Darker Still Read online

  “Why do this?” I signed, gesturing at all the runes. Copying out the poem seemed a lot of trouble to go to only to omit the most important part, the dedication.

  Mrs. Northe paced the room shaking her head. “Tell me everything else.” We paused as tea was brought in for us, and I took it gratefully, the hot liquid such a comfort. Perhaps my body would get used to shaking; this grim business would likely chill me to the bone for some time to come. “Natalie, tell me everything,” Mrs. Northe demanded gently. “Everything he told you.”

  I stared at her, allowing the fear that I felt to register on my face and in my eyes.

  She placed her hand on mine, and her expression calmed any doubts. “No matter how mad you fear it sounds.” She was, as I had to be, a true believer in the impossible.

  I signed and wrote Denbury’s story as best I could: Crenfall, the den, the French painter, the odd tangents as he worked. We had plenty of shudders between us in the retelling.

  Mrs. Northe asked about the mechanics of Denbury’s world, and I attempted to sign explanation: that time passed differently and that his basic human needs were suspended. Outside, my body stood frozen while lifetimes could have passed for us within that dream state, and while in his company, there was neither hunger nor thirst.

  “Your spirits exist together there, your minds and souls. Your identities, then, are tactile to each other.”

  I thrilled at the idea that our spirits coexisted on some otherworldly plane, but I dared add, “We share my dreams. When I visited him today, he knew I’d been there. He was with me in my terrible nightmare all along.”

  “Oh? Why, that’s magnificent!” she exclaimed, ignoring my shudder. “It simply goes to prove that minds and spirits have ways to move about the world and that movement is not limited only to the body. It’s a theory I rarely see in practice, but something that proves useful in dealings like these. There is being awake, being asleep, and then…sometimes there’s another type of existence entirely.”

  I moved to ask her more about that, but she demanded the particulars of the ritual itself.

  I tried to describe the vile act of possession that had cast Denbury’s better self into a painted prison. Mrs. Northe was astute about every detail: the business about the name “John,” the powders, the liquid, the blood, and the symbols.

  She took a deep breath. “All spell components,” Mrs. Northe declared. “Oh, Natalie, this is magic most foul. I daresay even Shakespeare’s witches couldn’t have dreamed this up.”

  Tapping a pen to a notebook, she suddenly drew a symbol. “That circle around the room that Denbury described, with the star inside, I wonder if it was this…” Her drawing was of a five-pointed star with two of the points facing upward.

  I raised my eyebrows in query.

  “A pentagram,” she explained. “A symbol of protection and goodwill when it’s drawn or worn with a single point upward.” She turned the paper to make it just so. “But inverted…” She turned the symbol on its end again with the two points upraised like horns. “It’s often taken to mean homage to the Devil.”

  I shuddered and yet I couldn’t hold back an admiring smile. “You’re not a spiritualist. You’re a scholar,” I signed.

  She looked at me. “A woman should be as educated as humanly possible about anything that interests her. And while I’m not interested in black forms of magic, I am interested in dispelling, discrediting, and fighting them at all costs.” Mrs. Northe did not linger on this thought. “What else?”

  I described how Denbury was bound and trapped and told her about the final Latin words, with the word within that didn’t quite match up.

  “That’s the crux of the spell,” Mrs. Northe murmured. “That’s the sending part of it.”

  Oh, and I’d nearly forgotten. There were so many overwhelming aspects to retain. His arm. I lifted my sleeve, showing her what I had copied of it onto my arm with his pen, and then I replicated it on paper, filling in the lines I’d left blank. “This was on his arm,” I explained, “sizzled into his flesh during the original rite and refreshed during the murder.”

  Mrs. Northe considered the runes and checked them against her books. “John. The markings mean ‘John.’ I wonder if those markings on that poor beheaded girl’s wrist mean, similarly, ‘Barbara.’”

  This struck me, and I stared at Mrs. Northe in terror. “It must. My dream.” I fumbled to sign. “The corpse with ‘Barbara’ carved on the arm…remember, I foresaw it.”

