forever
This story came to me, almost fully formed, in a dream a few years ago. Well, I say dream; I should rightly say nightmare. If, like me, you’re easily scared by things that go bump in the night, maybe treat this one with caution. Otherwise, enjoy.
Anna could not help but pause, the fingers of her right hand trembling slightly in the cold while reaching out to the narrow half-open gate. There was no question: there was something familiar about the rusted and overgrown ironwork; the path beyond indistinguishable in the deep shade under the rhododendrons.
She frowned as the memory swept past her, just out of reach. The old manor house stood apart from the town where she had always lived, only a high wall betraying its presence to motorists passing out into the countryside. The main gate, and this smaller one, were only accessible from a little-used side-road. Intrepid ramblers might sometimes park opposite, as Anna had done — and wonder who lived behind the iron, the stone and the bushes.
Perhaps she had stood here once, in her rebellious youth; and perhaps her adoptive parents had called her away, to follow them on another interminable walk in the hills.
This time Anna was here, not to touch the mystery with impetuous boldness and pass on — but to enter fully into it, and so dispel it.
Because there was a story here, she knew it. She shivered, and pushed aside her disquiet with a force that also drove her a short step forward. If she was going to finally escape her job at the local paper and make it as a journalist, she needed a story.
Her trainers sunk a little into the leaf-mould beyond the gate; and when she shuffled obstinately forward, watching the ground, unseen branches above tangled in her hair. She ducked and flailed to release them, and so found herself stumbling suddenly out of the line of bushes.
There it was, square and dark against the sky. Anna regarded it through her eyebrows as she re-fixed her ponytail. It was as run-down as the gate and bushes had suggested, dirty and ivy-grown. But not ruined, certainly. None of the masonry had crumbled, and all the windows were in place. If it was abandoned, as Anna had feared, it could only have been ten or fifteen years at most.
She pushed into the tall meadow ahead, which must once have been a lawn. What she knew so far, she had bought, with lunch, from a friend at the land registry: the last change of ownership was by inheritance, twenty-five years ago. The inheritor—the new rightful Lady of the Manor—had been the only resident after that. Was she still here?
Anna’s feet now crunched slightly on gravel hidden by the weeds and mulch. She had previously considered what she would say, at the door; but now she sighed with resignation. There would be no-one. She would have to face the choice: trespass, even break and enter, in search of the Lady’s story; or return to the council’s microfiche archives to try and find it there instead.
The main door, cracked and peeling, stood at the top of a short but grand flight of steps. The recent rain had puddled on the exposed stone among cracks and dirt that homed sprawling thistles. When she reached the landing Anna turned to survey the way she had come, vaguely aware that she was putting off the inevitable.
She raised her eyes to the line of hills that surmounted the wilderness of the garden. Once again, she paused in déja vu, but dismissed it immediately. After all, she saw those hills every day. It had been exciting to plan coming here; but somehow now, even her usual sense of adventure seemed to have abandoned her. She shuffled her feet so she could scan the door-frame for an unlikely bell.
However, her eyes were drawn straight to the door itself. The side nearest to her—was half-open.
She took an involuntary step backward. Had it been open, before? No! She would never have turned her back to it. Surely? Her mind seemed to be paralysed as her memory, of the door as she approached, refused to coalesce; while her instincts raged at her to flee.
“Hello?” she croaked, automatically. Her own voice sounded terrified but rational, and she clung to it. So, recovering her balance, she said again, louder, “Hello?”
How incredible it would be, to find someone still living here, after all! A Lady, reduced to a frightened hermit in her own Manor? Or squatters, of course. Or fugitives… Anna’s hand clasped over the pocket with her mobile phone. She glanced back. Even if she was caught before she reached the gates, she might still be able to make an emergency call. She had kept it a secret that she was coming here — how stupid that now seemed!
And somehow, the silence of the wind rushing in the trees was worse than any threatening vagrant. It oppressed her; fed her indecision and fear. But also, it was another explanation for the door, however unlikely.
So now she watched herself, incredulous, as she took another step, and laid her hand on the wood near the hinge, to push, and peer into the darkness. Her voice seemed tiny as she tried a final time: “Is anyone there?”
