Minutes later, the padlock gave way after only three great swings against its upper arc. It clattered to the hall floor. There was no answering sound, no shout from the kitchen or running feet upon the stairs. Jane carefully replaced the candles, which had been knocked free of their holders, and lit them one by one in the gas sconce nearest to her. Her fear had made her as cold as the metal in her hand.
She hauled open the door.
Inside it was pitch-black, and there was no switch for gaslights on the inner walls. This part of the house had not been modernized with the rest. The candlelight was her only illumination as she made her way into the gloom. She followed a short hallway to a set of stairs that began as wood, but as she descended, they and the surrounding walls were replaced by old white stone. Familiar white stone. Cold, damp air rose up from the blackness beneath her, chasing away the last of the midmorning warmth that clung to her shoulders.
She welcomed it. She wanted the chill. It made her stronger.
Because the room she now stood in the middle of was no collapsing cellar.
It was a crypt.
Its ceilings were high and vaulted, and the sections her candles illuminated were made of more of the same carved stone. Niches lined the walls and several halls branched off into the darkness. This had been here first, she was sure of it, before the house, before the horror. It was old, and solid, and wrong.
Picking a passageway at random, she entered a room that was longer than it was wide. Jane’s light fell on a stone chair, facing away from her. Another few steps and she could make out the bulk of a long banquet table, with chairs on either side, all made out of the same glimmering white rock. Her heart seized in her chest, and she clutched the candelabra with both hands, trying to offset her sudden shaking. There was no red stain upon the table, and her vision had not shown her chairs, but she knew. She recognized the plane of the stone, and saw where Elodie’s nightgown had lain, spread out across it. One of the seats had words carved into it. She approached, fear weaving through her spine.
JEREMIAH LAWRENCE
1714–1769
She checked the others. Most had names inscribed upon them, all members of Augustine’s lineage, and one, the one she stopped at, was carved with the name Elodie Lawrence. Two years dead now, at only twenty-four.
At the far edge of the room, she saw a faint movement in the shadows. She froze, eyes widening, free hand reaching out to steady herself on Elodie’s chair. Augustine? The servants?
Or worse—the strange figures from the other night?
Her eyes darted around the room, frantic to find where the first figure would come from, looking for the elongated bodies, the unnaturally shaped heads. Instead, a human-sized shadow stepped out of the gloom. Jane’s chest heaved in sputtering gasps, and she clutched the chair and candelabra more tightly. For one wild moment, she felt sure it was Augustine, scalpel in hand, but the silhouette was too curved.
Elodie.
She could see the waving outline of her floor-length nightgown, could smell the iron tang of blood. Jane staggered back, knuckles white on the candelabra, staring as Elodie emerged from the blackness, passing by the table that was now red and slick. It shone wetly in the candlelight, pocks of flesh distorting the shadows. It looked more like the operating table in the surgery than a monument now.
Crying out, Jane looked over her shoulder and moved the candelabra toward the doorway.
It wasn’t there.
The wall was smooth and unmarked, but she was certain it was the way she had come through. She pressed her free hand to the stone, searching, searching. There was no indentation, no hint of a corner, no indication a door had ever stood there. She let out another wretched sob, running along the wall, feeling desperately for some mark, some symbol.
Nothing.
She reached the corner and pressed her burning forehead to it, too afraid to look behind her. There were no footsteps, no rustle of fabric, no wheezing, rattling breath of the etherized or dying. Impossible, that a dead woman was behind her. Impossible for the dead to walk at all. A hallucination, a vision; that was all it was.
But without sound, she couldn’t tell how close the impossible dead woman might be. Jane’s pulse pounded in her ears, counting down until she was certain Elodie was close enough to touch her. She jerked and turned, helpless against her panic.
Elodie was only inches away. Even this close, the lines of her face seemed to waver and shift, as if she were reflected in uneven glass; but her cheeks were hollow, her lips blue and cracked. Her eyes were red, red as the blood that soaked the front of her gown, that poured from the ragged edges of her skin and muscle and bone.