Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization (5 page)

“As I recall, you’re not so keen on it yourself,” she shot back.

He made a face. “Tonight, I have no choice. Eunice would never forgive me.”

That’s true
, Edith thought.
If anyone can hold a grudge, it’s Eunice McMichael.
She had watched Eunice shun former best friends for the flimsiest of imagined slights.

Edith regarded the two men fondly. “You lads enjoy yourselves.” Then she whispered sotto voce to Alan, “Please don’t let him drink too much.”

* * *

The door to Cushing Manor closed as firmly as Edith’s refusal to attend the soirée. As Alan held out an umbrella for Mr. Cushing and they walked toward his motorcar, he was disappointed but not surprised that she was staying home. He would have skipped the party, too, if it weren’t being held in his home, by his family. Still, if Eunice married the young aristocrat, she would leave home and perhaps then Edith would call on the McMichaels more frequently. He certainly understood why she kept her distance. He loved his sister, but she could be quite mean.

“So she’s not coming.” It wasn’t a question. It was an opening gambit to find out precisely why. He had his opinions, but it stung him a bit that though he was but newly returned, she had not found that sufficient reason to put on a pretty dress and take a turn on the dance floor with him.

“I tried,” Mr. Cushing said. “Stubborn to the bone.”

“And where does she get that from?” Alan jabbed playfully. “I like it.”

Her willfulness indicated that Edith had a mind of her own, and he did like her mind. She was a prodigious wit and very creative, too. He was a man of science, not given to flights of fancy such as hers. He’d loved hearing her read passages from her book so long ago, but had never known exactly what to say in response. “I like it” had always sounded so weak.

“So do I,” her doting father admitted.

They climbed in and Alan guided the car into the rainy street. Next stop: social frivolity. If only Edith had consented to attend. She would have brought a ray of sunshine into a tedious, rainy night.

* * *

I couldn’t go, of course. I had so much to do: I was busy reading about clay mining in the north of England. And about the Sharpes’ home, Allerdale Hall. One of the most elegant homes in Northern England.

* * *

Edith knew that she would never see Sir Thomas’s ancestral home, but she was curious about it. And about him. She had already decided to rewrite Cavendish so that he more resembled the inscrutable young man—a common practice of authors she had learned from her research about the literary life. After her father and Alan’s departure, Edith lay sprawled on her large bed and studied a thick book replete with maps of England and intricate engravings of daily life. Cumberland, England, was the location of the Sharpe clay mines and their “family seat”: an enormous, castle-like building. Carriages entered and exited via a porte cochère; ladies with parasols strolled alongside gentlemen in top hats carrying walking canes.

It was enchanting. She imagined Sir Thomas drinking tea and discussing his invention with beautifully dressed visitors in a room decorated with oil paintings of his noble ancestors and a coat of arms over the mantel. She had never been to England, although she had read all the important British authors and some of the popular ones as well. She liked Charles Dickens very much, and her secret guilty pleasures were the ghost stories of Sheridan Le Fanu and Arthur Machen. She and her mother had read the Shakespeare plays, of course. Her mother’s favorite had been
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But for her money, she would take
Hamlet
or
Macbeth.
Stories with ghosts in them. She could imagine Thomas taking her to see a Shakespeare play in London.

Sir
Thomas, you twit
, she remonstrated herself.
And he’s practically engaged to Eunice. They’ll probably make the announcement tonight.

Which was the real reason, of course, that she was not attending the ball. One must be philosophical about these things. And while she had no hopes of being with him, she fully intended on escaping into the charming, mysterious man’s world, even if just for a few hours, by burying her nose in these books. The old world. Titles and privilege. So much depended on the accident of one’s birth. If you were the oldest son, you got everything. But if you were a younger brother, or a sister…

She wondered if Sir Thomas had siblings. She imagined him with doting parents. And a dog. Several. Hunting dogs, perhaps, though the notion of actual hunts repulsed her. What were they called? Blood sports.

Outside, raindrops spattered the windows. Thunder rumbled. The sky was unnaturally dark, and a sharp wind whistled down the lane. Father and Alan would be at the party soon, where there would be crackling fires and hot rum punch, and candles everywhere. She could just see Sir Thomas in his white tie and tails.

She smiled wistfully as she memorized the lines and angles of his grand family estate. Her father had visited many of the opulent homes of American tycoons, some even designed to look like English castles.

The handle to her door turned slowly.

Edith raised up on her elbow and watched it. It kept turning, as if by someone whose hands were too full to push open the door.

She rose from the bed, more curious than afraid.

“Father?” she called. “Did you forget something?”

She heard no reply. The handle kept moving, jittering wildly. Then suddenly the door swung open.

She jumped. No one was there. Wary and confused as long-buried memories bubbled toward the surface, she moved into the hall toward the upper-floor parlor, telling herself that she wasn’t afraid, that every chill down her spine was not an echo of something that had happened to her fourteen years ago.

When her mother—

She balled her fists and kept walking along the hallway.

Halfway down, she froze. She saw a shadow; she could
see
a woman in black, a dead woman, a
thing
of bones and decay and grave dirt—

No. I do not see her. I am not seeing this. I am asleep on my bed thinking of Macbeth.

But she was awake, and though the shadows were very deep, she
was
seeing something…

Gasping, Edith turned on her heel and raced back to her room, shut the door and held firm to the handle. She trembled, teeth chattering, trying to make sense of what she thought she saw, trying not to panic. Denial was her instinctive response.

I did not see that. It was my imagination, like that first time. It was—

Her heart pounded. There was no pressure on the handle. No sound on the other side of the door. She listened harder, ear pressed close to the wood.

