Chapter Five
CHAPTER
Five
Asound like thunder rattled through the room and startled Jane out of an otherwise dreamless sleep.
Panic spiked through her heart when she failed to recognize her surroundings, but as she focused on the deep blue of the wallpaper, the creaking sighs of the Drowning House’s bones, and the thrum of rain against its windows, she crumpled back into the stale smell of even staler sheets with a groan.
Right. The Drowning House, the storm, the flooded marshes. It all washed back over her in an ebbing wave of cold mud.
She groaned and scrubbed the heel of her palm into her eye sockets.
It had taken her what felt like half an age to at last fall asleep.
The caterwauling storm paired with the dusty old bed and its squealing springs, the unease worming its way through her, and her stomach groaning from lack of dinner, Jane failed to find enough comfort to properly sleep.
She tried to imagine Mr. Thompson’s warmth or the sound of her mother’s snores, but the absence of both made her feel all the colder beneath paper-thin sheets.
She sighed and lay flat on her back. Her eyes traced the cracks branching across the plaster ceiling to attempt to restart the cycle of sleeplessness.
Was Terence also struggling to sleep? Was he tossing and turning in his bed, eyes weary from the frustration of being unable to rest them?
She grinned at the sudden thought of going on a journey in search of his bedroom to ask if she could crawl into bed with him where she would then latch onto him and his heat and comfort.
He probably wouldn’t hesitate in offering her bed to him.
Not in a sexual manner, but rather because such was the law of a gentleman: you sacrifice a bit of yourself for the good of a lady.
Jane liked to think he was the breed of gentleman who would skin himself alive and wrap his flesh around her shoulders if it meant keeping her warm for just a moment.
Grim as the image was, Jane hummed with a little grin as she burrowed deep into the mattress to pretend that instead of creaky springs she laid atop a sculpted chest and was held by strong arms rather than dusty blankets.
Her heartbeat and breathing had started to fall into a tired rhythm, and her eyelids began to weigh themselves closed, when that thundering sound once more shook the room down to its very floorboards.
This time, it was accompanied by the scraping of something against wood, long and slow—against her door, as whatever lurked on the other side took its time in trying to claw its way inside.
A dog begging for scraps. Who in the house had a dog? Jane couldn’t recall seeing one…
The scratching continued, but only for a moment before it halted, and the silence that followed was deafening.
Jane nearly released the breath she was holding, too afraid to let it go, before a low moan droned from the other side of the door.
It was a groan with a dreadful gurgle she felt bubble in the back of her own throat, a sound that seemingly couldn’t decide between being a human wail or a beast’s growl.
Whatever it was, Jane didn’t move, only clutching a fistful of sheets against her chin.
The storm continued to seethe just beyond her window, and a flash of lighting proved that she was alone in the room. But that didn’t tell her who—what—was scratching against the door. She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to know what was on the other side; bliss lay in not knowing.
Another moan pressed against the wood, another agonizingly long scrape of nails dragged across the door until Jane felt those unseen claws raking down the plains of her ribs, pleading with her to be let inside.
Who are you? Her lips couldn’t muster the courage to call out to the intruder and she instead choked on the ice-cold fear lodged firmly at the back of her tongue.
“Mrs. Foster?” she somehow mustered. “Mrs. Foster, is that you? Ruben?”
Nothing. Only more scratching.
Slowly, Jane rose out of bed. Had an animal gotten into the house? Perhaps some vagabond in need of shelter from the storm? Curiosity was screaming in the back of her mind, demanding to know what was on the other side, and why they had the audacity to disturb her slumber.
She lit the oil lamp, bathing the room in a dim yellow light that turned the wallpaper a murky shade of green.
The scratching continued as she neared the door.
To temper her rising anxiety, she tried to picture some great, but harmless, dog on the other side, perhaps a lost Newfoundland or Great Dane, just looking for a midnight snack after it accidentally wandered from home and into another that wasn’t its own.
Hot, damp air rushed from the crack at the bottom of the door, as if a curious snout snuffled along it.
Ms. Hudson’s warnings echoed within the depths of her skull, then.
Ignore things that speak from the darkness—don’t leave your bedroom until you are certain it is sunlight spilling across your sheets.
The warnings tamed her temptation and she kept her eager hand closed into a tight fist against her chest. What if it wasn’t a lost dog?
She stared at the door and the shadow that shuffled along its bottom. It was a shadow that swayed, only telling Jane that whatever was on the other side was real, or real enough to cast a shadow.
But there was one other thing that kept her from opening the door. The knob was already turning itself. Her heart lurched in her throat.
She anticipated the door to open as it jerked within its frame, but it didn’t give way.
Mrs. Foster’s lock held firm, but Jane was unsure if a lock could keep whatever was on the other side at bay, especially as the door’s shaking grew in its intensity.
The moaning devolved into vicious snarls, the scratching into a clawing violence.
Jane rushed back to the sanctuary of the rickety bed that squealed in protest beneath her sudden weight.
On the nightstand, she rifled through her bag until her hand closed over something cold and thin, and she pulled out the silver hairpin.
She took the metal sheath, twisted it, and withdrew the hidden knife.
It was a gift her grandmother had given to all the Sterling daughters after their first monthly bleedings, a tool to defend, a piece of beauty that could be honed into a weapon, and Jane wore it in her hair everywhere she went.
But as she grew older, yet to face an opponent that’d require such a weapon, it had turned into a conversational piece, made even more so after she cut her hair on her twentieth birthday.
But now, as she hid beneath the covers with the knife clutched tight against her chest, she failed to find security in its presence as she listened to the intruder pounding at the bedroom door.
If she held doubts over its ability to fend off the undead, what good would it do against the brute-ish entity in the hallway?
She waited and waited, for something to burst through and descend upon her to tear her apart and rob her of innocence in one fell swoop. She pressed her eyes and held her breath as those claws snagged on wood—and waited.
And then all fell silent, abrupt as death. The quiet rang in her ears.
Jane strained to listen for any signs of the intruder past the hammering of her pulse, but there was nothing. No scratching or groaning, as if whatever was on the other side simply vanished.
Knife pressed against her cheek, Jane choked every breath and whimper that threatened to squirm up her throat. But she kept silent, and listened, and waited.
And waited.