The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

43

Day Seven

I scream into suffocating darkness, my back against a wall, my knees tucked under my chin. Instinctively I grab the spot where the butler was stabbed, cursing my stupidity. The Plague Doctor was telling the truth. Anna betrayed me.

I feel sick, my mind scrambling for a reasonable explanation, but I saw her myself. She’s been lying to me this whole time.

She isn’t the only one guilty of that.

‘Shut up,’ I say angrily.

My heart is racing, my breathing shallow. I need to calm down, or I’ll be no use to anybody. Taking a minute, I try to think of anything but Anna, but it’s surprisingly difficult. I hadn’t realised how often my mind has reached for her in the quiet.

She was safety, and comfort.

She was my friend.

Shifting position, I try to work out where I’ve woken up and whether I’m in any immediate danger. At first blush, it doesn’t appear so. My shoulders are touching the walls either side of me, a sliver of light piercing a crack near my right ear, dusting cardboard boxes on my left and bottles down by my feet.

I move my wristwatch to the light, discovering that it’s 10:13 a.m. Bell hasn’t even reached the house yet.

‘It’s still morning,’ I say to myself, relieved. ‘I still have time.’

My lips are dry, my tongue cracked, the air so thick with mildew it feels like a dirty rag’s been stuffed down my throat. A drink would be nice, something cold, anything with ice. It seems a long time since I’ve woken up beneath cotton sheets, the day’s torments queuing patiently on the other side of a warm bath.

I didn’t know when I was well off.

My host must have slept in this position all night because it’s agony to move. Thankfully, the panel to the right of me is loose and pushes open without too much effort, my eyes watering as they’re exposed to the harsh brightness of the room beyond.

I’m in a long gallery stretching the length of the house, cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. The walls are dark wood, the floor littered with dozens of pieces of old furniture that are thick with dust and almost hollowed out by woodworm. Brushing myself off, I get to my feet, shaking some life into my iron limbs. Turns out my host spent the night in a storage cupboard beneath a small flight of stairs leading up to a stage. Yellowed sheet music sits open in front of a dusty cello, and looking at it, I feel like I’ve slept through some great calamity, judgement having come and gone while I was stuffed in that cupboard.

What the hell was I doing under there?

Aching, I stagger over to one of the windows lining the gallery. It’s shrouded with grime, but wiping a spot clear with my sleeve reveals Blackheath’s gardens below. I’m on the top floor of the house.

Out of habit, I begin searching my pockets for some clue as to my identity, but realise I don’t need it. I’m Jim Rashton. I’m twenty-seven, a constable in the police force, and my parents Margaret and Henry beam with pride whenever they tell anybody. I have a sister, I have a dog and I’m in love with a woman called Grace Davies, who’s the reason I’m at this party.

Whatever barrier used to exist between myself and my hosts is almost completely knocked through. I can barely tell Rashton’s life from my own. Unfortunately, my recollection of how I came to end up in the cupboard is clouded by the bottle of Scotch that Rashton was drinking last night. I remember telling old stories, laughing and dancing, barrelling recklessly through an evening that had no other purpose than pleasure.

Was the footman there? Did he do this?

I strain for the memory, but last night’s a drunken smear. Agitation instinctively sends my hand to the leather cigarette case Rashton keeps in his pocket, but there’s only one cigarette left inside. I’m tempted to light it to calm my nerves, but given the circumstances a frayed temper might serve me better, especially if I have to fight my way out of here. The footman tracked me from Dance into the butler, so it’s doubtful I’ll find safe harbour in Rashton.

Caution will be my truest friend now.

Casting around for a weapon, I find a bronze statue of Atlas. I creep forwards with it held above my head, picking my way through walls of armoires and giant webs of interlocking chairs until I arrive at a faded black curtain stretching the length of the room. Cardboard trees are propped against the walls, near clothes racks stuffed with costumes. Among them are six or seven plague doctor outfits, the hats and masks piled in a box on the floor. It appears the family used to put on plays up here.

A floorboard creaks, the curtain twitching. Somebody’s shuffling around back there.

I tense. Raising Atlas above my head, I—

Anna bursts through, her cheeks red.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she says, catching sight of me.

She’s out of breath, dark circles surrounding bloodshot brown eyes. Her blonde hair is loose and tangled, her cap scrunched up in her hand. The artist’s sketchbook chronicling each of my hosts bulges in her apron.

‘You’re Rashton, right? Come on, we only have half an hour to save the others,’ she says, lunging forward to take hold of my hand.

I step back, the statue still raised, but the breathlessness of the introduction has knocked me off balance, as has the lack of guilt in her voice.

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ I say, gripping Atlas a little tighter.

Confusion paints her face, followed by a dawning realisation.

‘Is this because of what happened to Dance and the butler?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know anything about that, about anything really. I’ve haven’t been up long. I just know you’re in eight different people and a footman’s killing them, and we need to go and save the ones that are left.’