There was no movement within. The fragments of troubled air that reached Anna’s face were cold and dry, and hinted of dust. She felt nauseous with a child-like fear; but another feeling was asserting itself now: a feeling that seemed to wrap her in its protection, not quashing the fear—even, accepting it—but neutralising its power. Her heart hammered and her thoughts leaped crazily, from wonder at herself, to picturing the mysterious Lady, to other images she could not allow to properly form.
The light inside the manor house was not as poor as it had at first seemed, and so now that she stood fully in the doorway she could see the grey vestibule beyond. There were some scattered leaves on the chequerboard tiled floor, but the oak panelling, the carved mahogany chairs, and the nearby grand staircase—they might simply be waiting for the return of life: frocks and bonnets, and coats swirling away from shoulders, and dogs and children underfoot, and laughter and orders for the servants.
Anna shuffled forward, now intent and fascinated. The movement of the room in her vision did not seem related to her own steps, as though it were a recording she watched from the comfort of elsewhere. The crystal chandelier caught her eye, and held it as she approached beneath: in its hazy sparkles were captured tantalising glimpses of the life and light she had imagined, and forgotten warmth that contrasted savagely with the bitter cold of the air.
She felt heady with excitement. Whether or not there was a story to be found here, she was, for now, subsumed in this thrilling moment of discovery, of adventure. She turned a slow circle, looking for a clue where to go next, taking in the evocative features of the vestibule; dimly aware of how they seemed to speak directly to her. There was a narrow ornamental table to the left, between two impressive doors; she was drawn to the details of its carving and its brass-work, and found that she had moved to it, and her fingers were brushing dust from its cold, varnished surface.
Still without thought, with only feeling, she dropped her hand further to touch and then tug gently on one of its drawers. It slid open easily with the slightest scuffing of wood, a sound that nevertheless seemed to fill the empty, silent space around. Inside was nothing but a piece of paper, crudely cut out, as by a child, into the shape of a girl.
Anna had her other hand to her mouth, as she reached down to lift the barely-yellowed paper. This small artefact had already touched her heart, so that she fought to control sudden tears. But then as she caught its corner and lifted, she saw that the paper had been folded many times, and a trail of identical girls followed her fingers.
With a whimper she unclenched them, and the girls dropped back into the drawer. But her whole awareness seemed to follow them, so that she felt herself collapsing down too, as into the darkness of a tunnel.
There was a thump as the drawer shut. Anna was in the hall, stumbling backwards; the remnants of her cry of fear echoing into the distant places of the manor house. Then the quiet returned like a shroud, and she stood, panting frantically, under the chandelier once more.
She tried to control her breathing as panic swirled over and around her. In her mind, battle raged. Why had she been so affected, by so mundane a thing? What child had lived here? Who closed the drawer?
Silence, grey light, neglected things. With force of will, she levered her hand away from her mouth; even attempted a tight and empty smile. How silly, she said to herself; how hysterical. If she was going to make it as a grown-up journalist—as anything grown-up at all—she would have to act like one.
On impulse, she even fumbled with her coat to find her little-used notepad, and clasped it like a talisman as she moved deliberately forward, to one side of the stairs. Vaguely, she thought to seek out some kind of back room or study; but also, the part-glazed door ahead somehow seemed less oppressive than the ornate portals on either hand.
The door scuffed against the floor when she pulled at it, perhaps warped by time and damp, even jamming completely when half-open. It was enough for Anna to squeeze through, but already she was inwardly cursing her decision. But, as though she were being watched by a critical audience, she could not stop herself following through with it.
Pond-like darkness; dull white paint; swollen lead piping. She swore again, aloud. This obviously led to the servants’ domain. Interesting, perhaps, but unlikely to yield much by way of records, or other clues to the Lady’s fate.
And yet, there was something here, on the edge of her consciousness, brushing gently but painfully on the tips of her raw nerves. At first it was just a feeling, but it made her freeze, half-turned, the mist of her breath swirling in the disturbed air. It resolved slowly, perhaps because of its strangeness, into a sound; a sound so quiet that she would never have heard it, or even believed she had heard it, but for the utter silence of the place.
Voices. Immediately, she thought again of squatters. But these sounds, almost wholly inaudible, did not evoke the talk, or argument, of a few. Anna was absolutely still. No, they were many; like a crowd beyond an invisible horizon. A crowd of people, crying out.
