The Fate of Mercy Alban (28 page)

When the music finally stopped, she turned to me, and only then did I see her face—a hideous mask of death, worm-eaten and dirty, as though she had just risen from the grave. She smiled and floated toward me, saying the words “My love, my true love, has come for me,” though her lips did not move.

I opened my mouth to scream and was awakened by the very force of it, never so happy to find myself in my bed between sweat-soaked sheets. My heart beating furiously, I padded to the bathroom and turned on the tap with shaking hands, trying to steady the glass I held under the stream. I took one gulp after another and then splashed water on my face in an effort, I suppose, to banish the dream back to whatever dark and evil place it had come from. I dried my face on a towel and shook my head—
enough nonsense, it was only a dream
.

It was only then I noticed the footprints on the white tile floor. My footprints. The bottoms of my feet were caked in dirt.
How in the world …?
When the answer passed through me, I slumped to the floor, wrapped my arms around my knees, and began to shake, unable to get the dance, and her monstrous visage, out of my mind.

I stayed there like that until the first rays of sun streamed through my window, and during the hours that passed, I had all but convinced myself it had been a case of sleepwalking or some other decidedly real-world event that led me outside in the dead of night. What other explanation could there possibly be? Even so, I had had enough of girls in white and midnight dances. I vowed to leave Whitehall that very day.

But I should have known better. When one has been caught up in a dance with the very face of evil, there is no running away.

I looked up from the manuscript and shivered. “That was rather intense, wasn’t it?”

“It’s a perfect ghost story,” Matthew said. “But I think it also tells us something about what really went on that summer, don’t you?” He smiled a broad smile and gestured toward the walls.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” I said. “The passageways.”

“Without knowing about them, the story reads just a like an old-fashioned ghost tale,” he said. “But with what we know about the way this house is laid out …”

I nodded. “I’ll bet my father and his sister didn’t tell Coleville about the passageways. My brothers and I were always forbidden to talk about them with outsiders and I’m sure they were, too. I think it’s clear that Coleville sensed he was being watched that summer, even heard whomever it was shuffling around in the passageways. Add a writer’s imagination to that—”

“And you’ve got a ghost story!” Matthew finished my thought.

“I think we both know who was creeping around in those passageways scaring the life out of Coleville,” I said.

He leaned forward in his chair. “If Mercy had developed some sort of mental illness because of her ordeal in the crypt, maybe she was kept away from visitors. Her parents simply didn’t introduce her to Coleville. It’s a big enough house to have pulled that off.”

“It’s exactly the type of thing my family would do, keep a sick relative hidden away. Very
Secret Garden
.”

“And let’s say Mercy didn’t much like that, being away from all the fun,” Matthew went on. “What would she do?”

My eyes opened wide. “She’d do what my brothers and I would do when we didn’t want to stay in our rooms … but also didn’t want our parents to know we were watching them.”

We sat in silence for a moment. We might never know what really happened all those years ago, but this explanation was sounding more and more plausible to me. But then another thought floated through my mind.

“You know,” I began, “something else is bothering me. We suspected that my family was upset about what Coleville wrote and killed him because of it. But this isn’t some sort of exposé of my family’s dirty laundry. This is just an old-fashioned, gothic ghost story. Who would be upset enough about that to kill him because of it?”

Matthew leaned back and crossed his legs. “What if it wasn’t the manuscript that got Coleville killed?”

And there and then, the explanation for Coleville’s ill-timed death seemed to simply lay itself out before me. “In Coleville’s story, he found on his writing pad: ‘The girl in white loves you,’ ” I said. “What if that really happened? What if Mercy, creeping around in the passageways spying on him, really did fall in love with him?”

Matthew picked up my train of thought. “And what if she found out he was coming back the next summer to marry Lily—er, your mother?”

“People have killed for a lot less,” I said, the certainty of it wrapping itself around me. “If she killed Coleville, that would explain why my grandfather put her in Mercy House. Mystery solved! I’ll bet you anything that’s what happened.”

But Matthew began shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “It still doesn’t explain what happened to Fate. I’m wondering—”

The crackling of the intercom interrupted his thought.

“Miss Grace, are you up there?” It was a man’s voice.

I crossed the room and pushed the button on the desk. “I’m here. Who’s this?”

“It’s Carter, miss,” he said, his voice harsh and full. “You need to get down here to the main floor immediately. I’ve rung the police and the ambulance, but—”

“Ambulance? Police?”

“It’s Jane, miss. She’s been hurt. We’re in the kitchen.”

Matthew and I flew out of the study and raced down the hallway, taking two stairs at a time on the way down. We reached the main floor just as the ambulance was pulling into the driveway, lights blazing, and I gave a quick thanks for living in a small town where ambulance response times can typically be counted in the seconds.

I burst through the kitchen door to find Carter standing against the wall of cabinets, his face ashen, and Mr. Jameson crouched over Jane, who was lying on the floor, a small pool of blood from her midsection seeping into the tile.

“You’re going to be just fine, dear,” her husband was whispering to her, his voice shredded to bits. “You rest now. You’re going to be just fine.”

My hands flew to my mouth. “What happened?” But even as I croaked out the words, a feeling was creeping its way up my spine. I exchanged glances with Matthew and could tell that he was thinking the same thing I was.

