Evie stepped inside and found herself in a small room. There was another door, oddly, in the center of the wall. She turned the knob on that door, and a trap in the floor gave way, sending her barreling down a laundry chute. Screaming, she pawed the smooth sides for something to grab, something to slow her descent. As she was shot out the other end, her coat caught on a sharp edge, suspending her. Carefully, she eased out of the coat, holding fast to it as she lowered herself. The coat ripped at the collar, dropping her the rest of the way. She landed on a dirt floor with an uncomfortable thump that rattled her bones. Nothing was broken, but her flashlight was gone, and her new gold brocade coat was now in tatters; a square of bright cloth stuck to the mouth of the laundry chute.
Evie struggled to her feet. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, the room beginning to take dim shape. An old furnace. A potting table covered in tools. Linens hanging from a line, gone stiff and dusty with neglect. One moved ever so slightly, and Evie could hear her blood pounding in her ears. There was no one there. But it had moved; she was certain of it. She put up a hand and felt the slightest of breezes. But from where? There were no windows in this dark tomb.
“Evie! Are you all right?” Mabel’s panicked voice echoed dully down the laundry chute. “Evie!”
“Mabel, honey, you should see—there’s the most darb speakeasy down here, and John Barrymore is fixing me a champagne cocktail,” Evie joked to calm her nerves.
“Don’t you dare tease me!”
“Everything’s copacetic, Pie Face. Looking for the steps. Be up in a minute.”
Mabel continued talking. It was what she did when she was nervous, but Evie was grateful for it as she stumbled around in the gloomy basement, her hand up and following the tiny breath of air.
“… can’t believe you talked me into this…”
The breath of air led to a wall. That was impossible; air couldn’t seep through a wall.
“… will never, ever follow you into the breach again, Evil O’Neill…”
It was so dark. Evie felt along the wall for a seam. In the stillness, she thought she heard whispers, a low, steady tone. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and shot up to her neck. Yes, whispers. Like the scratchings of wings. The drone of insects. The low growl of dogs. A thousand tongues whispering at once.
“Steady, old girl, steady,” she said aloud to herself. It was what James had said when he helped her learn to navigate the icy pond on skates, his hands holding hers.
Now her hands shook, along with her breath. She heard a crunch as her foot came down on something hard. She bent to find the object and came up with the pieces of a rhinestone clasp. A shoe buckle. Just like the one missing from Ruta Badowski’s shoe. Her mind reeled, and she felt dizzy. She dropped the buckle like an unclean thing. The whispers came again. It felt as if something were moving in the dark. The old furnace flared to life and Evie fell back from the suddenness of it; just as quickly, it died down again.
From above, she heard a loud thump, followed by Mabel’s quick scream.
“Mabel! Mabel!” Evie cried.
“Those brats have thrown the baseball, after an eternity!” Mabel yelled down through the chute. “We’d better beat it before their mothers come and have us arrested for trespassing.”
Evie stumbled across the basement searching for a way out and practically cried with joy when she found the staircase at last. She bolted quickly up the rickety basement stairs and banged on the door until Mabel came to let her out. Arm in arm, they barreled through the front door and into the reassuring sunshine, not bothering with the latch, and not stopping until they reached the subway platform and could see the train rattling down the tracks of the city’s long metal spine.
Evie knew Will would have a fit when she told him of the day’s exploits at Knowles’ End, but she hoped he’d be swayed when she showed him Ida’s diary, which she had managed to wrest away from Mabel with the promise that they would read it together after she’d shared it with Uncle Will. Now she settled herself at a table on the second floor of the museum library, beside a green banker’s lamp, and read the few entries at the end.
September 7, 1874. Tonight was an evening of wonders! In the darkened parlor, my dear Mary communed with the spirits of my departed mother and father. We joined hands, and Mary and Mr. Hobbes spoke in strange tongues. There came a rapping sound and the candle flame flickered above its wax shroud and went out. We were pitched into darkness.
“Do not be afraid, dear pet,” Mary said in a trance, and I knew at once it was my dear papa speaking to me through her. Oh, to hear his words to me from such a mysterious distance, the veil lifted for the most precious of moments, was a balm beyond any I have known!
“How do my lilacs fare?” Mother asked, as she had in life. Her darling lilacs! I could scarcely speak for the longing in my breast.
“Beautiful as ever,” I replied, and though it was unseemly, I could not stop the flow of my tears.
Too brief was their sojourn on this plane, and I hope to try again as soon as possible.
October 3. Mr. Hobbes is a most peculiar man. He wears the oddest pendant, a round medallion upon which are imprinted a constellation of curious symbols. Mary says that it is a holy relic of a secret order. Sometimes I see him sitting in the cool of the library, studying an ancient text, which he claims the Good Lord directed him to find hidden in the knothole of a twinned oak. The book is a mystical text filled with keys to the next world, which cannot be shared with the uninitiated, he said with apology, and locked the book in the curio cabinet and pocketed the key. I found it rather brash that he would appropriate my curio cabinet so. But Mary tells me that Mr. Hobbes is a spiritual man unbothered by earthly concerns and proprieties, though he is kind enough to oversee, at his own expense, repairs to the house, which is a great comfort to me as I wish Knowles’ End to be returned to its former glory.
October 28. Such a clamor! Mr. Hobbes’s hammers disturb us night and day. I have moved to the old attic room to avoid the dust and unholy noise.
November 22. Mr. Hobbes would not allow me into my own cellar. When I took umbrage at this, he told me as kindly as possible that there had been a terrible misfortune in the cellar and the old furnace must be replaced, along with most everything else. He smiled as he said this, and I noted that his smile is never quite mirrored in his eyes, which are the coldest shade of blue.
January 15. I am not well and am confined to bed. Mary says I am overwrought by grief at speaking with my dear mother and father so often and by the assessor’s continued letters for payment of taxes. I haven’t the money. “Sell Knowles’ End to me, my dear, and I shall pay the taxes and you will live on as before, with none the wiser that you are not the sole owner of the house. Your good standing need never be in question,” Mary said to me. I cannot bear the anguish of selling Knowles’ End, but how much worse to lose it to the auction block. I shall think on it. Mary offered me sweet wine and insisted I drink it all to soothe my nerves.
January 20. My sleep is disturbed by the most terrible dreams.
April 21. I found him in the dark of the parlor, naked. “Look on me and be amazed,” he growled. And his eyes burned in the dark like twin fires. I remember nothing after but that I woke in my bed well after noon with a headache and Mary insisting that I did not need a physician, only to rest and let her care for me.
May. I know not what day it is, for the days run together as currents in a stream. They hold odd séances below. I can hear them, but I am too weak to go downstairs, and too afraid.
August. It is terribly hot. A foul stench permeates the house, turning my stomach. The boarder has gone, I know not where.
September 1. The beast skulks the halls of the house, frightening all within. The servants, the few remaining, fear him. He tells the most fantastical tales. Once, he claimed to be the last surviving member of a lost, chosen tribe, when I know he was poor as a church mouse, common as dirt, raised in an orphanage in Brooklyn. Every time it is a new tale, until it is impossible to know what is truth and what folly.
September 20. I will have no more of that woman’s sweet wine.