This time, the panic could not be quashed by reason, or dismissed by humour, or limited by any unaccountable reassurance. Anna rebounded back out through the half-open servants’ door, her frantic breath dragging on her vocal chords to reflect and amplify the hidden host’s lament.
And when she saw the Lady, standing quite still under the chandelier, she screamed.
Basic instinct made her try to hide, and she collided with the wood panelling beside her that rose with the stairs. Trying at the same time to be invisible and keep her eyes on the apparition, she squirmed and peered over the sloping bottom rail of the balustrade.
For a long moment, silence returned, broken only by the rush of Anna’s sobbing breath.
“I am sorry,” offered the Lady, one palm raised slightly at her side. Her elocution was perfect, her manner benign. “You mustn’t go in there. Not yet.”
Anna didn’t understand this strange admonition; but it entered her mind as a gentle consolation that immediately calmed and uplifted her. Wondering a little at herself, she emerged slightly from hiding.
The Lady smiled. Her appearance was timeless: blonde curls, and a light, floral dress, wholly inappropriate to the cold, but somehow perfectly fitting under the crystal of the chandelier. And so, so beautiful.
Anna croaked; cleared her throat; managed: “Lady Somers?”
The Lady inclined her head. “How generous of you, to afford me my title,” she commented. “Some might say”—she swept her arm in an arc to encompass the hall—“my manor no longer befits it.”
The motion was executed with all the grace and theatre of ballet: from the turned palm with little finger uppermost, to the way the Lady’s dress swirled a few degrees around her legs. Anna was captivated, and only the lingering nausea of fear reminded her of the moments past. Somehow, whether the Lady were real or not, did not matter.
Anna coughed again, uncertain; although the calm smile upon the face of the Lady seemed to suggest that she felt no awkwardness in waiting for Anna to speak.
“Do you live here… alone?” she tried, querulously.
“Oh no,” replied the Lady, her voice so exquisitely controlled. “That is, I do not live here, at all. I died some years ago. This place: it is now merely my prison.”
Anna had whimpered, and the Lady continued, with both palms now lifted at her sides: “Please don’t be afraid. But to complete answering your question: yes, I am…”—and now she seemed to lose just a fraction of her composure—“lonely.”
Anna was a hollow vessel in which feelings ricocheted like fireworks, entangling in streams of vibrant colour. Fear the most powerful of all, but also excitement, and a kind of nostalgia, exchanging sparks with pity, and also another: bright, alluring, and nameless.
“How long… I mean,” she stammered. “How did…” She remembered her notebook, but found it was no longer in her hand. Reflexively, she glanced down and back, then cried out when she saw the door behind her was fully closed; with no sign it had ever been opened.
When she looked up again, the Lady was not there. Once again Anna gave herself over to panic, and fled, skirting around the vestibule in a blur of tears, to the front door, which still stood ajar.
As she passed out into the blinding rain, she thought she heard the voice of the Lady, saying, “Please return, soon. Please.”
When they finally kissed, Anna knew that what she felt was love. It had always been.
They had both stood, on impulse, from their chairs at the table where they so often talked, and found themselves facing one another, only inches apart. And then Anna had been suddenly lost in the Lady’s shining, slightly transparent eyes; and could not help herself.
They could not touch, of course, in any physical sense. But their connection had grown so deep, over the weeks, that Anna’s imagination had begun to fill in the details of every chance meeting of fingers, every brush of clothes. And so the energy of the Lady’s lips was there, perfectly there, even if their reality was long gone.
Somehow, it made the kiss purer, deeper, more spiritual than Anna had ever envisaged a kiss could be. Her toes were clenched with effort to prevent her from toppling forward, but nevertheless she was falling, endlessly, her stomach tight with exhilaration, her mind a blissful blank.
That eternity might have been only heartbeats, or breathless minutes. But gradually, a feeling of absurdity grew in her consciousness; and at once, she wondered whether the Lady was even there any more. The betrayal of that thought made Anna open her eyes; and there she was, smiling slightly with a kind of delight.
Anna’s mouth twitched in reply; then she looked down at her own uselessly hanging arms, intertwining her fingers nervously.
“That was most,” began the Lady softly, then paused, and finished, “touching.”
Anna grinned again, wryly. “I’ve never kissed a ghost,” she observed. Then another thought struck her, and she wondered why it never had before. “Nor anyone.”
