The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

No one can see into me the way Herschel can.

Behind me, Lottie is struggling to scrub behind Beattie’s ears and Beattie is whining that the water’s too cold. If I slip out now, they’ll think I’m just going down to breakfast, and no one will notice me leave.

I hurry over to look at myself in the glass on the dressing table, to pinch my cheeks and fluff the curls over my ears before rushing out of the house.

I step in front of the mirror, fingertips at my cheeks.

But instead of my reflection, the mirror reflects a hideous apparition back at me, with bony fingers on its cheeks. Before I can stop myself, I scream in horror and clap my hands over my eyes.

In the glass, this horrible thing leered at me, a desiccated creature of teeth and skin and bones. Hair like seaweeds sprouting from its head. Eyes empty and bottomless, just pits where the eyes should be. The thing was like the specter of a witch, or a demon out of Cotton Mather. Something evil and wretched and unthinkable.

“Annie?” Beattie calls from the washtub. I hear water slosh as she stands up.

My hands are still over my eyes, and I’m trembling.

Horrible. Too horrible. A nightmare thing that somehow crawled out of my dream with me when I awoke.

“Annie?” I hear my sister’s bare feet pad over to stand behind me. A gentle hand comes to rest on my shoulder.

“I . . . I . . . ,” I stammer.

I don’t know what’s happening.

I don’t understand.

“It’s all right,” Beattie says.

I’m hiding behind my hands, unable to look, and so instead Beattie pulls me to her in an embrace. She’s damp and cold from the bath, and the sweet smell of Pears soap fills my nostrils as I breathe in my sister. I crush my face into her hair and shudder. Beattie’s only twelve, but she has a reassuring wisdom at times. I’ve even thought of telling her about Herschel. I can’t tell anyone, but I yearned to show her the cameo when he gave it to me.

But I can’t.

I can’t tell anyone.

No one can know.

“Here now,” Lottie chides us from the other side of the room. “You’ll catch your death.”

Beattie releases me and I screw open my eyes. I see the concerned look of my sister, who’s wrapped in a damp towel and staring at me curiously. Over her head, in the oval dressing table glass, I spy our twin reflections. My face is paler than usual, almost sallow, but the monster has vanished. I wipe my eyes with my wrists and suck the tears out of my nose and down my throat.

“It’s Ed’s fault, for waking us up like that,” Beattie says soothingly. “You’re just overtired.”

She gives my arm a squeeze and then returns to the tub where Lottie’s waiting.

I nod.

I can’t tell her that I was already awake, before Ed. Long before Ed.

Lottie gives me the briefest of glances, and then looks away while rubbing the water off Beattie.

“Well,” I say to the room. “I’ll just go downstairs, then.”

I hurry to the door to the front stair, avoiding catching either of their eyes,

“Tell Mother I’ll be down in a trice,” Beatrice calls after me.

On the landing outside our bedroom I smell cooking bacon and beans, and strong coffee, and my stomach rumbles. I start down the curving staircase, my hand tracing the banister. This house is much more comfortable than my aunt’s, though she finds our neighborhood remote and unfashionable. Her house is drafty. I spent every night in her spare room shivering under the quilt with the torn square.

As I descend the stairs, the smells of food intensify, changing in a just perceptible way. There’s a sharpness to the smell, and it makes my mouth water.