Autumn (4 page)

             
No one in the dining room had noticed the incident and Arabel was glad. She was tired of people staring at her, fussing over her, ignoring her and then whispering cruelly behind her back. It was hard to bear sometimes. Arabel glanced at Eli.

             
He was strange, but no longer a stranger. She gave him a tremulous smile.

             
“It’s watching me, you know.” Arabel said, and Eli regarded her solemnly. “It knows I can feel it.” Arabel looked away, no longer able to bear even Eli’s kind eyes upon her. Arabel felt as if he could see right into her core and it was disconcerting.

             
“I don’t know how to stop it.”

             
“We’ll find him tomorrow,” Eli promised. “We’ll go to every door if we have to.”

             
Arabel didn’t answer. She was already afraid it would be too late.

             
She could see the man in front of her, he was walking briskly. She struggled to keep up. She was carrying a large bag and it was heavy, so heavy that she wanted to put it down and forget about it. Leave it behind and continue on, faster, faster, and catch up with the man. She was losing him! He was running, his legs so much longer than hers. And then someone else, coming up from behind to drag her down. On the ground, the russet leaves a faint cushion, the earth cold and unyielding. The second person, choking her. Hands on her neck, tighter and tighter.

             
She was screaming with no sound. Her throat was constricted. The contents of the heavy bag lie all over the forest floor. Apples and peaches and carrots and potatoes. She struggled in horror, staring wildly at the shiny red apples as they rolled away. Her legs kicked out uselessly and her hands and nails clawed at the person behind her. She tried to turn, she tried to breathe. Grey and black overcoming her. Laughter. There were two of them and they were laughing, jeering at her.

             
“Thought you were so clever, didn’t you?” one of them said, his voice guttural, deep, and fully without conscience. “Teach you for meddling!”

             
More laughter, more tight fingers upon her throat, someone grasping her dress, the sound of ripping material. Horror and unspeakable pain. Under her nails, skin and blood. And then –

             
Arabel awoke with her heart pounding. She didn’t know where she was. The room was dark and she was in bed, but the horror remained although she knew she was alone. This wasn’t the first time Arabel had encountered the dream but this time it had gone further. It usually ended with the apples rolling away from her, her transfixed gaze upon the shiny red skin. Now she knew more of the story.

             
But Arabel didn’t know if it was her own personal tale or the channelled vision of an unknown woman. Arabel could never see herself in the dream, so she didn’t know if she had become Lady X, or if it was a product of her own subconscious imagination. Or if it was a nightmare still headed toward her.

             
The heavy velvet draperies concealed the dawn and Arabel could not stand the darkness any longer. She crept out of bed, slowly, tiredly, feeling the adrenalin finally slowing down within her veins. Arabel brushed the curtains aside and stood at the double windows, staring down into the courtyard of the Inn. A few people were scurrying about in the early morning light and the day was officially beginning.

             
There was no time to lose, Arabel realized. Last night they’d learned nothing, though they’d questioned the staff and perused the other dwellers at the Inn.

             
The most common consensus was the rumour Eli had already spoken of: Lady X had been leaving her husband for her lover and she’d been caught and choked to death. It was a grim tale but many who spoke of it seemed to relish the dark details in the way that only the small minded and cruel can do. Arabel had met no one who appeared to have any connection to the man with the dull grey eyes, nor was he the figure in her nightmare. It was all too confusing, really, and Arabel felt a deep sadness engulf her.

             
The ghost in grey passed through Arabel’s body on its way to peer endlessly out the window and Arabel felt the chill of its passing within herself. The spectre continued her pacing and Arabel wondered at the futility of her quest – her own, and the spectre’s. Arabel was trying to keep the negative energy away and focus on what she’d come to do but it seemed to be proving harder each step of the way.

             
And then Arabel shook her head. Such nonsense! She would do what she could and that was all she could do. The dead would have to be satisfied with that.

             
Arabel washed and dressed and went down for breakfast.

             
She was not surprised to see Eli already in the dining room, eagerly consuming hot porridge with cinnamon and a cup of strong tea. He took one look at Arabel and the welcoming light in his eyes dimmed.

             
“You didn’t rest well?” Eli asked.

             
“I did just fine until the dawn. And then two men tried to rape and kill me,” Arabel replied evenly.

             
Eli started. “What?”

             
“A dream. A nasty, nasty dream,” Arabel elaborated.

             
The server came by and Arabel ordered the same as Eli and within minutes was eating the nourishing meal.

             
“They’re not going to scare me away,” she continued, “although they think they’ll be able to.”

             
“Were either of them the man we’re looking for?”

             
Arabel shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. And that’s the strange part. Who are they and are they figments of my imagination, or a nightmare of events yet to come?”

             
Eli was worried, Arabel could see it. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. 

             
“Perhaps you should go to Chief Constable Bartlin after all,” Eli suggested but Arabel could tell it was only a half-hearted idea. Even Eli didn’t really think it would help solve anything. It would only create further trouble and shift the focus away from the important matter of finding the killer of Lady X.

             
Arabel was about to say so when a wild-eyed young woman rushed into the dining room. Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the room, panic in every motion.

