"What's become of you?"
she asked, softly, still moving around him, waiting for the
slightest sign that he was reverting back to his animal form, in
which case, guilt or no guilt, doubt or no doubt, she would pull
the trigger and send him to his grave, or the hell that might roar
beneath it. But he continued to weep, his hands slowly floating
away from a bowed head, the features streaked with
shadow.
"It was
him
," he said, snot
dripping from his nose. "
He
did this to me."
"Who?"
"Callow."
"Edgar Callow? He's dead.
Everyone knows that."
"No, Florence. He's
not."
She kept moving. "What
kind of a man has the power to come back to life? To do somethin'
like this to anyone?"
"There was a woman," he
said. "Edgar's wife. He brought her here from abroad and she was
poisoned, Florence. But we...we both loved her, as I'm sure every
foolish man who ever got close enough to look in her eyes loved
her. She was a witch, a harridan of the worst kind because she
delivered her evil into the hearts of men with mere glances,
moistened lips and night whispers, not spells and potions and
hexes. She was the mother of what I've become, the carrier of this
terrible disease that courses through me." He winced, and clutched
a hand to his chest, and when he bent over, fresh blood flowed from
the bullet hole on his back, just below his shoulder.
Instinct almost drove Mrs.
Fletcher to him then, but she resisted, using the image of the
monster he had been only moments before to give her strength.
Instead she took advantage of his pain and hurried around so she
was facing him and had her back to the door, exactly where she
wanted to be. Three steps and she would be out on the
landing.
"My dear
Florence..."
She could only hope the
pain meant he'd conceded, that it had forced him to embrace his
humanity again.
She only hoped she'd be
fast enough if it hadn't.
A chance, however, was
something she was not willing to take. She had served the master in
this house for decades. She had tended to his children when
business or illness had spirited him away. She had always been
loyal and yes, would gladly have given her life for him.
But this was not the man
she had served, and when it came down to it, the children would
always come first, those innocents who even now could be traipsing
across the dark moors, drawn only by the light of this house and
the comfort they knew resided within, the security they had grown
to know in her embrace. Despite its misfortunes, she and Mr. Grady
had made Mansfield House a haven, from all the bad things that
existed in the outside world, the things they would not yet need to
know about. The things their father had brought down upon them. In
his foolishness, he had become the embodiment of life's cruelty, of
everything that would shadow the children's steps as they made
their way through life, Mansfield House forgotten and crumbling at
their backs. All the trials and obstacles that would arise to foil
their happiness throughout their years stood bleeding before her.
He was a manifestation of her own loss and despair, all rolled up
and seasoned with the fear that she had failed her own children,
let them wander into the woods where unknown horrors waited to
gobble them up and reduce them to the sad, wistful thing she had
herself become.
Neil and Kate could not come home to
this.
To a father they worshiped and prayed
for with every whisper.
To a father now a ravenous beast that
might rend them to pieces with his teeth because his own
unfaithfulness had seen him cursed.
"Florence..." he said
again, and slowly turned around, his eyes catching the light. They
were dark red and swollen, like the eyes of a crushed rabbit.
"Florence..." A chastising tone had entered his voice. "Listen to
me. I'm dying. You have to help me. You know me, you know
I---"
"You've become something
from Hell," she said, flatly, still tugged by the need to forgive
him, to help him, but she realized that in all his years of
sleeping, her love for him had gathered dust. He was more a
stranger now, and that made it easier to say what she had to. "And
I can't say whether or not I trust you not to hurt your own
children."
"But Florence..." he
implored, trembling hands held out to her, close enough for his
fingertips to brush the barrel of the gun, forcing her to move back
another step lest he attempt to snatch the weapon from her. "Surely
you must know that wasn't the real
me?
It's this damned
disease!
And if I must
die because of it, then so be it, but it is of utmost importance
that
you
accept
the truth of the matter. Accept what your own two eyes have
beheld."
"They've beheld a
monster," she told him. "No matter what the costume. A man's heart
stays pure unless he lets it be tainted and I believe that's what
you've done." She nodded. "The world can't pay for your mistakes,
no more than I should expect it to pay for mine. I'm sorry. We all
pay for our sins eventually, whether here or in Heaven."
He made a sound that might
have been a laugh, or a sob. She couldn't be sure, but the muscles
in his neck tensed, stuck out like ropes beneath a silk sheet.
"Heaven," he scoffed. "So you're judging me, in the absence of God,
is that it? I look after you. I give you a home, wages and my
children to fawn over, and now you're standing there
judging me?
How
dare
you!"
"I'm sorry," she replied,
her own body steeling itself for violence. "Truly I am. You were
good to me, but by the look of you that goodness has run out, and I
can't let you hurt the children."
He straightened, his blood
tap-tapping on the floor, his skin so pale he looked made of
moonlight. "I would never
ever
hurt my children," he said, "No more than I would
hurt
you
for
suggesting it."
He took a step toward her and the air
changed as if some unseen laborer had strung invisible filaments
from wall to ceiling and made a harp of the room. Even the light
seemed to have to strain to penetrate it.
"I believe my master is
gone," Mrs. Fletcher said. "And you are merely an echo of his good
self, a shadow he left behind."
She took a deep breath,
held it and released it slowly, then moved back a few more feet to
the door, her eyes registering every ripple and twitch in his body,
waiting for the beast to forsake its costume and lunge at
her.
