Doppelgänger (9 page)

When she heard the laughter again she looked over at Julian. He was sleeping on his stomach, dead to the world. It was pointless to awaken him. He wouldn't believe in the reality of the phenomenon even if he heard it for himself.

She reached for her dressing gown and shrugged it on in the darkness. Pausing at the door, she pressed her ear to the wood.

Yes, the
spöke
was there. She could hear it.
Creak…creak…
Then the laughter came again. It was so faint as to be barely perceptible, but it was there.

Anine opened the door. The hallway was very dim. Miss Wicks often left one light in the entryway on, the gas turned very low. It was so faint that the orange glow barely filtered up to the second floor. But at the end of the hallway Anine could see a figure.

She was astonished at first. Rubbing her eyes, now certain of what she was seeing, the terror suddenly clutched at her. Twenty feet away, at the very end of the hallway near the doors to two of the guest rooms, Anine saw what was unmistakably the bell-shaped figure of the lower half of a woman's dress. It was red and covered with some dark pattern. A fringe of red lace danced against the floor. The upper body of the woman was shrouded in darkness. As she moved the red-black bell of the dress moved with her, swishing about with the sound of gently rustling fabric. The giggling came again—a soft, polite, airy laugh—and then the shadows swallowed all.

Instantly Anine wrenched open the bedroom door, darted back inside and closed it behind her. Her breaths were fast and shallow. She could hear the pounding of her pulse in her ears. There was no mistaking it this time. She had
seen
it. For a split-second, yes; dark, yes; indistinct, yes. But she
had
seen it.

She turned. Julian still hadn't awakened. Gingerly Anine tiptoed back to bed, took off her dressing gown and draped it on the bedpost. She was so terrified of the figure at the end of the hallway that right now even Julian's presence was comforting. She bundled the covers around her, gathering them up as if they were armor that would deflect the supernatural.

Well, there's no use denying it any longer
, Anine thought.
This house is
hemsökt
.
Haunted.

Chapter Eight

The Woman

Anine knew she needed to bring someone else into the circle—if only to preserve her own sanity—but with each day that passed without a note from Rachael she realized her choice of allies was extremely limited. Until she could be seen socially without turning the women of New York even more fiercely against her, Anine knew she could count on no hope from outside the walls of her house. Yet she steadfastly refused to be isolated. The terrifying gibberish in Bradbury's diary had set off an alarm inside of her.
That could happen to me
. It was imperative to make sure it did not.

Two mornings after she'd seen the specter in the hallway Anine waited until Julian left for his office, then retired into the Green Parlor and rang the bell cord. She made a point to be standing—not sitting down—when Miss Wicks opened the pocket doors and entered. The detached, maid-ish way she said “Yes, ma'am?” caused Anine to vow that this was the last time Clea Wicks addressed her as merely an employer.

“Come in, Miss Wicks. Close the doors.” When she had done so Anine motioned to one of the chairs. “Sit down, please.”

Wicks hesitated but awkwardly took a seat. “Have I done something wrong, ma'am?”

“No. Quite the contrary.” Anine thought about how to start. She almost said,
I wanted to thank you for your discretion about my illness and Mr. Bradbury's book
, but she knew that Wicks would simply shrug it off. Ultimately she decided that Wicks would respect nothing so much as a blunt statement of the truth. “I wish to confide in you, Miss Wicks. Something is happening in this house—something quite unusual. You may have noticed that I'm shunned in society. I do not know why. But I don't wish to alienate the women of New York any more than is necessary. I need someone who understands. And I thought, who better to turn to than another woman who lives inside these walls?”

Only after she'd said this did Anine realize it was borderline nonsensical. She wasn't surprised when Wicks cocked her head and replied, “Excuse me, ma'am?”

Anine blushed. “I'm sorry. I realize I'm not making any sense.” She stood up and looked at the window. “Since the first night I've been in this house I've heard strange sounds. I hear creaking, like the creaking of floorboards, and the sound of a woman laughing. The other night when I heard these sounds I left my room. At the end of the second floor hallway I saw something: a woman in a black and red dress. It was only for a split-second, but I'm certain I saw her.” She looked back at Wicks, whose expression was, predictably, blank. “You asked me right here in this room, the first day you came here, if I was scared of ghosts. I answered no. I realize now that I lied to you. I should have answered yes. I
am
scared of ghosts. I'm scared of the ghost in
this
house—and I believe strongly that there is one.”