“Well then,” said the Lady, and her voice carried a little of the effortless command she could so easily summon. “We had best make up for that privation.”
Anna was aware, so aware, of the desire that she felt, that could no longer be quashed or ignored. Her breath was strangely hurried. “I want you,” she gasped in a whisper, still addressing the floor. “I can’t believe…” She shook her head, to banish the indecision; then raised her eyes, and concluded, “I love you.”
“And I you,” concurred the Lady, without hesitation; perhaps even some relief. “I have been quite affected, since I first met you. Hush,” she instructed, as Anna’s eyes betrayed some sudden doubt. “Come.” And she turned half away, hand elegantly raised to invite Anna to follow. “We have waited long enough.”
Then she was gliding away, over the dusty parquet which betrayed the many comings and goings of Anna’s trainers, her dress floating around her legs in some other air.
Anna followed, the anomaly of her love seeming to colour the place, as though she stepped gradually into a vision of how it must once have been, a sparse but elegant dining room lit with soft crystal and warm hearts. Her own heart was clear, beating like the chiming of bells; but her mind seemed to dance out of her control. The errant thought that had checked her a moment ago—that she knew the Lady had once had a lover—seemed to explode into confused shards. How could she replace that lost love? How dare she? What had that woman been, to the Lady?
The high door swept open to release the Lady into the hall, and Anna instinctively hurried to pass through while it remained open. She had become used to the way the doors obeyed the Lady’s command—but if Anna tried them, were creaky and truculent, or just outright jammed. She had often wondered why the Lady could touch the house, but not her. But when she mentioned it the Lady had simply looked pained, and Anna had hastily moved on.
Now, the Lady ascended the grand staircase ahead, slowly, not looking back. Anna cast an uneasy glance at the servants’ door, as she always did; although recently, it had felt more like a habit. Then she followed, watching the Lady now, mesmerised by the way she blended in, not with the dust and the cold, but with the timeless spirit of the manor.
How strange, to have the world become so immaterial, and a ghost so real; to accept her, even to love her, while the daily trappings of life waned to nothing. Anna bit her lip as she thought how her friends and colleagues had begun to question her absences from her normal pursuits; and, if they might accept her cagey hints that she was ‘working through’ some mental health issues, she was not really sure how near it was to the truth.
She didn’t care. Not now that her love was accepted, and free to grow. Anna smiled to herself to banish whatever doubts remained, and followed her Lady.
The master bedroom had always been a highlight of the manor house for Anna. Somehow here it was easier to see through the crumbling decor, the dust and the sadness, to the small, personal signs of humanity: the night-dress mouldering on a velvet chair; the one wardrobe door forgotten open; the wooden toy dog abandoned at the foot of the bed.
But like the paper chain in the downstairs drawer, that dog always had a shocking, disproportionate effect on Anna. Just a glance at it could bring her to the cusp of tears; so that she found herself avoiding this room, and shoring up her emotional defences when she did come. It was difficult to know whether the Lady felt the same; in fact Anna sometimes found herself wondering how the Lady could be so composed.
Because she knew that Lady had not only lost her lover; but also her child, that terrible day many years ago, when they had both disappeared.
Now, Anna did not glance; but all of the feelings that this house had ever provoked seemed to culminate and resolve in this moment. The Lady had stopped, still facing away to the windows, and with delicate fingertips she was lifting the dress from her shoulders.
Fright; excitement; sorrow; and now, desperate, desperate desire, to touch, to hold. The dress crumpled around the Lady’s feet, and she was naked but for the tumultuous fall of her golden hair.
Silhouette of cheek, tip of nose, twitch of lips, and the Lady whispered: “I want you also.”
Anna took a step forward, her breath gasping with emotion; and she felt the door behind her swish and click closed. She blurted, “but, we can’t. You’re…”
“I can change that,” said the Lady, turning, and gliding closer. Her body was dark, but for its aura of dust-stained sunlight, and Anna strained, despite herself, to see its beautiful detail. “I can become real, for you.”
Then she was close, so close; her palms had come up to cup Anna’s chin, and her face, her lips, filled Anna’s sight.
