“I’m trying to save her, you fool! Leave me be before it’s too late.”
His words were immediately followed by Mary’s heavy footsteps, retreating down the stairs.
A single candle flickered near the bed, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. My head reeled, and I had to make a conscious effort to stay awake.
“I see Mary’s knocking has disturbed your sleep,” the man said, a disembodied voice speaking from the shadows.
My mouth felt dry and my lips moved clumsily when I tried to speak. “Who are you?” The words came out in a slur. “What do you want with me?”
The man circled to the end of my bed and stepped into the candle’s soft light. “Surely, you recognize me, my dear girl.”
I blinked several times to help steady my vision as old Edgar Sweeney’s face came into view. A relieved breath rushed from my throat at the sight of his gentle eyes and paternal smile. “Oh, Edgar, I must have fallen asleep downstairs. Did you help Mary bring me to bed?”
“That I did,” he said kindly. “And you’re a might bit heavier than when you were a little girl.”
Flat on my back, I felt my arms and legs splayed out into an ungainly X. Wanting to sit up, I tried to turn onto my side, but found even this simple movement impossible. I arched my neck for a closer look and saw my wrists had been fettered to the bedposts. From what I could tell, my ankles had suffered a similar fate.
Confusion overtook me and I yanked at the bindings. “Why have I been tied up?”
He watched my struggles with a look of unveiled sympathy. “For your own good.”
I had heard medical anecdotes of patients needing to be restrained for violent behavior. Fearing this may have happened to me, I tried to think back, but had no recollection since falling asleep on the sofa. Even so, he could surely see that my senses had returned and I no longer posed a danger.
Edgar bent down to pick up an unlit oil lamp, similar to those stored downstairs in the pantry. He carefully removed the shade and began to dribble the oil near my right foot, onto Henry’s folded quilt. Bewildered by this action, I tried to prop up on my shoulder blades for a better look and accidentally caught my toes on the quilt, knocking it from the bed. Edgar fumbled the lamp, managing to pour oil on both of us in his attempt to catch the quilt.
“Gadzooks, Selah!” he said sharply. “Hold still. I’ve just spilled all over my coat.”
I laid my head back on the mattress, a bit shaken by the tone of his voice. It wasn’t as if I had a lot of control in my present condition. “I’m sorry, Edgar. If you would untie me then I wouldn’t be such a nuisance.”
He ducked out of sight as he bent down to push the quilt under the bed. “I’ve every intention of setting you free,” he said, standing back up to his full height. “Just like I did for Sarah and Elizabeth.”
I blinked again, trying to clear the grogginess from my head. Sarah and Elizabeth...The names circled just beyond my reach. “Do you mean my mother and grandmother? What do they have to do with this?”
“Like you, they were also cursed. It was my duty to free them from their unnatural burdens.” He spoke so calmly that I had to repeat the words before my brain caught up.
I stared at him, dumbstruck by such an odd and errant confession. No doubt, old age had addled Edgar’s mind. He loved my family, had been like the grandfather I never knew. He couldn’t do something so terrible. “I don’t believe you,” I said in a trembling voice. “You would never have hurt them.”
The candlelight flickered across one half of his face, leaving the other half in shadow. “I didn’t have a choice, Selah. They had to die.”
His bluntness stripped my denials bare. No matter how much I wanted to blame madness, the truth was far worse. For a terrifying moment it felt as though my heart had stopped. Black shadows pushed in on all sides, threatened to plunge me back into the abyss of unconsciousness. Instinct rang like a warning bell in my head. I had to stay awake, to fight against the dizziness and confusion as though my life depended on it...
“I’ve every intention of setting you free, just like I did for Sarah and Elizabeth.”
His meaning crashed over me with the force of a towering wave. All these years, the gentle, fatherly exterior had been nothing more than a mask used to hide the real person deep inside. This man looked just like Edgar, even sounded like him, but for all the similarity, he was a complete stranger to me.
A stranger capable of murder.
“Help!” I screamed with such force that my throat hurt from the strain. “Someone help me!”
“There’s no reason to yell. Only Mary can hear you.”
Oh, please no...
Dread pulsed through my veins, pounded in my head like a vicious hammer. There should have been three other people in the house besides Mary. “What did you do with Mrs. Ryan and the other maids?”