on how to begin. I was certain that the right words would come, as long as I imagined everything perfectly.
“Alex, there’s something I need to tell you….”
I see ghosts. I speak to ghosts. They speak to me. But I’m not mad. At least, I don’t think so.
“Alex, I’m afraid I have some upsetting news….”
Your father sired some sort of monstrous offspring that look more like plants than babies. And then your mother killed his mistress. Also the babies. Probably.
“Alex, could we…”
Run away from this house before all of this darkness rises up and somehow claims us.
I nodded again, but remained motionless and still, rooted to the bed.
“Alex…”
“There you are, I’ve been waiting for over an hour.”
Alex’s words hit me like a cold wave as I stepped into the little study.
