A low rumble sounds beside me. My tormenter is laughing. A deep chuckle of malicious satisfaction.
“Learn your lesson, Edie,” he whispers at my ear. “Everything you touch turns to ash. Now run, before the screams begin.”
I let out an animal howl of rage, my teeth gnashing. I swear I catch a glimpse of him, falling back in shock, just as he did before I killed him. But when I run, ignoring the pain arcing through my ankle, I do not run at him.
I run for the house.
“Get back here!” he bellows at me, and I laugh. I laugh an ugly, hollow laugh, because he has finally made a mistake.
He told me to run or he would kill the Morants. Yet he could not resist punishing them—and me—for their kindness. Setting the house ablaze while they slept too soundly to ever wake. They will die, and so there is no reason for me to run.
I know he will not let me save them. But I can try. That is how I will defy him. I will wake them before I flee and pray that whatever magic is here, whatever made my tormenter corporeal before might return. That if I wake Dr. Morant, I give him a chance to save himself and his aunt.
I race into the house, shouting “Fire! Fire!” Ahead, a figure runs through the smoke and flames. The height and dark hair say it is Dr. Morant, but he runs in the other direction. Away from the front door.
“Alma!” he bellows. “Aunt Alma!”
Had he fallen asleep in the parlor? He must have—he had still been reading when I retired. I run after him, shouting at the top of my lungs, hoping to rouse Mrs. Morant. Yet when I reach the stairs, Dr. Morant is gone.
Smoke swirls around me, pouring through my nose and mouth and I begin to hack. I grab the bodice of my nightdress and yank it up to my nose, but the smoke is too thick. It is all I can smell. All I can see. All I can taste.
The heat of the fire blazes around me, and I cannot find the stairs. I try to shout, but I can barely draw breath. Then heat licks my leg, and I look down to see my dress has caught fire. I reach to bat it, but my ankle finally gives out and I fall forward, slamming down on the burning floor—
“Edie!”
Hands grab me. The stink of smoke seems to evaporate. I inhale the smell of dirt instead, and then I am being lifted, strong arms going around me.
“Edie? Can you hear me?”
I force my eyes open and . . .
I am looking into a blue-black sky twinkling with stars. Those stars seem to go on forever, layer upon layer of them, and it is the most beautiful thing I could imagine.
Dead. I am dead.
“Edie?”
I look to see Dr. Morant is holding me, and that starry sky wavers behind a gloss of tears.
“I am so sorry,” I say. “I tried to save you. I truly did. This is my fault.”
“What?”
“You are dead, and it is my fault.”
He startles at that, his eyes going wide, and when he speaks, he chokes out “Wh-what?”
“What happened?” another voice says. Mrs. Morant appears on the steps behind him. The steps of Raven’s Moor, the house whole, a single window lighting it against the dark moors.
“Edie was walking in her sleep. I believe she had a nightmare.”
“Fire,” I whisper.
He tenses, fear lighting his eyes again.
“The house is—was on fire.” I swallow as I look around. “You found me out here?”
“Your poor thing,” Mrs. Morant says as she hurries to us and squeezes my arm. “A nightmare indeed. Bring her inside, Victor.”
I push up violently enough that he nearly drops me. “No! He is here. My pursuer. He told me to run.”
Dr. Morant turns in a half-circle, his jaw set, eyes blazing as he scans the moor. “He is here?”
“You will not see him. Even I could not this time. He came to my room. Told me to leave or he would hurt you. I did as he said, only he lit the house aflame anyway.”
Dr. Morant relaxes. “That was a nightmare, Edie. No one is here.”
I struggle until he reluctantly lowers me to the ground. “No. The fire might have been imagined. A warning. But he was real. He choked me.”
I lift my hands to my throat, but when I gingerly touch the skin, it feels fine. I inhale deeply. My breath comes easily, no hint of pain even when I palpate my fingers over my throat.
I look up at Dr. Morant. “He choked me. I felt it.”
He seems ready to say there is no sign of bruising. Then he swallows the words and says, “Come inside where I can see better.”
He extends his elbow for me. I hesitate, and then take it and we head inside.
* * *
My throat is fine. No bruising. No scratching. The only marks are on my knees, scraped and bloodied from when I pitched face-first off the front step. Because that is what happened.
In the dream, my pursuer shoved me hard between the shoulder blades, and I had stumbled but not fallen. Then I took a few hobbling steps before hearing the crackle of fire and ran back in. When Dr. Morant found me, though, I was facedown in the dirt, having stumbled off the steps.
And the walking stick I had taken? It is still in its elephant-foot holder with the others.
Mrs. Morant has brought me tea and shortbread, and set it down beside a snifter of brandy. I look from the brandy to the steaming tea. Dr. Morant lifts the snifter and half tips it over the teacup, holding my gaze. I nod, and he sloshes in a generous portion. I take a long drink, letting the double burn of the hot tea and brandy sear through me.