"Give me the rifle, you
whore," Mansfield said, a snarl, all too human, contorting his
face. Mrs. Fletcher closed one eye, checked her aim, and, satisfied
that he would not survive the shot, said, "Please forgive me,"
before she fired, the blast obliterating that snarl and everything
above it.
***
Like curious children,
wisps of ground fog curled out from behind the tors and hunkered
mounds of craggy rock and hurried across the moors. Starlight
limned the rain-soaked sprawls of fern and induced in the sphagnum
moss an almost ethereal glow. The moon had wrenched a shroud of
lightning-bruised clouds across its face denying the naked birch
their proud dominating silhouettes.
Grady shook his head in
frightened awe. Kate slowly backed away from the boy she had once
called her brother, the shock draining all life from her
face.
The naked men in the semicircle
exchanged delighted grins at her reaction.
Then Stephen shook his
head. "Neil, it would appear you are still ignorant of your
position. You're the leader now, so all decisions are yours to
make. If you wish to kill the girl, that is up to you, but if I may
offer a piece of advice..."
Neil nodded.
"I would consider keeping
her alive and using her as a breeder."
Grady went to Kate and put his arms on
her shoulders.
Neil looked appalled. "A
breeder? But she's...she was, my sister."
"Precisely. She
was
your sister. Such
relations mean little now. But even then she was not your kin. A
female is a breeder; man is the hunter and sower of seeds. That's
the way of things."
Despite the explanation,
the boy still looked disgusted. He turned his
seeing
eyes toward Kate and a look of
disgust contorted his features. "I'd rather kill her."
"Then that is your choice.
But a rather poor one, given our needs."
Neil hesitated, the eyes
of the gathering on him, and Grady took the opportunity to delay.
"Neil...why are you doin' this?"
The disgusted expression
held on the boy's face, making it clear that whatever had happened
to him, whatever had possessed him, it hadn't elevated Grady above
the contempt with which he'd viewed his sister.
"Stephen gave me my eyes.
He gave me my life, and all the power it brings with it. You heard
what he said: I'm a
leader
now, not a follower like I've been all my life. I
won't have to listen to the pity in everyone's voice when they talk
to me. I won't have to depend on anyone but myself from now on. And
most importantly, I won't have to pretend to care about people
I
hate
."
"Why do you hate me?"
Grady asked. "I was never anythin' but good to you."
"Good to me?" Neil took a
step forward, fists clenched and teeth bared. Grady still found it
unnerving that the boy was
looking
at him, the burnished cast gone, leaving behind
focused and
seeing
eyes. Seeing eyes that were filled with malice. "You kept the
truth from me. You let me grow up in the care of people who were
not my kin. You carved out a hollow life for me, old man, and
filled it with lies. You kept me trapped in a miserable house for
years, talking down to me as if I was a whipped cur, convincing me
I was nothing more than a poor blind boy. Well, look at me now,
Grady. I'm not that boy any more. My
real
father has given me everything
I've ever wanted: my sight and my freedom, and I intend to use both
to tear you apart for what you've done to me."
Grady was stunned. That
the boy could see was a miracle, but the words he spat from that
sneering mouth suggested possession, corruption, and he refused to
believe there was any sincerity to them.
Not again.
Not from another young man who should
have loved him.
He glared at Stephen.
"What have you done to him?"
"Oh my, foolish fellow,"
Stephen replied cheerfully, "I've done nothing to him. He did it
all himself. It was in his genes, don't you see, a little something
he inherited from his mother and me. All that was required was a
scratch of my nails on his eyes and a choice. He could embrace or
resist, and as you can plainly see, he chose the former. If you had
seen the speed with which he converted, it would take your breath
away. He's truly of our blood. And now he'll lead our army into the
world until your kind are reduced to mere legends we'll tell around
campfires."
Grady tapped Kate on the
shoulder. She looked up at him and he whispered, "When I shoot, I
want you to run, fast as you can toward the village. Bring the
pistol with you."
She looked about to argue,
to protest in silence, but to his surprise, she nodded, and he
realized he should have expected it, despite her usual
stubbornness. After all, what she had come for was gone. The boy
standing across from her with the hungry, hateful gaze was no one
she knew. Grady hoped the distance the boy had always shown her
would lessen the blow of his betrayal, but doubted it somehow. Kate
had never been one to love only as much as she was loved in return,
and if she survived this night, Grady imagined that quality would
mean much heartbreak in the days ahead.
He raised his head and
addressed the boy. "Kate is an innocent in all of this. I want to
ask you to please let her go."
"No one is innocent," Neil
said flatly.
"She never did anything
but help and love you, Neil. Fer God's sake, no matter how much
this man has poisoned you, you must still
see
that."
Neil said nothing for a
moment, but stared at Grady. The old man felt as if invisible
fingers were digging their nails into his skull. The gathering
seemed to thrum with impatience, until finally Neil smirked and
said, "I won't kill her. Yet. I'll take you in her place and while
we're feeding on you, she can run. Call it a head start. She won't
get very far, but perhaps during those few precious moments of
freedom she can reflect on all the times she was cruel to me over
the years."
When Kate spoke, her
enraged voice cracked with sorrow, "I was
never
cruel to you. No more than you
asked for, you spoiled little bastard."
The gathering began to
move.