Perfectly Preventable Deaths

38 Sweet Violet

‘Come,’ I tell Mam. My voice sounds strange. Authoritative. Capable. Like when I spoke to Lon at the prefab. There’s a fevered focus to my actions. All I know is that I can do this.

I can find her.

We’re back inside the castle, and inching our way up the stairs, towards Brian’s office. I’m holding the leaf ahead of me, blinking furiously to keep the tears inside my eyes as much as possible, not streaming down my face. It’s colder than it was; there is a chill. It leaches heat from me. The veins of the leaf make a road for me, and I can read them. Up the stairs, through the door. We’re in.

It looks so normal. Leather office chair, and Brian’s laptop. Pictures on the wall of Ballyfrann, when it was all just forest, back before. I never noticed that they were our woods until tonight. The green shade of his library lamp, the light fixture that’s like a candelabra. Shelves of books, old files. There is a path that spiders from this place, that brings us somewhere I have been before. I see it on the leaf in front of me, the path to take. Once I have gotten in. I start to bang at walls, to push at them – all around where it opened up before. This has to work. It has to work.

It has to.

Mam is in the corner, tears streaming down her face. Her lips are moving but she isn’t speaking. She thinks I’m breaking down. She thinks that this is it. She’s lost us both. I don’t have time for that. She needs to move. If we want to find Catlin, we need to look and look and keep on looking.

‘Find your child,’ I tell her. ‘Do your job.’ Shrunken head on top of the dark door frame, staring at the wall. It was a girl once, and it knew danger. I follow its dead gaze, fix on the wall. There is an extra brass flap for a light switch. I swing it up. Inside there is a cord, like the old chain flush on certain toilets. I take the little knob. I pull it out.

With a creak the wall slides away, inside the other wall. As it is swallowed up, a nook appears, a smooth black door inside it. It looks like it has always been there. No trace of wall remaining. It makes a kind of sense inside the room, an extra passage. I do not look at Mam, but I can hear the hush of muffled sobs, the wrench of tears and snot inside her throat. I can’t be dealing with it. Not right now.

I jam a book to keep the door from closing and go in. I hear soft feet behind me. Going down. It should be dark, I think. But it’s so bright. My stinging eyes see clearly. Cobwebs on the brickwork. Little pools.

There’s moss on some of the steps and lichen on the walls, thick and lacey. The leaf against my eye still, but I hardly need it now. When I close my eyes I can see the tiny threads of blood vessels map-making on the inside of my eyelids. Helping me. They’re helping me along. And how could this have always just been in me?

Something wet is trickling down my cheeks. I put my hands up. Wipe away the tears. My knuckles hot wet red. I’m crying blood. Like one of Catlin’s statues. And it’s a small price to pay, but I’m not sure what I’m paying for exactly.

The map is in my hand. The veins are twisting. I can see them move, like insect legs. Behind my eyes, the same shapes forming, warping. We’re getting there. I can sense her closeness. I focus and unfocus, wrap my brain around the parts I need. I feel a touch. It’s Mam. She holds my hand.

We turn the corner, and there is a sort of door. A slab of stone inside the wall, I push it but I cannot make it budge. Mam puts the flat of her palms on it too. We shove until it strains. Until it gives. Painfully, slowly, it moves away from us. Mam’s face is red, her breathing’s forcing heavy. One last effort. Both of us together, thinking of Catlin. One and two and … then we’re in the cave. The same one from my dream, I think. But the dream cave was like a screen, there was a distance. This is very real. All my senses are screaming in this place.

‘What is this?’ asks Mam, taking in the stalagmites and stalactites. The piles of records. My foot brushes a scarf. It looks smaller, shabbier with my real eyes. The smell of rot and ancient mould. This place is old, older than the castle. There is a rainbow sheen to the wall like oil or petrol, pocked with strange growth, slime. My feet splash through a little water pool. It’s chilly here, and dank.

‘Catlin?’ I call. Nobody replies.

And then I see the bed. Big enough for way more than two people. Spindly posts, intricately carved with eyes and hands and mouths and teeth. Jumbled, jutting, horrible and wrong. The sheets are rumpled. Thick fur throws and mirrors. Candles lit. It looks medieval. Arcane. I have a notion something happened here I wouldn’t like. Beside me, I hear Mam’s intake of breath.

‘Love …?’ she asks. And then I see the hand. Stark white and poking out from under covers. It’s small, the fingers stubby-long like mine. It isn’t real. It’s alabaster. Wax. It cannot be my sister. Mam ahead of me, I start to run.