Wicks's reaction was not what Anine expected. Her expression softened slightly, but she didn't look disbelieving or quizzical. “They can't hurt you, ma'am.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ghosts. They can't hurt you.”

“I'm not sure you're right about that.” She turned from the window. “The other day after I was taken ill you said you put Mr. Bradbury's book out of sight. Where did you put it?”

Wicks pointed to a polished oak end table which had a shallow drawer. “There.”

Anine stepped over to the end table and slid the drawer open. She removed the small leather book. Pausing for only a moment to run her thumb across the pages—the flash of the obscene drawing going by made her shudder—she turned and thrust it into Wicks's hands.

“I would like you to read this,” said Anine. “Read it and tell me what you think. Take as much time as you need.” She crossed over to the corner and rang the bell cord. “I'll have Mrs. Hennessey bring us some tea.”

They consumed two pots of tea while Wicks read the diary. Anine watched her reaction carefully. As she turned one page the maid winced. Anine was certain it was the obscene drawing, but she was curious if it created the same image in Wicks's mind as it had in hers. At the end, the terrible climax of Erskine Bradbury's madness, Wicks finally began to look drawn and sad. After she closed the book and set it on the end table she reached for her teacup. The blankness of her maid's expression returned, but more slowly this time.

“So that's why he hunged himself,” she said softly.

“I believe that Mr. Bradbury was insane. Anyone can see that from looking at the diary. But was he insane
before
he came to this house, or did he only become insane after he was here? He had this thing in his past—this terrible thing he had done to his daughter—and obviously that tormented him. But if the ghost up there is the spirit of a child, seeing it made his own guilt even worse and that's what caused him to kill himself. Note at the end he kept saying ‘there can be no happiness, no one shall have happiness.' I can't help feeling that means something.”

“You said you saw a woman. You didn't see no child?”

“No. The figure I saw the other night was clearly a woman, wearing a long dress.”

“You heard this music? You see the piano”—Wicks pronounced it
peeanah
—“or the little trumpet? You seen these things?”

“No, Miss Wicks, I have not seen them. I've seen only the woman dressed in red and black. And I've heard her laughing in the night.”

Wicks sipped her tea and set the cup down. “Sounds like we got more than one ghost.”

“Then you
do
believe there's a ghost in this house?”

The maid shrugged. “You said you seen it. Bradbury said he seen it. The maid who was here before me, that Irishwoman—we don't know what she saw, but she saw nothing ever again after that night. That's good enough for me. But I ask you, ma'am: what do you want me to do about it?”

Anine was nearly weak with relief.
Thank God she understands
. She'd been expecting and preparing for a long uphill battle to convince Wicks that the phenomena were real. She found the maid's reaction ultimately refreshing, and also curiously rational—as rational as one could be when discussing disembodied spirits.

“There are several things I want you to do. First, I want you to—what's the American expression?—‘keep your eyes peeled.' I want you to watch for anything out of the ordinary, however small, however strange it seems. Second, I want you to keep this matter strictly between us. Mr. Atherton, Mrs. Hennessey and Mr. Shoop can't know anything about it. Third—and this is a little awkward—” Anine tried to keep herself from blushing “—I'd like for you to think of me not as your employer, not as ‘ma'am', but as your friend. Please, call me Anine. Let's not have this distance between us, especially now.”

Wicks seemed to take this in the same stride she took everything else. “I don't think you want me to be calling you Anine around the other servants or Mr. Julian. They might get suspicious about why we're so familiar.”

“Very well. That's fair.”

At long last a hint of a smile split Wicks's face. “And my name's Clea.”

Anine smiled too. “Clea.”

“One more thing, ma'am—I mean Miss Anine.”

“Yes?”

“Like I said before, ghosts can't hurt you. A ghost didn't hurt Mr. Bradbury. Mr. Bradbury hurt himself. You get scared, you remember that.”

It took Anine a moment to realize that this was very sage advice. At last she nodded. “Thank you.”

Clea stood, leaned over and began to clean up the tea tray. “Mrs. Hennessey will have lunch on soon,” she said. “And I expect you'll want to change. I'll go lay the blue dress out for you.” After a few moments she was gone, and everything was suddenly back to normal—if not quite the same. At least Anine now had someone on her side, and she had a feeling Clea Wicks, inexpressive though she was, might turn out to be a powerful ally.

That night over dinner Julian made a blunt announcement: “Anine, I think we've waited long enough. I want a son.”

