Chapter 12
Faces and forms burst from the darkness as I lift the lamp. I almost scream, until I realize that the figures aren’t moving. The faces are expressionless, the eyes vacant and fixed. The heads loll to one side or the other, and the arms hang limp.
The bodies are naked and slack. And the room is full of them.
I inhale sharply, then wish I hadn’t. Instead of the stench of death, there’s a pungent herbal smell in the room, so strong it’s unpleasant. I can’t discern which herbs I’m smelling, though. My brain is occupied with processing sights, not scents.
Each nude body hangs in a sort of harness, straps passing around their upper chests and over their shoulders. Some of the corpses are pale, others tawny or brown. Each one bears a bite mark.
The bite on the body nearest me appears to be from human teeth, while the mark on the next corpse has a wider curvature, with narrower punctures.
One of the bitten bodies is still bleeding, dripping from a wound that must have been inflicted by enormous, long, jaws. The victim’s blood slicks the floor like a dark, wet mirror, reflecting the glow of my lamp.
My hand goes to my mouth and clamps there to ensure that my screams don’t escape, although I don’t think anyone would hear me even if I did shriek.
Beresford killed these people, or he’s protecting the thing that did. The size and placement of the largest bites reminds me of the monstrous two-headed wolf in Wormsloe. Could it have bitten these people? Is it connected to Beresford somehow?
But if the wolf bit these victims, why didn’t it eat them? It’s starving. It would have gobbled them up. And why don’t all the bodies have the same marks?
I peer more closely at the body that’s dripping onto the floor. I don’t recognize the man. As far as I can tell, he isn’t breathing. Cautiously I reach out and touch his arm. It’s cold, but not as cold as I expected.
As I look around the room, I notice that none of the bodies have decayed. Some of the bites look fresher than others, but there’s no rot, no stiffening of the limbs, no bloating. They’re dead, and yet they appear to have been preserved somehow.
I examine the next corpse, an old man with shriveled genitals and sagging skin. There’s soil under his nails and dirt staining his fingers.
He was a gardener.
In the back of my mind I hear Beresford’s voice, irritably saying, “Everyone is curious about everything. Where I came from, where I lived before this, why I bought the house, where I got my money, where the gardener went, when can they visit my estate again, why do I hold parties on the grounds but never in my house—”
Where the gardener went.
What if this is the gardener who designed and maintained the greenhouse on the estate? But then, why is he here? And why does Beresford act as if he has been caring for those plants for decades?
The old gardener’s eyes are fixed and empty, just like the eyes of the other bodies. I move past two more people, and then I stop short, a horrible weakness flooding my body as I stare into the face of the next carcass.
It’s Grandmother Riquet.
I would recognize her wizened face and bristly chin anywhere.
I know her hands, swollen at the joints.
The nails are ragged, the body emaciated.
She’s naked like the others, her flat breasts hanging down to her waist. Both her thighs and her lower belly bear the marks of giant teeth.
The wounds are old and black. They stopped bleeding a long time ago.
“Fuck,” I whisper. Tears well up in my eyes, and I dash them away with my free hand. I’m shaking so hard I can barely hold up the lamp.
My first impulse is to cut her down somehow. But then I glance to the left, and my stomach drops again.
Herron, with huge fang wounds across his midsection. His mouth sags open, and his chin is crusted with drool.
Grandmother and Herron are here. Which means I have to keep going. I need to look into the faces of each person in this room and see if I recognize them.
Most of them are strangers to me, though a few look vaguely familiar, like perhaps I saw them in a shop or at the market.
A little farther on, I encounter Quinn Yameson, a friend of Essienne’s who used to play the harpsichord or the fiddle in the village square on holidays.
Mama once confessed to me that she thought he might be some sort of professional thief and pickpocket as well as a musician. Maybe he tried to rob Beresford.
I push my way past two more people I don’t recognize. At the back of the room, near the wall, hangs a large figure, taller and broader than any of the others.
Even as I raise my lamp, I recognize the defined stomach muscles, the big pectorals, and the large hands. When I look at his face, I let out a screaming sob.
Because it’s my fucking husband. It’s Beresford.
His right shoulder has been torn open, and the wound is clotted with old, black blood. His hair and beard are brown, not blue. But it’s him, right down to the placement of the tiny mole below his left collarbone.
This is not a resemblance, not a twin. It’s him. Hanging from the ceiling of the secret room in his own mansion.
I scream again and sit down hard on the floor. My shaking fingers can’t hold the lamp anymore. I manage to set it aside.
“Beresford,” I rasp. “Beresford.”
The man in the harness is Theron Beresford.
But Beresford rode away this morning on a beautiful horse, with his greatcoat flapping in the autumn wind.
Anne and I roamed the house all day. If he had returned, we would have seen him.
No one had the time or the opportunity to drag him in here and hang him from this ceiling—not without being seen.
That leaves only one explanation, which isn’t an explanation at all, really.
There are two Beresfords. This dead one, and the one who rode away on “business.”
Which one did I marry? How long has this Beresford been hanging here?
Why do the two Beresfords look exactly alike?
My mind supplies a possibility, even though my heart shrieks against it.
They look alike because one is the real Beresford, and one is the thing that has taken his form.
