Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Isat huddled in the corner of the attic, my hair a tangled mess hanging in disarray, partially obscuring my vision.
But I didn’t need to see everything—just the door.
And I waited. For hours. Or maybe just minutes that stretched on, felt like hours.
Finally, the door eased open, allowing in a young woman wearing a simple blue dress and carrying a tray with a silver dome set atop it.
“You need to eat something, Alice,” the woman told me, pushing the door closed with her hip. “Your husband isn’t happy with you starving yourself.”
I merely stared at her, hating the sight of her because it meant I was still alive, still trapped in the damned attic, an abomination growing inside my belly.
The young woman set the tray on a plain wooden table near the wall. “Look, Alice,” she said as if I were a child. “It’s your favorite. And I even brought you some peach cobbler.”
“I do not want it, Netty,” I spat. “I do not want anything from any of them!”
Netty huffed and put her hands on her hips. “What about little David? He misses you. Please just eat something. If you do, I know Mr. Proffitt will let you come out again. Wouldn’t that be nice? Sit under the tree and drink lemonade?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, briefly sorry that it had to be Netty who brought me my dinner today. She’d always been kind. But then, she wasn’t one of them. Not yet.
“Leave it,” I ordered. “You can come back for it later.”
Netty looked hesitant. “I don’t know, Alice…”
“Who employs you at this house, Netty?” I demanded, pushing away from the corner and slinking slowly toward her. “If you like your job, you will do what I say.”
She took a few steps back, her eyes going wide. “Mr. Proffitt promised me—”
I sprung forward, coming within inches of her face. She pressed herself as flat as possible against the wall, her eyes squeezed shut, her head turned away from me.
“Do not believe a word he says,” I ground out near her ear. “He’ll use you as he has the rest, make you and your sister vessels for his hell spawn. Has he promised that he will always take care of you? That he will always love you? Has he fucked you yet, Netty? Has he?”
Netty ducked away from me and ran toward the door. But I was faster. I grabbed the silver dome and swung it, striking her in the back of her head. She crumpled to the ground, unconscious from the blow.
I tossed the dome aside and fled from the room. Turning to close the door behind me, I paused to survey the place that had been my prison. Carved into the walls over and over again until nearly all the surface was covered was my warning to anyone else who followed.
The Devil’s child must die.
I crept out of the attic and down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen. Finding it empty, I hurried in, snatched a knife from the table, then tiptoed back up the stairs until I reached the top floor where the nursery was located.
The Devil’s child must die.
I could hear a child singing softly and went forward before I changed my mind.
The Devil’s child must die.
It had to be done.
The Devil’s child must die.
For his own good.
The Devil’s child must die.
I couldn’t let him become a monster. Not my David.
The Devil’s child must die…
The nursery door was only half closed. I pushed it open slowly so as not to startle him. He sat at his little desk, drawing. His hand stilled when he saw me standing in the doorway.
He said nothing—merely watched me as I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
I bolted upright, a scream on my lips, but I choked it back before I could make a sound. Tears streamed down my face unchecked as I scanned the room, assuring myself that I was in my apartment and not the nightmare that had intruded on sleep that had been so, so sweet since I’d married Whit.
As the adrenaline dissipated, I began to shiver, not just from my sweat-soaked pajamas and sheets, but the horror I’d witnessed in my dream.
“Zellie?” Whit reached for me, wrapping me in his arms. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“I saw her, Whit,” I sobbed. “I saw her. She killed him.”
“Who, baby?”
“Her name is Alice,” I said, pulling back and wiping my eyes. “She’s the screaming woman, the one I keep seeing. The one I saw on the first night here.”
I gasped, suddenly sensing a presence nearby. I threw off the covers and ran down the hall to the living room and pulled open the apartment door, stumbling out into the main hallway. At the far end of the hall, the door was open, the white curtains billowing in the breeze.
And then I saw her—Alice, knife in hand, blood splattered across her nightgown, her arms, her face, a macabre testament to the heartbreaking scene I’d witnessed in my dream.
Her black, empty sockets where eyes had once been bored into me as if trying to communicate the pain, the desperation, the madness that had driven her to such horrific acts.
Then she raised the knife and plunged it into her stomach, over and over again.