  “Yes, Natalie. And how awful to receive such omens. But it reinforces that you’re entwined in Denbury’s fate. What else?”

  I signed about the sparks and light Denbury saw around the demon, as if particular colors were refracted from a prism and seen at times of struggle or when he tested his prison walls, and how he saw my halo colors as opposite.

  Mrs. Northe sat back in her finely upholstered chair. “This is powerful stuff indeed,” she said finally. Her brow furrowed. “Are you baptized, child?”

  I stared at her. “Who wouldn’t be?” I signed.

  “One cannot and should not make assumptions. Otherwise I’d do a different blessing. But a blessing you need, child. I don’t like this one bit.” She gestured at the marks on my arm. “I don’t want these dark things to linger on you any more than they have already.” She eyed me. “Be sure to go to church on Sunday. We need all the blessings we can get. Ritual to combat ritual.”

  She took a small vial of clear liquid from a shelf, uncorked it, dabbed a bit on her finger, and marked my forehead with a cross in oil. She laid her hands on my head and murmured a familiar blessing. After noting the marks, she used the same oil and her handkerchief to rub the ink from my arm, while offering another blessing. The marks smeared black and ugly, the ink stubborn.

  I went on to mention Denbury’s necklace, the talisman the demon had put around his neck, describing and transferring the symbols onto paper for her perusal. I was correct that they were hieroglyphs.

  “A cartouche of sorts,” Mrs. Northe murmured. She went to another bookshelf and plucked another fine volume, musing as she flipped through pages. “Dear Lord, add Egyptian gods into the mix now too? What a mess. A cartouche is a set of hieroglyphs, similar to what we think of as a monogram. But this cartouche, I believe, means vessel.”

  She put the book down and returned to sit with our notes, saying, “The fiend spoke of vessels, so it would follow…” I could practically hear Mrs. Northe’s mind reeling at great speed. She continued. “Remind me, I must check the nameplate of the painting attached to the frame.” I nodded. “Baptized you may be, but do you consider yourself a Christian, Natalie?” she asked.

  This was not a question I expected. Just as I had assumed everyone was baptized, I’d never considered myself otherwise. I nodded. “Lutheran,” I clarified for her, writing in my little notebook.

  “Indeed, as I am Episcopalian,” she replied. “Therefore—” She stopped short as she noticed my expression. She set her jaw.

  “As I have said, Natalie, spiritualism does not preclude my Christianity. Would you tell any of my Quaker colleagues that they do not believe the Bible? They’d give you a calm, thorough argument and they’d win. We must here abandon prejudices. The methods to solve these riddles may not be found in our faith at all, but in others or in dark things with which we have no business.

  “That’s what frightens me most, all this borrowing. ‘I am a jealous God,’ says scripture. Every religion has a jealous god, in some way. Poor Denbury is in a pit of jealous gods, each offended that their separate parts should be so oddly and disrespectfully thrown together. That’s quite a mess of energies that I’d rather not be in the middle of.”

  I sat utterly overwhelmed. Mrs. Northe seemed worried but not defeated. Perhaps forces were at work to bring us good parties together, a ragtag battalion against the darkness. I liked to think so. I didn’t think God would care about which denominations we were, as long as we were unified in rejecting any works of a devil.


  Mrs. Northe was still musing aloud.

  “We need to see what factors emerge consistently in the crimes. But letting more women die just for the sake of empirical evidence won’t do. We don’t have the luxury to wait and see. We are dealing with separation of body and soul. Then the imprisonment of the soul and the possession of a body. Identity and the transfer of it. We know who we are because of our soul and consciousness. Our soul is who we are, not what we are. Who Denbury is remains in the painting. The what of Denbury—the mortal stuffs, the shell of his body, and all the animal that remains—walks the streets of New York City freely. Now, how to bring those two parties back together?”

  “The body isn’t afraid to be near the soul,” I signed. “It haunts the painting.”

  Mrs. Northe nodded. “So the trick will be in the reversal. To reverse the curse when the two are face-to-face. And for that, we need every word that was spoken. We’ll put it together with the runes. Tell me again, those dread words…write down the spell.”

