I knew those eyes.
Those were Gerard’s eyes.
These were Gerard’s…sons?
Without warning, Constance bustled into the room, whole and unharmed. Her form looked more solid than before.
“What is this place?” I asked her, but she was still caught in the past, unaware of me.
Humming a soft, happy tune, Constance gathered up one of the infants, then crossed over to a rocking chair. Her feet barely skimmed the floor, pushing the chair back and forth on tiptoe, lulling the babe into a quiet trance. With one hand, she unbuttoned the front of her shapeless dress, revealing a milk-swollen breast, riddled with veins strange and green and wrong. The hungry infant went to work, suckling noisily.
“Constance?” I tried again, unable to look away from her dark veins. “What are you doing? What is all this?”
She and the infant flickered, fully disappearing for a second, for two, then three, before returning. I took a step forward, waving my hands, trying to steal her attention, but she only had eyes for the baby.
Gazing up at her in mutual adoration, he placed his tiny hand upon her chest and I gasped.
It wasn’t a hand at all, but some sort of stump, malformed and a horrible shade of verdigris. As I watched, the arm unfurled, like the coiling fiddlehead of a fern, and leaves—actual leaves—opened up. They spread across Constance’s skin, a lacy network of vines and tendrils.
I retreated from the macabre tableaux, choking back a cry, and bumped into the first crib. I cringed as the baby within struggled to roll over and look at me. He was young. He was so young and small. The babies couldn’t have been more than a month old.
His face was red and tight with an impending howl. Tufts of green fuzz, like feathered moss, poked out from behind his ears. His little fingers were curling tendrils of dark green and purple.
The same shade as the flowers in the greenhouse.
My stomach heaved and the room spun.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I whispered, gulping back a sob.
I hadn’t heard Constance get up.
I hadn’t felt her approach.
But she was beside me now, her face distorted and beaten. A long slash ripped the bridge of her nose open wide, flaying back her pallid skin till it hung in tatters. A pair of gardening shears protruded from her chest and bursts of red bloomed there, staining the linen bloody. She smelled foul, as dark and dank as a grave.
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.
I’d been all over the house searching for him—his bedroom, the dining room, the terrace. I’d even walked down to the lake, studying the shoreline in case he’d decided on an alfresco breakfast.
I hadn’t found a trace of him or Frederick.
“I…I’ve been looking for you. You weren’t in your rooms.”
He squinted at me. “Of course not. I’ve been here. Waiting.”
His testiness threw me off-balance, causing me to react to it and not my meticulously laid plans. “I’m sorry. I didn’t…I didn’t think we had a session this morning?”
He rubbed at his forehead. “What else would we be doing?”
“Could we talk for a moment?” I asked, sinking my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palm.
He checked his pocket watch. “Now?” I started to nod but he cut me off. “We’ve already wasted most of the morning. Just get on with it.”
I nearly fell onto my stool in my haste to comply. I’d never seen Alex in such a state of irritation before. I uncovered the palette, still wet from the day before, and picked up a paintbrush. “You look as though you might have a headache. Would some coffee help? I could ring for some—”
“I’ve had coffee!” he snapped. “Hours ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.
Only the thickness of the canvas separated us, but I felt miles from him.
I dipped the paintbrush into a dab of tawny taupe and tried to push back all the words I’d carefully prepared. Trying to tell him anything when he was feeling so poorly was bound to end in disaster. We could work in silence until his mood improved.
Then.
Then, I would tell him everything.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, steadying breath.
I just needed to focus on this, on the work, on Alex.