Chapter Three
THREE
When he fractures, it is in a place so deep inside himself that he cannot begin to collect the shattered pieces. He is kneeling there, terror unraveling in bloody ribbons from his mouth, his body a locked tomb.
He’s in shock, but knowing does nothing to thaw limbs now rooted to the floor. A small part of him is soundlessly screaming that these are warning signs he’s about to tip into an episode, but he can’t snap out of it.
He is looking at the body of the man who became his father, and he doesn’t understand what happened. It was so, so fast.
Someone needs to—
this isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t real
He isn’t dead, he can’t be—
Hands hook under Evander’s armpits, bony fingers digging painfully into tender flesh, and it takes Evander a full minute to understand he’s being dragged from the conservatory.
His legs don’t work. His brain isn’t processing sounds.
Voices beat against each other, muddy and disorientating, until Carrington’s cuts through, shrill and reedy.
“You should be in your room. Quickly. Get up!”
Evander stumbles upright, steadied by the tight grip of the ancient butler. He glances over his shoulder once to see Laurie on his knees beside the body with a blankness to his face. When he raises his head, his eyes meet Evander’s and they look like dark cavities of disbelief.
Then Evander is rushed from the room, tripping as he keeps up with Carrington’s staggering pace.
The mansion has been built in such a disorientating nest of hallways, every room so filled with antiques and collections of the bizarre and uncanny, that to traverse it is like stumbling through a fever dream.
Carrington whips them through with a speed that doesn’t match his age until they are back in the stale, claustrophobic darkness of the north wing.
There is his door, the key in the lock.
The sight of it cuts through his shock and he finally tries to wrench free of Carrington’s grip.
“No, wait, please—”
But Carrington shoves Evander through the doorway.
It is not hard to move him when he is a creature made of gossamer moth wings pulled over fragile stick bones.
He trips and slams down on his knees, his lungs heaving and fingers scrabbling like hooked thorns against his familiar, worn-down carpet.
Carrington scuttles around him, hurrying to the window and slamming it closed before fishing another key from the heavy iron loop he keeps pocketed and locking it.
Then he whips around, bearing down on Evander. “What did you do?”
Evander wilts on the floor, drawing his knees up to his chin. He has always been slightly scared of the gnarled old butler and the sickly sweet, rotting smell that clings to him.
“Wh-what? I didn’t—” He breaks off, his teeth chattering as he tries to gather a full sentence. “I was j-j-just standing there.”
“You are not to leave this room,” Carrington hisses. “I have put your medicine on your desk. Take it and go to sleep.” Then he’s out the door just as Evander realizes what will happen.
He scrabbles forward, his hand outstretched. “No! Don’t lock—”
But Carrington has already slammed it closed and the key twists in the lock with a dull thud.
Such a familiar sound.
Evander’s world tips. The descent is too rapid; there is blood in his mouth. The sound he’s making is upturned and wretched, a keening that doesn’t end.
He flattens himself against the door, his mouth pressed to the sliver of space beneath as if he intends to scream for Carrington to come back.
But he can’t. He shouldn’t. Everything inside him spins in a sick, tilted swirl, and if he doesn’t swallow this down, an episode will hit.
His head feels inflamed, his stomach cramping so severely he thinks he might throw up.
He should take his meds as instructed, but the idea of sleeping is ludicrous.
All he can think of is the tea and the thing growing in Mr. Lennox-Hall’s throat.
Unless he’s imagining—
No, he saw something. What if the tea was poisoned?
Thoughts feel too nebulous to hold on to right now, his heartbeat a runaway beast in his chest, and he can do nothing except lie there on the floor and pretend the door will open and his guardian will stride in and command Evander to pull himself together.
But no one comes.
Evander breathes in plumes of dust caught in the cracks between floorboards and suddenly remembers lying like this when he was a child—fever licking up and down his weak body, his stitches stretching from the exertion of hours of screaming, his skin flayed with red rashes from medication reactions.
