Serafina and the Black Cloak (3 page)

“No, sir! Please! No!” the girl whimpered, her voice trembling with despair. “We’re not supposed to be down here.” The girl spoke like someone who had been raised
in a well-heeled family and attended a fancy school.

“Don’t worry. We’re going right in here…” the man said, stopping at the door just around the corner from Serafina. Now she could hear his breathing, the movement
of his hands, and the rustle of his clothing. Flashes of heat scorched through her. She wanted to run, to flee, but she couldn’t get her legs to move.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of, child,” he said to the girl. “I’m not going to hurt you…”

The way he said these words caused the hairs on the back of Serafina’s neck to rise.
Don’t go with him,
she thought.
Don’t go!

The girl sounded like she was just a little younger than her, and Serafina wanted to help her, but she couldn’t find the courage. She pressed herself against the wall, certain that she
would be heard or seen. Her legs trembled, feeling as if they would crumble beneath her. She couldn’t see what happened next, but suddenly the girl let out a bloodcurdling scream. The
piercing sound caused Serafina to jump, and she had to stifle her own scream. Then she heard a struggle as the girl tore away from the man and fled down the corridor.
Run, girl! Run!
Serafina thought.

The man’s steps faded into the distance as he went after her. Serafina could tell that he wasn’t running full-out but moving steadily, relentlessly, like he knew the girl
couldn’t escape him. Serafina’s pa had told her that’s how the red wolves chase down and kill deer in the mountains—with dogged stamina rather than bursts of speed.

Serafina didn’t know what to do. Should she hide in a dark corner and hope he didn’t find her? Should she flee with the terror-stricken rats and spiders while she had the chance? She
wanted to run back to her father, but what about the child? The girl was so helpless, so slow and weak and frightened, and more than anything, she needed a friend to help her fight. Serafina wanted
to be that friend; she wanted to help her, but she couldn’t bring herself to move in that direction.

Then she heard the girl scream again.
That dirty, rotten rat’s gonna kill her,
Serafina thought.
He’s gonna kill her.

With a burst of anger and courage, she raced toward the sound. Her legs felt like explosions of speed. Her mind blazed with fear and exhilaration. She turned corner after corner. But when she
came to the mossy stone stairway that led down into the deepest bowels of the subbasement, she stopped, gasping for breath, and shook her head. It was a cold, wet, slimy, horrible place that she
had always done her best to avoid—especially in the winter. She’d heard stories that they stored dead bodies in the subbasement in the winter, when the ground was too frozen to dig a
grave. Why in the world had the girl gone down
there
?

Serafina made her way haltingly down the wet, sticky stairs, lifting and shaking off her foot after each slimy step she took. When at last she reached the bottom, she followed a long, slanting
corridor where the ceiling dripped with brown sludge. The whole dank, disgusting place gave her the jitters something fierce, but she kept going.
You’ve got to help her,
she told
herself again.
You can’t turn back.
She wound her way through a labyrinth of twisting tunnels. She turned right, then left, then left, then right until she lost track of how far
she’d gone. Then she heard the sound of fighting and shouting just around the corner ahead of her. She was very close.

She hesitated, frightened, her heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst. Her body shook all over. She didn’t want to go another step, but friends had to help friends. She
didn’t know much about life, but she did know that, knew that for sure, and she wasn’t going to run away like a scared-out-of-her-wits squirrel just when somebody needed her most.
Trembling all over, she steadied herself the best she could, sucked in a deep breath, and pushed herself around the corner.

A broken lantern lay tipped on the stone floor, its glass shattered but the flame still burning. In its halo of faltering light, a girl in a yellow dress struggled for her life. A tall man in a
black cloak and hood, his hands stained with blood, grabbed the girl by the wrists. The girl tried to pull away. “No! Let me go!” she screamed.

“Quiet down,” the man told her, his voice seething in a dark, unworldly tone. “I’m not going to hurt you, child…” he said for the second time.

The girl had curly blond hair and pale white skin. She fought to escape, but the man in the black cloak pulled her toward him. He tangled her in his arms. She flailed and struck him in the face
with her tiny fists.

“Just stay still, and it will all be over,” he said, pulling her toward him.

Serafina suddenly realized that she’d made a dreadful mistake. This was far more than she could handle. She knew that she should help the girl, but she was so scared that her feet stuck to
the floor. She couldn’t even breathe, let alone fight.

Help her!
Serafina’s mind screamed at her.
Help her! Attack the rat! Attack the rat!

She finally plucked up her courage and charged forward, but just at that moment, the man’s black satin cloak floated upward as if possessed by a smoky spirit. The girl screamed. The folds
of the cloak slithered around her like the tentacles of a hungry serpent. The cloak seemed to move of its own accord, wrapping, twisting, accompanied by a disturbing rattling noise, like the
hissing threats of a hundred rattlesnakes. Serafina saw the girl’s horrified face looking at her from within the folds of the enveloping cloak, the girl’s pleading blue eyes wide with
fear.
Help me! Help me!
Then the folds closed over her, the scream went silent, and the girl disappeared, leaving nothing but the blackness of the cloak.

Serafina gasped in shock. One moment the girl was struggling to get free, and the next she vanished into thin air. The cloak had consumed her. Overwhelmed with confusion, grief, and fear,
Serafina just stood there in stunned bewilderment.

For several seconds, the man seemed to vibrate violently, and a ghoulish aura glowed around him in a dark, shimmering haze. A horribly foul smell of rotting guts invaded Serafina’s
nostrils, forcing her head to jerk back. She wrinkled her nose and squinched her mouth and tried not to breathe it in.