She tried to show no reaction. Silently she said,
after what you did to me the thought of voluntarily bearing your children is only slightly more appealing than dousing myself in kerosene and setting myself on fire
. But she could not say this. It wasn't that she feared him, but she thought that antagonizing him unnecessarily was tactically inadvisable, at least until she decided how—or if—to try to create some reasonable basis on which they could live together more or less harmoniously. All she said was, “I don't believe the time is right for that.”

“The time is right,” he replied softly, “when
I
decide it's right. We've been married five months. We have our own house now. And when Hancock is elected this fall, having a child on the way will help me press my case for an office in his administration. I'll have a family to provide for.”

Anine almost laughed.
An office? Is he serious?
Julian was twenty-three. His contribution to the presidential campaign of the great Winfield Scott Hancock was to sit around in a smoke-filled club with other rich young Democrats, curse Garfield and the Republicans and promise the occasional city job to various ward and precinct captains. She swallowed the acerbic words she wanted to say with a bite of squab. What she finally said was: “I'm a part of this decision too, Julian. I'm not ready for a baby. Neither of us are.”

Julian's jaw bulged as he cut into the squab on his plate. After several seconds of silence he threw down the knife and fork and stabbed a finger angrily in her direction.

“
You
do not decide when
you're
ready for a child!” he blasted. “That's
my
decision!
I'm
the one who's going to be out there working to provide for him while you lay around twiddling yourself in the parlor all day. I'm going to give you a baby whether you like it or not. That's my right as a husband and you know it. You should relish the chance to prove you're useful for something other than as a pretty mannequin to hang expensive clothes on. I can't even count on you to be a competent social hostess because it's obvious the other women of New York can't stand to be around you. So the least you can do is justify your existence by pushing out some kids. And they'd better have balls instead of slots, or I'll divorce you and put you on the first boat back to Sweden.”

She knew he meant this speech to sound fearsome and terrifying, but in reality it was simply pathetic. She almost pitied him.
This is the man I married? He used to be so charming. When did he turn into this—thing?
This time she couldn't stop the acerbic reply. She said in Swedish, “Great idea. When do I leave?”

He snatched the butter knife from his plate and flung it at her.
“Fittjävel!”
he cried—a particularly vile Swedish swear word—and his face was as red as the carpet. The knife startled her but flew wide, clattering on the sideboard behind Anine's chair. As he got up from the table he upended his plate and deliberately knocked over his wine glass. “Get your nigger maid to clean it up,” he grumbled, and left the dining room.

She regretted egging him on. In the hour before bed as she sat at her dressing table and brushed her hair she dreaded how forcefully he would certainly take her tonight. But some part of the conversation in the dining room gnawed at her, and not altogether unpleasantly.
What if I could go back to Sweden?
I obviously don't belong in New York. Maybe that is the answer. Yes, there's the scandal of a divorce, but I could patch things up with my own family given enough time. I might never be received in Stockholm society, but I'm obviously not going to be received here in New York either, so what's the difference?

As she changed into her bedclothes she decided that she must stand up to him no matter what the cost. She would not allow him to ravage her again. Her dignity demanded that she take a stand, regardless of whether the row ended in violence or not. For a very long time she sat at the dressing table waiting for him to come in, rehearsing the words of her blunt refusal. But he never came. At midnight she realized he wasn't coming at all and had probably gone to bed. For all his bluster and threats he seemed to blanch at actually carrying them through, which meant he might not be completely without remorse for what he'd done to her. She didn't know if she should interpret it as a victory for her or an olive branch from him, but she did think it was significant.

Relieved, Anine blew out the lamp, got into bed and slept peacefully, undisturbed by nightmares or the creaking, giggling, red-and-black-clad phantasm with whom she shared the house.

Two days later, shortly after Julian left for the office, Anine was lingering over breakfast when Clea entered the dining room. The maid had an insistent look on her face and the way she looked around, making sure neither Bryan Shoop nor Mrs. Hennessey were in earshot, told Anine she had something she wanted to communicate in confidence.

“You were right,” said Clea. “There
is
a woman. I saw her last night.”

“Where?”

“I was standing at the top of the stairs, just about to go into my room. I looked down and saw someone at the railing on the third floor. I thought it was you but then I heard the door to your bedroom open and saw you come out and come down the stairs. When I looked down at the third floor again she was gone.”

Anine had indeed left her room and gone downstairs briefly. Just before she went to bed she discovered the pitcher in her room was empty, so she took it down to the kitchen to refill it. She hadn't sensed the presence of the
spöke
at that time or any time last night. Yet if Clea was right—and there was no reason to believe she wasn't—the apparition had been one floor up, directly above her.