‘You expect me to trust you?’ I say, stunned. ‘You distracted Dance while the footman murdered him. You were standing in the room when he killed the butler. You’ve been helping him, I’ve seen you!’

She shakes her head.

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she cries. ‘I haven’t done any of that yet, and even when I do, it won’t be because I’m betraying you. If I wanted you dead, I’d pick off your hosts before they ever woke up. You wouldn’t see me, and I certainly wouldn’t work with a man guaranteed to turn on me once we’d finished.’

‘Then what were you doing there?’ I demand.

‘I don’t know, I haven’t lived that part yet,’ she snaps back. ‘You – another you, I mean – were waiting for me when I woke up. He gave me a book that told me to find Derby in the forest, then come here and save you. That’s my day. That’s everything I know.’

‘It’s not enough,’ I say, bluntly. ‘I haven’t done any of that, so I don’t know if you’re telling the truth.’

Putting the statue down, I walk past her, heading for the black curtain she emerged through.

‘I can’t trust you, Anna,’ I say.

‘Why not?’ she says, catching my trailing hand. ‘I’m trusting you.’

‘That’s not—’

‘Do you remember anything from our previous loops?’

‘Only your name,’ I say, looking down at her fingers intertwined with mine, my resistance already crumbling. I want to believe her so badly.

‘But you don’t remember how any of them ended?’

‘No,’ I say impatiently. ‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘Because I do,’ she says. ‘The reason I know your name is because I remember calling for you in the gatehouse. We’d arranged to meet there. You were late, and I was worried. I was so happy to see you, and then I saw the look on your face.’

Her eyes find mine, the pupils wide and dark and daring. They’re guileless. Surely, she couldn’t have...

Everybody in this house is wearing a mask.

‘You murdered me right where I stood,’ she says, touching my cheek, studying the face I still haven’t seen. ‘When you found me this morning, I was so scared I almost ran away, but you were so broken... so scared. All your lives had crashed down on top of you. You couldn’t tell one from another, you didn’t even know who you were. You pushed this book into my hands and said you were sorry. You kept repeating it. You told me you weren’t that man any more and that we couldn’t get out of this by making the same mistakes all over again. It was the last thing you said.’

Memories are stirring slowly and so far away that I feel like a man reaching across a river to trap a butterfly between his fingers.

She presses the chess piece into my palm, curling my fingers around it.

‘This might help,’ she says. ‘We used these pieces in the last loop to identify ourselves. A bishop for you, Aiden Bishop, and a knight for me. The protector, like now.’

I remember the guilt, the sorrow. I remember the regret. There aren’t images, there isn’t even a memory. It doesn’t matter. I can feel the truth of what she’s saying, as I felt the strength of our friendship the first time we met, and the agony of the grief that brought me to Blackheath. She’s right, I murdered her.

‘Do you remember now?’ she says.

I nod, ashamed and sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to hurt her, I know that. We’d been working together like today, but something changed... I became desperate. I saw my escape slipping away, and I panicked. I promised myself I’d find a way to get her out after I’d left. I couched my betrayal in noble intentions, and I did something awful.

I shudder, waves of revulsion washing over me.

‘I don’t know which loop the memory is from,’ says Anna. ‘But I think I held on to it as a warning to myself. A warning not to trust you again.’

‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ I say. ‘I... I let myself forget what I did. I held on to your name instead. It was a promise to myself, and to you, that I’d do better next time.’

‘And you’re keeping that promise,’ she says soothingly.

I wish that were true, but I know it’s not. I’ve seen my future. I’ve spoken with him, helped him in his schemes. Daniel is making the same mistakes I made in my last loop. Desperation has made him ruthless and unless I stop him, he’s going to sacrifice Anna again.

‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth when we first met?’ I say, still ashamed.

‘Because you already knew,’ she says, wrinkling her forehead. ‘From my perspective, we met two hours ago, and you knew everything about me.’

‘The first time I met you, I was Cecil Ravencourt,’ I respond.

‘Then we’re meeting in the middle, because I don’t know who that is yet,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter though. I won’t tell him, or any of the others, because it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t us in those loops. Whoever they were, they made different choices, different mistakes. I’m choosing to trust you, Aiden, and I need you to trust me, because this place is... you know how it works. Whatever you think I was doing when the footman killed you, it wasn’t everything. It wasn’t the truth.’

She’d seem confident if it weren’t for the nervous throb in her throat, the way her foot worries at the floor. I can feel her hand trembling against my cheek, the strain in her voice. Beneath all the bravado, she’s still afraid of me, of the man I was, of the man who may still be lurking within.

I can’t imagine the courage it took to bring her here.

‘I don’t know how to get us both out of here, Anna.’

‘I know.’

‘But I will, I won’t leave without you, I promise.’

‘I know that too.’

And that’s when she slaps me.

‘That’s for murdering me,’ she says, standing on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on the sting. ‘Now, let’s go and make sure the footman doesn’t murder any more of you.’