“I don’t know. But if it is, Mac and Donovan have a lot of explaining to do.” He reached into his pocket to extract a set of keys. They clinked as he shuffled them between his fingers, and upon finding the right one, he locked the door with a satisfying snick.
We resumed our journey to the next floor, Michael leading and Gage at my back. There were no wall sconces lit in the stairwell leading up to the attic, so both men grabbed a brace of candles from their recesses in the wall. Their flickering light in the draft of our movement danced over the walls around us, gleaming off the woodwork.
The attic was pitch-black and freezing. I shivered in my thin, vermilion satin evening gown and tightened my ivory shawl around my shoulders. I had expected there to be at least some living presence up here in the form of the servants’ quarters, but apparently in this house they had been built belowstairs rather than above.
Michael led us to the second door on the left and unlocked it. The door swung open easily and silently, despite the fact that I had been expecting an ominous groan. I peered around Michael’s shoulder at the contents inside. Crates and boxes were stacked next to old canvases resting on their sides and draped in heavy cloths. Everything was covered over with a fine layer of dust, except the box sitting on the top of the stack closest to us.
Following my gaze, he explained, “That’s where I’ve been storing his most recent sketches. Like the ones you saw the other night.”
I stepped forward hesitantly. “May I?”
Michael was silent a moment and then choked out his response. “Yes.”
I lifted my arm to open the lid on the box and then stopped with my hand poised in the air. My heart pounded in my chest. I suddenly felt as if I was about to dive over a precipice—one that I wasn’t sure I wanted to traverse—and wondered whether there would be something there to catch me when I landed.
The floorboards shifted behind me and I felt the warm press of Gage’s hand on my lower back. “Go ahead,” he urged me.
I swallowed and lifted the lid from the box. Immediately the ashy smell of charcoal assailed my nostrils, its normally comforting scent now distorted by my concern over what I might find rendered by it inside. I reached in and lifted out the top stack of sketches, those that had been scattered across the floor of Will’s room two nights past.
Flipping through the rough paper slowly, I saw the same crude renderings and scribbles I remembered. And the stacks below them were not much different. Some were more detailed and horrifying than others, but they all depicted the same scenes of helplessness and despair. The tortured images on his walls, of people drugged or strapped to beds or with their heads forced underwater, repeated themselves. There were also several more where people milled around a central courtyard, some fighting, some crying, and some laughing while the rest wandered around aimlessly. But predominately the drawings were scribbles of nothingness, of darkness. One depicted a pair of round, frightened eyes surrounded by nothing but black swirls of charcoal.
I set them down and turned away a minute, trying to regain control over my emotions. Tears were threatening at the backs of my eyes and I could feel the corresponding lump at the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, forcing it down.
“Is this all?” I asked Michael. “I take it he has not been painting.” That would require a much more concerted effort, and when Will went into these . . . trances he was drawing by instinct, ignoring artistic skill.
“No.”
Gage moved across the room, resting his hand on one of the blanketed canvases. “Are these from before he was confined to the asylum?”
Michael’s gaze was filled with apprehension. “Yes.”
Gage continued to stare down at them for a moment and then glanced back up at Michael, asking his permission.
He nodded.
Gage set his brace of candles on a stack of boxes to his left and slowly peeled back the heavy cloth. A fine cloud of dust rose from the fabric, forcing Gage to turn his head away. I wrinkled my nose against the musty stench. Part of me wanted to turn away before I saw something I didn’t wish to, but another part of me held my eyes captive to the painting, wondering if I had imagined the horrible depictions Will had rendered after the war.
Fortunately, the first one Gage revealed was not one of the worst. A young woman was painted in the center, her clothes being torn asunder as she struggled with the soldier who was assaulting her. An arm hid the girl’s face while the soldier smiled lasciviously down at her. However, an old woman stood behind them—her expression tortured by what she must do—with a knife raised above her head ready to strike the soldier.
Having seen enough, I turned away, facing Michael where he still stood in the doorway. His eyes were fastened on the painting and his mouth had thinned into a straight line. I watched as weary resignation spread across his features. When his gaze lifted, meeting mine, I braced myself, knowing today’s revelations were not over.