77 Shadow Street

As though in prophetic confirmation of that thought, the sky swung another series of bright blades. The city, like a chopping block, seemed to shudder from the impacts, the countless briefly silvered raindrops stuttering down the dusk in a stroboscopic dazzle.

In the window glass, Martha’s reflected image flickered, as if the life force in her might be near the end of its wick. She suffered from a fear of death that she struggled always to repress, a dread that dated from the night that her first husband, Simon, passed away, when she had been forty-one. The inspiration for her fear was not Simon’s death but an incident that occurred shortly thereafter, which for the past thirty-nine years she had been able neither to explain nor forget.

When the doorbell rang, Smoke and Ashes turned their heads but did not deign to leave their cushioned perches to welcome the caller.

In the open doorway, Bailey Hawks greeted Martha with a kiss on the cheek. As he crossed the threshold into the foyer, her anxiety diminished. He was the kind of man to whom she’d never been attracted in her youth: quiet, competent, a good listener, a steady ship in any storm. For reasons she had never quite understood, even into middle age, she had been drawn to weak men with sparkling personalities, who were always entertaining and, in the end, always disappointing. Well, she had done all right in spite of having married one man-child and then another; but it was comforting to have a friend like Bailey when your housekeeper started ranting about seeing the devil between the china cabinets and the silver closet.

“I don’t know whether to call a medical doctor or psychiatrist,” she said to Bailey, “but I refuse to call an exorcist.”

“Where’s Sally?”

“In the kitchen with Edna. By now my sister will have convinced herself that she, too, saw the apparition and that it had a forked tongue just like a snake.”

Edna cared about decor far more than did her sister, and so Martha lived with the consequences of Edna’s passion for all things Victorian: chesterfield sofas upholstered in midnight-blue mohair, side tables draped with velvet and crocheted overlays, etageres full of porcelain birds, floral-fabric walls in original William Morris patterns, everything trimmed with ornate gimp, tassels, fringes, lace, and swags.

Although the kitchen had touches of late-nineteenth-century style, it appeared more modern than the rest of the apartment because even Edna preferred gas and electric appliances to wood-burning iron stoves and hulking ice lockers. The most Victorian thing in this roomy space was Edna’s outfit, a faithful re-creation of actual day wear from the period, which her seamstress had made according to a drawing in a catalog published in that era: a lilac silk afternoon dress covered with white-spotted lilac chiffon, featuring a lace yoke with rucked silk, a matching hip basque, elbow-length pleated sleeves, and a pleated and gathered floor-length skirt.

Martha was so accustomed to Edna’s ways that most of the time she was hardly aware that her sister’s fashions were unusual, but once in a while, like now, she realized that these dresses might be more accurately described as costumes. Sitting at the breakfast table with Sally Hollander, whose self-chosen uniform consisted of black slacks and a simple white blouse, Edna looked eccentric, sweet and dear, pleasingly fanciful, but undeniably eccentric.

Declining an offer of coffee with or without brandy, Bailey sat at the table, across from Sally, and said, “Will you tell me what you saw?”

Previously, the housekeeper’s broad, freckled face had always appeared to be aglow with soft reflected firelight, her green eyes often merry but seldom less than amused. Her skin was ashen now, the fire banked in her eyes.

The tremor in her voice seemed genuine. “I was putting away the luncheon plates. The ones with the pierced rim and the roses. From the corner of my eye, I saw something … something quick and dark. At first it was a shadow, like a shadow, but not a shadow. It came from the kitchen into the butler’s pantry, went past me toward the door to the dining room. Tall, almost seven feet, very fast.”

Easing forward in her chair, arms on the table, Edna lowered her voice as if concerned that the forces of darkness might learn she was aware of them. “Some say this place is haunted by Andrew Pendleton himself, ever since he committed suicide back in the day.”

Leaning against a counter, Martha sighed, but no one noticed.

“Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t,” Edna continued. “But even if 77 Shadow Street is as full of restless shades as any graveyard, this wasn’t one of them. Nothing as innocent as lingering spirits. Tell him, Sally.”

“God help me, I’m half afraid to talk about it,” the housekeeper said. “Talking about such things can be an invitation to them. Isn’t that what they say, Miss Edna? I don’t want to invite that thing back, whatever it was.”

“We know what it was,” Edna said.

Martha expected Bailey to glance at her knowingly, but he remained focused on the housekeeper. “You said it was like a shadow at first.”

Sally nodded. “It was ink-black. No details. But then I turned to look after it passed me … and I saw it as clear as I see you now. About eight feet away, turning toward me as if it hadn’t noticed me until it flew past and was surprised to see me there. Like a man but not a man. Something different about the shape of the head, something wrong, I can’t say for sure what. But no hair at all, no eyebrows. Skin as gray as lead. Even the eyes gray, no whites to them, and the irises black, black and deep like gun barrels.” She shuddered and resorted to her spiked coffee for comfort. Then: “He … it … it was lean but looked strong. It opened its mouth, those terrible gray lips, its teeth gray, too, and sharp. It hissed and it meant to bite me, I’m sure it did. I screamed, and it came at me so fast, faster than a cat or a striking snake, faster than anything.”

Although Martha remained determined not to be as credulous as Edna, neither her insulating skepticism nor her sensible pantsuit prevented a chill from prickling her spine. She told herself that what disturbed her was the change in Sally, this uncharacteristic claim of a supernatural experience, rather than the possibility that the encounter might have been real.

“Demonic,” Edna declared. “A creature of the Pit. No ordinary spirit.”

To the housekeeper, Bailey said, “But it didn’t bite you.”

She shook her head. “This sounds so weird … but as it came at me, it changed again, from something very real to just a black shape, and it flew past. I could feel it brushing past me.”

“And how did it leave the butler’s pantry?” Bailey asked.