Mr. Jameson didn’t seem to hear me or register that I was there. Carter met my gaze and shook his head. Just then, the ambulance drivers were rapping on the kitchen door.

“We found her like this, just a few moments ago,” Carter told them after opening the door and standing to the side so they could rush in with their stretcher. “I had been waiting to take her into town. Mr. Jameson was with me in the carriage house playing cards. When she didn’t come—”

“We thought you all were in town when we got here,” I said, glancing at Matthew. “The house was so quiet.”

“How long ago was that?” one of the ambulance drivers asked as they worked to get Jane on a stretcher.

I searched Matthew’s eyes. “A half hour? Maybe a little more.”

I hurried to Jane’s side and grasped her hand, which was limp but still warm. “Jane,” I said to her. “Jane, what happened? Who did this to you?” But she didn’t even open her eyes. And then the ambulance drivers were ready to take her away. “I love you, Jane,” I choked out. She didn’t respond, but I felt her, ever so slightly, squeeze my hand.

“St. Mark’s?” I said to the driver, who nodded as they were wheeling Jane out the door, Mr. Jameson following close behind.

“I’ll get the car,” Carter said, his voice wavering.

“No,” I said to him over my shoulder as I locked the kitchen door. “This time, we’ll drive you.”

The ER waiting room was full of people, some slumped in their chairs, others staring out into space, and still others pacing back and forth.

“
J-a-m-e-s-o-n
,” I said to the woman behind the reception desk. “She was just brought in, for goodness’ sake.”

“Are you family?” she asked, snapping her gum and barely looking up from her computer screen.

“Yes,” I said to her louder than I had intended. “Where is she? How is she?”

“I’ll find out,” she said, rising from her chair a little more slowly than I would have liked and disappearing through an automatic door that led, I assumed, to the emergency room.

Several minutes later, she reappeared. “She’s in surgery,” she informed us as Carter blew his nose loudly into his handkerchief. “I’ll take you to a family room, where you can wait for the doctor to come and talk to you.”

Carter, Matthew, and I followed her to a small room where Mr. Jameson was slumped in a chair.

I didn’t even have to ask the question. “Collapsed lung,” he said, shaking his head. “Multiple stab wounds.”

I held my breath, not wanting to hear more.

“The doctor said she’s lucky,” Mr. Jameson went on. “He said it could have been much worse. He’ll know more when she’s out of surgery, of course.”

I sank into the chair beside him and squeezed his hand. “Jane’s one tough gal. If anyone could get through this, it’s her.”

He let out a deep sigh and pushed himself to his feet. “I can’t just sit in this blasted room. Does anyone want coffee?”

I glanced at Carter, who was staring off into space, his lips moving slightly, seemingly having a conversation that none of us could hear.

“I think we could all use some coffee,” I said, fishing a few bills out of my purse and handing them to him. “Do you want me to go with you?”

Mr. Jameson shook his head, his eyes brimming with tears. “I’ll get it. I need a walk on my own.”

When he had gone, Matthew sank down onto the sofa, where I joined him. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Carter. He seemed elsewhere, as though his present was hazy and unfocused, and he was instead immersed in the past.

“What happened, Carter?” I asked him, trying to prod him out of his funk. “When we got home, we assumed you all were out at the pharmacy because the house was so quiet. Jane was going to pick up the prescriptions Mercy’s doctor—”

Carter snapped his head in my direction. “What did you just say?”

Obviously, he hadn’t been told the identity of our houseguest. “Mercy, Carter,” I said with as much gentleness in my voice as I could muster. “I talked to her doctor in Switzerland early this morning.” It seemed like a lifetime ago. “We all thought the woman who showed up at my mother’s funeral was my aunt Fate, but the doctor let me know she’s really Mercy.”

Carter put his face in his hands and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Oh, dear God, no,” he murmured. “No.”

“Carter?” I said, a chill running through me.

He lifted his head from his hands to look at me. “You don’t know,” he said. “You don’t understand.”

“I think I’m beginning to,” I said, “but you’re right, I really don’t quite understand. Can you tell me—”

“We all thought she was gone,” he said, shaking his head. I wasn’t quite sure he had heard me. “We thought she was back with whatever had made her. I put her in the crypt myself.”

“I know,” I said to him. “Jane told me she was ill when she was a little girl, but—”

“For fifty years we thought we were safe. Jane, Thomas, your mother, God rest her soul, and I.”

“Carter—” I tried again, but he seemed to be caught once again in the web of his own thoughts. He turned his gaze back to a spot on the wall opposite us, but I knew he was looking at something else, something I couldn’t see.

“I think Carter is in shock,” I said, my voice low. “Will you get a nurse? I think he needs something. A sedative, maybe?”

Matthew nodded and slipped from the sofa and out of the room. A few minutes later, he returned with a nurse in tow.

“Mr. Carter?” she tried. “Mr. Carter? Are you all right?”

But Carter just shook his head. “She cannot stay at Alban House, not another day.”

The nurse nodded at Matthew and me. “Please come with me, Mr. Carter,” she said, gently taking his arm. And then to me, over her shoulder, “We’ll take his vitals and give him something.”

Carter looked back at me, his eyes seeming very far away. “We’ll be here waiting for you,” I said to him, squeezing his hand. “We’ll be right here.”

I slumped back onto the couch next to Matthew. “I really don’t know how I could have possibly handled this—any of this—without you.”