“I have never done that before,” I say. “Walked in my sleep.”
“You are in a strange place and unsettled. I am only glad you made it down the main stairs without incident.”
I nod slowly. Then I blurt. “It felt real. As if he was there. I could not see him but he really did seem to be there.”
“Like a ghost,” Mrs. Morant murmurs. “He let you think you had killed him and that he was a ghost, and so when you had a nightmare, you imagined he really was one.”
Dr. Morant’s lips tighten, just a little. For one heartbeat, I think he knows my pursuer is more than a living and breathing man. But when I try to catch his eye, he says, “Even when he is not here, he torments you. If he does ever come back, he will regret it.” And I realize he was not reacting to his aunt’s interpretations. Just to the fact that my pursuer has such a hold on me.
Dr. Morant meets my gaze. “If that ever happens again, wake me. It will be easy enough. I am a light sleeper.”
When I do not answer, he says, “Wake me, Edie. Whatever you are experiencing, it is in your mind. He has done damage there. When one experiences a trauma, it lingers, even when one is safe.” He locks gazes with me. “You are safe. He cannot come here.”
I do not know what to say to that. It had felt real. Very real. Yet there is no proof that any of it happened. Everything adheres to this alternate theory—that I had a nightmare and walked in my sleep.
If my pursuer had truly been here, would he have walked away? No, even if he could conjure a vision of fire and death, he would not have easily abandoned me when I woke from it.
“Edie?” Dr. Morant says. “I need your assurance in this. If it happens again, you will wake me, yes?”
I hesitate only a moment. Then I say, “Yes.”
* * *
Breakfast the next day threatens to proceed the same as the others, in silence. When I break it by asking about Dr. Morant’s upcoming day, he fairly sighs in relief, as if he had been committed to conversation while having no idea how to start it.
He will be checking on young Lucy, and he invites me along, which I happily accept. That is his only appointment for the day, and he intends to spend the rest of it doing as little as possible. I am not certain I can join him in that—I did promise to help Tillie and her mother with the laundering—but I also have hopes of a quiet tête-à-tête with my nearly finished edition of The Fall of the House of Usher, a deliciously dark tale of the sort my parents did not keep in the house.
I spend the day trying not to think of the night. Neither the night before nor the night to come. It is a near-perfect day, and I will not allow anything to interfere. The way I cling to it, however, proves that the night is very much on my mind.
I fear Dr. Morant is wrong. That whatever happened the night before cannot entirely be explained by terrifying dreams and sleep walking. That is how it manifested, but at its core, I believe, was my tormenter, finding a way to reach from beyond this circle of safety and seize hold of my mind.
I promised Dr. Morant that if my pursuer returned, I would wake him.
I lied.
I had no choice. I understand why Dr. Morant wants me to do this. It is the logical course of action. If I think I am under attack, come to him and he will wake me. And yet I do not dare take that chance. Dr. Morant believes my tormenter is a living man, and so he does not understand the danger he faces. The danger I have put him in.
So I live that day as if it is my last. My last beautiful wisp of fancy and fantasy, hours spent in a wonderful world where I am safe with good people. Where I can learn from them and converse with them, drink with them, laugh with them and, maybe, just a little, dream of them. Dream of a life where this might be my home. It cannot be, and so that makes it safe to indulge in the fantasy.
Night comes, and I wake just past midnight, smelling smoke. I leap out of bed, whirling to confront my tormenter. Yet he is not there. The house stays silent, only that faint smell of smoke tickling past.
Using my cane, I creep into the hall. I listen first at Mrs. Morant’s door and then at her nephew’s, waiting until I hear slow and relaxed breathing. Then I go downstairs and make a round of the main level until I am absolutely certain we are alone and no fire hides in some corner. Only once I am sure do I return to my room, crawl back under the covers and fall asleep.
Five more days and nights pass in the same way. Days that I embrace as I have never embraced life before. From breakfast with Dr. Morant to gardening with his aunt, from tending to the raven to assisting Tillie with her chores, from accompanying Dr. Morant on his visits to learning herbal lore from Mrs. Morant. Then the day winds down in the parlor with raucous games or quiet reading.
Night comes, and at the same time each evening, just past midnight, I wake smelling smoke. I check on the Morants and then scour the house for fire. I never see my pursuer, but I am convinced he is out there, sending the smell of smoke.
Something prevents him from doing more, but he will, once he is able. He will burn the house down with everyone in it.
Soon, that smoke whispers.
Soon.
Perhaps I should heed the warning and flee. I do not. I will not. As long as he is kept at bay by whatever magic infuses this place, I will seize these days and live them to the fullest. I will build memories he cannot steal and then, when he returns, I will flee and Dr. Morant and his aunt will be safe.