It was that in-between time of night, where it wasn’t quite night anymore but not nearly morning yet. Though the moon still shone bright, it was clear that the sun was on the edge of the horizon’s underbelly, just waiting to peer up into the otherwise darkened sky.
The mistress of the house walked through its halls, passing each doorway with a vacant expression, eyes fixed upon the darkened hallway in front of her. She held a candlestick in her right hand—a brass holder with a loop on the side for her thin, elegant fingers to hook around. The flame flickered, dancing in a noiseless breeze that she couldn’t feel on her face.
She was alone. Her husband had gone to London for business and he’d taken some of the staff with him. The rest of the help had been sent home, as her husband said that there was no money left for their wages. The mistress knew that the house was to blame—the cost of living there was far beyond the quality of it. She supposed that her husband kept pouring their savings into the bills because it had been his childhood home, but she still found it to be a poor excuse for near bankruptcy.
Still, her husband was gone along with the staff, and so she was alone. Undoubtedly alone.
And yet she had been stirred from her slumber by an unmistakably sweet scent drifting down the drafty halls… It was a warm, cozy sort of smell, with a hint of cinnamon sugar and something else that invoked a feeling reminiscent of walking down the street on All Hallows Eve.
The mistress was on the third floor, wandering down the hallway that led from her bedroom to the grand staircase. She had on a crimson nightgown with long, flowing sleeves that hung past her slender waist. The skirt stopped just short of her slippers, which were made of the same red satin as her gown. Her raven hair and amber eyes glinted in the dull light from her candle. She was a gaunt sort of woman—sharp cheekbones with porcelain skin pulled tight across them, giving her a skeletal air. She glided like mist over a winter lake, taking slow, silent strides.
As she reached the top of the stairs, she hesitated. It was a large house and the walls always seemed to be listening, watching, waiting for something. The wallpaper—a repeating pattern of vines in sickly chartreuse—was peeling off in certain places near the ceiling and floorboards. Ah, the floorboards… She had spoken to her husband about them when they were first married, that in the leftmost corner of the second-floor study, there was a gap in the floorboards so wide that she could see through to the kitchens below. Worse than that was the grand staircase—it shook and creaked something terrible. Her husband had promised that he would hire a carpenter to fix it, but she imagined they had run out of money for that a long time ago. And then there were the windows; they were all so scratched and cloudy that it was difficult to see outside, and everything took on a dreamy hue—and they leaked when it rained but trapped in all the heat during summer. But above it all, there was a draft in the walls. It was subtle, like someone breathing down your neck. It wasn’t the sort of draft that could be felt all the time—no, sometimes it just lingered in the air, hanging nearly imperceivable, creeping like watchful eyes that are ever behind you no matter how often you look over your shoulder.
The mistress began to descend the staircase. With each step, the wood protested with a hollow croaking like an empty stomach. She ran her left hand along the mahogany banister, which was cold to the touch and smooth from years of caressing. Halfway down, a sudden spell of vertigo fell over the mistress and she feared she would fall—the steps seemed an endless, nearly vertical path descending into a hollow abyss. She tightened her grip on the banister. Her candle flickered. For a moment the shapes and shadows around her all grew darker, fainter, hazy and distant. Her eyes closed.
As quickly as it had come, the feeling vanished. The mistress’s eyes flickered open and she continued down.
With the dark and the quiet, the second story seemed immense. She couldn’t make out the hallway doors, or the ceiling, or the carpet, giving the floor the look of being one gigantic room bathed in pitch black. She drew in a long breath, holding her candle out in front of her. The sweet scent was stronger now—coming from a door, she thought—the one on her left that opened to her husband’s study. The mistress entered slowly; the door had been hanging open already and she didn’t bother to shut it behind her.
It was pleasantly warm in the study. The woman took in another breath. The smell had to be of bread—warm bread, with that cozy sort of feeling it always brings with it. But what caught her attention was the small speck of light in the far-left corner. It was dull orange, lighting up the base of a large wooden bookcase and the edges of wallpaper that were peeling away from the baseboard. The mistress slowly approached the speck of light.
Of course—it was coming from that ghastly gap in the floorboards. She got down on her hands and knees, placing her candlestick down on the lowest bookcase shelf, and lowered her face down to the warmed floor.
In the kitchen below, a gaslight was lit. Sitting on the stove was a large loaf of dark amber bread, faint tendrils of steam gently rising from it.
“Darling—” a soft, feminine voice downstairs interrupted the silence. “Whatever are you doing awake at this hour?” A woman stepped into view, mixing a pale-white glaze in a small ceramic bowl and looking off to her left with an amused sort of smile. She had mousy brown hair hanging down against her back, pulled away from her face with strips of beige linen. With eyes of ambiguous color and fair skin—she was thin and overly rosy-cheeked, but faintly pretty.
A man’s voice replied, rumbling yet refined. “I might as well ask you that, dear.” The voice was eerily familiar, but it couldn’t be…her husband was away.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep,” yawned the woman. “It’s far too cold in this house. So, I decided that I would pass the time productively—that I would warm the house a little and prepare a small midnight refreshment.”
She smiled, eyes glittering in the lamplight. “I doubt you have as decent of an excuse.”
The mistress’s husband walked into sight. He was still dressed from the day—a double-breasted, camel-colored tartan vest and trousers, a white dress shirt, and his favorite navy-blue floral smoking jacket. Compared to the rest of his attire, the jacket appeared uncharacteristically faded and faintly frayed—and throughout her husband’s beard, and just above his temple, his auburn hair was dashed with unfamiliar grey.
He embraced the woman with a gentle kiss, then continued to hold her in his burly arms.
“I was in my study,” he said, “working. I lost track of time, I suppose. I…”
He sighed. “I thought I heard something on the stairs—like footsteps, but not quite as solid. Then, suddenly, they stopped, and I took that as a chance to go check what was there…”
“And?”
“And there was nothing—nothing that I could see. It was too bloody dark. But I could smell your baking, so I thought that I should tell you goodnight and, well…and that I love you.”
The two of them stood together silently in the center of the kitchen; the mistress watched as her husband’s curls were stroked gently by one hand of that woman.
“Seven years was a long time ago,” the woman said softly.
“I know…and yet, every time I hear a noise on the stairs, I think of her and I’m taken back to that horrible night.” It sounded like a sob was lodged in his throat, unable to escape. “Those dreaded stairs—why didn’t I fix them?”
Yes, why didn’t you? the mistress asked, though no one heard her. She sat up, hands folded primly in her lap. Though she was unmoved from her seated position, she felt the very distinct and nearly unforgettable sensation of her head being cracked open against the hardwood floor, and warm, thick blood oozing from her skull.
That’s when she remembered—and once she remembered, she faded into the spiced air. But her candlestick remained on the study shelf, still lit, flickering in rhythm with an invisible heartbeat until, at last, the flame turned to smoke.
Listen to the audio version below:
Ohhh so good, Lucy.
Thank you, Melissa!