An Unforeseen Inheritance

by Livia E. De Souza

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

conclusion

When I awoke again it was late morning. There was no sign of the inferno which had consumed my surroundings the previous night, and I took in the pristine state of the room and my own unharmed form with great relief. The lantern sat cold on the floor, its small reserve of oil exhausted.

I pulled myself from the bed and crossed the hallway to reach Abigail's room.

A vestige of my dream must have remained with me, for a burning scent filled the hallway. It grew stronger as I moved forward, and soon I could see smoke slipping out from beneath Abigail's closed door.

The handle was still cool. I opened the door and was met with billows of black smoke, which felt somehow lethal beyond their choking nature. It was as though the bitterness of poison laced the tainted air.

Abigail still lay on the bed. Her eyes were open but she was unmoving.

The fireplace neatly contained the flames, but it seemed the chimney had been blocked, as black smoke filled the room, unabated. I kicked the unburnt sticks and logs from the fire, and doused the blaze with water from a nearby jug.

The fire sizzled and spat; black water ran out onto the floor.

I opened the windows, my lungs still burning from the smoke.

Abigail was watching me from the bed, her body stiff. Her eyes were the only part of her which moved, and past the tears they blinked and rolled.

When the air again allowed breath, I came and sat on the edge of her bed.

“Abigail,” I said. “Abigail, can you hear me.”

“In the fire,” she whispered. Her lips remained nearly closed as the words came out in a mumble.

I stood and returned to the dwindling, steaming remains. I found nothing in the hearth itself, but, looking upwards, I could see a cloth of some kind had been stuffed into the chimney. I pulled it down, immediately recognizing it as the blanket the nurse had brought me from my own bed.

Of the charred sticks I had sent scattering from the fireplace, I could see some were still green and leaf-bearing, as though only just plucked from the tree.

I brought one to Abigail's side, and held it before her.

She said something, which I did not understand. I saw her swallow drily before trying again.

“Poison, they said,” she whispered.

There was a hint of crimson behind her hair, which was thickly knotted and splayed across her pillow.

I spread my fingers behind her skull and delicately lifted her shoulder with my other hand, turning her onto her left side. There was a small stain of blood on the pillow. I pushed her hair away from her neck, and saw something dark jutting from her spine, just above her shoulders.

“It's a piece of wood from the hanging tree,” a man's voice sounded behind me. “Charlotte met her end by that branch.”

Doctor Morton had reentered the room. He set his medical bag down in the doorway.

“When we found out that Abigail Cooper had finally found a roof over her head, it made sense it could only have been here. Mr. Platt, I know you are a good and decent man. You did not know you had given a home to Charlotte's own flesh and blood,” he continued. “Abigail knew the risk she took, letting this same story play out again.”

“The same story concocted by those who said Hayes Manor was built in a night?”

At this, Doctor Morton smiled. “We have seen no evidence of the hauntings since her arrival. The cessation was remarkably sudden.”

“I saw the figures yesterday,” I said defiantly.

“You only offer further evidence to condemn her. It is no coincidence that she is safe within its walls, but that a lapse in her physical health would allow immediate passage to the otherworldly.”

“So, you paralyze her and attempt to murder her with smoke? Why not simply poison her? That would save you from being nearby when she died. After all, I assume that's what you were after.”

“We poisoned both of you. But, for her at least, it proved nonfatal,” the doctor said, his face impassive. “You should show some gratitude. I could have let you die.”

He started toward the bed, the silver flash of a blade in his hand.

I was not thinking clearly when I grabbed his wrist, twisting the joint in on itself. I did not mean to stab him when to I pressed the knife to his belly, his fingers tightly knotted against the wooden hilt.

However, it was no accident when I used the blade to carve upwards through the doctor, lodging the blade mid-sternum.

I stepped backwards, and his blood-soaked hand slipped from the firmly stuck blade as he fell backwards into the embrace of nothing. His head made a repulsive sound as it cracked against the floor.

Abigail merely watched wordlessly, her pupils constricted and her eyes rolled to the lower lashes, straining to see what took place beyond the foot of the bed.

Still, the doctor was alive. He breathed heavily, but there was something wet about the air as it mixed in his lungs. A red foam appeared at the corner of his mouth, sputtering across his cheek and pooling in his ear as it descended.

I cursed.

The nurse would return. She may have been in the manor at that very moment. Though fear of spirits had kept the locals at bay, the doctor's absence would be noticed, and there was no telling what they would do.

He was still alive and there was no time to lose. A mounting horror within me induced the absolute belief that I could not allow him to live. Yet, I could not bring myself to deal the killing blow.

Doctor Morton was too weak to fight back when I grasped his ankles and dragged him from Abigail's chamber. Though I regretted every movement with immediacy, I kept hold of him as I made my way down the stairs. I could hear the sickening thud of his head on every step, but continued this way, clumsily dragging him to the cold cellar of the manor.

I had no source of light, but the panic that seized me would allow no delay. I dragged him down a couple of steps, until I could no longer see beyond my own hands. Unable or unwilling to seek a lantern, I left him there on the steps. His upturned body sprawled on the dark descent, his eyes unblinking in the wash of unabated pain.

I closed the door to the cellar, locking it behind me and tucking the key into my pocket.

It was only as I began to make my way back to Abigail's chamber that I saw the trail of blood I had left behind. Crimson stained each step, vividly painting the path of my journey to the near-depths of the manor.

To my mind sprang the nurse and villagers, detectives and soldiers. My exposure seemed inevitable, and I could not face condemnation. There was no way to clean the steps sufficiently, no way to restore the spotless, impassive grey stone.