Still, there was no touch. But the Lady’s very presence was a fire which Anna reached out to, sighing for release, her hands grasping at the empty air. There was an otherworldly heat in the overlap of their bodies: thighs and navels, breasts and lips. Anna kissed forward hungrily; stumbled a step; and the incandescence filled her form completely.
The Lady’s delighted laughter seemed to come from within Anna’s own head; and she laughed too, wondering at the crazed lust that made her tear off her own hoodie and tee shirt in a single convulsion. The Lady was behind her now; Anna could feel a burning in her fingers as she unclasped her own bra.
The Lady hummed with approval; then the shock of the room’s cold air fell upon Anna’s breasts and her arms instinctively rose to gather them up, her wrists crossing over her chest; and she saw and felt the Lady’s shining forearms wrap around her also.
For an infinite moment she stood still, amazed at what she was doing, awed at the sensations that entwined her body and mind.
“Let me guide you,” said the Lady softly over her shoulder, fractional hoarseness colouring her exquisite intonation. “Your hands, my hands.” And her palms rose a little away from Anna’s body, suggesting. But Anna bit her lip; because with understanding came a sliver of disappointment. Must her own touch be the only consummation of their love?
But the Lady continued, “Trust me”; and Anna obligingly lifted her hands to overlap them with her’s, saying “Yes, my Lady,” with a tiny breath of forced laughter.
“Clara,” corrected the Lady, her voice a step warmer than Anna had heard it before. “Call me Clara.”
Anna closed her eyes to the wave of yearning that threatened to overwhelm her, more powerful even than the burning presence and touch of the Lady. But she also felt the fire in her hands become irregular: she glanced at them, saw that the Lady’s hands were moving, fingertips striving upward.
For a moment she tracked them carefully by sight; but when they reached her face, she sighed and shut her eyes once more. Her head was leaning onto the palm of one hand, lips reaching for the fingers of the other, her arms still pressing into her own nakedness; and Anna wondered if she could survive the miracle of this moment.
“Clara,” she breathed, in wonder; and she felt for certain the smile that tightened the lips of her lover, because they were upon her shoulder: their presence, shorn of physicality, was pure desire. And when fingertips rounded above her ear and caressed slowly down onto her neck, she no longer knew whether they were her own, or the touch of a spectre.
She was trembling, weakening; and gasping for some greater realisation that she could not conceive. The Lady whispered again, so softly: “I can be real,” and Anna’s heart clamoured to have it so.
“I can take you back,” said the Lady, more insistently; her palm was wrapped over Anna’s breast. “Come back with me. To when I was alive.”
Anna whimpered at the raw, unfettered, and unidentifiable emotions that swept around and through her mind, confusing everything except the burning of the Lady’s shape at her back. Her eyes had opened, somehow, and gazed upon the grey, cold, empty room; but detached, as at a photograph, as though she was no longer there, but somehow already in that alternate reality of Clara, the Lady of the Manor.
She shivered suddenly, a violent tremor like a desperate reminder from her corporeal body; and one of the feelings resolved with it, into distant terror. She was wrapped in the arms of a ghost, it seemed to cry from afar; a ghost who would take her away: from life, into death.
And yet it seemed that here, in the arms of the Lady, was life; death was out there, in the dust and the rot, and the endless hopeless humdrum of Anna’s old existence. No-one had ever made her feel such desire, such passion, such love; no-one out there had ever connected with her so completely; no-one even missed her, or cared enough to question more closely her disappearances. No-one was looking for her, now.
“But how,” she murmured, perhaps seeking only to quash what little doubt remained. “What about… your lover?”
The Lady’s body had faded, and now she rounded into Anna’s view; but her hand still rested on Anna’s breast. Anna watched it as it twisted slightly, withdrawing her own hand when their juxtaposition became awkward; still feeling its presence, as otherworldly desire made visible. And now there was the nearness of the Lady’s own breasts: delicate, pointed, richly glowing, fair and deathly.
“You will be my lover,” the Lady whispered, just as a tear fell from Anna’s eye, to disappear swiftly between them. “You can be her. I can make it so.”
And then she was closer again: beautiful, perfect; their bodies touching without touch. Reflexively, Anna’s hands reached out; they found empty air, and fell unrewarded onto her own hips, twitching uselessly.
But the Lady seemed to smile, and said: “Yes, my love. Be with me now. Don’t be ashamed of what you wish.”