             
“My sister!” she cried loudly. “My sister Klara, she’s missing!”

             
Several dining room patrons jumped to their feet to question the woman and a server motioned them away into the hall. Arabel felt her heart drop to her feet.

             
“Oh no,” she whispered as a chill settled over her. “Already…”

             
Eli put down his tea and got to his feet. “I’ll get the horses,” he said and exited quickly.

             
Arabel finished the last two bites of her porridge. It had cooled but the cinnamon was so cheery that it seemed to serve as a rebuke against any semblance of complacency. How fanciful I have become, Arabel thought to herself. Let that brightness serve as a weapon, a resistance to this evil. Let my very fancifulness work toward my goal. Let this light protect me from the darkness of man, the mendacity of needless hatred and the coming horror of further murder.

             
Arabel vowed to herself that she would not give in to the sorrow which threatened to overtake her and numb her abilities to observe, partake and share. You will not win, she threatened the grey swirling energy and she pushed back from the table, eager to help the townsfolk by joining in the search for the missing girl.

             
Magpie Moor was desolate, to Arabel’s mind. It was a vast tract of open, peaty wasteland. High in latitude, the drainage was poor and the few houses who had dared to adorn the bleak vista looked as miserable as the grey sky with its spitting rain. Arabel and Eli joined a search party of sixty people, further broken down into groups of ten. All were on horseback which would enable them to scout farther distances. Back at the Rosewood Inn, others were moving over the grounds on foot with bloodhounds to look for anything the riders might miss.

             
The sister of the missing girl wept openly as they rode and was in Arabel and Eli’s group of ten.

             
“She just went out to check on our horses,” she said through sobs and Arabel’s heart went out to her in sorrowful solidarity.

             
Another member of the group rode beside the woman and sought to comfort her but Arabel knew such comfort was a small and cold embrace and would do little to thaw the terror which consumed the woman. Arabel hoped that the nightmare she’d had earlier was not a vision of Klara’s sisters’ fate.

             
“Spread out and search in pairs,” the man in charge yelled to the group and Arabel and Eli moved off in the direction he gestured them to.

             
The moor was silent; it seemed bare of all creatures. The heath grew stoutly and seemed to be the only vegetation the landscape would allow. Whipsie’s broad back felt reassuring to Arabel and the roan seemed to be as determined as her rider to locate and rescue the missing girl.

             
“She can’t have gotten far,” Eli said, a worried frown displacing his normally pleasant countenance. “She was only missing for less than half an hour before they galvanized the search crew.”

             
“On horseback though…”Arabel trailed off. Eli nodded grimly.

             
“Do you think it was planned? Or a crime of opportunity? If indeed, a crime has been committed and the girl hasn’t just wandered off and gotten lost,” Eli speculated.

             
“I don’t think the girl got herself lost,” Arabel answered bleakly, wishing her intuition was not telling her something dreadful had already happened. It was at times like these that she cursed the fickleness of her abilities. Why couldn’t she see what she wanted to see, when she wanted to see it? It had always been like this; a flash of knowing here, a psychic vision there, but no way to tame or regulate what or when. It was frustrating to have so little control over her own abilities and perceptions.

             
Arabel glanced at Eli. He returned her gaze, a question in his soft brown eyes.

             
“Did we only meet yesterday?” Arabel asked and Eli smiled.

             
“I think we met a long time ago,” was his response, and Arabel found herself smiling back.

             
“Indeed,” she said.

             
Nature seemed to conspire against the search party as the rain came down in a violent temper and thunder clouds rolled in to add to the fury. The thunder roared close to Arabel and while she normally enjoyed a good thunderstorm, she was usually observing from behind a paned glass window and not getting soaked on horseback. Lightning cracked the grey sky and darkness hovered though it was barely mid-day.

             
Arabel and Eli encountered no one else from the search party as they traversed the moor. They stopped to rest the horses near a soggy bog and Whipsie turned her great eyes upon Arabel, as if beseeching her for a respite from the elements.

             
“Sorry old dear,” Arabel said ruefully, “but I believe we’re out here for some time yet.”

             
“We’ll have to turn back in the next hour, though, if we’re to make it back to Murphy’s by nightfall,” Eli interjected.

             
Arabel started in surprise. She had completely forgotten they needed to return home tonight.

             
“You have to get back to work,“ she mused, “and I need to sneak in quietly and hope my grandmother doesn’t know I’ve been running around The Corvids with a strange young man, completely un-chaperoned!” Arabel’s lips twitched in a sudden break of humour as she pictured Amelia Bodean searching the house for her and noticing the unslept-in bed.

             
Eli grinned at Arabel. “I’ve seen your grandmother in town,” he drawled laconically. “She’s quite formidable.”

             
“Yes,” Arabel agreed without hesitation, “that she certainly is.”

             
They continued to search, only turning back when they encountered another pair of the party who also had come up with nothing. Discouraged, Arabel and the others led their mounts to the main meeting place and she noticed immediately that the mood was utterly desolate as no one had found any clues at all. Klara was still very much a missing person.

             
Back at the Rosewood Inn, the mood was darker and impatience and anger seemed to be mounting. A large, rough man addressed the proprietor in the lobby.