Chapter 4
My head hurts.
There’s a horrible pounding behind my eyes, and my brain feels as though it’s been taken out of my skull, poked by angry fingers, and stuffed back in again.
I was dreaming, wasn’t I? One of those dreams that feel so real, waking seems like the dream.
God, how much did I drink last night? What did I drink? It must have been a bad batch, whatever it was.
No, wait. I wasn’t drinking last night. I had to get up early to go to Massachusetts.
Hart’s Leap. The uncouth butler. The secret room.
The injection.
My eyes fly open.
I’m sitting on a hard chair in a small room I don’t recognize. There’s a table with a newspaper on it, a wardrobe, a narrow bed with a thin blanket, and the chair beneath me. Everything has a poor air about it, in contrast to the run-down but still opulent estate I was just in.
How the hell did I get here? And how long was I unconscious?
I put a hand to my aching head, expecting to find blood from a blow. No blood…but my hair feels abnormally long. A lock falls into my eyes, and I pull it away to inspect it. Only the tip is bleached, the rest my natural dull brown.
And the clothes I’m wearing—those are mine at least, thank God. But this is one of my older suits, not the one I put on this morning to impress Hart. It ought to be hanging in my apartment in Greenwich, not…wherever the hell I am now.
This is just a dream. Myers drugged me, and now I’m dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or finally succumbing completely to shell shock.
But it feels real.
I stand slowly, carefully, my limbs almost unfamiliar. What the devil did they drug me with?
My eye is drawn to the newspaper, so I cross the room to it, hoping for some clue. The mast proclaims it the Widdershins Enquirer.
Widdershins—that’s the name of a town. Some dreadful little place on the Massachusetts coastline.
Someone has circled the date on the paper in blue ink, deliberately focusing my attention on it.
September 30, 1927.
No—that’s wrong. It has to be wrong. It’s May 18, 1926.
I couldn’t have been unconscious for over a year. That’s impossible.
From outside the closed door comes the sound of approaching footsteps.