Over time, they took shape, knit themselves together from bits of skin and bone into the rough shapes she came to know as ghouls. They were the stuff of nightmares, and for weeks she didn’t sleep, her back to the wall and her eyes on the dark.
Go away, she’d think, and they would, but they always came back. She didn’t know why they followed her, didn’t know why no one else could see them, was afraid that they were real and afraid that they weren’t, afraid what the matrons would do if they found out that she was haunted or mad. But most of all, she was afraid of the ghouls themselves.
Afraid that they would reach out of the dark and grab her, ruined fingers closing over skin. And then one day she flung her hand out in frustration, expecting to meet dead flesh or at least the eerie brush of cobwebs, the mist of something halfway formed. But she felt nothing.
Gruesome as they were, they were not there.
Sure, she could see them from the corner of her eye, an unpleasant echo, like staring at the sun and having to spend an hour blinking away light. But she learned to ignore them because they could not touch her.
They could never touch her.
And yet, now, pressed back against a moldering wall in a hidden passage of the house that is not Gallant, she can feel the ghoul’s hand over her mouth. And it is not the hint of a hand, not spider silk or mist, but long-rotten fruit and too-dry sticks, a bone-dry palm forced tight over her lips.
If she could scream, she would.
But she can’t, so she fights, tries to force the ghoul off, fingers sinking through tattered cloth and hollow ribs, but the ghoul only twists her round and leans in close, its ruined face inches from her own, and in the silver dark, there’s no menace in its filmy eyes, only a silent plea to be still.
Past her pounding heart, Olivia tries to listen to the room beyond the wall. She hears the splinter of the door, the steady beat of the soldier’s boots as it crosses the study, passing from the wood onto the thin rug. She pictures its narrow, wolfish frame as it stalks around the desk. A knee touching down, and the metal gauntlet scraping the ground, and then—no. The soft drag of something being freed, the flutter of loose paper. Her mother’s journal. Olivia’s hands ache and her lungs burn. She has to go back for it, but she can’t, she can’t, so instead, she breathes against the rotting fingers, inhaling dead leaves and ash.
Until at last, the steps withdraw.
The silence drags long and flat.
The ghoul’s palm falls away.
It retreats a step, and in the eerie almost-light that permeates the house, she sees it is—or was—a man, her uncle’s age, perhaps, the same strong jaw and deep-set eyes she’s come to know as Prior.
Its hands drift up in surrender, or perhaps apology. She doesn’t understand, not until the fingers trace through the air, in something that is not sign language—not the kind she learned—but the gestures are slow, readable.
You . . . asked . . . for . . . help.
Olivia stares at the ghoul. She did, when she was hiding in the hall. But it was only a thought, a prayer, a silent plea, neither spoken nor signed.
How did you hear me? she asks, but the ghoul’s attention twitches back toward the hidden door. Its face contorts, and then it gestures down the darkened passage.
You must go, it says. The shadow is coming back.
The shadow? she asks, but the ghoul turns her round to face the narrow hall. The dim silver light doesn’t seem to reach more than a foot. Beyond, the darkness is a wall.
A ruined hand drifts past her as it points.
That way.
But her eyes hang on the withered hand. Olivia turns back. The mouse. The flowers. Twice she’s touched the dead and brought them back to life, and so she reaches out to touch the ghoul’s broken chest, but it catches her wrist and shakes its head.
Why not? she thinks.
Its other hand drags through the air. Not yours.
She doesn’t understand, but the ghoul doesn’t give her time to ask again. It turns her away from the hidden door and the wolf lurking beyond, and even though she cannot see it now, she can feel the warning in its touch. Go.
Thank you, she thinks, and the ghoul’s fingers tighten on her shoulder. A single, brief squeeze, and then she is nudged forward. Down the corridor.
Ahead, the darkness is as thick as paint, and she half expects to feel it hold against her fingers. But when she takes a step, the wall draws back, the silver light moving with her, reaching only a few inches ahead. She brings her hand to the walls, the passage narrow enough that she can touch both sides with elbows bent.
She looks back, but the ghoul is gone.