  I wrote out the words Denbury had spoken to me.

  Mrs. Northe shook her head. “Maddening.” She too stumbled over the word that Denbury himself couldn’t make out. Soulren was not a word. “I imagine we must know every word of this spell for it to hold any power. The actor must understand every phrase of Shakespeare to make his soliloquy clear and the poet every word of her prose. The priest must understand the words of scripture to be able to give his blessing, and so must those who wield spells comprehend every word. Thus, any empty word would render a spell meaningless.”

  She ruminated on the details, pausing to write down key words. After pondering a long while, she looked up.

  “Should we mention this to your father?” Mrs. Northe asked quietly. I shook my head. “Why, because he will not believe?”

  “He would not want to,” I countered. Having never fully recovered from Mother’s death, he was more sensitive than he would ever let on. This would do his heart no good. “What about Maggie?”

  “Not a word of it. She’s too flighty for such grave things. She wouldn’t understand.”

  I thought about it a moment and nodded. Truly, jealousy aside, if I’d been the one drawn into Lord Denbury’s danger, then his company was to be my reward and mine alone.

  Mrs. Northe reached forward and squeezed my hand. The warmth of her touch made me realize my own chilled extremities. “Good work in gathering evidence, Natalie, very good. But I fear you’ll have to do far more.”

  I nodded, feeling like I’d aged a year in a few days.

  And as I’ve been in this room for more hours than I dare count, I’m off to kneel before the altar at Immanuel. I prefer the space when it’s quiet and I’m left alone to my prayers without the kind but pitying looks of the congregants.

  Afterward I’ll make a pilgrimage to my beloved Central Park. I’ll clear my mind and bolster my heart with natural beauty by sitting at the feet of my sacred Angel of the Waters as she rises above the Bethesda Terrace. Hers is my favorite visage of those the city has to offer. It can’t hurt to be near angels in times like this.

  June 15

  3:30 a.m.

  (Awakened by a mixture of determination and fear)

  I will attempt to re-create my latest nightmare as best I can, turning the key of my bedside gas lamp high. In the light, the shadows of my mind lessen into a creature whose teeth recede. But goodness, my mind does have its fangs.

  A street corner at dusk. I stood with the city moving around me. Before I even knew where I was, I was struck by the quality of the lamplight. It cast shadows long and deep. But, as with many things in my life of late, the shadows were a bit off. Surreal. Full of a life one would not expect of shadows.

  Cast by carriages and their horses, by persons young and old, men in top hats and women with too many ruffles on their skirts to be practical, the shadows swirled like mist or a drop of ink into water. But when I looked at the shadows directly, they were only that, a shape that blocked light. The moment I focused on a passerby or an architectural detail, the shadows were off, moving into the corners of my eyes again.

  Glancing about, I realized I stood in the middle of Manhattan, at the southern foot of Central Park where the city begins again with those grand blocks where the Vanderbilt mansion is lord, with its pomp and impressive circumstance. The grandeur of wealth attracts passersby at such a twilight time. It’s an hour to be seen, that particular moment of dusk when there’s a bit of magic in the air, when women don fine clothing and lovers might steal a moment in the shadows before they are expected beneath the glittering chandeliers of polite company.

  The others on the street reflected my own fascination. It is hard to live in New York and not be compelled by the city’s grandeur. Each passing face was full of hopeful possibility, persons en route to a fine dinner in some nearby mansion, out to the symphony or the opera, or off to an exclusive society club.

  New York, the great city of bustling desire.

  It moved around me, as if I were a stone in a babbling brook.

  Out of the sea of faces I then saw him, there before the estate of one of the most powerful New Yorkers. His silhouette—I would know it anywhere. Perhaps I was dreaming of the sort of life Denbury would lead were he an English lord in New York City, free from his curse, and I was looking in on his life and the places where it might lead him.

  But then he turned to stare me down. This was not the face of the compelling soul of the Denbury who entranced me, but the odd, primal gaze of the one who repulsed me. His lip curled before he lunged at me. I was seized by the specific sort of panic that, from an early age, has made speech impossible.

