9
Catherine slept through the morning and felt nauseous over lunch. By early afternoon, I’d convinced Nurse Gray to let Catherine go for a walk, but then it began to rain. And rain. And rain.
It was a good soaking rain that puddled on the ground and lashed against the windows. It filled the house with a consistent drumming noise that made everyone feel lazy. Even me. I was not usually one to nap, but when Catherine fell back asleep, I went to my room, locked the door, and slept for a restless hour.
I dreamt I was in my sister’s house, in the guest room, taking a nap. Then, the doorknob began to rattle.
In the dream, I sat up in bed, staring at the door, certain Camellia would charge through it at any second, ready to take me to task for talking about her with Charles.
The doorknob would go still for long seconds that stretched to minutes, and I would swear the light outside the window was changing from afternoon to evening to night. Yet, I sat and stared at the knob. When it began turning again, I jumped and let out a shriek.
This happened again and again, until I grew hungry and tired and even bored. I wanted whatever was on the other side of the door to come in already. So, eventually, I gathered my courage and my dressing gown and walked towards the door.
If this is the way I die, I thought, then let it be the way I die.
Then, I thrust open the door.
I’d prepared myself for Camellia to be standing outside, but there was nothing. No one at all.
I walked down the hallway, checking the doors as I went, but they were all locked. The usual sounds of shuffling feet or soft voices had been replaced with perfect silence. The kind of silence that felt like a physical presence lurking over one.
After checking the second floor and the main floor, I finally walked outside. The ground was muddy and damp from the rain, but my feet didn’t sink into it. I seemed to float above the ground, in fact, my bare feet immune to the cold slime of the mud. I called out for my sister or Charles. At one point, I became so desperate to find another human that I called for my infant niece, as well. No one answered.
The longer I walked, the less I remembered why I was walking at all. I couldn’t remember what had sent me out of the house, so I tried to turn around, but the house was gone. In its stead was a smoking pile of rubble with a small pile of bricks in the center that had once been the living room fireplace.
Just as I opened my mouth to scream, something cracked over the back of my head.
At once, whatever dream magic had kept me from sinking into the mud faltered, and I fell flat against the earth. The cold seeped into me, drawing me to sleep, and I listened. I closed my eyes and sunk into the ground as footsteps squelched in the mud around me.
When I woke up, I was shivering.
The fire in my hearth had waned to small embers, and the cool wind that had blown away the rain clouds, also blew open my window. The draft was icy, and I darted across the wood floor in bare feet, slammed the window shut, and then threw myself back beneath the covers to get warm.
I couldn’t hear any movement in the rest of the house, and that more than anything propelled me out of bed. I wanted to be sure my dream hadn’t come true.
The second I opened the door, I could hear Camellia’s singing voice, lulling Hazel back to sleep. I could also hear the confident click of Nurse Gray’s heeled shoes on the floor. Charles, I couldn’t hear, but I had every reason to believe he was down in his study as usual.
Confident the rest of the house hadn’t disappeared, I went back into my room, laced my walking boots on over my stockings, and slipped into my wool coat.
No one stopped me as I tromped through the house and through the back door. I didn’t expect they would. Catherine as the only exception, everyone seemed to want me to leave sooner rather than later.
I would not give them what they wanted, but I did require frequent outings to help keep my sanity. Part of me felt Catherine had begun to lose her wits because the house itself was so gloomy.
No one smiled or laughed or joked. It was nothing but glum people coexisting alongside one another without ever really interacting. Nothing like the home I knew Catherine wanted.
If there was any doubt that my dream had been nothing more than a dream, my first step out of the back door was proof enough. Almost immediately, my boots sunk two inches deep in mud.
The ground suctioned around my shoes, pulling at my feet in turn as I moved down the path, but I did not turn back.
I needed a break from the four walls of my room, and I could not spend another second next to my sister’s bedside or reading books in the sitting room downstairs, or trying to talk sense into my brother-in-law.
If I was to remain at Catherine’s home—a previously and mistakenly described ‘picturesque countryside escape’—I needed fresh air and time to think. I needed to remind myself of what was real and what was not.
Despite what Charles said, I knew my sister was not insane.
Camellia’s relationship with Hazel was not normal or healthy.
Nurse Gray over-medicated Catherine.
Margaret and Abigail Wilds might be the most normal people I had met during my time