His memory is a pockmarked thing thanks to his many illnesses and his head wound from the day in the garden, but an image comes back in a sharp metallic rush.
He would lie here and listen to a soft voice whisper under a door, wait for the rustle of pages before the story would continue.
He’d forgotten that, forgotten the way he’d kicked his heels in a furious tantrum if the pauses grew too long. Sometimes there would be a tearing sound and a single page would slide under the door for him to look at while the soft little voice continued reading.
Two things hit Evander as he lies there, fear collapsing his lungs.
He used to eat those storybook pages instead of giving them back.
And the person reading to him through the door was Laurie.
He is forgotten.
It’s inevitable really, but as the night turns into dim, gray morning with rain flogging the windows, Evander wonders if it’s on purpose.
Carrington views him as a chore to be done with stiff yet courteous diligence, and Laurie obviously hates him.
They aren’t going to care how long he is left in here, alone.
All he knows is that Mr. Lennox-Hall could be dead—he is dead you know he’s dead dead dead stop pretending otherwise—and Evander is locked in his room with no way out.
Unless he breaks the window—
No, he’s being unreasonable, hysterical. Just be patient.
But the day stretches long and silent and empty, and Evander wears fear like a coat.
He paces. Anxious sweating leaves his pajamas tacky against his skin, sour and uncomfortable, but he doesn’t change.
He can’t sleep. Damp seeps through the walls as the rain strengthens, and he should be cold but his skin feels feverishly hot.
He needs air, but no amount of rattling the window shifts the lock.
Last night was the first time he’d slipped free of his room in years and he can’t help think about how losing the window feels like punishment. But he’s safer in here. If the tea was poisoned, then it was done on purpose.
Somewhere in Hazelthorn, there is a murderer.
Descending down this thought spiral does little to stave off Evander’s growing panic, and as the day drags by and night falls again, he lines his arms with puffy purple bruises from senseless pinching.
Time moves like a knocked-over jar of molasses, sticky and sullen, and all he can do is take another thousand paces up and down his room and silently beg Carrington to appear and explain what’s happening.
No one comes.
In the tiny attached bathroom, Evander sticks his head under the faucet and gulps enough water to swell his stomach. He shouldn’t think about food at a time like this, but he’s hungry, and Carrington does not walk in with the usual tray of oatmeal or buttered toast.
Evander is starving.
He can’t read, can’t study, can’t watch a documentary, can’t sleep.
There is a murderer in Hazelthorn.
The word murderer beats a merciless bruising rhythm against his skull. He’s read enough Sherlock Holmes classics to understand how one goes about solving a mystery, piecing together clues and analyzing forensics, but he’s too full of static to think through what he knows.
All he has is this:
Carrington served the tea.
But Laurie has tried to kill once before and he had just said, Long may he rot, about his grandfather. So what if—
There are only four of them in Hazelthorn, so one of them has to have poisoned the tea.
Evander paces.
He chews his fingernails down to bloody nubs. He’s starving and he hates himself for obsessing over it.
Eventually, he gives up pacing and sits in the middle of his floor, his knees drawn up to his chin, biting at his wrist until the teeth marks swell.
He leaves the lights off. The deep green of his wallpaper breathes like wind filtering through hedgerows, the fauns stuffing the moths between their molars and chewing with morbid satisfaction.
Count to ten. Then Mr. Lennox-Hall will walk in.
Count to one hundred. Then Carrington will walk in.
Count to one thousand. Then—
Evander’s hand slips under his sweater and his palm presses hard up against old scar tissue. From the attack. From the surgeries that saved his life. He is an ugly thing when bared and he doesn’t like to think about it.
Somewhere, far into the deep of midnight, Hazelthorn moans.
In the back of Evander’s throat, he tastes the hot sting of poisonous berries.
It isn’t real.
It isn’t real let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out let him out LET HIM OUT LET HIM—
Only the dark is there to watch him beat himself bloody against the locked door.