Somehow one of Anna’s hands now curled over her groin, and she gasped at the physical pressure that joined the burning closeness of the Lady’s loins. She found herself to be fiercely, agitatedly aroused; and her own touch was like a flame to a fuse. She groaned, and her eyes drunk deep of the Lady’s lips, and neck, and body.
What magic was this, what witchcraft, what spell, that made her fall to her knees, and release the button of her jeans, and tuck her hand inside, and bring her fingers into her wetness, and masturbate; so furiously, so desperately, watching her lover standing over her, graceful yet in her victory?
And when the moment came, so soon, like the sudden rush of moonlit tide onto a parched beach, Anna could feel some other force take hold of her, and of time itself, and slow it, and stop it. Her orgasm exploded into a static maelstrom of power; then, she saw herself back out of the room, accelerating crazily; saw the dust swirl, and the light rise and fall, rise and fall, faster, faster, until it was a flicker, then it was lost to an indistinct haze into which everything faded and disappeared. Ecstasy built upon ecstasy, until she could bear no more, and she was gone.
“There is only one condition,” said the Lady’s voice. “You must not, ever, leave the grounds of the manor. It is my will that binds you; just as I am bound, to this place. Break this one rule, and you will return, and I will die once more.
“When you awake, you will awake with me, my love. So sleep now. I will kiss you in the morning.”
Anna loved the late Summer most of all. The cold rising from the very foundations of the manor house was at its least penetrating, and sometimes even a balm to overheated feet, pattering into the vestibule from the blazing sunshine. Never the servants’ feet of course, nor Clara’s: their need for formality was too ingrained, and Anna had, eventually, learned to respect it.
But for herself, and for little Belle, anything went. They were sisters-in-arms in the good fight against rules of any kind. Every room was a play-room, every floor a race-track, every flower-bed a jungle to be explored. The only place that had remained firmly out of bounds was the servants’ quarters themselves.
They might hide in the rhododendrons, giggling, their backs speckled with golden sunshine, from an oblivious gardener rolling the immaculate lawn; before pelting across it when his back was turned-only to have their stealth ruined by their own laughing cries of hurt as they crossed the sharp gravel of the drive. And then: up the steps, and turn, holding hands, to stick their tongues out at the lonely gardener, and then dive victorious into the cool of the indoors.
Once, this game had been abruptly truncated outside the main door. Belle had stopped, bringing Anna to a halt at the end of the span of their arms.
“What’s that, Mamma?” she said, pointing above the garden and the bushes, when Anna turned back to her.
Anna knew what the growing child could see, of course. A tiny thrill of memory passed over her, coloured with an inevitable sadness.
“Those are hills,” she answered simply.
“Can we go see?”
Anna sighed. She had never questioned the conditions of her pact with Clara, blissfully content as they were in the soft reality of each other’s arms. But the miraculous arrival of Belle had created an unspoken question, that Anna had never yet allowed to fully form in her mind.
“One day,” she replied. “Now,” she continued forcibly, “we’ve got to conquer this castle, remember?”
But as the months passed, it became harder to distract the little girl from the expanding bubble of her awareness. It could be simply wondering where some of their food came from, or a lingering glance down the drive, or, increasingly, questions about the outside world, asked with a childish directness that was a razor to Anna’s heart.
Clara did not seem at all affected by any concern over Belle’s future. In this, as in all things, she was calmly reasonable; a gentle laying of her hand onto Anna’s enough to subdue Anna’s worry and tip her back into blissful love. Of the two of them, Anna was more the mother: having borne the baby for those short months after the incredible discovery of her pregnancy, she had also nursed her, and so slipped willingly into an almost conventional role.
The servants, so familiar and comforting, were like Belle’s extended family: the younger girls merrily taking on the role of elder sisters, the butler and housekeeper the avuncular educators and the nearest approximation to disciplinarians. So Anna’s days were gloriously filled with contentment: homely pursuits, and play, and walks with the Lady of the Manor, hand in hand through the groves and out onto the fields of the estate, among the sheep and the oaks.
Now, it was summer again. Anna had spent the early morning with her watercolours in the orangery; Clara had arrived, with Belle, and for a moment they had looked on, the Lady gently shushing their daughter until Anna was ready. Anna was so charmed by the little scene that she could barely maintain her serious face of concentration; but then, Belle had been distracted by some paper and scissors, and Clara had sat with her to help.
