Serafina and the Black Cloak (4 page)

Mice are timid and prone to panic-induced mistakes at key moments
.

She heard the man moving from place to place, rummaging beneath the sinks, opening and closing the cabinets.

Just stay still, little mouse. Just stay still,
she told herself. She wanted to break cover and flee so bad, but she knew that the dead mice were the dumb mice that panicked and ran. She
told herself over and over again,
Don’t be a dumb mouse. Don’t be a dumb mouse.

Then he came into the drying area where she was and moved slowly through the room, running his hands over the ghostly sheets.

If I’d hidden there…

He was just a few feet away from her now, looking around the room. Even though he couldn’t see her, he seemed to sense that she was there.

Serafina held her breath and stayed perfectly, perfectly, perfectly still.

S
erafina slowly opened her eyes.

She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep or even where she was. She found herself crammed into a tight, dark space, her face pressed up against metal.

She heard the sound of footsteps approaching. She stayed quiet and listened.

It was a man in work boots, tools jangling. Feeling a burst of happiness, she wriggled her way out of the machine and into the morning sunlight pouring through the laundry windows.

“Here I am, Pa!” she cried, her voice parched and weak.

“I’ve been gnawin’ on leather lookin’ for you,” her pa scolded. “You weren’t in your bed this mornin’.”

She ran forward and hugged him, pressing herself into his chest. He was a large and hardened man with thick arms and rough, calloused hands. His tools hung from his leather apron, and he smelled
faintly of metal, oil, and the leather straps that drove the workshop’s machines.

In the distance, she heard the sounds of the staff arriving for the morning, the clanking of pots in the kitchen, and the conversations of the workers. It was a glorious sound to her ears. The
danger of the night was gone. She had survived!

Wrapped in her father’s arms, she felt safe and at home. He was more accustomed to mallets and rivets than a kind word, but he’d always taken care of her, always loved and protected
her. She couldn’t hold back the tears of relief stinging her eyes.

“Where’ve ya been, Sera?” her father asked.

“He tried to get me, Pa! He tried to kill me!”

“What are you goin’ on about, girl?” her pa said suspiciously, holding her by the shoulders with his huge hands. He looked intently into her face. “Is this another one of
your wild stories?”

“No, Pa,” she said, shaking her head.

“I ain’t in any kinda mood for stories.”

“A man in a black cloak took a little girl, and then he came after me. I fought him, Pa! I bit him a good one! I spun ’round and clawed him, and I ran and ran and I got away and I
hid. I crawled into your machine, Pa. That’s how I got away. It saved me!”

“Whatcha mean, he took a girl?” her pa said, narrowing his eyes. “What girl?”

“He…he made her…She was right in front of me, and then she vanished before my eyes!”

“Come on now, Sera,” he said doubtfully. “You sound like you don’t know whether you’re washin’ the clothes or hangin’ ’em out.”

“I swear, Pa,” she said. “Just listen to me.” She took a good, hard swallow and started at the beginning. As the story poured out of her, she realized how brave
she’d actually been.

But her pa just shook his head. “You’ve had a bad dream is all. Been readin’ too many of them ghost stories. I told ya to stay away from Mr. Poe. Now look at ya. You’re
all scruffed up like a cornered possum.”

Her heart sank. She was telling him the God’s honest truth, and he didn’t believe a word of it. She tried to keep from crying, but it was hard. She was going on thirteen and he was
still treating her like a child.

“I wasn’t dreamin’, Pa,” she said, wiping a sniffle from her nose.

“Just calm yourself down,” he grumbled. He hated it when she cried. She’d known since she was little that he’d rather wrangle with a good piece of sheet metal than deal
with a weepy girl.

“I’ve gotta go to work,” he said gruffly as he separated from her. “The dynamo busted somethin’ bad last night. Now get on back to the workshop, and get some proper
sleep in ya.”

Hot frustration flashed through her and she clenched her fists in anger, but she could hear the seriousness in his voice and knew there was no point in arguing with him. The Edison dynamo was an
iron machine with copper coils and spinning wheels that generated a new thing called “electricity.” She knew from the books she’d read that most homes in America didn’t have
running water, indoor toilets, refrigeration, or even heating. But Biltmore had all of these things. It was one of the few homes in America that had electric lighting in some of the rooms. But if
her pa couldn’t get the dynamo working by nightfall, the Vanderbilts and their guests would be plunged into darkness. She knew he had a lot of things on his mind, and she wasn’t one of
them.

A wave of resentment swept through her. She’d tried to save a girl from an evil black-cloaked demon-thing and almost got herself killed in the process, but her pa didn’t care. All he
cared about was his stupid machines. He never believed her about anything. To him, she was just a little girl, nothing important, nothing worth listening to, nothing anyone could count on for
anything.

As she walked glumly back to the workshop, she fully intended to follow her pa’s instructions, but when she passed the stairway that led up to Biltmore Estate’s main floor, she
stopped and looked up the stairs.

She knew she shouldn’t do it.

She shouldn’t even think about doing it.

But she couldn’t help it.

Her pa had been telling her for years that she shouldn’t go upstairs, and lately she’d been trying to follow his rules at least some of the time, but today she was furious that he
hadn’t believed her.
It’d serve him right if I didn’t listen to him.

She thought about the girl in the yellow dress. She tried to make sense of what she’d seen: the horrible black cloak and the wide-eyed fear in the girl’s face as she disappeared.
Where had the girl gone? Was she dead or somehow still alive? Was there still a chance she could be saved?

Snippets of conversation drifted down the stairs. There was some sort of commotion. Had they found a body? Were they all crying in despair? Were they searching for a murderer?

She didn’t know if she was brave or stupid, but she had to tell someone what she’d seen. She had to figure out what happened. Most of all, she had to help the girl in the yellow
dress.