The Beresford in front of me might have been hanging here for weeks, months—who knows how long? His wound looks old, but not corrupted, and like the others, his body has been preserved somehow. Sustained by magic, perhaps.
Yes, there is definitely magic at work here, although I have no idea what kind, nor can I imagine what reason anyone would have to keep a room full of preserved corpses.
I’m panting rapidly, breathing much too fast. Black spots are beginning to bloom at the edges of my vision. I try taking a deep breath, but the pungent odor of the room fills my lungs, and nausea lurches in my stomach.
I can’t throw up in this room. If I do, Beresford will know I was here.
I scramble to my feet, snatching up the lamp as I run for the exit. Somehow I manage to relock the door, and then I race to the nearest guest bathroom and hurl the contents of my stomach into the toilet.
When it’s over, I pull the chain to flush, then sit on the cold, tiled floor with my back against the wall. The lamp gutters as a faint breeze whispers through the room. I don’t know where that current of air came from, and that sets me on edge even more.
My gaze falls to the ring of keys, splayed against the tiles where I dropped them.
Something is smeared on the little gold one, the key for the blue door. It looks like blood.
Fuck, did I get blood on it somehow?
Frantically I inspect my hands and my nightgown. No blood. My bare feet only have a few flecks of dirt on them.
I pick up the key and inspect it. It does look bloodstained, but it isn’t wet to the touch.
Shakily I get to my feet and stumble to the sink, where I turn on the hot water. Running the key beneath the stream doesn’t help, so I take it back to my bathroom and try every kind of soap I can find.
A visceral dread coils in my gut as I scrub the key with one kind of soap after another.
At last I detach the key from the ring, take it down to the kitchen, and try the harsher soaps there, along with the sponges and scrubbers that the kitchen maids use for pots and pans.
I scour the gold until my fingers hurt. I plunge the key into vinegar, then into various types of alcohol.
Nothing works. The little golden key still bears a scarlet stain.
“Shit,” I whisper, on the verge of tears. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Running back to my room, I use tongs to hold the key in the fire for several minutes. But the stain won’t burn off.
At last I’m forced to admit the truth: the key is charmed or cursed. It has been spelled to react when someone other than Beresford opens that blue door.
There was never any chance of my broken promise going undetected. My husband was always going to find out. This was not only a test, but a trap. A dirty trick.
When he comes home, he’ll ask for the key. The second he sees it, he’ll know that I entered the forbidden room.
What will he do to me? He said it would mean the end of us. Does he plan to send me home? Divorce me? Kill me?
I have several options. I could run to the servants’ house, tell them what I’ve found, and hope that they will help me.
But what if they’re involved in this? I’ve heard stories of loyal servants covering up the sins of their lords and ladies.
What if these servants are devoted to Beresford and view me as the enemy?
I don’t know them well enough to trust them.
I could take a horse, flee to the village, and tell them what I know.
They could assemble a group of men to come here and investigate.
But if the Valenkirk servants are loyal to Beresford, they’ll defend this place in his absence.
People could die on both sides, and all for a cause that I don’t fully understand.
The only person who knows the truth is Beresford himself.
I could run from him—run away from everything. I could take all his money and flee with my mother and sister. I could abandon this region and its people to whatever fate he has planned for them. I could go far away, where he can’t touch me.
And yet, as fucked up as it seems, the idea of him never touching me again hurts. After everything I’ve seen tonight, despite all the dark possibilities swirling through my head, the idea of his death or absence clutches my heart like a physical force, like a fist with sharp nails.
My final option is to stay. To face the consequences of unveiling his secrets. To speak with him, face to face, and boldly confess what I’ve done. To demand an explanation from him.
I’ll have to go about it carefully. I thought I knew him well enough to share a life with him, but clearly I did not. He may try to kill me, and I have to be ready for that.
Whatever he is, whatever he has done, there is one truth to which I cling.
He wants me. Craves me. Loves me, to whatever extent he is capable.
He wanted to believe that he could trust me—he wanted that trust so desperately that he left me alone here, with the key.
He desires a life with me, and that desire gives me some power over him.
When he returns, I will use every charm I possess, every bit of influence I might have. I will seduce a confession out of him.
Maybe I can change him, make him better. My love could tame his wildness, soothe his dark urges, fix whatever is broken inside him.
But first, I need to know what he is, and where he came from.
I spend another hour pacing the room and trying to rub the blood off the key, but at last I throw myself into bed and sink into restless sleep, during which I dream of shadowy demons and dark figures rising out of a crack in the Barrow.
When I wake, I have a new theory. Perhaps Beresford is a manifestation of the Barrow-Man, the entity with whom my father bargained for a son.
Beresford’s fascination with me can’t be just a coincidence, not with the dark magic of Wormsloe seeping from beneath its boughs into the fields and farms beyond.
As soon as the idea takes root, I grasp it with all the fervor of a woman desperate for truth.
After dressing for the day, I write one note for Mrs. Nanterre, canceling the dinner party.
I leave another note for my mother and sister in case they decide to show up at Valenkirk in my absence.
I tell them that I’m running an errand in the city, but that Anne can feel free to show Mama around the main floors if she likes.
With those tasks completed and both notes laid out on the kitchen table, I put on my new red cloak, pack up a few supplies, and head across the fields of Valenkirk toward Wormsloe Wood, with the blood-stained key in the pocket of my trousers.