House of Small Shadows

EIGHT

‘Go in, go on, go inside.’

‘But…’

‘In. In.’ Edith’s insistence carried the threat of anger.

‘Lights?’

‘We keep them in the dark. We don’t want them damaged.’

‘Then how do you see them?’

‘Oh, will you get inside, you silly girl!’

Catherine stood inside the doorway and stared into total darkness. Behind her, in the narrow passage where she had been instructed to wheel and position Edith Mason, the footplates of the wheelchair touched her heels, as if the elderly woman had managed to roll her chair forward a few inches by herself to add emphasis to her demand. ‘The ceiling light has not been replaced in years. You will have to open the curtains. Would you have me draw the curtains with these hands? Are you afraid, dear. Afraid of the dark?’ Edith tittered.

Catherine took a step inside as though the floor was ice, her hands outstretched, her eyes so wide they stung in their sockets. The air was close, humid, thick with the scent of polished wood and the chemical taint. Which was stronger, more pungent the further she moved through the darkness.

‘Stay on the left. The left!’ Edith warned, though a stern tone did not disguise her mirth, if not glee, at Catherine’s discomfort.

The low heels of Catherine’s sandals clattered and scraped across the floorboards, the sound rang hollow in what she sensed was a large room. There was nothing soft inside the space to cushion the noise or to protect her.

Catherine looked back at the grotesque but featureless silhouette of Edith Mason, framed by the faint ruddy light of the ground-floor passage. The figure was motionless, propped upright, the outline of the head ungainly and vast upon wizened shoulders.

Groping through oblivion in the unfamiliar room of a sinister house suddenly felt like a test combined with a childish dare and a horrible prank designed by a cruel mind. She was doing this for the contract and she loathed herself for it, her actions were suddenly unacceptable to her. She was allowing herself to be goaded, to be manipulated, to be bullied for some illusory promise of advancement. Was that not part of the reason she left London? She’d not even been here an hour and she was frightened in the dark and Edith Mason was inside her head. She grimaced at the elderly woman’s silhouette and despised it.

‘Don’t pout, dear.’

Catherine flinched. How could she see?

‘You wanted to see them. That’s why you came here. You must work for your supper.’

Part of her also wanted to shriek with laughter at the absurdity of the situation. How was this possible? She had not long been in her car driving through a recognizable world. No one would believe her about this. It was surreal. It was mad. But there was nothing entertaining about the experience, not in the smelly darkness. And what was that?

‘You… lied.’ Catherine turned and looked into the nothingness opposite the door she had just crept through. She’d heard it once, to her right on what she guessed was the far side of the room. A shifting of fabric across wood. Against the floor. Or had someone just slid off a chair? The child.

‘What did you say?’ Edith said from the doorway, the outrage in her tone barely contained.

‘There is somebody in here. You tricked me. I don’t find this funny.’

‘You are alone in there.’ Now her voice seemed cruelly playful. ‘Nothing else is living, though it may appear so.’ If this was intended as reassurance it had no effect. If the old woman closed and locked the door, she would be trapped.

Quickly, Catherine decided to go for the window she had been promised. But why had she stayed? What had she been thinking? The face at the window, the dog arranged to startle her, the horrid outfits, Maude’s unpleasant silence, and she had been called a whore, there was definitely an inference. She was the victim of an elaborate joke, played on a commoner who had come here to finger the family silver.

She raked her hands through the void, fingers scrabbling for purchase while anger got her to the curtains. Of which there were many layers. Her fingernails scraped down what felt like heavy velvet, but it would not part, so she edged sideways, breathless with anxiety.

‘That’s it. You’re nearly there. I can hear your progress.’

Catherine glanced again at the doorway. And realized Edith’s silhouette was no longer looking in her direction, but to the side of the unlit room, opposite the door. From which direction there now issued a scraping. Sharp metal against masonry, but faint. And then a flap of cloth. She would have screamed if her air wasn’t sealed inside her petrified lungs.

She turned back to claw at the curtains until her hands found where they parted in the middle. When she tugged the drapes apart there was no light. She was still sealed in darkness. Her fingers found more fabric; it was thinner. She tugged at it.

‘Be careful with my curtains!’

Slowing herself with the last shred of her composure, Catherine found her hands and wrists to be tangled in what felt like lace, swathes of it. Beyond that layer of fabric her fingernails scraped at wood. And for a horrible second in which she felt true paralysis, she realized it really was a trap. She had been sent to a false window. The door to the room would now slam shut, a key would turn in the large brass mortise lock that she had admired like a fool. It was as if she was stuck fast inside the dream that began when she left her car. She blinked her sightless eyes and wanted to dig her nails into her wrists until they bled. Opening her mouth wide she swallowed the darkness, then clenched her teeth shut.

‘The shutters are retractable,’ Edith called from the doorway, her voice now flat and merely imparting instructions. ‘There is a latch in the middle. Unlock it. But be careful! Those shutters have protected that window since 1863. Push them back to the sides. Oh, do hurry, you’re wasting time, dear.’

Catherine found the little lock and unlatched the wooden shutters. Creaking like an old sailing boat, they moved to the sides with little resistance. And she stood, dazed and empty, with her face seared by a white light that came directly from salvation, from heaven.

She turned to face the harmless old woman in the wheelchair. Tension softened from her shoulders and her pulse eased. Until she saw what was kept inside the dark room under lock and key.