Chapter 7 #2
Oh God, what have I done?
My body slumped in the chair.
“I think you need to lie down,” Mr. Hoffmann said.
“Yes, that seems right, Molly,” Bethany said. “Think of our training. We put shock patients in bed and give them Mother’s Milk.”
Drugs were the last thing I needed. For all I knew, I had a concussion after falling in the foyer, so I shouldn’t sleep. “But—”
Mrs. Culpepper spared me a pitiful look. “Let’s help her upstairs to her room.”
I didn’t argue. I was too dumbstruck, questioning my reality and trying to match what I’d experienced with what they’d told me.
So I allowed them to help me up from the table, and I didn’t struggle when Mr. Hoffmann and Filomena stood on either side of me and slung their arms around my back to support me as I took fumbling steps.
Instead of going out to the foyer and up the grand staircase, they ferried me through the butler’s pantry to a narrow set of stairs meant for the servants.
It took some effort to climb, but when we got to the second floor, I was surprised to find that these servants’ stairs were just a few steps from my room, the view of them from my room blocked by a potted palm.
“I want to talk to Mr. Voss,” I said, suddenly panicking again that they were lying to me.
Mrs. Culpepper shook her head. “He’s had a long day and retired early. You’ll see him tomorrow when both of you are better rested. Here’s your room, now. Come, child. Let’s get you inside.”
My room was across the hall, just a few steps away. Once they got me inside the door and lit a candle at the bedside, I waved them away from helping me further. “I’m all right,” I lied.
“I’ll come fetch you tomorrow for your duties,” Mrs. Culpepper said. “Please, try to rest.”
“You’ll feel better in the morning, I’m certain of it,” Mr. Hoffmann said, clearly trying to sound hopeful, though I wasn’t sure I bought it.
But after a bit more fussing, they all left and headed back down by way of the servants’ stairs. I quickly shut the door and rotated a small lock to secure it.
And I waited.
“Are you okay, Molly?” Bethany asked from somewhere in the room.
I wasn’t okay. I was a million miles from home with no means to get back, questioning why I was here. Questioning the staff’s motivations. Questioning my mental capacity.
I was confused, embarrassed, and scared.
Even with Bethany there, I’d never felt so alone.
With my cheek resting against the door and Bethany pacing behind me, I thought about everything the servants had said. Everything I’d experienced.
But mostly, my thoughts strayed to the one thing I couldn’t make my mind accept.
The boy was real.
Alive or dead, I hadn’t dreamed him up. There was someone chained down there. I could still see him in my mind, sitting captive beneath all that strange writing. And the more I thought about it, the surer I was.
“You saw him, right?” I asked Bethany in a small voice.
“Who?”
“Before you disappeared, you said the basement felt wrong. Did you see him? The boy chained in the basement?”
“I saw…” She paused, and I turned to look at her in the flickering candlelight that burned at my bedside. “Darkness and death.”
A little shiver went through me.
I backed away from the door and retreated to the bed, where I propped myself up and peered out the window.
It was windy, and cool air seeped through tiny gaps in the wood-framed panes.
Looking across the atrium below, I noticed that Mr. Voss’s rooms were now dark.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, if he was asleep for the night or if he’d left his quarters.
Was he frustrated with me? Disappointed that he’d brought me out here and I’d failed to live up to expectations?
I tried to let it all go and erase the night’s events from my head, but I just couldn’t. I knew for certain that I hadn’t imagined feeling drugged. Maybe the servants were telling the truth. Maybe they hadn’t done the drugging.
If not them, who? Mr. Voss? That made no sense. None of it did. All I knew was that something was wrong here in this house. And it centered around the boy in the basement.
Darkness and death.
Doubt grew inside my chest and weighed me down. At the hospital, I was head of the class. Confident. I knew what I was doing. Here? I was a traveler in a foreign land, unable to understand language and local customs. I didn’t know…
Anything, really.
I shrank back into the pillows, hugging myself. Unable to stop tears from welling, or the heavy sadness that fell over me.
Oh, Mammy, I prayed inside my head as a bitter wind howled and banged against the window. What have I done, coming here? I’m scared. Help me, please.
No answer came. It never did when I tried to talk to her. Instead a spark of clarity rushed to the surface of my anguished thoughts.
“Holy shite, I know his voice,” I whispered to myself.
Bolting up in bed, I forced myself to recall every detail of my trip down to the crypt. How the boy had been sitting on the floor. His manacle. The loose, dark curls that framed a face I couldn’t quite see behind his extended hand, blocking the light. His fine clothes, dirty and ripped.
Fine clothes… Dark clothes. Black clothes.
I pictured him in my head, as he was on the floor of the crypt, in a three-piece suit.
Had I spied something else in the moment that I hadn’t yet processed?
Think! Just when I was so frustrated that I wanted to throw something across the room, I suddenly remembered the detail I’d forgotten.
The boy in the crypt, his jacket lapel had been pinned with a floral boutonniere.
A chill ran down my spine.
All at once, my perception shifted, and the puzzle pieces of the night suddenly slotted into place inside my head.
I definitely knew this boy. I’d been seeing him appear and disappear since I was a child.
He was the Black Groom.