Chapter Thirteen #2
Every time Nora read that wretched last scene, she itched to pick up the pen and write an ending where Katherine and her husband swoop in to save their daughter.
Winston and Ursula would meet their end, and finally Mum would have peace.
Instead of finding that pen, Nora laid her hand over the unfinished scene and prayed that one day Mum might return home to write her own version of a happy ending.
Until then, Katherine’s daughter’s life would teeter on the precipice of tragedy or victory.
It was later than Nora would’ve liked when she set up the simplest traps and checked all the locks before trudging upstairs.
After she’d heard her old name spoken but not seen anyone, being home alone left her tense.
It was far too easy to imagine someone hiding, what with the way the house creaked and the wind blew.
Mice feet pitter-pattered in the walls, and by the thumps in the attic, the raccoons from a few nights ago had found their way back in.
So much for tugging the trunk up to the attic tonight.
The last thing she wanted was to face a pair of angry raccoons.
As for the mice, maybe Nora could convince Father to get a cat.
One as grouchy as Tristan ought to be able to rid the house of vermin.
After a quick check of the attic stairs to confirm the door was closed, she carried the libretto to her room.
She flipped through the loose pages again. Maybe she should ask Lydia for ideas on how to preserve the pages. No matter if Mum ever returned to finish the libretto, Nora wanted—
Strong, lean arms cinched around Nora’s waist and lifted her from the floor.
She dropped the pages and screamed as she thrust her elbows behind her. When that had no effect, she tossed her head back and kicked against her captor’s legs.
Please, God. Let Mr. and Mrs. Jerden hear me.
One arm released her, but a gloved hand snaked around and pressed against her nose and mouth. Her scream died under the suffocating grip.
How had this man gotten inside?
Nora flung her body side to side, hoping to break free or throw him off balance.
He lowered her until her stockinged feet touched the ground, then leaned heavily downward on her. The force made it harder to writhe, but it was a mistake for him to place his center of gravity directly over her.
She jerked her legs upward, making his one arm bear her full weight.
He stumbled, and when she was certain she could do the most damage, she dropped her feet and pushed up.
Her head collided with his face.
No satisfying crunch, but his curse accompanied her release.
When she hit the floor, she rolled and kicked. If she could make contact with his most vulnerable spot, he’d be the one down and she running for the stairs.
Instead of hitting her mark, she grazed the side of his leg.
He grabbed her ankle as she pulled back for another shot.
She slammed her other stockinged foot against his shin, but it had no impact on his stance or his hold.
“You’ve gotten stronger, Eleonora.”
Nora froze as she looked up into the face of the man from the stage. Adler. But why? And how?
Eleonora.
There was no reason to know her name unless he was—
She met his gaze, and her stomach twisted.
A glass eye stared at nothing while his other eye stared down at her.
Winston.
How had she not recognized Adler as Winston even from her seat in the balcony? Or had she recognized him but not realized it? Is that why she panicked? But he didn’t look like the Winston she remembered. Years of nightmares had seared his face into her memory. Or had time and dreams altered it?
“Ah, I see you noticed what you did to me. I’ve been waiting to get my vengeance.” He dropped her foot and removed a knife from his coat. “An eye for an eye sounds about right.”
Nora flattened against the floor and searched for anything she could use as protection. Unless he feared a paper cut, nothing could defend against a knife.
“There will be time for that later.” A woman dressed in full mourning with a long, thick veil over her face and an obviously disguised voice stepped around Winston. This must be Ursula. She leaned upon a metal-tipped cane, but Nora doubted its purpose was to help walk. “Where is Katherine?”
Katherine? The only Katherine Nora knew lay scattered amongst the pages on the floor. “I don’t know a Katherine.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Ursula stamped the metal tip against the floor. “Katherine is your mother.”
“My mum is Constanza Brisbane.”
Winston huffed. “Same woman, different name. Where is she?”
But that couldn’t be right. Katherine was a character, not a real person. Nora sat up, but leaned away as Winston brought the knife tip to within inches of her face.
She met his eye. “Katherine is nothing but a character in Mum’s libretto.”
“She’s more than that, girl. Now tell us where your mother is, and I won’t make you suffer. Much.”
Nora shook her head. This had to be a dream, or worse, a hallucination.
As frightening as this was, a dream or hallucination made more sense.
These two acted like villains from one of Lydia’s dime novels.
No one was really that ridiculous or melodramatic, and they insisted on Mum being a character from a libretto.
Even their appearances fit with a mind losing its hold.
She’d never seen Ursula’s face, so a veil obscured the details she didn’t know.
And Winston, his was just the face of the opera singer from Olivette.
But she had been attacked by Winston, and she couldn’t fight back against a hallucination, could she?
But she’d fought Winston countless times in her dreams. This was just a new dream, molded by her experience at the opera house and imagining his voice in the street.
Nora sharpened her tone to steel. “I’m going to stand, and you’re going to let me.”
When they didn’t threaten her or move, she blew out a breath and stood. If she could control them with her words, then she must be dreaming—which meant she could make them disappear if she did her exercise of speaking truths to herself.
She glared at where Ursula’s eyes should be behind the veil. “You’re not real. I’m just overly tired from staying up all night with the Guardians. I must have fallen asleep while reading Mum’s libretto, that’s all. I’m not losing my mind like Mum. This is all a dream.”
Winston’s mouth fell open. “You think this is a dream?” He looked to Ursula. “She’s dottier than a patient in Bedlam.”
Nora adopted her most commanding pose. She’d had enough of these tricks of the mind. She would not become Mum. “You are to leave me and never come back.”