She began to climb the stairs.

Staying as small and quiet as she could, she crept up the steps one by one. A cacophony of sounds floated down to her: the echo of people talking, the rustling of clothing,
dozens of different footsteps—it was a crowd of many people. Something was definitely happening up there.
We’ve got to keep to ourselves, you and I.
Her pa’s warning played
in her mind as she climbed.
There ain’t no sense in people seein’ you and askin’ questions.

She slinked to the top of the stairway, then ducked into an alcove on the main floor that looked onto a huge room full of fancy-dressed people who seemed to be gathering for some type of grand
social event.

Massive, ornately crafted wrought-iron-and-glass doors led into the Entrance Hall, with its polished marble floor and vaulted ceiling of hand-carved oak beams. Soaring limestone arches led from
this central room to the various wings of the mansion. The ceiling was so high she had the urge to climb up there and peer down. She’d been here before, but she had always loved the room and
couldn’t help marveling at it again, especially in the daylight. She’d never seen so many glistening, beautiful things, so many soft surfaces to sit on, and so many interesting places
to hide. Spotting an upholstered chair, she felt an overwhelming desire to run her fingernails over the plush fabric. All of the room’s colors were so bright, and the surfaces were so clean
and shiny. She didn’t see any mud or grease or dirt anywhere. There were brightly colored vases filled with flowers—to think! Flowers, actually
inside
the house. Sunlight flooded
in from the sparkling, leaded-glass windows of the spiraling, four-story-high Grand Staircase and the glass-domed Winter Garden, with its spraying fountain and tropical plants. She squinted her
eyes against the brightness.

The Entrance Hall teemed with dozens of beautifully attired ladies and gentlemen along with manservants in black-and-white uniforms helping them to prepare for a morning of horseback riding.
Serafina stared at a lady who wore a riding dress made of white-piped green velvet and cranberry-red damask. Another woman wore a lovely mauve habit with dark purple accents and a matching hat.
There were even a few children there, clothed as finely as their parents. Her eyes darted around the room as she tried to take it all in.

Serafina looked at the face of the lady in the green dress, and then she looked at the face of the lady in the mauve hat. She knew her momma was long dead, or at very least long gone, but all
her life, whenever she saw a woman, she checked to see if the woman looked like her. She studied the faces of the children, too, wondering if there was a chance that any of them could be her
brothers and sisters. When she was little, she used to tell herself a story that maybe she had come home one day to the house, muddy from her hunting, and her mother had taken her downstairs and
stuck her in the belt-driven washing machine, and then went back upstairs and accidentally forgot about her, just spinning and spinning away down there. But when Serafina looked around at the women
and the children in the Entrance Hall and saw their blond hair and their blue eyes, their black hair and their brown eyes, she knew that none of them were her kin. Her pa never talked about what
her momma looked like, but Serafina searched for her in every face she saw.

Serafina had come upstairs with a purpose, but now that she was here, the thought of actually trying to talk to any of these fancy people put a rock in her stomach. She swallowed and inched
forward a little, but the lump in her throat was so huge, she wasn’t even sure she could get a word out. She wanted to tell them what she saw, but it suddenly seemed so foolish. They were all
happy and carefree, like so many larks on a sunny day. She didn’t understand. The girl was obviously one of these people, so why weren’t they looking for her? It was like it never
happened, like she had imagined the whole thing. What was she going to say to them?
Excuse me, everyone…I’m pretty sure I saw a horrible black-cloaked man make a little girl vanish
into thin air. Has anyone seen her?
They’d lock her up like a cuckoo bird.

As a tall gentleman in a black suit coat walked by, she realized that one of these men might actually be the Man in the Black Cloak. With his shadowed face and glowing eyes, there was no doubt
that the attacker had been some sort of specter, but she had sunk her teeth into him and tasted real blood, and he needed a lantern to see just like all the other people she’d followed over
the years, which meant he was of this world too. She scanned the men in the crowd, keeping her breathing as steady as she could. Was it possible that he was here at this very moment?

Mrs. Edith Vanderbilt, the mistress of the house, walked into the room wearing a striking velvet dress and a wide-brimmed hat. Serafina couldn’t take her eyes off the mesmerizing movement
of the hat’s feathers. A refined and attractive woman, Mrs. Vanderbilt had a pale complexion and a full head of dark hair, and she seemed at ease in her role as hostess as she moved through
the room.

“While we wait for the servants to bring up our horses,” she said happily to her guests, “I would like to invite everyone to join me in the Tapestry Gallery for a little bit of
musical entertainment.”

A pleasant murmur passed through the crowd. Delighted by the idea of a diversion, the ladies and gentlemen streamed into the gallery, an elegantly decorated room with its exquisitely
hand-painted ceiling, intricate musical instruments, and delicate antique wall tapestries. Serafina loved to climb the tapestries at night and run her fingernails down through the soft fabric.

“I’m sure that most of you already know Mr. Montgomery Thorne,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said with a gentle sweep of her arm toward a gentleman. “He has graciously offered to play
for us today.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Vanderbilt,” Mr. Thorne said as he stepped forward with a smile. “This whole outing is such a wonderful idea, and I must say you’re a most radiant
hostess on this lovely morning.”

“You’re too kind, sir,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said with a smile.

To Serafina, who’d been listening to Biltmore’s visitors her entire life, he didn’t sound like he came from the mountains of North Carolina, or from New York like the
Vanderbilts. He spoke with the accent of a Southern gentleman, maybe from Georgia or South Carolina. She crept forward to get a better look at him. He wore a white satin cravat around his neck, a
brocade waistcoat, and pale gray gloves, all of which she thought went nicely with his silvery-black hair and perfectly trimmed sideburns.