Anna’s brow dipped a fraction. For a few days Clara had seemed distracted: coming and going with unusual haste, and speaking with a distinct clipped edge to her beautiful elocution. More than ever, she was insistent on the many formalities of the manor; a little harder with the servants, but even more attentive to Anna. Their love-making had been more intense and sensuous than ever, even since those first incredible days here in the living past of the manor.
Anna had no explanation, and had not sought one. Something spoke to her of a new urgency, a new readiness in Clara. For what, she did not know; and somehow, that very opaqueness seemed to darken Anna’s thoughts, like a foreshadow of dust and cold.
A small shout of excitement from the other table made her glance there. Belle’s craft seemed to be reaching some kind of conclusion; and then, just as suddenly, the little girl was up and bounding over.
“Come see!” she cried; but Anna saw that Clara’s hand was raised.
“Not yet,” said the Lady. “It’s not finished.”
“Aw.” Belle always seemed to take Clara’s pronouncements as final, unlike Anna’s. But then she brightened at a new thought, and leaned both hands into the apron on Anna’s lap. “Play now?”
Anna chuckled, partly to try and dismiss the shadow that had fallen on her mood. “Okay.”
Together, they passed through the drawing room and into the vestibule, where the sun was casting blinding light onto the tiles through the high windows on either side of the main door. Anna skipped ahead and tugged it open, allowing the brightness to wash her clean.
When she turned, the hall seemed very dark. Clara was kneeling to speak with Belle, holding one tiny hand with both of hers; then letting her free as though releasing a dove; and Anna started at the stab of some strange and deep emotion.
But Belle scampered delightedly past her and through the doorway, shouting, “come on!” at the top of her tiny voice.
Anna knew the girl was still too small to take the steps at speed, so she took a moment to settle herself, gazing back at the Lady, who merely stood, serene and still, at the side of the hall; not far from the spot where Anna had first seen her, so long ago. Only now, she was real, and did not glow, but instead seemed to fade.
“I love you,” Anna said simply, and it felt like a weak attempt to salve her own confusion.
“And I, you,” replied the Lady, with steel-edged sincerity. “I will love you, forever.”
But the feeling of wrongness was not assuaged. If anything, it grew. Anna felt unaccountably cold; remembered Belle, outside by herself. She turned.
The little girl was nowhere to be seen. Anna jumped; hurried to the top of the steps. “Belle?”
Perhaps, a movement in the bushes. Probably, Anna’s own worst fear. She threw herself down the steps, calling more loudly; crossed the drive at a sprint, then the lawn.
Into the bushes; ahead a sudden, quiet, but terrifying creak; it could only be the small, little used, iron gate.
Gasping the butler’s name now, Anna arrived. Belle was still holding onto the bars of the gate with both hands, but on the outside, a grin of excited impudence on her elfin features.
But something else had begun. Anna had felt a tug, now a pull, now a tearing, a rush of pain, as though some demonic creature were grasping at her very skeleton, dragging her away. She saw Belle’s face turn surprised, then petrified. Anna was ensconced in the maelstrom, and she saw her daughter crying, looking around; then pattering away aimlessly, on macabre fast forward.
As the agony grew unbearable, Anna screamed: “No! I didn’t leave! I didn’t leave the grounds!”
Night fell, the days flashed, and then blurred. And then, there was nothing.
Until now. The pain is gone; but the cold reaches even deeper. Anna sways on her feet. The edged black-on-white shadows reveal little, but, she hears the voices. Closer now; even more raw, more desperate. She is back in the servants’ corridor, but now, at the far end. She can see her own notepad, strewn on the floor; and the door, slowly, silently, closing.
The voices are behind her. She cannot turn. She cannot flee. Her mouth falls open to scream, but no sound comes, only tears. And still the voices cry out, at her very back.
The Lady is there now, gliding into the corridor, saying aside, “Please return, soon.” Her beautiful, deathly glow brings a shimmer to the whitewashed walls.
She stops before Anna; reaches out to her chin; but there is no touch, only fire.
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for returning, Annabelle.”
And now, finally, Anna turns; and her cries join the thousand replicas of herself, gathered there.
Trapped in forever.