Then came the rustle of silk…

And then… the turn of the handle once more, this time moving against her fingers.

Chills raced down her back as she held the handle with both hands, fighting to keep the door shut. If the door opened—

If she saw—

“What is it?” she cried. “What do you want?”

Two withered hands burst straight through the door and grabbed her by the shoulders. They were burning cold blocks, sticks of ice, painfully strong. Then a horrible, blackened head that stank of the grave crashed through the wood, the figure’s features crushed, the face a ruin.

No, not crushed; the face was
rippling
, like water.

And the voice that had read her to sleep so many childhood nights, the voice that now rushed forth from long-dead lungs was likewise quavering, distorted almost beyond recognition.

“Beware of Crimson Peak!”

Edith fell backwards and scrambled away. The room tilted, then whirled. She couldn’t breathe, could only gape. There could be no doubt this time it was her mother, her long-dead and buried mother.

Then her face, her hands vanished. The door was unmarred. Edith heard herself gasping.

The door handle turned again, and Edith choked back a scream as Annie, one of the maids, cracked it open and leaned in.

Mute with horror, Edith could only stare at the girl.

“Are you all right, miss? Whatever is it?” the maid asked anxiously.

“Nothing. You—you startled me, that’s all.”

Oh, my God, I saw a ghost. Or else I am mad.

Annie did not press her mistress for further explanation.

“There’s a Sir Thomas Sharpe at the door,” Annie said. “He’s dripping wet and most insistent on coming in.”

“Thomas Sharpe?” Edith fought for composure. “At this hour? Did you tell him Father was out?”

Annie bobbed her head. “I told him that, miss. He won’t go away. He wants to talk to
you
.”

Edith was stunned. “It’s out of the question, Annie,” she said, forcing the quaver out of her voice. Beyond the impropriety of receiving a gentleman in her dressing gown and without her father in the house, Edith felt barely coherent. She had just seen a ghost.

Had she not?

“Send him away.”

The maid shrugged helplessly. “I tried.”

“And?”

“He won’t go away.”

Nonplussed, Edith found herself in a kind of fog descending the stairs. The situation was untenable.

I saw a ghost. She was here.

But she had no proof of that. Her door was unblemished. She had been working very hard on her novel—revising with a sharper, tougher eye since Sir Thomas had commented on it, she had to confess. A dream would have churned up horrific images, memories. She had read of the lengths to which her fellow author, Edgar Allan Poe, had gone to wrest the grotesque and phantasmagorical from the humdrum, mundane outer life he had endured as a magazine editor. And Samuel Taylor Coleridge had smoked opium to bring such deeply buried visions as the Ancient Mariner to life.

So perhaps this simply means that I am digging into my own mine—into a rich vein of metaphors for my own loss, as I told Mr. Ogilvie. Perhaps this happened because I am changing. I thought never to leave Father’s side, as he would then be alone. I believed I had no interest in a husband of my own. I had assumed I would be content to serve as Father’s hostess for as long as he lived.

Perhaps this is my fear that my father will not always be here. His birthday is coming, and he is growing old, no matter how he may try to disguise it. And I have a true calling to write. I cannot deny it. I should embrace these specters that I see. They are a gift.

Still, she was quite shaken. But good breeding and manners took over as she saw Sir Thomas in the foyer, his long, wavy hair damp with rainwater. He was wearing a black coat, perfectly cut, a white vest and tie, trousers revealing the polished tips of a pair of leather dancing boots. No more elegant man had ever crossed the threshold of Cushing Manor in her lifetime, not even her father. She was confounded.

He is spoken for
, she reminded herself.
Well, almost.

“Miss Cushing, are you all right? You seem quite pale.” His deep-set eyes narrowed with genuine concern.

If I summoned the courage to tell him what just happened upstairs, he would no doubt think me hysterical, or mad.

“I am not all too well, Sir Thomas, I’m sorry to say. And Father’s not home.” She spoke in a clipped fashion in an attempt to maintain her control.

“I know that. I saw him leave.” He paused and then added, “I waited in the rain for him to leave.”

Despite her distress, she understood, with a shock, that he was calling on her.

“Oh?” Edith managed.

“I know he is going to the reception at the McMichael house,” he continued. “Which is my destination, too.”

Now she wasn’t quite following again. Concentrating took a supreme effort. Too much had happened. Was happening.

“But that’s Bidwell Parkway, sir. This is Masten Park. You are very, very lost.”

“That I am,” he concurred. “And I desperately need your help.”

“Help with what?” she asked cautiously.

“Well, Miss Cushing, the language, for one.” His smile was rueful. “As you can plainly see, I do not speak a word of American.”

At that, she mustered a small smile. He had a wit. The master of Allerdale Hall had come calling. He cut a breath-catching figure in his evening clothes. And yet…

“Sir Thomas, I simply can’t.”

“Please, am I to make even more of a wretch of myself?” he beseeched her. “Why would you want to stay here, all alone?”

Why indeed? She gazed back up the stairs toward her room. Had that happened? Had it really happened? Perhaps she had dreamed it.

I know that I didn’t. I know what I saw.

Fear bubbled up.

She swallowed it down.

They are gifts
, she reminded herself.

This party can’t get any worse
, Alan McMichael thought as he gazed around at the glittering assembly of Buffalo high society. The ladies were dressed in the finest fashions from Paris, bare-shouldered, draped with pearls and glowing, the gentlemen in their tailcoats and gloves. Candles gleamed and a profusion of artfully arranged flowers lent an air of magic to the McMichael home.
Poor Eunice.