She must have made some sort of involuntary gagging noise, for the man in the black cloak suddenly turned and looked at her, seeing her for the first time. It felt like a giant claw gripped her
around her chest. The folds of the man’s hood shrouded his face, but she could see that his eyes blazed with an unnatural light.

She stood frozen, utterly terrified.

The man whispered in a raspy voice. “I’m not going to hurt you, child…”

H
earing those eerie words jolted Serafina into action. She had just seen what those words led to.
Not this time, rat!
With a burst of new
energy, she turned and ran.

She tore through the labyrinth of crisscrossing tunnels, running and running, certain that she was leaving him far in the distance. But when she glanced over her shoulder, the hooded man was
flying through the air right behind her, levitated by the power of the billowing black cloak, his bloody hands reaching toward her.

Serafina tried to run faster, but just as she came to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main level of the basement, the man in the black cloak grabbed her. One hand clamped her
shoulder. The other locked on to her neck. She turned and hissed like a snared animal. She whirled and clawed in a wild circle and broke herself free.

She bounded up the stairs three at a time, but he followed right behind her. He reached out and yanked her head back by her hair. She screamed in pain.

“Time to give up now, little child,” he said calmly, even as the tightening of his fist slowly tore strands of her hair from her head.

“I ain’t never!” she snarled, and bit his arm. She fought as hard as she could, scratching and clawing with her fingernails, but it didn’t matter. The man in the black
cloak was far too strong. He pulled her into his chest, entangling her in his arms.

The folds of the black cloak rose up around her, pulsing with gray smoke. The awful rotting odor made her gag. All she could hear was that loathsome rattling noise as the cloak slithered and
twisted its way around her body. She felt like she was being crushed in the coil of a boa constrictor.

“I’m not going to hurt you, child…” came the hideous rasping voice again, as if the man wasn’t of his own mind but possessed by a demented, ravenous demon.

The folds of the cloak cast a wretched pall over her, drenching her in a dripping, suffocating sickness. She felt her soul slipping away from her—not just slipping, but being yanked, being
extracted. Death was so near that she could see its blackness with her own eyes and she could hear the screams of the children who had gone before her.

“No! No! No!” she screamed in defiance. She didn’t want to go. Hissing wildly, she reached up and clutched his face, clawing at his eyes. She kicked his chest with her feet.
She bit him repeatedly, snapping like a snarling, rabid beast, and she tasted his blood in her mouth. The girl in the yellow dress had fought, but nothing like this. Finally, Serafina twisted out
of his grip and spun to the ground. She landed on her feet and leapt away.

She wanted to get back to her pa, but she couldn’t make it that far. She fled down the corridor and dashed into the main kitchen. There were a dozen places to hide. Should she slip behind
the black cast-iron ovens? Or crawl up among the copper pots hanging from the ceiling rack? No. She knew she had to find a better place.

She was back in her territory now, and she knew it well. She knew the darkness and she knew the light. She knew the left and the right. She had killed rats in every corner of this place, and
there was no way she was going to let herself become one of those rats. She was the C.R.C. No trap or weapon or evil man was going to catch her. Like a wild creature, she ran and jumped and
crawled.

When she reached the linen storage room, with all its wooden shelves and stacks of folded white sheets and blankets, she scampered into a crumbling break in the wall, in the back corner beneath
the lowest shelf. Even if the man did notice the hole, it would seem impossibly small for anyone to fit through. But she knew it provided a shortcut into the back of the laundry.

She came out in the room where they hung and dried the fancy folks’ bedsheets. The moon had risen outside, and its light shone through the basement windows. Hundreds of flowing white
sheets hung from the ceiling like ghosts, the silver moonlight casting them into an eerie glow. She slipped slowly between the hanging sheets, wondering if they would provide her the concealment
she needed. But she thought better of it and kept going.

For good or ill, she had an idea. She knew that Mr. Vanderbilt prided himself on installing the most advanced equipment at Biltmore. Her pa had constructed special drying racks that rolled on
metal ceiling tracks that tucked into narrow chambers where the sheets and clothes were dried with the radiant heat of well-sealed steam pipes. Determined to find the best possible hiding place,
she made herself small and pressed herself through the narrow slot of one of the machines.

When Serafina was born, there had been a number of things physically different about her. She had four toes on each foot rather than five, and although it was not noticeable just by looking at
her, her collarbones were malformed such that they didn’t connect properly to her other bones. This allowed her to fit into some pretty tight spots. The opening in the machine was no more
than a few inches wide, but as long as she could fit her head into something, she could push her whole body through. She wedged herself inside, into a dark little spot where she hoped the man in
the black cloak wouldn’t find her.

She tried to be quiet, she tried to be still, but she panted like a little animal. She was exhausted, breathless, and frightened beyond her wits. She’d seen the girl in the yellow dress
consumed by the shadow-filled folds and knew the man in the black cloak was coming for her next. Her only hope was that he couldn’t hear the deafening pound of her heartbeat.

She heard him walking slowly down the hallway outside the kitchen. He’d lost her in the darkness, but he moved methodically from room to room, looking for her.

She heard him in the main kitchen, opening the doors of the cast-iron ovens.
If I’d hidden there,
she thought,
I’d be dead now.

Then she heard him clanging through the copper pots, looking for her in the ceiling rack.
If I’d hidden there,
she thought,
I’d be dead again.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” he whispered, trying to coax her out.

She listened and waited, trembling like a field mouse.

Finally, the man in the black cloak made his way into the laundry room.