  Instinct made me run. I picked up my skirts and fled, thankful to be wearing sensible boots on the treacherous cobbles. The fiend was after me like a predatory animal, the blue eyes now replaced entirely by that eerie reflective gleam. Even a form as beautiful as Denbury’s could not entirely hide the ugliness that had overtaken it.

  I was pressing downtown, or so I thought, but I abruptly found myself caught up in a tangled mess of alleys and lots instead of that magnificent stretch of Fifth Avenue. Suddenly I was in what I imagined the worst parts of the city were like, barely lit, a maze of brick and cast-iron facades with industry and horse manure and huddled hordes tucked in shadows, hardly the promenading parade. From grandeur to struggle, so too was this the heart of New York. Perhaps these were those infamous parts where the killer had struck.

  A door beckoned at the end of the alley. Safety? Or greater danger?

  The closer I came, the brighter the light from beneath it grew.

  I reached for the glass knob, threw myself against the door, and tumbled into Denbury’s painted study.

  The dear man must be commended for being so quick on his feet during urgent times, no matter the strange ties of our conscious and unconscious states. He seized me and whirled me to the side, pressing me firmly behind him as he stepped boldly forward to place himself between me and the demon who hesitated at the door, snarling.

  There at the threshold, the true Denbury and his horrid doppelganger were face-to-face. And in that brief moment, the true Denbury was just as ferocious as his dark twin. What a beautiful sight that was as his righteous fury lit up the air around him.

  “Demon, you’ve taken everything from me. You’ll not take this girl!” Denbury cried, and even though it hurt him to do so, he shoved his demon self back and slammed the door, crackling with fire, upon the demon’s face.

  But the demon pounded at the door, taunting and calling.

  I was shrinking away from the demon’s hissing of “pretty thing” and mad with fear, but Denbury grabbed me by the elbows and swung me around to look him in the eye. His confidence and conviction broke through my terror. While in his territory, clearly he would not allow anything to get the better of us.

  “Natalie, you can make it go away. This is your dream. You can change what’s on the other side of that door. You are not at its mercy. If I can keep wha
t little mind I have left, then you can face your nightmares and tell them to bugger off.”

  I half smiled despite myself. He took a brief, measured breath.

  “Excuse my language. But do it, please.”

  I tried to form a command on my lips. I thought of the renunciations of evil used during baptisms of the young and old, a call and response between pastor and congregation, a core principle of the faith I adhered to out of respect and a bit of awe—something that had never seemed as imperative as now. My voice was faint and trembling, not what I hoped it could be: “I renounce thee…”

  Denbury repeated the phrase with me, and in doing so I was strengthened.

  “I renounce thee!” we chorused.

  I turned around, and the demon was gone from the doorstep. But in its place was that same woman’s corpse, still in her white shift. This time it retained its head, but the body was bent slightly at the waist, creating a curtain of dark hair that made the face still unrecognizable. The arm was carved bloody, inscribed again, but with a new name: Cecilia.

  Trembling and shocked, I fumbled for the words to banish the hideous specter.

  “Go on,” Denbury urged. “Be rid of it. You have the power.”

  I opened my mouth. An aspirated, ungainly sound came out. A few tears fell down my cheeks. Denbury cupped my chin in his hand and forced me to look into his heart-stopping eyes.

  “You are stronger than this, Natalie. Now, turn around and tell the nightmares you’re no longer ruled by them.” A product of a mostly Protestant country that would have had somewhat similar liturgies to mine, Denbury then supplied the question: “Do you renounce sin, the Devil, and all his empty promises?”

  And because liturgy was like muscle memory, I was able to answer: “I renounce them.”

  With a bit of the Whisper, that tickling, maddening murmur at my ear, the phantasm faded. I took a deep breath.

  That the Whisper was connected to such sights was a bit too much to bear, considering the association with Mother. But if she was somewhere present, I hoped the disembodied noise was in fact information or a clue. I just wished she’d be clearer about it after all this time.