“Maybe I just need to prove how real I am”—Winston took a threatening step forward with his knife ready to carve her flesh—“by making you bleed.”
Dream or not, she stepped back.
The cane cut through the space between them and cracked against Winston’s hand, dislodging the knife from his grip.
“That is enough!” Ursula approached like a black apparition, her speech slow and placating. “You heard Eleonora. She knows we’re not real, and now we have to leave.”
“You’ve gone dotty! I’m not leaving without my revenge!” He reached for the knife.
Ursula stepped on the blade and pulled a white handkerchief from her sleeve.
“Don’t worry, Winston. You’ll be back, but for now, she’s figured us out.
The least we can do is allow her to rest.” The pop of a cork accompanied her words, followed by the soft rustle of fabric. “Here, why don’t you help her?”
Winston snatched the handkerchief from her extended hand. “Fine, but I’ll be watching you, Eleonora, and when you least expect it, I’ll get my eye for an eye.”
Nora shifted to a boxing stance. How many times would she have to fight Winston in one dream before she woke up?
She would wake up, right? Or had she just convinced herself of a lie and now a very real Winston was about to strike?
Was she becoming unable to distinguish between the real and the imagined?
Winston didn’t go for her face or an arm grab.
He ducked low and tackled her middle, taking her down to the floor.
Her head slammed against the wood, and bursts of light blinded her.
Before she could stop him, he’d pinned her arms beneath his legs and pressed the handkerchief over her mouth and nose.
The scent brought a flash of memory from the last time that smell had assailed her.
No. Not that horrid stuff.
She thrashed her head, trying to get free, but he used his other hand to stop her.
Tears stung her eyes. Though age had given her size and strength, lightheadedness quickly made it difficult to think.
Heaviness seeped into her body, stealing her fight.
Black crowded in, and far too soon all sense of what was happening faded into nothingness.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
The heavy clang of the grandfather clock infiltrated Nora’s dream as she continued to struggle against the grip of her attacker. His hands suffocated, and she twisted to get free. A sharp pain zinged up her neck and into her head, severing wakefulness from the vestiges of her nightmare.
She blinked against the light from the lamp next to her as she tried to make sense of where she was.
A chair in the parlor. And she was sitting at an odd angle.
Apparently fighting the demons of her dream had translated into actual movement while she slept.
The pounding in her head matched the rhythm of her heartbeat and demanded she find immediate relief for the monstrous headache.
She stretched gingerly, and paper crinkled beneath her bare feet.
Mum’s libretto lay scattered on the floor, like she’d fallen asleep reading and it had slipped from her lap.
Strange. Hadn’t she read it while eating supper at the kitchen table?
She didn’t remember coming to the parlor to finish.
In fact, she distinctly remembered checking all the windows and doors before going upstairs to put it away.
Unease wound through her. It had been a nightmare, hadn’t it?
Something about Winston and her bedroom?
She massaged her throbbing temple to abate the headache so she could think.
Bits and pieces floated to the surface. The woman in mourning garb—Ursula.
Winston attacking her. Their threats and search for Mum.
No, for Katherine . . . who was also Mum?
Then there was her head being slammed and the sweet-smelling handkerchief.
Had she been drugged? But then, why was she in her chair like she’d never made it upstairs to begin with?
Surely Winston and Ursula hadn’t drugged her, carried her downstairs, propped her up in a chair, and given her the libretto to read.
Winston was more likely to cut out her eye and leave her for dead.
Did that mean the attack had been a dream?
It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, especially given her reaction to Olivette and then her recounting of the kidnapping.
It probably hadn’t been wise to read Mum’s libretto, given how tied it was to Nora’s past.
But she did go upstairs for bed. She was sure of it. So was last night a dream or real?
She needed evidence or her mind would pace around the question all night.
Even if they’d staged her sleeping in the chair for some reason, they would’ve had to leave a sign of their presence.
She collected the pages of the libretto and set them aside, then began her rounds, including a stop for headache powder.
Both doors were locked, as well as most of the windows.
But all it took was one to give Winston entrance.
Nora’s hand trembled as she touched the sash lock that, although twisted, had missed the notch.
Even the nail board she kept beneath the window was somewhat askew.
Someone could have easily climbed in or out and shut the window behind them.
Or she could have missed the window during her earlier checks.
After all, they had cracked the window when Flossie complained about the lingering sardine stench. Lydia closed it as she left for lunch with Abraham, but Nora hadn’t double-checked she’d done a good job of it. So was this her fault or the work of Winston and Ursula?
After locking it tight and checking all the windows and doors again, Nora took the libretto to her room.
Not a dust mote stood out of place, from what she could tell, but just standing in the room churned her stomach.
She’d been facing her shelves when Winston’s arms wrapped around her and she dropped the libretto.
It was there, on the floor amongst those scattered pages, that he’d pinned her and suffocated her with that handkerchief .
. . just as he’d done when she was eleven.
Dream or reality, she couldn’t sleep in here tonight.
She grabbed her knitting needles and the loaded gun from her nightstand, then shut the door on the feel of evil in the room.
She should search for the officer who patrolled their area, but it was after three and far from a safe time for a woman to be alone on the streets.
Abraham would attend church tomorrow. She could ask him to use his detective skills to sort out whether or not someone had been in her house.
But would he think her crazy if he found nothing?
Perhaps the safest and sanest course of action was to set more traps.
She and the Guardians had talked about doing it, knowing she’d be alone for at least two more nights, but then they’d been distracted.
The traps were only meant to test Lydia’s plots, but they’d come in handy more than once.
Tonight, Nora would set them all up, then pray it was a dream.
Because if Winston and Ursula were real, her whole family was in danger.