Chapter 10
As before, her words propel Barney into motion. Divested of my sopping coat and hat, I gratefully stand in front of the fire. Evans joins me a moment later, a little sigh of relief escaping him as he holds his strong brown hands out to the flames.
“A bad night for a wreck,” Mrs. Foster says. “But I’m glad you saw our lantern. It’s not often we get visitors, and with just Barney…” She shakes her head. “Well, he’s not much of a conversationalist these days. Not that he was much of one before.”
Before what? Did he get a head injury in the war? Or on the farm, kicked by an animal or caught in some bit of machinery?
It would be rude to ask. “Thank you again for your hospitality.”
Barney appears with two threadbare blankets, which he hands to us. We wrap them around our shoulders, and Mrs. Foster says, “Barney, make three cups of tea and bring them in here.”
He shuffles off, and she turns back to us. “Once the tea is done, I’ll have him make you up a pair of rooms upstairs.”
Exhausted as I am, I’m not certain I could sleep in this decaying place. I glance at Evans and read the same uncertainty in his dark eyes.
“Thank you for the offer,” I say, “but we’ll just wait for the rain to stop and be on our way.”
Mrs. Foster shrugs. “Have it your way—I know how headstrong men can be. Barney was the same.”
As if she’d called him, Barney shuffles back into the room, carrying a tray with a teapot, three chipped cups, and a saucer with sugar cubes. Given the squalor of the place, I don’t particularly want to eat or drink anything, but I force myself to accept a cup with a murmur of thanks.
Evans cradles the cup between his hands and takes a deep breath of the steam coming off, but he doesn’t touch his lips to it. “Thank you, ma’am. A hot drink is very welcome on a night like this.”
I can’t help but notice how good-looking he is, especially when making an effort to charm.
Mrs. Foster must notice as well, because she flutters her lashes when she replies, “Why, of course, Mr. Evans. It’s our pleasure.
” She takes a hearty swig of her own tea, then puts the cup down and rises with the stiffness that comes with age.
“If you’ll just excuse me a moment—I have to set Barney to his chores, otherwise he’ll just stand there for the rest of the night. ”
Indeed, the man is simply waiting slack-faced, as if content to remain in place forever. He follows his mother gamely out of the room when prompted, and she shuts the door behind them.
I immediately toss my tea into the fire. “I haven’t seen the kitchen, and I know the water was boiled, but…”
“Agreed.” Evans makes a face and follows my lead. “I hope the rain stops soon. How are you holding up?”
The question brings me up short. “I’ve been trying not to think about it,” I admit after a moment.
“I was drugged and woke up over a year later in a strange city. You tell me I no longer own half of the business I intended to spend the rest of my life building. Someone is trying to kill me, and were only stopped by some strange weather phenomenon that—”
I catch myself, because it sounds insane, even in my own head. But Evans prompts me: “That what?”
“That felt as though it came from me. Came out of me.”
There. I’ve said it aloud. My next home won’t be my apartment in Greenwich, but an asylum.
Evans doesn’t speak for a long moment, only stares into the fire.
“I met a fair number of French and British soldiers over there,” he finally says.
“Brave, strong men. But some of them, the ones who’d been at the bloodiest battles—Mons, Passchendaele, others—when they were in their cups, they’d swear there were forces on the field that weren’t human.
And I’m not talking about guardian angels or phantom bowmen. Terrible things, inexplicable.”
The fine hairs on the back of my neck rise. Emerson…
But no. Emerson died moaning, none of us able to reach him without getting our brains blown out by a sniper. He didn’t come back. I never saw him standing there in the fog, his eyes glowing with unholy light.
“Such hallucinations weren’t uncommon in the war,” I say regretfully. “Based on my own experience, I’d say they’re an early symptom of shell shock.”
The door swings open, and Mrs. Foster returns. “Are you fellows warm enough? Then sit down, sit down.”
There’s a decrepit couch across from the fire, and a battered wingback chair drawn up closer to the warmth.
I assume the chair is where Barney normally sits, so I take the couch.
Evans perches beside me, close enough I can smell a faint trace of lilac wafting from his skin even through the scent of mildew rising from the cushions.
Mrs. Foster slurps down the rest of her tea. Above us, the wooden floorboards creak as Barney makes his way around upstairs. Doing his chores, though I can’t imagine what chores are needed at this time of night. “Do either of you need your cups refilled?”
“Not yet,” Evans says, and mimes taking a sip from his, as though there was some of the brew left inside. “Is it just you and your son, then?”
“Sad to say.” Her expression turns wistful.
“There used to be more of us. I grew up here, and so did my father and his mother and so on back to when this was just an English colony. If you think we’re in the middle of nowhere now, you should have seen this stretch of road when I was a little girl.
Maybe one person a day would ride past, if that.
” A heavy sigh escapes her. “But we had a run of bad luck, and now it’s just me and Barney, and he was thinking about leaving back when he was able to. ”
Something thumps loudly overhead, and I look up. “Just Barney getting ready for bed,” Mrs. Foster says cheerfully. “He’s such a good boy these days.”
There’s something very disturbing about these people, and my earlier concern about being rude is slipping away. “I don’t mean to pry, but what happened to…?” I let the question hang.
“Liquor.” She shakes her head sadly. “Bootleg liquor. Now I don’t hold with drinking—no offense if you two do, but it’s against the Lord’s will for us to cloud up our minds so. He wants us nice and sharp, as we were made to be. Don’t see the wolf or the lion getting drunk, do you?”
“Er…no?”
“Exactly.” She nods her head sagely.
A line appears between Evans’s brows. “I’ve read in the paper about a rash of bad liquor sending people to the asylums. Not catatonic, but unmotivated to do anything but what they’re told. Is that what happened to your son?”
“We don’t get the papers out here, so I can’t say.
” She pours herself a second helping of tea and settles back.
“All I know is, one night he came home drunk as a skunk. The next morning, well, he was like he is now. And, yes, liquor is a tool of the evil one, but surely the Lord took up that tool and used it to sculpt Barney anew. Cut out his wild ways, his disobedient ways. Remade him into the hard-working young man you saw before you.”
I haven’t the slightest idea what to think about her story. She certainly seems unconcerned about whatever damage the rotgut did to his brain, welcomes it, even. No matter how wild or disobedient Barney was before, it seems callous of a mother—of anyone—to say such things.
Something drips into my cup. The roof must leak—no surprise in this ramshackle place—but when I look into the cup, the drop is scarlet.
I raise my eyes slowly to the ceiling. If the old ceiling was ever plastered, it’s long gone, the wooden floorboards of the room above exposed. Something red has pooled in the cracks, and a second drop falls, spattering my hand this time.
The smell rising from it is unmistakable.
Blood.