“No!” I screamed and would have lurched forward to stop her from mutilating herself if Whit hadn’t wrapped his arms around me, keeping me where I was.
She lifted her crimson-drenched hands and let the knife slip from her fingers. Then she leaned back, falling out of the open doorway as if in slow motion, her apparition fading but not before her mouth opened wide in a wail of rage and grief.
“What the hell?” Whit breathed.
“You saw her?” I choked, my voice little more than a rasp from my own sorrow. “You saw her too?”
His eyes were wide as he nodded. “Yeah.”
I took a step toward the open door, but Whit guided me back to the apartment door. “No, no, inside. Please, Zellie. Let’s go back inside.”
I glanced down the hallway again, torn. Part of me felt like I owed it to Alice to stand where she stood, understand what had driven her to murder her son, her unborn, herself. But as my adrenaline began to dissipate, my legs started shaking, so I nodded and let Whit help me inside.
He led me to the couch, then returned with two glasses and a crystal decanter of scotch that had been a wedding present from Junior and Pearlie. He poured each of us a drink and gulped his down then poured another.
We sat on the couch together in silence, neither of us sure what to say. Then he finally murmured, “My God.”
I ran my hands through my hair, wiped the fresh tears from my cheeks. “It’s over now, right?” I asked. “I saw what she’d wanted me to see. I saw how she died. And why. So, that’s it, don’t you think?”
He dragged his hand down, suddenly looking aged beyond his years. “Yeah. I would think so. I mean, this is really more your area of expertise. But…yeah.”
Leaving my drink untouched, I scooted closer to Whit and curled into him when he put his arm around me and pulled me close.
We sat this way until the first beams of sunlight began to peek through the blinds.
Only then, too exhausted and drained to stay awake any longer, did I allow myself to sink down into a dark, dreamless sleep.
Whit and I kept what had happened to ourselves.
I’d seen how everyone had reacted when I first brought up that Dawes House was haunted and knew they would never take the story seriously.
At best, they’d think Whit and I had overreacted to something completely explainable.
At worst, they’d think we were losing our minds.
Besides, I had concerns about the present that kept my thoughts off the distant past of Dawes House.
Only a few weeks earlier, I’d cried myself into exhaustion the day I put Henry on the school bus the first time and waved goodbye, excited for him and happy to see him finally living the big day he’d anticipated for so long, but my heart broke as I watched the bus drive away.
A little piece of my heart tore away with it, floating after him like a leaf on the wind, chasing after him but never quite catching up, and leaving in its place a hole that seemed both small and large at once, reminding me of the stone in Henry’s favorite poem by e.e.
cummings that was “as small as a world and as large as alone.”
Since then, I’d tried to keep myself busy.
My job at the bookstore and my class for the fall filled up my time when I wasn’t with Whit and Henry, keeping my mind off how quiet it was without Henry running around the apartment and telling me about all the adventures he and Addie had shared.
But the transition wore on me. I was exhausted, distracted.
Eating made me nauseated. And when I actually couldn’t keep food down any longer, Whit insisted I see a doctor.
“What did she say?” he asked when I returned from my appointment. He was furiously trying to finish up the last of the renovations to his apartment and was splattered with paint, giving his hair a salt and pepper look that made him look even more like his father.
“I need more vitamins,” I told him.
He nodded, wiping his hands with an old rag. “Okay. That’s good. I’m sure June has something she can give you to help with that.”
“Well,” I drawled, “June already gave me something, which might actually have played a role in what’s going on.”
He went still, his back rigid. “What did she give you, Zellie?”
“It’s the special mixture of herbal supplements that’s been passed down in her family and given to new brides,” I told him. “The one she gave me the night we announced our engagement. The one meant to keep babies from leeching all the nutrients from mothers’ bodies.”
He stared at me, silent. But I could see his mind racing as he put it together. “Do you mean…?”
I laughed with pure joy. “Yes! I’m pregnant, Whit.”
His jaw tightened, and he wiped his hands with the rags again, his attention trained intently on the paint that wasn’t there. Finally, his eyes still averted, he asked, “Are you sure?”
My elation at getting the news dissipated in that instant. “This isn’t really the reaction I was hoping for. I thought you’d be happy.”