Yet, blood was blood.

I retrieved the doctor's bag from the doorway. Abigail's breathing was shallow, and her skin was soaked with sweat. Her lips and fingers were growing blue, and she appeared entirely unaware of my presence only a few feet from her.

Drawing nearer, I knelt beside her bed. I held her hand in mine, shuddering at the feel of her living coldness, at her insensibility to both heaven and earth. I pressed my lips to the back of her hand and my senses filled with the shred of life that lingered within my fading companion.

I returned to the locked cellar door with the doctor's bag. I tore my shirtsleeve past the elbow, and cut a long, shallow incision across my forearm with his scalpel. When this failed to produce sufficient blood, I made another cut, this time to the outside of my upper arm.

The blood began to flow quickly, soaking through my shirt and spilling onto the floor. I positioned myself against the door, watching with a small degree of satisfaction as my own blood began to mingle with that of the doctor.

I flung the bag across the room toward the entrance to the manor. Its contents spilled out, as though it had been dropped in haste.

I could hear voices outside, but these intruders did not knock, nor did they try the door. Their footsteps were soft against the grass, and their number impossible to know.

I felt lightheaded as I watched blood begin to stream from my initial cut. I now regretted the haste of my second self-wounding.

A shape moved in front of the window. The door handle rotated, and I held my breath.

It was the nurse who had accompanied Doctor Morton. Behind her stood a man I did not recognize, perhaps a lawman. His entire body was tensed to flee, and his gaze darted to the top of the stairs.

The nurse crossed to stand over me, her angered form eclipsing my view of the windows.

“Where is Doctor Morton?” she asked, spitting the words onto my fallen body.

I looked up at her. “The room was filled with smoke. Abigail said something I didn't hear, but Doctor Morton did. He got a wild look in his eyes. He grabbed his scalpel and lunged at me. I defended myself as best I could, but he cut me before escaping into the woods.”

“You're lying,” the nurse said.

“We should go find Doctor Morton,” the unknown man said, quick to further display his nerves. “We've no business here.”

“Shouldn't I tend these wounds?” the nurse asked with a distracted smirk. She gestured towards my deeply sliced arm.

“Please,” I said, straightening my back against the door, “just leave me in peace.”

The man now tugged at the nurse's elbow. “We need to find Doctor Morton. If Abigail, in her final moments...”

“If she's dead,” the nurse said, turning from me and beginning her ascent toward where Abigail lay. “I'm not exactly convinced.”

The man cast a brief glance at me, before running to catch up with the nurse who was already halfway up the flight of stairs.

I wanted to stand, to defend Abigail and chase these malicious trespassers from the manor, but I was far too weak from blood loss. My own miscalculation and impatience may have cost us both our lives.

My vision blurred at the edges, so I tried to focus on a single point. I stared with forced attention at the door which had signaled the beginning of our end. When I heard the returning footsteps, I remained immobile, unable to do anything else.

“She's dead,” the nurse said, unwavering from her path toward the door. “It seems the smoke worked after all.”

The man scuttled behind her, and quickly both disappeared from my sight, to spend their next hours in search of the doctor hidden only a few feet away, behind the locked door.

Abigail was dead.

Dead.

Dead, and it was all for nothing. Her life had been heartlessly wasted in search of a home.

Perhaps I would die.

The thought crept into my head as I realized that hours had passed, and the golden hours of early evening were upon me. I looked down, and saw the sunlight's gilded tint upon my own spreading pool of blood. Again, I cursed my own impetuosity.

I wanted to stand, but I found myself without strength. The light dimmed, and the birdsong outside the manor faded.

The shadows rose, and the origin of their contrast was no longer to be found in the sun. Instead, the shadows danced before an unseen flame, flickering and mercurial. I could smell the smoke, and feel the growing heat, yet I could only see the product of this flame's light, the taunting shadows.

One shadowed figure appeared more solid than the others, with rotting blood that seeped from its stomach. The face was grey, drained of vitality. Its hands were stretched out, as though to seize me, making no attempt to abate the eternal flow of its very essence.

Now, I could see it was an impression of the doctor. It was not Morton himself, yet the features were the same: set in the same expression of holy indignation, possessing of the same twisted desire to destroy.

His desire was for Abigail, whom I had failed to protect, and who now failed to protect me.

The shadows grew closer.

These silhouettes, which had once been cast upon the walls, flickered across the floor. The dark impression of hands reached out to me, their boundaries overlapping mine. Where the shadows touched me, my slowed blood ran cold. The freezing grasp struck me, my own body unable to move this frigid blood to my heart.

My hands grew numb, their sensationless forms cast into darkness, and soon I could no longer feel my legs. The heat of an invisible flame spread through my ribs and warmed my chest, as the rest was lost to me.

I had no strength to shiver, or to move. Instead, I sat against the door in silence as those shadowed overtook me, the world of the living only inches away.

When the light drew again to my eyes, early morning had broken across the manor. My strength had returned in part. Only the night before, I had believed that my loss of blood and abandonment by those few who dared to enter Hayes Manor had sealed my fate.

I buried Abigail myself and left her grave unmarked. I spread leaves over the disturbed earth to safeguard her eternal peace. She was alone in the land of the dead, as I found myself alone where she had once walked.

As soon as the opportunity arose, I returned to the city. I have found that the constant movement and commotion outside my door alleviate, in part, the pain and regret which have replaced the manor to become my inheritance.

Yet, in those moments when my surroundings still, I cannot deaden recollection. The image of the manor chews its way to the fore of my brain, spitting from its jagged mouth the viscera of memories, hollowing my mind from within.

And I try not to think of her.